The advice in this guide was written primarily for men. Young men from the ages of fifteen to twenty-five may especially benefit from it. Please read our other guides if you have been wrongly accused or if you have been found responsible for these accusations under a college or university’s misconduct policies.

Why This Guide Matters

Those wrongly accused of rape and sexual assault have been barred from education, lost their jobs and careers, suffered extreme harassment and threats, suffered chronic depression, suffered vigilante violence, have been killed, and have killed themselves. It is no stretch to say that false allegations are an attack on what makes life worth living and even on life itself.

In a nation sensitive to real and perceived harm motivated on the basis of sex, our institutions and culture should recognize false allegations of sexual violence—overwhelmingly made against and exploiting fears about men—as discriminatory in nature. The justice system should hold them accountable, and educational institutions should work to prevent their occurrence and remedy their effects as a matter of anti-discrimination policy.

Institutions­­­­­ tend to not investigate false accusers or hold them accountable, however, even when strong evidence supports it. Since 2011, over eight hundred and fifty lawsuits have been filed by male students (and some female students) alleging their rights were violated by schools investigating them for alleged sexual misconduct. Many of these lawsuits have exposed sham proceedings where accused students had no meaningful chance to defend themselves.

For all the above reasons, it makes sense for men to do what they can to avoid being wrongly accused. It is also why we have written this guide in the best interests of the wrongly accused (who are overwhelmingly men) and prioritized their safety over ideological pieties that offer them no practical help, or worse: blind them to the dangers they face or condition them to regard the harm of false allegations as acceptable. We need to have brave conversations about the reality of false rape accusations. This will require sacrificing a few sacred cows, but it is worth it.

In a perfect world, men should not have to take steps out of fear that they will suffer a false sex-assault accusation and this guide would be unnecessary. We do not live in that world. None of the suggestions for avoiding false allegations should be construed as a justification for the grotesque act of falsely accusing others of sexual abuse.

An Example of the Consequences of False Accusations: The Story of Brian Banks

Pictured above: Brian Banks crying upon learning he will be released. A falsely accused high school football star, Brian Banks was imprisoned for six years before his accuser confessed to making it up. Banks had a full ride scholarship to USC and a promising career, but too much time had passed for him to play competitively. He was signed by the Atlanta Falcons but was cut after four months and four preseason games. His accuser Wanetta Gibson was never charged.

How Common are False Accusations of Sexual Assault and Rape?

No one knows an exact or even close percentage of how many accusations are false. All studies on the subject have significant flaws and limitations. At minimum, however, we do know these two things:

1. False accusations of rape are at least several times higher than the average false reporting rate for other crimes.
2. In a court of law—which has more rigorous fact-finding procedures than any study—most accusations are not determined one way or another, either as true or false.

A thorough discussion of false reporting rates will be the subject of a future guide.

How to Avoid False Accusations of Sexual Assault and Rape

Below is our advice—backed by studies and real-life stories—on how to reduce the chances of being wrongly accused. Although it is tailored to male students, this advice can apply to men everywhere.

Avoid Encounters With Women You Don’t Know Well

This is the first, most important, and most broadly applicable advice. It is especially true in casual encounters with women you have just met. If you don’t know your partner well, you won’t know her well enough to know whether she fits into all the other categories of women you should avoid.

Avoid Encounters With Women Who Are Intoxicated or High

Having sex with someone who is incapacitated by alcohol or drugs is rape. While everyone who is incapacitated by alcohol is also intoxicated, not everyone who is intoxicated is incapacitated. People who are under the influence of alcohol—but not to the point that they don’t know what they are doing and lack the basic power to act in their behalf—are still responsible for their choices, whether they choose to drive a car, assault someone, or have sex.

Blaming alcohol to avoid accountability for one’s decisions is a tale as old as time, including the choices to have sex. Blaming alcohol also “combos” well with other incentives for making false accusations. For example, if a woman is caught cheating by her boyfriend after she had a drink or two at a party, she can just claim she was too drunk to consent. In such cases, it has already been established that she was drinking, so now it’s the word of the accused versus the murky line between intoxication and incapacitation.

Keep in mind a few other things:

• If a man has a sexual encounter with a woman at or after a party and doesn’t know how much she has been drinking, he will still be held responsible for correctly determining whatever authorities later (rightly or wrongly) believe her level of intoxication was at the time, and that could be months or years after the fact. Some accusers also drink at one location before going to another location, drink there as well, and then get intimate with men they later accuse. While these men are unaware that the women had been drinking at prior locations, they will still be held responsible for correctly recognizing the effects of that drinking upon their partners’ ability to consent.
• Whether in policy or practice, schools generally waive disciplinary investigations into underage drinking if a student claims she was sexually assaulted while drunk. Some schools waive all investigations into non-violent and non-public safety misconduct if the student suspected of that misconduct claims rape. Some state governments—such as Texas—also waive prosecution for underage drinking in such cases. While noble in intent, the bill does provide some incentive for false allegations.

Many lawsuits allege that young men were wrongly accused after they hooked up with a woman after one or both of them were drinking. One student was successful in court against his false accuser—but only after he was wrongly found responsible for rape by Clemson University.

Andrew Pampu filed the lawsuit in 2017, alleging that his Clemson classmates Colin Gahagan and Erin Wingo, as well as Wingo’s father, David, sought to “defame, harass, abuse and punish” him following a consensual sexual encounter between him and Erin Wingo in 2015, when they were first-year students.

After the encounter, Erin Wingo filed a Title IX complaint against Pampu, alleging she had been sexually assaulted while under the influence of alcohol.

But according to Pampu’s complaint, Wingo had been pursuing him and initiated the sexual contact the night in question, which happened to be his birthday, Oct. 25. Friends reported that Wingo was not intoxicated, and she remembered the encounter well enough the next morning to text Pampu and say, “don’t tell [Colin Gahagan, her on-again, off-again boyfriend] what happened.”

It was only after Gahagan found out about their hookup that Wingo claimed she had been incapacitated at the time. Gahagan reportedly told her, “If you don’t remember, then it’s rape.”

The two began calling Pampu a “rapist” to their friends.

Clemson’s investigation found Pampu guilty of sexual misconduct and suspended him for one semester. When he appealed, his suspension was extended another 12 months.

Then, in January 2017, Gahagan texted Pampu, admitted he had conspired with Erin Wingo on the false rape charge and acknowledged that she had in fact pursued him romantically.

“You’re innocent. I lied in that hearing. Erin wanted to have sex that night,” he wrote.

Andrew Pampu then sued his false accusers and won, but without that text message he would probably still be regarded as guilty.

Avoid Encounters With Women Who Already Have Partners

A 2018 scholarly analysis of studies on false rape accusations found that “Most false allegations were used to cover up other behavior such as adultery or skipping school.” A story at Hofstra University provides an example. A female student named Danmell Ndonye was dancing with her boyfriend until they got into an argument, so she started dancing with another man. She then suggested that they go back to her residence hall and told him to bring his friends.

Right after group sex, she ran into her boyfriend who had entered the building looking for her (she ignored his calls while having sex). He later told the New York Post the following:

“She comes up and she has no shoes on, she is holding them in her hands. She looked like she just finished hot sex. I said, ‘Where were you? What were you doing?’ She told me, ‘Nothing.’ I said, ‘What do you mean, nothing?’ I said, ‘Don’t lie to me, what’s going on?’ And she said, ‘Oh, I just got raped.’

“It didn’t seem real to me. She was calm,” he continued. “Then she started crying and saying, ‘I was raped.’ She lied to me. I think she was embarrassed. I said to her, ‘You have to call public safety.’ She hesitated. It seemed like she didn’t want to.”

But she did. The young men were charged with rape and bail was set at $500,000 bond or $350,000 cash. They each faced up to 25 years in prison. The Community of the Wrongly Accused, a prominent blog at the time, covered it as follows:

Newspaper reports treated the naked allegation as a proven rape, with scary lock-the-doors-and-hide-the-daughters headlines. Mugshots of the four frightened young men were plastered across the pages of some of America’s leading dailies. Television news reported the story with a frantic tone that left little doubt that a terrible rape had definitely, absolutely, and certainly occurred.

The only falsely accused young man who was a student at Hofstra was immediately suspended and banned from campus. Another of the young man was immediately fired from his job. The men received death threats. Jail guards badgered, pushed and shoved at least one of the men. The men’s families were harassed.

The only reason the false accuser recanted was because she learned that one of the young men had videotaped the sordid event.

But even when it was revealed that the claim was a lie, progressive pundits insisted “we’ll never know what really happened” even though we did. Chivalrous men said the falsely accused men got the good scare they deserved. And feminists declared that the liar did not deserve to be branded as a criminal because “rape culture” made her do it.

Danmell Ndonye was not charged; instead, District Attorney Kathleen Rice said she was a “troubled woman in need of help.” Characteristic of law enforcement and media responses when rape accusations are proven false, Rice’s statements emphasized the harm they cause to rape victims and was silent on the harm they cause to the falsely accused.

Video: District Attorney Kathleen Rice Addresses the Hofstra University False Rape Accusations

Avoid Encounters With Mentally Unstable or Otherwise Toxic Women

When Justice Brett Kavanaugh was being considered as a U.S. Supreme Court nominee, a woman named Judy Munro-Leighton came forward to formally accuse him of rape before the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary. She later confessed to making up the accusation, admitting that she “just wanted to get attention.”

In another case, a 21-year-old woman named Sapphire Phillips admitted to falsely accusing a young man of rape. Her probation officer stated that “It’s a strategy she uses when she can’t cope with a situation. “She requires attention, even if it’s negative.” The prosecutor stated that this was “the third time she has made false allegations to the police, and it has a huge impact on the person falsely accused.”

These women are not alone; studies have found that seeking attention is one of the primary motives for making false rape accusations. Additionally, women with borderline personality disorder (who are prone to attention-seeking behavior) are over-represented among false accusers. False accusations are also made out of spite and for revenge. Statements by law firms whose clients are falsely accused men are consistent with this. As an example, one firm says, “Many times, rape accusations are made by a partner against their former partner to try and ‘get back’ or ‘get even.’”

Although men instinctively recognize toxicity when they see it, they often lack more articulate means of addressing it. Instead, when speaking to their friends, they may refer to women displaying such traits as “psychos” and advise their friends “don’t stick your dick in crazy.” In addition to women who display excessive attention-seeking and revenge-prone behaviors, we also recommend avoiding women who claim that they have been a constant victim in every relationship. For these women, the common denominator is themselves, and if you become involved with them there is a good chance they will claim to be your “victim” in the future.

You should also avoid women who:

• Threaten to harm themselves if you don’t do what they say
• Display an extreme and suffocating fear of abandonment.
• Have “a pattern of unstable, intense relationships, such as believing someone is perfect one moment and then suddenly believing the person doesn’t care enough or is cruel” (symptoms of a personality disorder).

For more information, review the symptoms of borderline personality disorder, histrionic personality disorder, and narcissistic personality disorder. Remember that you are not obligated to remain in a relationship just to “save” toxic people from themselves. Not only is there a good chance that they will drag you down with them, but you cannot save people from themselves anyway; they have to do it on their own.

Avoid Ambiguous Encounters

You should avoid situations where consent is somewhat ambiguous, even if you believe you are erring on the side of consent being present. Your partner may not see it that way—especially in retrospect and if her judgment is clouded by feelings of hurt, anger, abandonment, betrayal, etc., that arise later, whether those feelings are justified or not (again, avoid mentally unstable/toxic women).

If you proceed in a situation where you are erring on the side of consent being present in an otherwise ambiguous encounter, you are skating on the edge of the “preponderance standard.” This is a standard of evidence in which civil courts and schools find those accused of sexual assault guilty if there is only a 50.01% likelihood that the alleged assault occurred.

All this doesn’t mean that you need to go to extreme lengths to establish consent like what some men’s and women’s advocates suggest (some men’s advocates suggest that consent should be in writing beforehand, while some women’s advocates demand that consent must be sufficiently “enthusiastic” to be valid). Just make sure consent is clear, either by your partner’s words and/or actions.

Avoid Women With Extreme “Progressive” or “Traditional” Views on Sex and Relationships

Both culturally and politically, presumptions of guilt and anti-male bias have emerged as serious problems in the more extreme “progressive” faction of left-wing politics. Coalitions of politicians and activist organizations now advocate the removal of the presumption of innocence for men accused of sexual misconduct. Influential, well-funded activist coalitions demand immunity from prosecution for women who falsely accuse men of rape—even when their accusations were made out of deliberate malice. They also demand that men accused of sexual misconduct should remain branded as “guilty” (and remain punished) even when that “guilty” finding was proven in court to be the product of an unconstitutional proceeding.

A sneering dismissal of the pain of wrongly accused men and bloodthirsty presumptions of guilt are now pervasive throughout overlapping “progressive” and feminist circles. Many feminists falsely claim “rape” based on experimental, impractical, unfair, and sometimes absurdly broad definitions of the crime that find no basis in law. On social media, false accusations of sexual impropriety and abuse are now regularly used insult and intimidate political opponents—something that is not unique but is nonetheless distinctive to self-identifying progressives.

On college campuses, many are so obsessed with status-seeking among their peer group that they compete to determine who can go to the most extreme lengths to punish accused men regardless of their innocence. As a result, vandalism of cars and buildings (including fraternity houses), threats of vigilante violence, and extreme harassment are common.

An Example of Campus Extremism

Above: the infamous “castrate” banner carried by activists at Duke University outside the frat house of the falsely accused students. Protestors also passed around “wanted posters” of the lacrosse players. In one incident, protestors surrounded the falsely accused students on campus and shouted for them to confess.

The Duke Lacrosse false rape case was distinctive because it involved eighty-eight humanities professors who signed a statement taking the side of the false accuser based upon on nothing more than the demographics of the accuser and the accused. These professors were themselves hired as part of Duke’s initiatives to recruit professors specializing in applying a “progressive” lens to their respective fields of study.

Campus extremism has created an environment where any sexual expression by men can land them in trouble. Many people—usually men—love to crack jokes that push the boundaries of appropriateness but do not rise to the level of misconduct per se. But in academia, many now base their identity around being perpetually offended and see it as their mission to push the boundaries of speech they can censor and punish. These two are on an inevitable collision course, but the risks they face are not equal; censors fear they may have to continue hearing unwanted speech, but those they accuse fear for their education and career. Such censors also tend to regard certain types of conduct and speech as acceptable for female students but unacceptable for male students.

Communities on the extreme “traditional” end of the ideological spectrum can pose issues as well. The conduct policies of Brigham Young University and Indiana Wesleyan University, for example, prohibit premarital sex. Male students have filed lawsuits alleging that they were falsely accused by female students who hoped to avoid responsibility for breaking these policies once their consensual sexual activity became common knowledge.

Some foreign students face intense pressure to conform to the sexual norms of their more traditional home countries to which they may one day return. This may include arranged marriages (which may already be established by their parents!) or expectations that the bride is a virgin. This can create a need for the woman to “explain” why she is not responsible for “giving herself away.” Again, this isn’t always the case. If you are dating someone beholden to these norms, however, you should know the incentives and weigh the risks.

Treat Your Sexual Partners With Respect

Rarely does a man take offense when a woman tells her friends that they had sex, even if her friends offer a few chuckles and colorful remarks. But if a man brags to his friends about having sex with a particular woman, it is often the case that she will be embarrassed and regret the encounter, especially if the man brags in a disrespectful way.

It used to be the case that regret was a learning experience that would help teach the young woman to take things a bit slower and be more selective with potential partners. Too often, that is no longer the case; young women now tend to retroactively convince themselves (often with the help of their friends) that because they now regret the encounter it must have been “rape.”

There are also cases where women make false accusations because they want to maintain the perception that they are more selective with their male partners than they really are. This is what was alleged in Doe v. Colgate University:

[Jane] Roe learned that [John] Doe had disclosed their sexual encounter to his friends, and that it was a topic of discussion amongst them in part because Roe had also had a sexual encounter with Doe’s roommate, who was also a member of the Colgate Men’s Crew Team.

Roe became embarrassed by the fact that other students were aware that she had had sexual encounters with at least two men on the Crew Team, and she began to feel uncomfortable attending events at which the Men’s Crew Team was present.

Roe’s increasing embarrassment and discomfort around other students’ knowledge of her encounters with two separate men on the Crew Team, and her annoyance with Doe in particular for disclosing their encounter to others, led her to fabricate a narrative in which Doe initiated sex with her while she was still asleep, thereby minimizing her own level of participation in the encounter.

Whenever possible, we recommend that you keep sexual matters private between you and your partner. You don’t have anything to prove to anyone. Also, you should refuse the advice of those (including online male dating “coaches”) who tell you that a good dating strategy involves telling women what they want to hear, having sex with them, and then ghosting them. It is not.

Additional Considerations

An understated method of avoiding a false accusation is that you should avoid doing anything that would get you accused of a truthful one. Obviously, you shouldn’t harm people, and if you don’t want to be accused of doing something bad, don’t do it. But you can also be truthfully accused of one thing and then wrongly accused of something else—including something much worse.

People who commit any kind of misconduct often think they can get away with it. Unfortunately, the following people also think they can get away with something:

1. A woman who “comes forward” with her own story of “abuse” because she is envious of the attention a real victim is getting, dislikes the accused, or some other reason. These stories often lack evidence other than the complainant’s testimony and are vulnerable to cross-examination. The man committed sexual harassment against the first woman, but this new accuser has “one-upped” it with her own story of sexual assault or stalking. This second accusation may be harder to defend against because there are now multiple accusers.
2. A prosecutor who decides to stack charges with whatever he feels he can get away with. Once a prosecutor can reliably prove an accused person has already done one bad thing, it is easier to “prove” he has done another.
3. A decisionmaker in a school misconduct proceeding who doesn’t feel like adjudicating yet another case and wants to appease colleagues who, at this point, just want the accused student gone.

Conclusion

There is no way to guarantee that you will never be wrongly accused, but if you follow the above suggestions, you will greatly reduce the risk. Check out our other guides if you have been wrongly accused or wrongly found responsible in a school setting.

About Title IX for All

Title IX for All, a Texas-based organization, was founded to advocate equal treatment in academia. Our core value is that the benefits and protections of gender equality should not be just for one sex; they should be for all—including men who are wrongly accused. For that reason, we tend to focus extensively (but not exclusively) on issues that disproportionately impact male students, a demographic often underserved and overlooked.

Title IX for All has been studying false accusations since 2010. Our work involves advising accused students, advocating for the wrongly accused, and providing the world’s only database dedicated to wrongly accused students. Our first mission is to inform. We fulfill this in everything from writing to advocacy, database development, and advising.