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I know a woman who was raped and didn't report it (despite my urging) because she thought no one would believe her. I also knew a girl in college who was mad at her boyfriend so she had her friend beat her up in the ladies room of a bar and reported him to the cops for battery (I was at the bar at the time and witnessed/heard about it from her friend as it was happening). Now if she accused somebody of rape later on in life do I think that the jury should hear of her earlier false allegations? Of course.

I don't know whether Kobe raped this girl or not, but to say that we would be wrong to consider two previous suicide attempts due to boyfriend trouble, bragging to her friends about Kobe's manhood, and, yes, even auditioning for American Idol when speculating (which is all we can do at this point) on her credibility is naive. We make judgments about people all the time based on how they dress, how they act, how they speak, how they treat those around them, etc. These judgments aren't always perfect, and a good judge of character knows that, but they are a necessary mechanism for living in a world in which we do not have all the facts all the time.

This is Nick's find, so he gets full credit, but it needs posting. But I'm sure the FBI Behavioral Sciences unit is biased towards rapists. THOSE KOBOTS!

I don't believe that 15% is the number "used by the FBI." I think that might be Ms. Barry trying to be helpful.

In C.P. McDowell, & N.S. Hibler, False allegations, Behavioral Science Unit, FBI Academy, Quantico, VA, 1985 they examined 556 cases. They used a very tight criterion for determining that an allegation was false: the accuser herself had to recant the charge and admit that she had made it up. Under that criterion, 27% were found to be fraudulent allegations. They then gave the pile of less certain cases to a panel of three independent investigators. Their conclusion was that 60% of those were false as well.

E.J. Kanin, "False rape allegations." Archives of Sexual Behavior, 23(1) 1994 reports a study done at a university using similar citeria and concludes "false rape allegations constitute 41% of the total forcible rape cases reported during this period." Another done at two midwestern universities found 50%.

Whatever the number is, it is non-zero and large enough to give pause to anyone tempted to jump on every allegation of rape as if it must be true.

Here's another thing the FBI says, on a slightly different aspect of the problem: "Every year since 1989, in about 25 percent of the sexual assault cases referred to the FBI where results could be obtained (primarily by State and local law enforcement), the primary suspect has been excluded by forensic DNA testing."

They also say this:

The fact that these percentages have remained constant for 7 years, and that the National Institute of Justice's informal survey of private laboratories reveals a strikingly similar 26-percent exclusion rate, strongly suggests that postarrest and postconviction DNA exonerations are tied to some strong, underlying systemic problems that generate erroneous accusations and convictions.