False accusation of rape

A false accusation of rape happens when a person states that they or another person have been raped when no rape has occurred.

Although there are widely varying estimates of the prevalence of false accusation of rape, according to a 2013 book on forensic victimology, very few scientific studies have been conducted.

Rates of false accusation are sometimes inflated or misrepresented due to conflation of false with designations such as unfounded. Designations such as unfounded allow law enforcement to close cases without arriving at a conclusion and are used to describe cases without enough evidence, as opposed to false cases where the accuser is not credible or eventually admits that the accusation is untrue.

With regard to racism in the United States, historically, due to white people having greater influence in the judicial system, false accusations of rape made by white women against African American men often resulted in wrongful convictions, and led to extrajudicial acts of violence such as lynchings.