Estimated reading time: 2 minutes
Sadly, there is not enough research concerning false (or wrongful) allegations. However there are some important papers, reviews, books and reports.
Books about Wrongful Allegations
Many books have been written by those who have been impacted by a wrongful allegation.
A journalist, Richard Webster, investigated the child abuse scandals in Welsh care homes of the 1980’s and uncovered the story behind the miscarriages of justice caused by false allegations of abuse.
and Child Abuse
Wrongful Allegations of Sexual and Child Abuse is an academic reference book edited by Dr Ros Burnett of Oxford University Department of Criminology. It contains 21 chapters by criminologists, psychologists, legal scholars and other experts in the field.
Studies and Reports
The Oxford University Report, ‘The Impact of Being Wrongly Accused of Abuse in Occupations of Trust: Victims’ Voices’ is a landmark study of the suffering caused by wrongful allegations.
‘Robbed of Everything’: The Voices of Former Prisoners Maintaining Innocence though Convicted of Sexual Offences, and of their Relatives is another study by Oxford University.
The Henriques Report into the disastrous Met Police investigation, ‘Operation Midland strongly criticizes the police’s policy of ‘believe the victim’, and makes many recommendations of the changes needed to improve the impartiality of police investigations into allegations of abuse.
Presumed Guilty, the Plight of Falsely Accused and Wrongly Convicted Carers and Teachers is a briefing paper for Parliamentarians written by Dr Michael Naughton in 2011. At the time he was a Senior Lecturer at the University of Bristol where he taught undergraduates in the School of Law and the Department of Sociology in the general area of crime and society. He taught postgraduates in the specific area of miscarriages of justice.
Coping Strategies Used by FACT Members Following a False Allegation of Abuse is a survey of 43 FACT Conference attendees and the coping strategies they found most helpful. The results have been used to produce a useful advice sheet on how to cope with false allegations.