I'm pretty sure the bar for proving a report was made in bad faith would be much higher than the bar for proving there is abuse happening.
I'm not arguing that people who are wrong in good faith be punished, just that we punish people who we can prove lied in order to retaliate against people they don't like.
Not really. The bar (at least in the US) for convicting someone of false accusations is just the same as any other crime.
The difference is the police won't go after false reporting often, probably because they are worried it will have a chilling effect on people talking to them.
If 10% of murder convictions are mistaken it would stand to reason that the false accusation conviction error rate would be equally high or higher.
It's fun to say, punish everyone that does crime X. But you have to accept a false positive rate.
I'm not arguing that people who are wrong in good faith be punished, just that we punish people who we can prove lied in order to retaliate against people they don't like.