A dangerous threat to actual survivors of rape and sexual assault are those who falsely report the crime. False reports divert police resources from actual assaults and other serious crimes, unfairly incriminate the alleged perpetrator and propagate stereotypes and myths surrounding sexual assaults.
The 19-year-old woman who told police she'd been assaulted Oct. 10 by a stranger outside Holden Hall has since changed her story. She was accosted by the man she described to police, but he only grabbed her arm and did not throw her to the ground as she described. False crime reports are a misdemeanor for a reason, and we hope she's prosecuted for the bogus charge.
This semester, The State News has had the unfortunate responsibility to cover a string of sexual assaults on our campus. The public response to these sexual assaults, though, has been multi-faceted. Some feel there is more the university could have done to warn students and encourage them to protect themselves. Some feel that we were doing the MSU community a disservice by disseminating panic-inducing information, and some have called for mandatory education on sexual assault at freshman orientation. What we can all agree on, though, is that for this dialogue to culminate in a false report is nothing but reckless.
To be sure, many students at MSU took extra precautions before the total number of assaults reached double digits. Conventional wisdom determines that one sexual assault is one too many, and assuredly, this false report is no reason to entertain the concept that MSU's campus - or anywhere - is completely safe. The threat is still present, despite this false report, and we should continue to treat it as such.
The consequences of filing a false police report - especially one of this nature - do more harm against sexual assault awareness than they raise the level of positive dialogue. Fallacies and embellishments multiply. If a false report of sexual assault is filed, it gives undue credence to the myths that surround legitimate sexual assaults.
"She was asking for it." "The way she was dressed encouraged it." Those kinds of blatantly ignorant rationales are fueled when the current situation on campus is handled with gross misconduct.
Furthermore, a false police report puts peripheral players into conflict with one other. After a rash of sexual assaults occurred in Brody Complex in early September, we roundly criticized the university for not disclosing them immediately. We felt it was the responsibility of MSU officials to give their students as much notice as possible about the environment they're engulfed in. We still believe that wholeheartedly, but what would the circumstances have been if they were all false reports? Criticisms go unfounded and speculative, frivolous details dominate what should be going on - preventative action.
A vast majority of sexual assault reports are genuine, and, for that reason, a report's integrity should be taken seriously. The majority of sexual assaults are a real threat, and positive dialogue surrounding them enables us all to prevent the next one from happening. However, false claims set all parties' progress back.
