I can't imagine that this could somehow be a huge misunderstanding. That she was speaking of a sexual assault, meaning that there was simply a 'pattern of sexual aggression', but that the police and DA somehow completely understood her and thought she meant an actual rape. For one, you can search on the smoking gun site for the very police report and her statement of what occurred. She describes the rape in pretty graphic and unequivocal details. There was no generalities about being assaulted. She actually stated the oral, vaginal, and anal penetration and who did it.

On a sidenote, it looks like 60-minutes is interviewing the AG this weekend and CBS has released a part of the interview ahead of time. Here's part of what he had to say:

"He says contradictions in the accuser’s earlier statements clearly indicated that an attack never occurred, but neither Nifong nor his staff challenged her. “We don’t think that any of these tough questions were asked of her,” says Cooper. What’s more, says Cooper, the accuser’s story continued to change as his investigators talked to her. “We started out knowing we had a problem…and the way it turned out, it was much worse than we thought.” Cooper’s team also thought she was possibly inebriated. “Our investigative team who was to meet her that day believed that she was under the influence of something.”

Among the new stories the accuser told was a fantastic account of the rape in which she contradicts the account she gave Nifong that led to him dropping rape charges back in December. “She was suspended in mid air and was being assaulted by all three of them in the bathroom,” Cooper recalls the accuser saying. “And I’ve been in that bathroom and it was very difficult for me to see how that could have occurred.” Cooper’s investigators were shocked by the situation. “A number of them said to me, ‘I’ve never seen anything like this.’ It was amazing how she could continue to tell different stories.”

After the change again in stories and the revelations of her mental issues, I can understand how she might have believed her statements were true, each of them as she was saying them, and how they were completely disconnected from reality. That would still make her a false accuser IMO. After all, her allegation did not factually occur as she has claimed, even in broad strokes. I mean, think of it another way. If I said that John Edwards was really a spacealien from the planet Mars sent to take over the world using girlscout cookies, wouldn't my accusation be false even if I were psychotic and believed in my heart of hearts that it was true? Surely I would be a false accuser, no? I might not be a knowing liar, but that's a different can of worms.