What percentage of people lie about rape in America?

What percentage of rape accusations made in America are false?

According to the official FBI data collected on that topic, the one most commonly cited, that number is between 2-8%.

Wait a second though, since that isn't the full story. It's barely the first page of the book!

That number is only for cases where the accuser was actively found to be lying (step one), had charges brought against them (step two) and were found guilty. (Step three)
If you're paying attention, you might notice that leaves a lot of wiggle room, given our current legal system.
How many accusers are found to be lying, so the charges are simply dropped?

We don't know, for certain, but some say that the police/legal system, and all that, end up winnowing out close to 80% of all rape cases. In general this is pointed out as a sign that those pigs are just protecting the evil rapists of the world.

Is that the whole picture?

Almost certainly not. If we're going to make a guess as to what it means, it's probably safe to assume that 50% of these are false accusations, and so obvious that even the police realize it.

That's a guess however, so let's not use those numbers for now. (Remember that when making a mental tally at the end of this! We are not counting the things that can't be known.)

Even in the court system, it is rare for the DA to press charges against a woman caught lying, no matter how egregious the situation is. It makes them look bad, even if they're right, so they aren't going to risk it very often!
But is that the end of this? We just don't know how often false accusations are being made?

Well, we have some hints:

Each year the FBI reports that the DNA they are sent for testing false out in this general pattern:

20% of it exonerates the accused, not being their DNA.
20% is inconclusive.
60% shows that the man that is accused is responsible for the DNA (Not the same as guilt of rape! Note that for later.)

So at a guess, they work on the assumption that 25% of the inconclusive results are probably going to clear the person, which is likely close to the case.
So, the FBI says that 25% of accused men are actually not responsible for the DNA left behind in the rape victim/accuser.

That is freaking huge.

Add to this the 2-8% of accusers that are actually found guilty of lying by the courts each year, and you have 27-33% of all testable rape accusations being flat out proved to be false.
That's a little bit more than 2%, don't you think?
So, just to summarize what we have so far let me break this down with a numbered list.

1. 25% of DNA tested by the FBI is considered to be clearing the accused party in rape cases.
2. 2-8% of accusers are taken through the whole system, found guilty and are punished each year. They are not, in general in that upper 25%.
3. We have a large, but unknown percentage of accusations that are free form. The rumors do damage, but there is no move to take them to the police or court, for whatever reason.
4. Among those numbers will also likely be victims that have been raped, but no one believes.
5. What we know however is that the police don't send in DNA to clear people. They only test in order to make a conviction. If 1/4 of their attempts fail, what percentage of people being accused are actually innocent?
We can't truly know that answer, but it's clear that the numbers are much larger than we've been being told for a long time.


*Some other things to think about.

Most labs around the country that run similar DNA tests for the police find their rate of clearing the innocent to be at 26%. Slightly higher than the FBI admits to, but confirmation that the pattern is pretty consistent.

Most men count an accusation as someone simply claiming they raped them.

Most women only count things that actually go to court, even if fiscal, social or physical damage has come of a false accusation already.

The vast majority of people making false accusations of rape, in the U.S. are women.

The majority of people being raped (if we include prison populations) are men.