At a 1989 Princeton University "Take Back the Night" rally against campus rape, a young woman took to the podium and recounted her rape in frightening detail. According to her account, she had left from where she was eating because one boy "started hitting on me in a way that made me feel particularly uncomfortable." He followed her home and "dragged" her back to his room, to the indifference of onlookers: "Although I screamed the entire time, no one called for help, no one even looked out the window to see if the person screaming was in danger." He "carried" her to his room "and, while he shouted the most degrading obscenities imaginable, raped me." He told her that "his father buys him cheap girls like me to use up and throw away," and then banged her head against the bedpost until she was unconscious.

The woman then explained that the perpetrator was forced to leave campus for a year after she reported the rape and that now he was back, with a dissuasive administrator telling her "to let bygones be bygones." "Because I see this person every day," she explained, "my rape remains a constant daily reality for me." Despite the presence of her rapist on campus, she was now on the road to recovery, and "there are some nights when I sleep soundly and there are even some mornings when I look in the mirror and I like what I see. I may be a victim, but now I am also a survivor."

She later published the account in the campus newspaper, the Daily Princetonian, and even named the alleged rapist, who complained that he was being falsely accused. As it turns out, key allegations proved to be false: that she had reported a rape, and that an administrator had later dismissed her concerns.

Responding to administrative pressure, the woman later printed an apology in the same newspaper, saying of the accused, "I have never met this individual or spoken to him.... I urge students who are knowledgeable of this situation to cease blaming this person for my attack." Concerning her own motives for leveling the charge, she said, "I made my statements in the Daily Princetonian and at the Take Back the Night March in order to raise awareness for the plight of the campus rape victims." She also claimed that she was caught up in the heat of the moment. "In several personal conversations and especially at the Take Back the Night March, I have been overcome by emotion. As a result, I was not as coherent or accurate in my recounting of events as a situation as delicate as this demands." She had spoken on each of her four years at Princeton at Take Back the Night rallies, which often feature such emotional testimonials of harassment, abuse, or rape. Meanwhile, a total of two rapes had been reported to campus security between 1983 and 1992.

At George Washington University, a student was caught inventing a similar story. Mariam, a sophomore who worked in a rape-crisis center, told a story about "two muscular young-looking black males" in "torn dirty clothing" raping a white student. She later admitted to fabricating the story and wrote in a letter of apology that "my goal from the beginning was to call attention to what I perceived to be a serious safety concern for women." As the university's black student organization pointed out, the fabricated account promoted racist stereotypes.

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