splcenter.org

In some ways bogus reports of hate crimes are almost as bad as real hate crimes - they certainly diminish public acceptance of real hate crime reports, and they give bigots ammo to attack all other reports of hate crimes and even the groups that monitor them. That’s why it is important to support real hate crime victims while debunking false reports quickly. As Mark Potok explains there are a variety of reasons that some people fake hate crimes, but real hate crimes tremendously outnumber the few false reports.

It happened again this week. A woman in Louisiana told police that she had been set afire in a horrifying hate crime Sunday — only to have police, after a full-tilt investigation, say yesterday that she had fabricated the story.

Sharmeka Moffit, 20, set herself on fire in a park in Winnsboro, La., Police Chief Lester Thomas told a news conference late yesterday. She earlier told police that she had been attacked by three men of unknown race who were wearing ‘T-shirt hoodies.’ A racial slur and the letters ‘KKK’ were found daubed on her car when police arrived within one minute of her call to 911. A major investigation involving the Winnsboro Police Department, the Franklin Parish Sheriff’s Office and the state police was launched.

Her story, like those of several other people who fabricated stories about hate crime attacks recently, was odd from the start. Despite the very rapid response of police, they found no suspects or vehicles at the park when they arrived. Moffit also called her sister after her 911 call, a remarkable thing for a woman who was supposedly already on fire, and who is now in critical condition with third-degree burns over 60% of her body. In addition, both black and white town officials said that Winnsboro enjoyed remarkably good race relations.

But rumors, fueled by social media, started almost immediately. Internet posters speculated that the attack was a hate crime that had been carried out by members of the Ku Klux Klan. Several claimed, falsely, that Moffit, who is black, had been wearing an Obama T-shirt and that she had been sexually assaulted. Reporters from media around the world called officials in Winnsboro.

The story quickly fell apart. Thomas said that investigators found Moffit’s fingerprints on a cigarette lighter and a container of lighter fluid found at the scene of the purported attack. The slurs were written on her car in toothpaste that contained female DNA. And he said there was more physical evidence.