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SuccessfulSearch2 karma

I'm interested in knowing the reasons behind this, so I will check out this book. I understand that compared to the rate of unreported crimes, 2% is a rounding error, and probably insignificant to most. In comparison to false reporting of other crimes though, this seems high. As trivial as it may seem in comparison to the problem of unreported, the psychology of false reporting is still of interest to me.

Thinking about whether someone may seek treatment after a false report, I'm still unsure. I have no clue yet what the motivation is, if it was attention, perhaps they would still seek treatment? Maybe they seek treatment due to pressure of expectation from friends or family? If it was trigger/motivated from past abuse, perhaps they still actually need treatment? Due to mental instability? Is it even important in psychology to establish the facts of what happened, or just focus on the mental state and processing of the client?

SuccessfulSearch1 karma

Rightly so, the focus of your work is very much on victims that find it difficult to process and report a sexual assault against them. Under reporting of these crimes leads to a major injustice, obviously, but my question relates to the other side of this coin. The horrific nature of sexual abuse obviously creates immense obstacles in the life of the victim. Even though I assume it is much more rare, the same is also the case for people that have been falsely accused of a sexual assault related crime. Just by pure statistics, you have likely dealt with clients that you have either strong feelings, or perhaps even hard evidence that they made a false accusation. Why does this happen? How would you treat a client that has gone down this path? Is it even possible for you as a care provider to process the potential of a false claim for fear of undermining their trust?

If these crimes are under reported because victims don't feel like they will be believed, surely this makes false claims seemingly impossible to distinguish. Have you ever dealt with client to help them process a false accusation of sexual assault? In the case of a genuinely innocent person, how would you go about counselling them to cope with this scenario?