Why does the CPS prosecute only 29% of the women who the police believe have made false rape allegations?

Posted on September 5, 2014 by Mike Buchanan

We’ve just had the latest of our FoI requests responses, this one from the Crown Prosecution Service – here. As usual with FoI responses, material of interest has been highlighted in yellow. The letter has a link to an interesting report – here. The report was presented to the Director of Public Prosecutions in 2012. It was the joint effort of Alison Levitt QC, Principal Legal Advisor to the CPS, and the Equality and Diversity Unit of the CPS, so we cannot be surprised by the feminist thinking that runs through it. The CPS has for some time been notorious for being driven by feminist thinking. From the report:

In recent years we have worked hard to dispel the damaging myths and stereotypes which are associated with these cases. One such misplaced belief is that false allegations of rape and domestic violence are rife. This report presents a more accurate picture. (Our comment – it does nothing of the sort)

At the outset it is important that we acknowledge the very damaging impact that a false allegation of rape or sexual assault – be it either malicious or misguided – can have on the person falsely accused. Reputations can be ruined and lives can be devastated as a result. Such cases will be dealt with robustly and those falsely accused should feel confident that the Crown Prosecution Service will prosecute these cases wherever there is sufficient evidence and it is in the public interest to do so. (our emphasis)

Ah yes, ‘public interest’. The explanation given for the fact that no British woman has ever been charged by the criminal justice system for the egregious crime of paternity fraud. But when, you might reasonably ask, would it not be in the public interest to prosecute someone for making a false rape allegation?

The report reveals that between January 2011 and May 2012, the police brought 121 cases of allegedly false rape accusations to the CPS for charging decisions. Common sense tells us that this would have been a miniscule proportion of the false rape accusations made by women against men over a 16-month period. So the fact that the police presented cases for charging decisions suggests they believed the prospects for convictions in these 121 cases, if charges were brought, were high. The CPS decided to press charges in just 35 cases, 29% of the total – 25 for perverting the course of justice, 10 for wasting police time. It’s impossible to escape the obvious conclusion.

The CPS itself is perverting the course of justice, and wasting police time.

About Mike Buchanan

I'm a men's human rights advocate, writer, and publisher. My primary focus is leading the political party I launched in 2013, Justice for Men & Boys (and the women who love them). I still work actively on two campaigns I launched in early 2012, Campaign for Merit in Business and the Anti-Feminism League. In 2014 I launched The Alternative Sexism Project, aiming to raise public understanding that the sexism faced by men and boys has far more grievous consequences than the sexism faced by women and girls.
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  • I have written a detailed critique of the 2012 CPS/DPP report on false rape accusations, see Page 34 of http://redpilluk.co.uk/PartnerViolenceAgainstMen.pdf. It is a master class in the art of giving a false impression. The essence of it is that it cons the uncritical reader into conflating the number of prosecutions for false accusations with the actual number of false accusations. It is interesting to see how this is done. The conclusions start as follows,
    “The review has allowed us to examine the suggestion that false allegations of rape and / or domestic violence are rife. It is plain that there were a large number of prosecutions for rape and domestic violence but that only a very small number of individuals were prosecuted for having made a false complaint.”
    The juxtaposition of these two statements gives the impression that the claim made in the first sentence is justified by the second sentence. This is how an unwary person will probably read it. The second statement is true – very few prosecutions for false accusations are brought, as we well know. But that tells us nothing about the prevalence of false accusations. The report contains nothing at all which enlightens us on the matter, and the claim that “the review has allowed us to examine the suggestion that false allegations of rape and / or domestic violence are rife” is untrue.
    It has the desired effect in spreading misinformation. This is demonstrated, for example, by Tracey Vitchers in “Politics”, in an article entitled “Crying Rape On Innocent Men Doesn’t Happen As Often As You Might Think”. She summarises the conclusions of the CPS report thus: “In a recent report published by the United Kingdom’s Crown Prosecution Service, it was found that a mere 35 out of 5,651 or 0.6% of women falsely accused men of rape, and only 6 women out of 111,891 or 0.005% falsely accused a man of domestic violence during the 17-month-long study.”
    Note how the number of prosecutions for false accusations has become the actual number of false accusations in Vitchers’ article. Note also that Vitchers interprets all the prosecutions for domestic violence as being violence by men against women. It simply doesn’t cross her mind that some of those 111,891 are women beating up men. Thus the CPS report spreads misinformation.
    The report is propaganda. Goebbels would be proud. And you will be pleased to hear that, using the same reasoning, paternity fraud does not exist at all.

  • This is the same game played with domestic violence. Having established a national strategy Violence against women and girls. The government (in theory representing the public and it’s interest) gets it’s institutions to prosecute men. With the result that arrest and convictions reflect the Gov. strategy not the incidence shown in the BCS. The CPS is pursuing the public interest as expressed by Gov. in the VAWG strategy. Consequently it prioritises not justice but the strategy. Men as victims are collateral damage or superfluous to the public interest as expressed by the elected Gov.
    Thus the CPS need new political direction.

  • The *spin* that is placed upon the statistics, in the CPS’s shameful verbiage, is downright evil. On that we can surely all agree. If individual decisions not to prosecute, because prosecution was not in the public interest, were influenced by the desire of the higher-ups to massage the statistics, in order to be able to enable that particular spin to be placed upon the statistics, why then this too would be downright evil.

    However, being a “feminist” (defined in a bad way) is so evil and/or stupid, that hard-core such feminist career *activists* are likely to be few and far between. The thin-on-the-ground, hard-core feminazi therefore must concentrate upon infiltrating key organisations, specifically by occupying key *positions* in those organisations. They haven’t a hope of converting the rest of us, so they have to seek power, and then try to manipulate the rest of us, from their strategically-occupied positions of power.

    If card-carrying feminazi in *key* positions want ordinary civil servants to dance to their tune, they would probably have to put it in writing somewhere, that they wanted *many* decisions that it wouldn’t be in the public interest to prosecute particular rape fraudsters. Many ordinary civil servants, still capable of making a reality check upon just how heinous rape fraud is, might even be likely *always* to make decisions that it was in the public to prosecute for false rape allegations, where there was sufficient evidence. If so, this might suggest that 71% of the therefore *cynical* decisions not to prosecute, in the public interest, were taken by corrupt feminazi CPS staff. But that would require far more corrupt feminazi infiltrators amongst the rank and file of CPS decision-makers than I, for one, find credible.

    I think we need to ask further couple of FOIA questions of the CPS:

    (1) Is there a policy in place, committed to writing, that sets out the criteria for a prosecution for rape fraud, for which there is plenty enough evidence to convict, being in the “public interest”? If so, may we please see a copy of that written policy?

    (2) In how many of the 71% of cases in which the police suspected rape fraud, did the CPS decide that the evidence was insufficient (whatever the police suspected) to make conviction likely, versus agreeing with the police that the evidence was plenty sufficient, but then deciding that a conviction would nevertheless not be in the public interest?

    If we have the problem that both Mike Buchanan and Rick Bradford (apparently?) *suspect* we’ve got, that policies promulgated top-down by feminist infiltrators in key positions are forcing ordinary, non-feminist civil servants reluctantly to make corrupt feminist-like decisions, to the effect that prosecutions with plenty enough evidence more-or-less to guarantee conviction, aren’t in the public interest, the two supplementary questions I have suggested asking might help to confirm or to refute those suspicions.

    If we discover that all of the “no action” decisions were because of insufficient evidence, then Mike’s and Rick’s (on my reading) worst fears are unfounded, and we have only the *spin* put on this by feminist editors of the report about the statistics to complain about, not something gravely more sinister than this, which would amount to institutional coercion of ordinary, non-feminist civil servants into collaboration with a corrupt feminist agenda.

    Meanwhile, let us ask ourselves, when might an ordinary civil servant conscientiously decide, concerning a case in his own caseload, of his own accord, that prosecution was not in the public interest, even if the evidence was as compelling as it could ever be? “Never” is one possible answer, which I for one find attractive, because rape fraud is such a serious offence, and denial of its likely prevalence is such a feminist stance. But we ought to explore other possible conscientious responses to a referral of the police to the CPS, of a case file that disclosed abundant rape fraud evidence.

    Because rape fraud is such a serious offence, surely we would want it always to be punished severely, wouldn’t we? But, there again, what if there had been (say) a feeble-minded would-be rape-fraudster with a severe mental illness, and three children to get to school every school day, adequately fed, all fathered by different willfully absent fathers (the complete cads), whom no compassionate judge would feel comfortable punishing *severely*? Might not prosecuting *her*, knowing that she was likely to get a suspended sentence at worst – hardly a “severe” sentence – assuming that the state didn’t want to traumatise her innocent bastards, and to pay for their upkeep at extortionate foster carer rates of pay whilst she was in clink, detract somewhat from the message that it is in the public interest that the public hears, loud and clear, that rape fraud is typically punished severely?

    (The acid test for the right wing people, is whether they can endure the suffering of children, because nothing less than the threat of inflicting suffering upon the innocent, tiny children of the undeserving poor will provide the incentive that some of the undeserving poor need to adopt bourgeois, socially conservative morality themselves, but which will probably be insufficient incentive for the most recalcitrant amongst this underclass.)

    There is a potential conflict between maximising the conviction rate for alleged rape fraud, and maximising the average sentence imposed for proven rape fraud. Even a CPS civil servant who spent his leisure time online, getting justly angry in the manosphere, might jump in the wrong direction, faced with *that* conflict of objectives, both in the public interest.

    “Ye cannae get the breeches off a Highland man” is a thought that often deters the victim of tort from suing the man of straw, who will never be able to pay the judgment debt. (It certainly keeps my creditors at bay!) Perhaps a similar rationale is at work here. Just as there are some losers whom it simply isn’t worth suing, perhaps the view is being taken that some of the would-be rape fraudsters, riffraff as they are, simply aren’t worth prosecuting, not least because they are such losers that they might not even have the mental capacity to recognise justice if it jumped up and bit them on the nose, let alone to attempt to pervert the course of justice. With a clever lawyer, or even a stupid lawyer, they could easily plea-bargain down to the lesser offence of “wasting police time”, a mere peccadillo, given the police’s own predilection for wasting their *own* time nowadays.

    “Don’t call everything a conspiracy, like they do, and don’t live in dread of what frightens them.” [Isaiah 8:12, New Living Translation]

    Just saying …

    • John,

      My comment was pointing out that the 2012 CPS report makes claims about the prevalence of false accusations whilst containing no information whatsoever regarding their frequency. It would be preferable if the authors of the report were simply too stupid to understand the difference between prosecutions for false accusations and actual false accusations. But I do not believe that they are (that) stupid. The conflation of the two is deliberate and cold bloodied. The history of feminists’ claims on data is littered with similar examples of fraudulence. And once a fraudulent statistic has been launched, the feminist acolytes will quote it as gospel for ever after (as per my Vitchers quote). Read Christina Hoff Sommers – and she’s a feminist!

      If the same spurious reasoning used in the CPS report was applied to paternity fraud the conclusion would be that paternity fraud does not exist at all. But the truth is that paternity fraud is far and away the most common crime there is.

      I note that you find it unlikely that a few radical feminists would succeed in “institutional coercion of ordinary, non-feminist civil servants into collaboration with a corrupt feminist agenda”. A year or so ago I might have agreed with you. But I have now seen too many instances of outrageous bias in documents produced by public bodies to have any doubt. The big lies protect themselves by virtue of public incredulity. The means by which decent people are induced to support the feminist agenda would require a lengthy essay to do it justice. But the essence of it is the creation of a climate in which speaking out against feminism is regarded as nasty and will actually be career limiting for many people.

      Note that there is no specific crime of false accusation of rape or sexual assault. Such people can be charged only with perverting the course of justice or the very minor charge of wasting police time. So even if tried and found guilty the sentence will be far less than the accused would have received if the fraud had succeeded. This is wrong, and the lack of proportionate deterrent can only result in more false accusations. The frivolous reasons for many false accusations is telling – typically the woman just wanted to avoid a bit of embarrassment.

      Also note that many judges, lawyers, etc., state that the reason they do not regard it as “in the public interest” to prosecute false accusers is because of “the cooling effect it would have on other victims coming forward”. This staggering statement translates thus: “we don’t want to prosecute this known female criminal because our objective is to maximise the number of (hypothetical) male criminals we put in prison”.

      • Rick, I couldn’t agree with you more. Why would charging women who make false rape accusations deter victims of genuine rape coming forward? It’s too ridiculous for words.

        You may have seen that in my public challenge to the Chief Exec of Welsh Women’s Aid, that one of her lies was conflating offence frequency (in this case, DV) with prosecution frequency. There is NO WAY that can be an accident. At best she’s repeating a lie made by someone else, but to my mind that’s as bad an offence – people need to check the sources.

  • But why does the present government shy away from prosecuting women? because it is a vassal to feminist cause. And the ‘gentlemen’ MPs,stuck in the 19th century culture with the image of a lady that traditionally was modest,honest and lady-like, can’t seem to be able or willing to see that present day women could not be more different. They are unable or unwilling to adjust their attitudes to the harsh reality of today’s selfish,self-centered,dishonest,greedy women,who are capable of even the nastiest crimes. And this goes for the majority of western men.In order to receive equal rights and equal treatment for men, the change needs to come from within men themselves.Men need to cast aside the gentleman’s doctrine. It has outlived its purpose and does only harm to men’s and boys’ interests in today’s world. It is not easy to do,but it is neccessary.

  • The vehicle is the Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy  promulgated by the previous gov and supported by the coalition. The strategy is Gov. policy and as such all Gov. Agencies and Quangos will have action plans based on it. As indeed the CPS . This plan will influence all decisions made. Consequently it is easy to see if the focus is on getting convictions of men then all resources and efforts will be concentrated on this. Consequently any other areas , for instance false allegations will be peripheral and may be seen as getting in the way of the primary policy goal which is to increase convictions and conviction rates of men. It is the VAWG strategy that has performed very effectively in turning agents of the Gov. to the task. If there were to be a strategy to increase ( from 0) the convictions for paternity fraud within a couple of years we would see cases being brought. At any one time there are many many laws that are either rarely or never used. This can mean that no one commits the crime, but really it means there is no one prosecuting. There are often surges in crime figures reported by the police ( while the BCS records trends) these surges reflect strategies. So for instance there is a huge surge in prosecutions of historic sexual abuse(the celebrity cases are the tip of an iceberg) the reason being the political will to press all gov agencies to do just that. 
    I recall talking to an Italian acquaintance and they observed how quickly the effect of Gov. Could be seen to take effect in Britain. She contrasted this with her home land where people, even in Gov. employ largely ignore Gov. policy. 
    Thus it is that a relatively small number of people influencing policy can make some quite large impacts in the British system schooled in the notion that Gov. policy is the will of the people and should direct the work of it’s officials and agencies. 
    One should not laugh at La Harman and her confederates as while they spin wheels in theirParty and Gov. they have , continue and will wield considerable “power”. Through clever manipulation of the legislative and policy machinery inWestminster. 

    • And this is why J4MB is so important. Frankly the Conservatives , possibly because many aren’t “career politicians ” or they’re indolent, appear to be quite unable or unwilling to do more than fitfully role back the advance of the state into personal life. And indeed is some cases end up colluding with collectivist feminist projects.