"I'm 24 years old and I made this mistake when I was 9 years old, but it's never too late to try and right your wrong," Chaneya Kelly, a New York woman, told NBC News this week.
In 1997, her mother coerced the young girl to say that her father Daryl had raped her, leading to his conviction. He is still in prison.
Chaneya Kelly had been living with her parents in Newburgh, NY when she said that her mother repeatedly asked her if her father had touched her inappropriately. After repeated denials, her mother finally said: "if you don't tell me the answer that I want to hear, I'm going to beat you."
The 9-year-old resisted, and said that he did, and the cops were called in. She repeated the same remarks to them. While there was not physical proof that a rape took place, the stories of the mother and daughter had matched, which lead to his his conviction.
Daryl Kelly refused a plea deal and was sentenced to 20 to 40 years in prison. But six months after the conviction, the young girl told her grandmother it had been a lie, with her mother signing and affidavit that said she threatened to beat her daughter unless she told cops Daryl Kelly raped her, the Huffington Post reported.
The conviction was not overturned, however, and all of Kelly's multiple future appeals were denied. (Chaneya Kelly's mother, for her part, blamed her drug habit as the reason why she forced her daughter to lie).
Despite this revelation, rates of actual false claims remain low at an estimated 2-8%, according to a 2009 study by the National Sexual Violence Report, as noted in the Huffington Post.
