Summary: As the MeToo hysteria spreads, many Americans have abandoned the principles of due process and innocent until proven guilty (as described yesterday). That’s bad, since women often make false accusations. That ruins the narrative, and so is seldom mentioned in the news.
“I interviewed the victim twice, and I believed her.”
— District Attorney Denise Lunsford, explains why she ignored evidence showing that Mark Weiner was innocent (from Slate).
Off duty when it comes to false accusations of rape.
In Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird
A fine example is Mark Weiner, who on a rainy day gave a woman a ride to her home – a good deed ending in a sentence of eight years in jail for abducting a woman with the intent to sexually harm her. There was almost no evidence of his guilt. There was considerable exculpatory evidence (some of which was not disclosed to his attorney). Of course, none of that matters to the true believers who increasingly run America. This happened in Charlottesville, home of the infamous fake rape publicized in last November’s Rolling Stone.
“During the sentencing phase of the hearing, {District Attorney} Lunsford reminded the court of previous incidents in which Weiner had made unwelcome advances to two women and called it a ‘pattern of behavior.'”
— “Unwelcome advances” are an indication of criminality when done by a beta male. {Source.}
A fit conclusion to this story of injustice: the Judge sentenced Weiner to 20 years in prison (with 12 years suspended). In July, after two and a half years in prison, a judge vacated his conviction.
This sad story was covered in detail by journalist Lisa Provence (who deserves a career boost from it). Also see this article at Slate by Dahlia Lithwick. The story received desultory coverage from other news media, such as this from NBC. No wonder news media companies are laying off reporters and watching their profit evaporate, when they ignore such a hot story of injustice.
Not the justice you see on TV in “CSI”
Why did the DA behave so badly? She believed that rape victims tell the truth, and that this subjective reality trumps evidence. Even at the cost of a man’s life.
“When a reporter asked Lunsford about criticism she’d received for not pursuing justice in this case, the prosecutor said, ‘Sometimes it comes down to, do you believe the victim? I believe her.'” {Source.}
“Lunsford has said all along she believes the victim and she’s still not backing down. Instead she says this case is a prime example of why the job’s so difficult: ‘Sometimes, and often in these cases, it’s one person’s word against another so the decision of how to prosecute and whether to prosecute isn’t an easy one. I believed her in this case and that’s why I went forward with it. I felt she was telling the truth and I felt it was a community safety issue.'” (From Slate.)
After years of propaganda, this is a common belief. Sophie Hess, general manager of the campus radio station WOBC, said this about the rape accusation made by Lena Dunham (actress, writer, and director) …
“Asking whether or not a victim is telling the truth is irrelevant. It’s just not important if they are telling the truth.” {Source.}
Even senior government officials have moved beyond concern about truth. Ideology rules! No evidence needed.
“Not only do women like Dr. Ford, who bravely comes forward, need to be heard, but they need to be believed. They need to be believed.”
— Senator Mazie Hirono (D-HI) at a press conference on 19 September 2018.
Some high-profile false accusations of rape
Things women do lie about: what they ate for lunch. Things women don’t lie about: rape.
— Lena Dunham (@lenadunham) August 4, 2017
In the past, police ignored rape accusations that looked suspicious (sometimes in error). Or they lost interest after investigating them. Now police aggressively pursue accusations. But false rape accusations are too seldom investigated or prosecuted; guilty verdicts produce sentences far lighter than men get for rape.
If we should always believe the woman, why have so many high-profile rape accusations been proven false? Such as these …
- The 1987 rape of Tawana Brawley by 3 men (including a police officer), uncritically accepted by journalists (ironically, Bill Cosby was an early supporter) – but fake.
- Wanetta Gibson’s false rape accusation in 2002 put football star Brian Banks in prison for 5 years. She recanted in 2011. The verdict was overturned in 2012. Details here. After exoneration, he played with the NFL for 5 months.
- Journalists went into hysterics from Crystal Mangum’s accusations of rape by the Duke Lacrosse team in March 2006. District Attorney Mike Nifong sought re-election through their prosecution. It all collapsed, eventually.
- The 2009 rape of a Hofstra coed by five students; she recanted in a few days when questioned by the police.
- Buzzfeed and others hyped the 13 October 2013 story of a sexual assault on an Ohio U coed. A Grand Jury found it quite false.
- “UVA, Ferguson and Media Failure, op-ed at the WSJ by Bret Stephens: “Narratives and allegations are not facts, despite what the media would have us believe”. It points to “A Woman’s War” in the 18 March 2007 NYT Magazine, telling how Amorita Randall was raped twice while serving in the Navy, then told by her commander “not to make such a big deal about it.” The key supporting details proved false; the NYT had not allowed the Navy time to verify the facts before publication.
- We might never know the truth, but the Columbia U “mattress girl’s” story fits the “believe the girl despite the evidence” script. See this early coverage, and this with more evidence.
- “Lena Dunham ‘Raped by a Republican’ Story in Bestseller Collapses Under Scrutiny“ at Breitbart, 4 December 2014. A follow-up reports that “Both Dunham and her publisher Random House have apologized to “Barry One”, offered to reimburse his legal expenses, and have agreed to edit future copies of Dunham’s memoir in a way that will ensure he is not misidentified as her rapist.”
Other false accusations of rape
Here is a typical story of brutal rape – by Black men!
“Last March {2017}, investigators with the Denison Police Department received a call from a man who said his fiance, Breana Harmon Talbott {18}, was missing. The man told police that Talbott’s car had been found in the parking lot of an apartment complex. When officers arrived, they discovered the driver’s door was open, one shoe was on the ground and her phone and keys were sitting near the console.” {Oklahoma 4.}
“{Several hours later she} stumbled into a church clad only in bra, shirt and panties, bleeding from cuts and claiming to have been abducted by three African-American men in ski masks. …Social media lit up with angry demands for vengeance.” {Miami Herald.}
“This is going to be a brutally honest post. Today my daughter, Breana Harmon Talbott was taken by force by 3 black men. 2 raped her and she is cut head to toe by a knife.”
— Posted by her mother on Facebook.
Very “credible” (since it is in the news)! But the rest of the story took a different turn.
“Breana Harmon, 19, pleaded guilty to two counts tampering with evidence and two counts of tampering with a government record in Grayson County district court last month. …She faced up to 2-10 years in prison along with a $10,000 fine. … {She was} sentenced to 8 years probation, over $8,000 in restitution, and to pay another $2,000 in court fines on Tuesday.” {From KXII-TV.}
Such stories are quite common.
- “Here Are 8 Campus Rape Hoaxes Eerily Like The UVA Rape Story“ in the Daily Caller, 14 December 2014 – Some of these involve innocent men falsely accused for political gain.
- “German teen admits she lied about migrant gang rape” by UPI, 2 Feb 2016. Too bad about the riots sparked by this false rape accusation.
- Nikki Yovino wrecked 2 men’s lives with false rape accusations (to gain sympathy from a prospective boyfriend) – details here. She pled guilty to two counts of second-degree falsely reporting an incident and one count of interfering with police, all misdemeanors. She will serve 4 to 6 months in prison. She rolled her eyes during sentencing, when listening to the harm she has caused.
- Mary Zolkowski, 21, was sentenced to 45 days in prison after pleading guilty to falsely reporting a felony. She had claimed she was attacked by an acquaintance, an African-American man, in February 2017. See Newsweek’s story.
- “Stalker who tried to ‘destroy’ a care worker with false gang rape allegations ‘because she was left out of a trip to the zoo’ is jailed” at the Daily Mail. Her trial was still in progress as of September 21 (source).
- Sarah Campbell told Clemson U police that a man she did not know sexually assaulted her at the Delta Chi Fraternity House in January 2018. Clemson immediately prohibited any social activities at the universities fraternities. On February 28 she was charged with filing a false police report. More details here. Nothing on Google since then.
- Nicole Marie Hosmer, 22, on May 2 told Ocala police that she had been kidnapped. By her account she was driving when the man got into her vehicle (he was armed), forced her to take him to two gas stations and a fast food restaurant (where he got food, cigarettes and cash), then tried to rape her after removing her pants. Her alleged attacker denied it. “Hosmer eventually told police she doesn’t know why she lied and that the man did not make any sexual advances.” She pleaded no contest to giving a false report of crime to law enforcement, and was ordered to complete 50 hours of community service and pay slightly more than $500 in court costs.
Even false accusations of sexual assault that do not claim sexual assault are costly and potentially ruinous to men: “Two Students Hooked Up. It Was Clearly Consensual. He Still Spent $12,000 Defending Himself.” by Robby Soave at Reason – “A brief romantic encounter at UC-Davis triggered a Title IX investigation after the female student changed her mind about it weeks later.
DNA is uncovering old false rape accusations: “Two men exonerated in 1991 rape claim.”
Update: Even those falsely accused of rape genuflect to the MeToo Movement
From AP and Fox News – A woman said she was sexually assaulted while intoxicated in a suite at the Wynn Las Vegas resort. Four dentists were charged with kidnapping and sexual assault. Fortunately, they recorded the encounter on a cell phone. Charges have been dropped. But even after a close call with years in prison after a women’s perjury, they genuflect to MeToo. They released a statement including this incredible paragraph.
“We are so grateful to the justice system for recognizing that we were the victims in this case. We knew when the facts came out that the vicious allegations would be exposed as lies and our good names would be cleared. … “At this sensitive moment in our history, we believe that women should be respected and heard and believed.”
Expect more men to record their relations with women. It is the only protection to claims made days or years or decades in the future. Falsely accusing a man of sexual assault is probably the safest crime in America. It is a only misdemeanor in most (all?) States, and seldom prosecuted (because that would discourage women from reporting these crimes). Even if proven in court, perjury is seldom prosecuted.
More about false rape accusations
“It is a nonsense for our daughters to be more frightened of penises than than our sons are of knives or guns. …Raped women will be told not only that they are irrevocably damaged in soul and body but that if they do not acknowledge this they are in denial.”
— By famous second-wave feminist Germaine Greer in her book On Rape(2018).
Slate has a well-written but superficial article with some sad stories: “Crying Rape” by Cathy Young — “False rape accusations exist, and they are a serious problem.” Also see these articles by Francis Walker, rich with links and analysis. She takes a hard look at the soft foundation of the numbers about false rape accusations.
- Anatomy of a Scary Statistic
- Professor Twitter and the Problem of the Low False Rape Narrative
- What do we know about false rape allegations?
- Narrative in search of a statistic
Also see the Washington Examiner article about the not peer-reviewed and undeservedly famous “MAD Study” by End Violence Against Women International. The money paragraph …
“From all of this one could determine that 15.6% of reports could reliably be determined as false, another 17.9% weren’t actually crimes and just 1.2% (or 2.2%) could be reliably determined as true. The remainder would fall into a “we’ll never know for sure” category. …And beyond all of this, none of this data can be applied to reports of campus sexual assault. There is no data available on the number of campus sexual assault accusations that turn out to be false, as it hasn’t been studied.”
See these for more information about false reports of rape.
- “The Truth behind Legal Dominance Feminism’s Two Percent False Rape Claim Figure” by Edward Greer at the Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review, April 2000.
- A review of the literature: “False allegations of rape” by Philip N. S. Rumney in The Cambridge Law Journal, March 2006 — gated, open copy here.
- “False Reports: Moving Beyond the Issue to Successfully Investigate and Prosecute Non-Stranger Sexual Assault“ by Dr. Kimberly A. Lonsway et al at the American Prosecutors Research Institute, 2009.
- “How Often Do Women Falsely Cry Rape?“ by Emily Bazelon and Rachael Larimore in Slate, 1 October 2009 – “The question the Hofstra disaster left dangling.”
- I have not checked this, but it looks interesting: “Ten reasons false rape accusations are common” by Jonathan Taylor. The ten reasons look reasonable.
- “Does India have a problem with false rape claims?‘ by Joanna Jolly at the BBC.
This post is a follow-up to MeToo = Salem Witch trials 2.0 — see the similarities.
Posts about the Kavanaugh hearing
- The Kavanaugh hearings’ warning: the Court is so powerful that extreme measures are appropriate to take control of it.
- Hidden knowledge: false rape accusations by women are common.
- Lies are a useful and appropriate tool to use for political conflicts.
- The Kavanaugh hearings: lawfare used against us.
- The heart of the Kavanaugh hearing is our false confidence in our ability to tell lies from truth.
- Important: A surprise end to the gender wars: men stand together.
For a different spin on rape
See “Today In Rape Apologia, Ayn Rand Edition” by Scott Lemieux (Asst Prof of Political Science at College of St. Rose) at Lawyers, Guns and Money. Ayn Rand is a feminist by many standards, yet the sex scenes in her books often glorify rape. That was considered normal in her day. Such scenes, albeit toned down, are still common in chick lit (Fifty Shades of Grey
Other posts in this series
- MeToo = Salem Witch trials 2.0 — see the similarities.
- Hidden knowledge: false rape accusations are common.
- The astounding story of false rape accusations in England.
For More Information
Ideas! For shopping ideas, see my recommended books and films at Amazon.
If you liked this post, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. See all posts about women & society, about rape, about MeToo, and especially these…
- It’s time to forcibly re-shape America to fight the campus rape epidemic! Even if it’s fake.
- The University of Virginia “rape culture” story crashes and burns. Will this become a story of failed agitprop? Or a win for the Left?
- The University of Virginia shows how change comes to America: through agitprop and hysteria.
A classic about false rape accusations
To Kill a Mockingbird.
by Harper Lee (1960).
Also see the 1962 film
“Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ’em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”
From the publisher …
“A lawyer’s advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of Harper Lee’s classic novel – a black man charged with the rape of a white girl. Through the young eyes of Scout and Jem Finch, Harper Lee explores with rich humor and unswerving honesty the irrationality of adult attitudes toward race and class in the Deep South of the 1930s. The conscience of a town steeped in prejudice, violence, and hypocrisy is pricked by the stamina and quiet heroism of one man’s struggle for justice. But the weight of history will only tolerate so much.
“One of the best-loved classics of all time, To Kill a Mockingbird has earned many distinctions since its original publication in 1960. It has won the Pulitzer Prize, been translated into more than forty languages, sold more than forty million copies worldwide, and been made into a hit film. It was also named the best novel of the twentieth century by librarians across the country.”
