MF: The Malicious Fabricator; PIA: Pressure Induced; UW: Unreliable Witness; AS: Attention Seeker; MB: Misguided Believer.
Accused.me.uk conducted a survey on the different types of false accuser. It ran for 7 days from the 26 May 2023. The pie chart above provides the statistics for each category, which will be explained further below.
Methodology
In terms of methodology, the survey was sent to Accused.Me members at the pre-charge, trial and post-conviction stage. We received 84 responses.
We will acknowledge that this is a small sample, but it represents on going research by Accussed.Me, an organisation with over 3,000 members, that supports victims who have been false accused of rape, another serious sexual offence or domestic violence, into the motivations for making false allegations of sexual offences.
The Survey, then, has value in it in terms of introducing the concepts detailed below in an area of research that is known to be extremely difficult and about which not much is currently known.
We wholly believe that, going forward, collecting this kind of information will be of such use for us in countering claims made by organisations opposed to the notion that false allegations numbers are very much in the low percentage.
Types Of False Accusers
There are plenty of reasons why people make false accusations and quite often the false accuser's personality traits can also contribute to why they would make a false accusation.
Whilst there is zero excuse for making a false accusation, you will find that trying to establish the type of false accuser you are facing can often assist in preparing your defence.
So what are the different types of accuser?
The Malicious Fabricator: Driven by hate, these individuals are driven with malicious to bring us down. They deliberately and knowingly fabricate allegations for various reasons. Revenge, personal gain, and as a means to manipulate others. Malicious fabricators often seek financial compensation (particularly in the UK where the Government freely purchase their lies with tax pay money through CICA). They damage an individual’s reputation, or even use false accusations as a weapon in legal disputes or custody battles.
The Attention Seeker: Another type of false accuser is the attention seeker. They crave the spotlight and seek validation by gaining sympathy or support from others. Attention seekers may falsely accuse someone of rape to draw attention to themselves, reinforce their victimhood narrative, or to gain notoriety through media coverage or social media platforms.
The Misguided Believer: Some false accusers genuinely believe that they have been sexually assaulted, despite the absence of any actual incident. The misguided believer may suffer from mental health issues, such as delusions, hallucinations, or memory distortions, which lead them to sincerely believe in their false accusations.
The Unreliable Witness: Human memory is imperfect and sometimes individuals may make false allegations due to errors or distortions in their recollection quite often planted by spurious, under educated, unqualified ‘therapists’. Factors such as trauma, intoxication, or suggestive interviewing techniques can affect memory recall and lead to the vilest of false allegations. These unreliable witnesses genuinely believe their accounts, even though they may not accurately represent the events that occurred.
The Pressure Induced Accuser: This category includes situations where family, friends, or societal expectations influence someone to falsely accuse another person. In reality what this usually means is someone has a partner and has been doing the dirty. Rather than owning up to their cheating they falsely accuses their innocent victim in order to hide the truth from the partner.
By Emma Wells
Click here for Emma's recent book, Unseen Victims