One of the most controversial disputes affecting the discourse related to violence against women is the dispute about the frequency of false allegations of sexual assault. In an effort to add clarity to the discourse, published research on false allegations is critiqued, and the results of a new study described. All cases (N = 136) of sexual assault reported to a major Northeastern university over a 10-year period are analyzed to determine the percentage of false allegations. Of the 136 cases of sexual assault reported over the 10-year period, 8 (5.9%) are coded as false allegations. These results, taken in the context of an examination of previous research, indicate that the prevalence of false allegations is between 2% and 10%.
This research examines bystander willingness to report three different crimes to the police or campus authorities among a college student sample (n = 295). Twelve original vignettes varied anonymity when reporting, bystander's relationship with the offender (friend or stranger), and crime type. A factorial analysis of variance showed that main effects were found for crime type, bystander's gender, and bystander's relationship with the offender; anonymity was not significant. The physical assault was the most likely to be reported (4.47), followed by theft (3.26), and sexual assault (2.36). Women were more likely than men to report each crime type, and bystanders who were good friends of the offender were less likely to report than strangers. No two- or three-way interactions were significant, but a significant four-way interaction indicated that anonymity, relationship with the offender, and bystander's gender predicted willingness to report for the sexual assault scenario.
This study utilized an experimental design to determine how bystanders would intervene in campus sexual assault (SA) or intimate partner violence (IPV) situations. Specifically, it examines whether the type of intervention (direct, indirect, or delegation) is associated with relational distance, the nature of the crime, or the sex of the bystander. A random sample of college students completed a web-based survey at a private university in the Midwest. Survey participants were randomly assigned two vignettes-an SA scenario ( n = 371) and an IPV scenario ( n = 350)-with one of three conditions: knew the victim, knew the perpetrator, or knew neither. Chi-square tests, binary logistic regressions, and predicted probabilities were conducted to test three hypotheses. Results indicate that relational distance affects how a bystander will intervene. In the SA vignette, students who knew the victim or perpetrator chose direct intervention. In the IPV vignette, students who knew the victim or perpetrator chose direct or indirect interventions. Students who knew neither the victim nor the perpetrator tended to choose to delegate the intervention to someone else for both crime types. Although there were differences by sex, the larger differences were between whether they knew someone or not. Still, men had the highest probability of directly intervening in the SA scenario, whereas women had the highest probability of indirectly intervening in the IPV scenario. The results of this study suggest that campus violence prevention programs should consider context-specific issues in their trainings such as relational distance and type of crime.
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