There is no ‘hidden crisis’ of false sexual assault accusations

Individuals who have experienced sexual assault – the vast majority of whom are women and individuals within marginalized groups – are faced with an array of imperfect choices when deciding what to do after an assault happens. Victim-survivors are often expected to turn to the police and the criminal system when someone has harmed them. Yet, when victim-survivors do report the offence, they are subject to intense and harmful scrutiny. If their report does not result in a conviction, for which there are many non-discrediting explanations, they are often labelled as making a false accusation.

Few instances of sexual assault are reported to the police, and a fraction of these reports result in the offender being charged or convicted. The 2019 General Social Survey on Canadians’ Safety suggests that only 6 percent of sexual assaults are reported to the police. When victim-survivors were asked why they did not come forward, the top responses pointed to a lack of confidence in the criminal justice system, as well as shame or embarrassment and fear of the offender.

Criminal defence lawyer Joseph Neuburger recently suggested that three out of 10 (30 percent) of sexual assault cases he comes across are wrongful accusations. He said we have “gone too far with the #believe approach” to the point that there is now a “hidden crisis” in Canada’s criminal justice system. This rhetoric stretches far beyond Neuburger. The doubt and skepticism cast on victim-survivors’ reporting are ingrained in the systems we rely on to investigate and prosecute sexual assault cases and in the society in which we expect victim-survivors to come forward.

As Elaine Craig outlined in her book Putting Trials on Trial, a sexual assault charge that does not result in a charge or conviction is not the equivalent of a “wrongful” or “false” accusation and can be explained by various non-malicious reasons. For example:

• Sexual assault occurs overwhelmingly in private. As such, there are often few (if any) witnesses to the assault. Traditionally, a woman’s evidence was considered inherently unreliable, thereby requiring the Crown to present independent confirmation before the perpetrator could be found guilty. Though corroboration to this extent is no longer necessary, the threshold for conviction in a sexual assault case in the present day remains incredibly high.
• The complainant may not want to and/or may be too traumatized to participate in the criminal process. Sexual assault is a highly personal and often extremely traumatic, violating, and shame-inducing experience. In turn, a criminal trial in which the Crown does not represent the victim-survivor, they have little, if any, control over the process, and they are subject to invasive and extensive questioning about the trauma they endured (with an underlying goal to demonstrate they are untrustworthy) – enhances the risk for revictimization and pushes individuals away from the criminal justice system. Even where the criminal trial results in a finding of guilt, the trauma felt by the victim-survivor goes unaddressed. It follows as no surprise that some, like Shannon Graham and Mandi Gray, regret reporting the sexual assaults they endured to the police or caution others against doing so despite their assailants’ criminal convictions.
• The police service or the Crown do not have the capacity or resources to pursue the charge or conviction, despite seemingly credible reporting. Similarly, court and Crown delays, as well as judge shortages, have contributed to sexual assault cases being abandoned.

To be clear, false reporting (whether based on malice or mistake) of sexual assault is extremely rare, with research across multiple countries suggesting the rates fall between two and eight percent of all reports. Nonetheless, the “scorned” or “money-driven” tropes about why a victim-survivor would come forward (which I continue to come across when litigating civil sexual assault cases at Gillian Hnatiw & Co.) persist.

Courts have made significant strides to reject myths and stereotypes in sexual assault cases. The Supreme Court of Canada has repeatedly recognized the prevalence of myths and stereotypes about individuals who report sexual assault. In R. v. Kruk, 2024 SCC 7, Justice Martin reiterated that it is a myth that false allegations based on ulterior motives are more common than those of other offences. She also warned that relying on myths and stereotypes to discredit an individual who has reported sexual assault is an error of law.

Despite these strides and the SCC’s consistent direction, the arguably common-sense rejection of the harmful thinking behind these myths and stereotypes continues to appear in defences seeking to discredit sexual assault complaints. In the past year alone, the SCC has had to issue decisions confirming that it is still sexual assault where a child (who is legally unable to consent) “initiates” sexual touching at the invitation of an adult (R. v. R.A., 2025 SCC 7) and that depicting a 15-year-old’s behaviour toward a 52-year-old perpetrator as “flirtatious” is an error (R. v. W.W., 2025 SCC 37). Even in cases of childhood sexual abuse, the victim-survivors were put through a criminal trial (and later appeals) where their purported unscrupulous conduct – as opposed to the perpetrator’s – became the central focus.

A balance must be struck between the rights of an accused and the dignity of an individual reporting sexual assault to ensure they are not further victimized and deterred from reporting. The idea that the Crown not meeting the burden of proof in a criminal trial necessarily means that the allegation was false is untrue, ignores the high threshold in place to prove sexual assault in a criminal trial, and does nothing to preserve the integrity of the criminal justice system. We cannot impose a reverse presumption on individuals who bring complaints forward, requiring them to secure a conviction or else be labelled a liar.

The author thanks her colleague, Leigh Clark, for her assistance with and contribution to this article.