'Distraught' Over Election, Kirkland Woman Claims Police Refused to Investigate Assault

KIRKLAND, WA — The recent election has caused a lot of uproar across the country — but Kirkland Police appear to have experienced an especially unusual bit of fallout related to the election results.

The department on Friday issued a statement explaining that a woman had written a Facebook post claiming that they refused to investigate her sexual assault. But police say the woman admitted that she fabricated the post because she was "distraught over the recent election."

The matter came to the department's attention on Nov. 11 when a concerned citizen emailed them after reading the Facebook post. The police were flummoxed for a few days, unable to track down the post in question and unable to locate any reports of sexual assault. When they finally found the Facebook post, they interviewed the alleged victim at her workplace, which is when she admitted how deeply the election had affected her.

The department is taking the incident very seriously. They want to remind the community that they respond to every single call for service.

"Allegations of a sexual assault are always investigated and prosecuted to the fullest extent possible. The Kirkland police department has worked very hard to gain the trust and cooperation of the citizens of Kirkland and continues every day to build on this trust through transparency and accountability," Lt. Rob Saloum wrote in a statement.

Statistics on false rape accusations are hard to come by. Some studies say it's as high as 41 percent — although that study was based on figures submitted by detectives from one city — and most experts say there's no reliable statistic. It is known that rape victims often have a hard time dealing with the criminal justice system. According to the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, only 63 out of every 1,000 reported rapes lead to an arrest. Even fewer, 13 out of 1,000, make it to court, and fewer still lead to a conviction.

In other cases, women have been accused by police of fabricating a rape. In 2008, an 18-year-old Lynnwood woman was charged with a gross misdemeanor after detectives accused her of making up a rape. She was telling the truth, and her attacker, Marc O'Leary, was eventually arrested for multiple rapes across the U.S.

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