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Case 1:20-cr-00330-PAE Document 424-3 Filed 11/08/21 Page 6 of 29 100 J. Engle and W. O'Donobue movement (Spohn & Horney, 1992). As a result, the nation underwent sig- nificant changes in the legal handling of sexual assault cases. Sweeping new laws were adopted in all 50 states aimed at decreasing complainant attrition, increasing rates of reporting, and improving the overall treatment of victims filing complaints. Despite these efforts, recent studies on the outcome of rape reform laws have shown mixed results about their impact, indicat- ing partial effectiveness at best (see Clay-Warner & Burt, 2005; Spohn and Horney, 1992). Furthermore, studies on the number of unreported sexual assaults reveal consistently low rates of reporting to the police, from 15% of all rapes (Wolitzky-Taylor et al., 2011; Tjaden & Theonnes, 2006) down to 5% in some samples (see Fisher, Cullen, & Turner, 2000). Study findings have identified several reasons for the low rates of report- ing. In a national sample of U.S. women, the most commonly endorsed reason for choosing not to report was fear of reprisal by the perpetrator (Wolitzky-Taylor et al., 2011), indicating an endemic distrust of case pro- cessing and protection services for the victim. Among victims who reported the rape and those who did not, the most frequently endorsed concern about reporting was the belief that others would blame the victim for the rape. Indeed, the acceptance of rape myths, or widely held and generally false beliefs about rape that serve to deny and justify male sexual aggression (Lonsway & Fitzgerald, 1994), is associated with a higher tendency to ascribe responsibility for sexual assault to the victim (Burt, 1980). Examples of rape myths include the incorrect beliefs that women routinely lie about being raped, that most rapes are perpetrated by strangers, and that only women who have certain characteristics (e.g., poor moral character, promiscuous, unsafe) are victims of rape (Lonsway & Fitzgerald, 1994). Given the mixed performance of rape reform laws and the persistence of rape myths, it is no surprise that empirical investigations of false rape allegations would be subject to heated contention. Past studies of false alle- gations have been carefully inspected for methodological, definitional, and ideological mistakes, and many have been found (Lisak, Gardiner, Nicksa, & Cote, 2010). The significant variability in estimates of false rape allegations has reflected these methodological weaknesses, with study estimates rang- ing from 1% to 90% of all reported cases (Gross, 2009; Kelly, 2010; Lonsway, 2010; Lisak et al., 2010). These differences were generally related to discrep- ancies between researchers about definitions of terms and methodology of data collection CLisak et al., 2010). One predominant criticism of the litera- ture has been the inaccurate categorization of rape investigation results by the police. It has been suggested that law enforcement agencies have been known to incorrectly categorize “unfounded” cases, among other cases, as “false allegations” (Lisak et al., 2010). As articulated by the International Association of Chiefs of Police (ACP), during police investigations a false allegation may be determined only using the following process: DOJ-OGR- 00006274