by John
Stevenson
In my January 10 column, I
wrote of the injustice of presuming guilt of all men accused of sexual
harassment or worse. This continues that train of thought.
As described on the website constitution.com,
feminist columnist Emily Lindin says “it’s OK if, in the interest of the
greater good, the lives of some innocent men are destroyed by false accusations
of sexual harassment.”
Well, if that seems a bit
harsh, other notable feminists have expressed similar if slightly less extreme
views in favor of accepting sexual harassment and rape accusations as
gospel. Examples include Obama
administration spokesperson and current CNN political commentator Jen Psaki;
former Bernie Sanders press secretary, Democratic strategist and current CNN
political commentator Symone Sanders; and (ironically) Hillary Clinton herself.
Let’s look at some
situations which cast doubt on the wisdom of rushing to the judgment that
sexual harassment or rape accusations should be accepted as true.
Of course the highest
profile non-rape in recent memory is the 2006 case in which three Duke
University lacrosse players were accused of rape by Crystal Gail Mangum. She was a student at another college and
worked as a stripper and dancer. In
response to the accusation, the Duke lacrosse coach was forced to resign and
the school president cancelled the remainder of the lacrosse season. The Duke faculty condemned the three accused
students. Their pictures were displayed
on accusatory posters which appeared on campus.
Eventually Mangum’s fake
story fell apart. The North Carolina
Attorney General declared the three students were victims of a “tragic rush to
accuse.” The Duke president apologized
for “causing the families to feel abandoned when they most needed
support.” But the damage had already
been done. The falsely accused students’
reputations were destroyed. And, to go
along with their conviction in the court of public opinion, the three now had
arrest records which will require a lifetime of explanations.
A second notorious case
began in 2014, when writer Sabrina Erdely’s story “A Rape on Campus” appeared
in Rolling Stone. According to the
article, a University of Virginia student named Jackie had been taken to a party
at Phi Kappa Psi fraternity. There, she
claimed to have been gang-raped.
UVA suspended the
fraternity, and then followed up by suspending all Greek organizations. The Charlottesville police department
investigated and determined the story to be a hoax. Nevertheless, the student newspaper The
Cavalier said the incident, true or not, pointed to UVA’s inadequate handling
of sexual assault complaints.
Rolling Stone retracted the
false story, but not before the Phi Kappa Psi house had been heavily vandalized,
students demanded that UVA implement harsher consequences in sexual assault
cases, and hundreds of students participated in faculty-organized marches.
In dailycaller.com, Eric
Owens wrote “Here Are Eight Campus Rape Hoaxes Eerily Like the UVA Rape Story.” In condensed form, these are some highlights
from each of the eight:
Morgan
visited the University of California, Santa Cruz for a lesbian, gay, bisexual
and transgender conference. While there she called 911 and claimed to have been
raped on campus in broad daylight. It
turned out her story was a hoax.
Desiree,
a student at Rollins College in Winter Park, Fla. told police that two men
raped her in a bathroom on campus. Desiree was the president of the local
chapter of the National Organization for Women and it was during Sexual Assault
Awareness Week. She eventually recanted
her fake rape allegations. Police suggested that Desiree could have been
attempting to “make a statement” about sexual assault and charged her for
making a false report to police. Her husband said cops targeted her not because
of her lies but because “she is a women’s rights activist.”
Princeton
University student Mindy accused a fellow Princeton student of raping her. She slandered the student by spreading the
story through conversations around campus.
She also repeated the smear at a campus “take back the night” rally. But
she did not pursue criminal charges.
Once Mindy’s claim fell apart, she wrote an apology in the Daily
Princetonian newspaper. She explained
that her deceitful claim was intended to “raise awareness for the plight of the
campus rape victims.”
University
of Wyoming student Meg anonymously posted a rape threat directed at herself on
a Facebook page called UW Crushes. A
ruckus followed, and there was a big feminist rally. A school official
denounced “rape culture.” Police
investigated the incident, quickly determining that Meg posted the message on
her own computer while it was in her possession. She pled no contest to a
charge of interfering with a peace officer and paid a small fine.
At
Hofstra University Danmell voluntarily had sex with no fewer than five men in a
dormitory bathroom. Her boyfriend found
her understandably disheveled. Possibly
to deceive the boyfriend, Danmell accused the men of gang rape. As a result of
her lies, four innocent men were arrested and jailed. (A fifth remained at
large.) The four men were only saved because someone had filmed the orgy on a
mobile phone. Danmell’s story crumbled
because the video showed that the sex was consensual. The father of one of the
falsely accused said “Unfortunately, everything doesn’t stop because the DA
says go home and drops the charges.”
Former
University of Florida student Tanya lied to police about getting bound and
gagged in a Gainesville apartment complex parking lot. Tanya said a man tied her hands and gagged
her while she was getting out of her car and tried to rape her. Implausibly, she claimed she escaped, bound
and gagged, by kicking him in the tenders.
Tanya initially defended her fabricated story by saying that she was
trying to teach “a lesson to women in the area that an attack could happen to
them.” Police charged her with filing a
false police report.
At
Oberlin College, a “take back the night” group posted a number of signs on campus
labeling an apparently randomly-chosen, innocent freshman as “Rapist of the
Month.” “My initial reaction was
complete shock, complete disbelief,” the accused student said. He had to deny
the allegation to his friends. Another
student at Oberlin, sophomore Emily, suggested that critics of the incredible
falsehood were missing the “take back the night” group’s larger point. “So many women get their lives totally ruined
by being assaulted and not saying anything,” Emily explained. “So if one guy
gets his life ruined, maybe it balances out.”
Mariam,
then a sophomore at George Washington University, weaved a racist fiction about
a campus rape. Mariam, who was a rape
counselor and worked for a rape crisis hotline, told the school newspaper about
a white caller who was raped by two black men on campus. When her story crumbled, Mariam said she was
really sorry and insisted that she “had hoped the story, as reported, would
highlight the problems of safety for women.”
These examples of false rape
reports are not intended to trivialize rape.
In fact, like the women who claim an unwelcome proposition or a wolf
whistle constitute sexual assault, those who fabricate imaginary rapes are the
ones who trivialize the crime. They
cause actual rape reports to be taken less seriously and they undermine the
attention and credibility owed real rape victims.
A presumption of guilt seems
now to be in vogue. What these and other
examples of false reports demonstrate is that both real victims and the accused
would be better served by a presumption of innocence.
