Terror and Hate Crime Hoaxes

In a tell-all book, Maria Monk described scandalous secrets of the Montreal convent where she claimed to have lived for 7 years. Nuns sleeping with priests. Babies killed and buried in the basement. Her revelations caused public outcry and stoked anti-Catholic sentiment. But investigations found no evidence to back up her claims. Nor evidence that she had even been at the convent. More…

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, first published in Russia in 1903, was said to be the text of a speech given by a Zionist leader outlining a secret Jewish plan to achieve world power by controlling international finance and subverting the power of the Christian church. The manuscript was used to justify hate campaigns against the Jewish people throughout the twentieth century. However, the Protocols are a complete hoax. The text was adapted from an 1864 work, Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu, that didn't mention the Jewish people at all. More…

The case of Tawana Brawley initially appeared to be a shocking, racially motivated crime. The teenager was found lying inside a trash bag with racial insults written on her body. She claimed that a group of white men, including police officers, had raped and beaten her. The black community rallied around her. But the material evidence didn't back up Brawley's claims, and suspicions of a hoax grew. More…

Norma Khouri's bestseller Honor Lost (published in Australia, Khouri's home, as Forbidden Love) told the story of a Jordanian 'honor killing.' In the book, a young woman named Dalia living in Jordan falls in love with a Christian man and is murdered for this transgression by her father in order to defend the 'honor' of the family. Khouri claimed the story was nonfiction, based on the life (and death) of a woman she met while growing up in Jordan. But the Sydney Morning Herald discovered that Khouri didn't grow up in Jordan. She actually grew up in a suburb of Chicago. And no person matching the Dalia character appears to have existed. The clear implication was that her book was fiction. The Australian publisher withdrew it from sale.