Introduction

Central to how stalking is constructed, both as a concept and in many jurisdictions as an offence, is the victim's perceptions of being harassed and rendered fearful. Given this subjective element it might be expected in some cases that there would be a genuine disjunction between the view taken of the behaviour at issue by the putative perpetrator and that of the complainant. Beyond such differences of perspective there is also a small proportion of individuals who claim to be stalking victims but who quite simply have not been subjected to the behaviour about which they complain.

Although false allegations of stalking have received scant attention in the literature to date, false victims of crime have been documented since biblical times in a number of cultures (Mohandie et al., 1998) and there is an expanding literature on intentional false reports of rape (Kanin, 1994), sexual misconduct (Gutheil, 1992), sexual harassment (Long, 1994; Feldman-Schorrig, 1995, 1996) and physical assault (Eisendrath, 1996).

Kanin (1994), who studied forty-five cases of falsely alleged rape presenting to a police agency over a nine-year period, observed that the false allegations served three main functions: to furnish an alibi, typically in the wake of regretted consensual sex or unwanted pregnancy; to inflict revenge, as in the case of a woman who retaliates against a rejecting male; and as a ploy to procure sympathy and attention.