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To be falsely accused of rape can be a terrible fate, observes Detective Mick Nieman of the Medicine Hat police. The crime is so horrific that "people just can't get over the stigma," he says, nor in many cases can they really clear their names. "People often assume that [the accused] got off because of a lack of evidence, or that he had a good lawyer." The detective thinks that women who deliberately lay false sexual assault complaints should face sentences as severe as the penalties that they tried to inflict on innocent men. But not all judges agree, as shown last month in the cases of two Alberta women who pleaded guilty to public mischief.

Nicole Ann Hudon's story seemed fishy from the start, recalls Det. Nieman. The 19-year-old told police that she accepted a ride home from a party on January 30 with three men. She described in detail and with great conviction how two of them held her down in a car while the third raped her. "The car was all wrong," says the officer. "It was a sports car and [in such a small vehicle] some of the things she told us are `Mission Impossible."

Hudon also reported that she was put out of the car while partially clothed in minus 29 Celsius weather and had to walk five blocks home. But Det. Nieman and his partner Det. Andy McGrogan found no tread marks from her running shoes in the snow where she was supposedly dropped off.

Normally, false accusations quickly fall apart, says the officer, but Funk was emotionally convincing and the available evidence slight. Det. Nieman believes that, had the case gone to trial, the accused might well have gone to jail.

So the cop resorted to trickery. "I don't make any apologies for that," he says. The detectives told the girl that they found her fingerprints in the home of the alleged rapist (they had not, although they looked hard). On February 17, she admitted that she had gone to the accused's residence, made up the rape story to tell her mother when she got home, and then repeated it to the police. Hudon, the mother of an infant, pleaded guilty on July 4 in Medicine Hat provincial court. Judge Philip Wambolt sentenced her to 15 months in prison, despite her lawyer's pleas that her client suffered from depression and the effects of past sexual assault.

"We do get a lot of these false complaints," observes Det. Nieman. "We just charged another girl here last week." Typically, the woman fabricates an allegation of rape to explain her whereabouts to a jealous boyfriend or suspicious parents. But the policeman emphasizes that many complaints are legitimate and he never draws conclusions too quickly.

Trina Funk, 27, of Edmonton, charged with four counts of public mischief and one of obstructing justice, was also in court last month. In November 1991, she was found, crying and dishevelled, in a field. She told police that the husband of a friend had choked her, held her in a car and sexually assaulted her. The accused was arrested and spent six days in jail before the police confirmed that he had an airtight alibi. Charges against him were later dropped and last year Funk confessed that she made it all up.

In Edmonton provincial court on July 19, Judge Albert Chrumka was quite sympathetic. He noted that such charges normally lead to a jail term but gave Funk only 18 months' probation and 80 hours of community service. He may have taken into account her lawyer's claim, unsupported by witnesses or other evidence, that she really was assaulted by the accused in 1989, causing her to develop post-traumatic stress disorder.

That is normal procedure, notes Wayne Renke, a law professor at the University of Alberta. Sentencing hearings can be very informal, particularly if the accused pleads guilty. Often defence lawyers present mitigating circumstances which go unchallenged by the Crown. At stake in these cases are the personal lives of the accused and the integrity of the justice system, continues the professor. He therefore supports stiff sentences for those who maliciously lay false charges.

Eighteen months of probation for wrongly sending a man to jail "seems extraordinarily lenient" to Gwen Landolt, a lawyer and national vice-president of REAL Women of Canada. But she is not surprised. In June, Gail Chen, 40, of Toronto was convicted of public mischief for falsely accusing a man of raping her in June 1994. She needed a story to explain to her husband how she ended up naked with rug burns in an east-end apartment. Chen served six days in jail, while the man she accused spent 25 days behind bars and another four months under house arrest while the investigation was underway.

Mrs. Landolt also contends that federal Justice Minister Allan Rock is tilting the law against men in sexual assault cases. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that, in certain circumstances, counsellors of alleged rape victims must release their records to the defence. The court cited several examples where those documents established the innocence of the accused. Mr. Rock, however, is reportedly working on legislation which will prevent the release of these records. Remarks Mrs. Landolt, "He's never refused his radical feminist friends anything so far. Why would he stop at this?"

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Terrible stigma that sticks: women lay false rape accusations suffer less than their victims

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To be falsely accused of rape can be a terrible fate, observes Detective Mick Nieman of the Medicine Hat police. The crime is so horrific that "people just can't get over the stigma," he says, nor in many cases can they really clear their names.

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Ten years ago this Sunday, three of the four co-captains on the Duke men's lacrosse team held a day-long bacchanal for their teammates at their off-campus house, just off the school's bucolic East Campus, in Durham, North Carolina. One of the supposed highlights of the party was to be a performance by two "exotic dancers" that the players had hired for a total of $800. Crystal Mangum, a single mother of two children and a student at the nearby North Carolina Central University, also in Durham, was one of them.

You may remember bits and pieces of what happened next. Mangum was black. All but one of the players on the lacrosse team were white. Among them were David Evans, Reade Seligmann, and Colin Finnerty, all of whom Mangum later accused of raping and sexually assaulting her in the house's small bathroom. The young men were subsequently indicted by a Durham County grand jury after a police investigation and a nurse's examination convinced Mike Nifong, the district attorney, that a crime had occurred. The indictments created a firestorm that played out in the media (including this publication) and on cable-news channels, and all across the Internet. It ignited a national debate about sexual assault on college campuses that rages to this day.

But the Duke lacrosse case, as it came to be known, wasn't so simple. In fact, its nuances were hard to behold and poorly understood. Soon after the indictment, as the Duke students hired top-notch defense attorneys, the narrative began to change and a vexing legal circus ensued. Mangum could no longer recall with precision exactly what happened on the night of March 13, 2006. Nifong overzealously championed his case in the media. The DNA evidence did not match any of the three players, but it showed that other men had been with Mangum in the week before the incident.

In a clever tactic, the defense attorneys turned to the North Carolina State Bar to intervene, and for the first time in its history, the state bar brought charges against a sitting district attorney-Nifong-for being too outspoken and concealing the crucial DNA evidence. Nine months into the case, Nifong dropped the rape charge and offered Mangum the chance to abandon the entire case. But she refused his offer. She said she wanted justice. Eventually, to defend himself in front of the state bar, Nifong had to recuse himself from the case, and he handed it over to Roy Cooper, the North Carolina attorney general who four months later dropped the remaining charges against the players, declared them "innocent," and called Nifong a "rogue prosecutor."

In the end, there was no trial-a fact that most people forget. The three players received $20 million each in a settlement with Duke. The university spent more than $100 million between legal fees, settlement costs, and other expenses to move on from the ignominy and preserve its "brand."

Not only does this Sunday mark the 10th anniversary of that infamous night, it also is the ESPN premiere of Fantastic Lies, a 103-minute documentary about the case. (The title derives from David Evans's famous remark to the press after his indictment.) The timing is serendipitous, you might say, since Fantastic Lies will appear on the same night and network as "Selection Sunday," the popular prelude to March Madness, the annual N.C.A.A. college basketball tournament, which Duke won in 2015.

But the problem with Fantastic Lies isn't its opportunistic programming as much as its uneven portrayal of the events in question. The Duke lacrosse case, after all, was remarkable for, among other things, its enormous complexity. This was the main point I tried to convey in The Price of Silence, my book on the scandal, which came out in 2014. (I should mention-not with any sort of Dickensian pretensions-that the final version clocked in at 614 pages for a reason. The innumerable subtleties of the story demanded it.) For the first time, Nifong explained his motivations for prosecuting the case with such zeal. For the first time, Mangum shared what she believed happened on the night of March 13, 2006. Cooper, the state attorney general, never charged her with making false accusations in the lacrosse case; she told me she still believed she had been sexually assaulted.

The fall after my book came out, Jonathan and Simon Chinn, the principals at Lightbox, wanted to option The Price of Silence for a documentary. Simon Chinn was the producer of the Oscar-winning documentaries Searching for Sugar Man and Man on a Wire. They explained that they wanted to tell the true, multi-faceted story of what happened, not just the sanitized version that the players, their parents, and their attorneys preferred-and the one that everyone now remembers and accepts as fact. On the other hand, after they signed the contract and paid my fee, they were free to make whatever movie they wanted.

After a few false starts, the Chinns selected Marina Zenovich to direct the film. She was known for her two documentaries about Roman Polanski and another about Richard Pryor. She seemed genuinely moved by the incredible complexity and many subtleties of the story. In December 2014, she filmed me for close to six hours at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. After that, I helped her and the Chinns when I could. After Nifong declined to be interviewed or filmed, they asked me for the tapes of my conversations with him in order to include his voice in the documentary. With Nifong's permission, I gave the Chinns 20 hours of my digital recordings, plus the transcripts, of our conversations. After they asked, I also gave the Chinns the digital recording of my conversation with Mangum, who is now in the North Carolina Correctional Institution for Women, in Raleigh, where she'll be for the next 14 to 18 years as a result of her 2013 conviction for second-degree murder in her boyfriend's death. (The prison would not allow Zenovich to film Mangum.)

I did not get much information along the way about the film. Nor did I really expect any. I am hardly the first writer to be kept in the dark about how his book was being used, or not, in a documentary film. Occasionally, Jonathan Chinn and I would speak. After each conversation, I felt reassured. "It's a dense topic and not a straightforward story from any angle," he wrote me in September 2015. "That's what makes it so fascinating. Editorially, we are interested in unpacking the way in which this story fed into a city, state, and country's pre-existing racial and economic dysfunction and provided every side with a runaway bandwagon to jump onto. Some of the archive we have sourced of what was going on in Durham and on campus is remarkable in its expression of raw anger, mistrust, and frustration. It's turning out to be a story as much about the fallibility of the media and our universities as anything else. . . . Juicy stuff!"

In December, the Chinns sent me a cut of Fantastic Lies. It was breathtaking, but not in a good way. Nothing from my interview was used, nor were any of the recordings I shared with them from Nifong or Mangum. Instead, Fantastic Lies presents the narrative that the parents of the indicted players and their defense attorneys have been busily trying to preserve in amber for years: that the players were falsely accused, and that the Durham police, aided and abetted by Nifong, the rape nurse, and the media created an epic conflagration. Instead of grappling with why there never was a trial and how the North Carolina State Bar was used to subvert justice, the film once again spews the defense version that justice was served, even though it was not, and that no amount of money, not even $20 million, could ever compensate the three players for what Mangum and Nifong did to them.

We'll never know what really happened in that that bathroom 10 years ago, and the house itself has long since been torn down. To be sure, Fantastic Lies is more than just a bunch of fantastic lies. But it can certainly seem that way. In the end, sadly, it is another major missed opportunity to explain to a wider audience the complex story of the Duke lacrosse case.

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Remembering (and Misremembering) the Duke Lacrosse Case

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Ten years ago this Sunday, three of the four co-captains on the Duke men's lacrosse team held a day-long bacchanal for their teammates at their off-campus house, just off the school's bucolic East Campus, in Durham, North Carolina.

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NFL punter Matt Araiza and two San Diego State football players accused in gang-rape lawsuit

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A woman’s lawsuit alleges that Matt Araiza, now with the Buffalo Bills, and two San Diego State football players raped her when she was 17.

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Find a story that helped us learn about the topic ^^

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Find a story that helped us learn about the topic ^^

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The idea of false rape allegations has caught the imagination of our country in a major way. Unfortunately, the high-profile cases involving these false allegations serve as a reminder that they are more than just imagination.

Cases like the false gang rape allegations at the University of Virginia are fodder for every person who wishes to highlight the danger of false rape allegations. The problem is much of the conversation regarding this matter has fueled a number of dangerous false narratives.
Don't face charges alone. If you have been accused of a sex crime in Tulare County, schedule a consultation to start building your defense team today.
How Many Rape Allegations Are False?

No one agrees on the percentage of rape allegations that prove to be false, but estimates range from 2 to 10 percent. It is important to note, however, that men accused falsely of committing rape are often able to escape serious damage to their lives.

Innocent Men and Rape Charges

It is difficult for some people to believe that the lives of most men are not irreversibly damaged when falsely accused of rape due to the severe penalties attached to such a crime. The National Registry of Exonerations reports that since 1989, only 52 men have been exonerated due to the false rape allegations.

This number is compared to 790 overturned murder cases. This means that men falsely accused of rape are often able to dissolve these matters before spending substantial time in jail.

What Are the Motives for False Reports?

One academic study identified teenage girls as the most likely source of a false rape allegation. Teenage girls often make these allegations to avoid getting into trouble with their parents. Additionally, half of the rape complaints are initiated by a person other than the alleged victims. Many times parents are the original complainant.

Another common source of false rape allegations is a "victim" in search of medical care or psychiatric medication. Most times, these accusers do not pursue the allegations they make once they have obtained what they needed.

Is There a False Accuser Profile?

Unfortunately, some false accusers do continue forward with the cases they initiate. And because it is impossible to identify false and real rape victims on sight, it can be uncomfortable to talk much about either group. A good point to remember is that real rape victims have no distinguishing qualities at all.
They can be:

Young or old

A member of any race or ethnic background

And rich or poor

One striking pattern that has been identified among false rape accusers who continue forward with allegations is a prior history of criminal fraud. These people are often broken and come from environments filled with crime and violence.

One false accuser that fits this description is Duke Lacrosse team accuser Crystal Mangum. Ms.Mangum had reported a false rape and kidnapping on a previous occasion.

Motivation

Despite the similar histories shared by many false rape accusers, they often file claims for several different reasons.
Three of the main motivations for false rape allegations include:

Personal Gain - Accusers who make false rape reports are similar in personality to individuals that purposely slip and fall in a public place to file a lawsuit. This type of false rape accuser often claims a sexual assault on government property or by a government employee.

Mental Illness - People who have severe psychosis have been known to allege instances of rape that never took place. Many of these false accusers have a personality disorder that compels them to make fictitious assault claims.

Revenge - Revenge is another common motive for false rape accusations. What may surprise a lot of people, however, is the fact that this revenge almost never is in response to being dumped by the accused. The potential reasons for these revenge accusations are endless. Two examples are a woman who was upset with the number of drugs she purchased and a woman who accused a man whom she believed stole a truck from her husband.

Get The Help You Need

If you or someone you know is accused falsely of rape allegations, it is in your best interest to move as quickly as possible in your own defense. These matters are complicated legal issues, and you should trust a skilled California sex crime defense attorney with experience in these matters to fight on your behalf.

The attorneys at Schweitzer & Davidian have served the interests of clients in the Fresno, California area for more than a quarter of a century. Lawyers at the firm are available to clients through the most trying times of their lives.
You can call the dedicated attorneys at Schweitzer & Davidian at (559) 206-2322.

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False Allegations and Sexual Assault: An In-Depth Look

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The idea of false rape allegations has caught the imagination of our country in a major way. Unfortunately, the high-profile cases involving these false allegations serve as a reminder that they are more than just imagination. Cases like the false gang rape allegations at the University of Virginia are fodder for every person who wishes to highlight the danger of false rape allegations.

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BRIDGEPORT, Conn. (AP) - A woman who police say had a sexual encounter with two college football players in Connecticut and later made false rape allegations so she wouldn't lose a potential boyfriend was sentenced Thursday to one year in jail.

Nikki Yovino, 20, of South Setauket, New York, was sentenced Thursday in Bridgeport Superior Court. She agreed to serve the jail time when she pleaded guilty in June, just before jury selection was to begin, to misdemeanor charges of falsely reporting an incident and interfering with police.

Yovino was attending Sacred Heart University in Fairfield when she reported being raped by two school football players at an off-campus party in Bridgeport in October 2016. But police said she later admitted making up the allegations so she wouldn't ruin a relationship with another student.

Yovino's lawyers had said police pressured her into making a false confession. Attorney Ryan O'Neill previously said she told police the football players had sex with her against her will, but never used the terms rape or sexual assault.

The football players were never arrested, but both withdrew from the school while facing possible discipline. One of them also lost his football scholarship, according to the players' lawyer, Frank Riccio III. Both said they had consensual sex with Yovino.

Both players remained unidentified until Thursday, when Malik St. Hilaire came forward to speak at the sentencing and confront Yovino. The Connecticut Post reported Yovino rolled her eyes and smirked as St. Hilaire talked about how the allegations affected his life.

"I went from being a college student to sitting at home being expelled with no way to clear my name," St. Hilaire said. "I just hope she knows what she has done to me, my life will never be the same. I did nothing wrong, but everything has been altered because of this."

Riccio also read a statement from the second player, who remains unidentified. The player wrote that the past two years have been the most difficult of his life and he suffered depression, anxiety, and embarrassment while losing his football scholarship. He said he is now saddled with $30,000 of debt.

Both players are considering suing Yovino in civil court.

Judge William Holden said he hoped Yovino would spend her jail time contemplating her actions. Prosecutor Tatiana Messina said Yovino's crimes were a "disservice" to true sexual assault victims, who often are not believed.

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Woman who made false rape claim gets 1 year in jail

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BRIDGEPORT, Conn. (AP) - A woman who police say had a sexual encounter with two college football players in Connecticut and later made false rape allegations so she wouldn't lose a potential boyfriend was sentenced Thursday to one year in jail. Nikki Yovino, 20, of South Setauket, New York, was sentenced Thursday in Bridgeport Superior Court.

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