“What the fuck is wrong with these people? I keep seeing the same argument again and again and again and again—the idea that being accused of rape is not simply as bad as being raped but often worse. I honestly can’t believe how people can be so fucking dense so as to think this is true.
“Note that I am not saying that being falsely accused of rape is not bad and can utterly damage your life, but it just does not even compare to the experience of being raped. […]
“A person falsely accused of rape (and convicted, of course) may, at the worst case scenario, lose friends and family and have their career ruined, but given time they can find new friends who will believe them and repair their social circle, even while hindered by the state. Many times they even clear their names eventually (otherwise we wouldn’t have such a nice influx of False Rape Accusation news stories for the Men’s Right crowd to cheer around). But apparently for some, even the short-term damage of a false rape accusation that a male was eventually cleared from, compares to being actually raped.”
No, the blog A Division by Zer0 isn’t authored by Zerlina Maxwell, the attorney and social critic who gained notoriety a few months ago for voicing identical sentiments in The Washington Post (and being widely panned for it).
The post the epigraph is drawn from was authored by a man. He doesn’t identify himself…and I don’t blame him.
Harvard Law School Professor Emeritus Alan M. Dershowitz, perhaps the best-known criminal lawyer in the world, was accused of serial statutory rape in documents filed with the court around New Year’s. He’s not a party in the action and has no legal recourse to attack the allegation. It’s just “there” (on public record and in perpetuity).
The quoted post is emphatically titled, “For fuck’s sake, No! Being falsely accused of rape is not not NOT as bad as being actually raped!”
People’s gender and political allegiances don’t interest me. People are people, and to each his own. Ill-reasoning, however, offends me regardless of the contours of the body that emits it, especially when it’s emitted loudly. Ill-reasoning is particularly offensive when it mocks human suffering, as this man’s perspectives do.
His sympathy for victims of sexual violation would be commendable if only it weren’t countervailed by callousness.
A recent post on the blog you’re reading highlighted the case of a young British man who was detained by authorities for two days, based on a false accusation of rape. Then the charges were thrown out, that is, they were almost immediately dismissed. He nevertheless killed himself after struggling with depression pursuant to the violation. He was 23. Another featured case concerned an adolescent who was falsely accused of rape by some hoodlums at school. He hanged himself. He was 16. A third was about a man who was falsely convicted for rape (and five other felonies) and served a year and a half of a 35-year sentence. He was exonerated when it was belatedly discovered that his “14-year-old” accuser was an adult in her 20s and that her identity wasn’t all she’d lied about. While the man was in prison, his mother committed suicide. She died believing her son was a pimp and a rapist.
Introducing cases of false accusation that have consequences of this magnitude is illustrative, but it shouldn’t be necessary. The author of A Division by Zer0, like most feminist writers, betrays he understands the aftermath of trauma very well.
Here’s the difference though, a rape victim most likely will never escape the damage of the event. Once the deed has been done, the scar will stay forever, no matter if the perpetrator is punished. You cannot undo the [violation]. You cannot restore the lost trust. You cannot wipe the memory triggers.
In a moment of dramatic irony, the writer acknowledges the root of his own indifference: “Much of it, I believe, comes from lack of empathy.”
The man behind A Division by Zer0 is a member of the “Men’s Rights crowd”—or more aptly the People’s Rights crowd. He just doesn’t know it.
Copyright © 2015 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com
TALKING BACK to restraining orders 
Anne Copeland
April 20, 2015
Hi, This morning I was looking up Restraining Order Abuse, and you might already have this, but here is a link to an article about R.O. Abuse in Colorado: http://www.dvmen.org/dv-16.htm.
I have been trying to get to where I can start a petition against abusive R.O.s, but I am still suffering so severely from PTSD because of those against me that it is difficult to do anything. And yes, I am one of those who came close to committing suicide. I cannot believe that our Justice system is so truly screwed up that the defendants are not even given an adequate opportunity under our court system to defend themselves properly.
These cases are handled like traffic tickets. I saw a man in traffic court who had taken a lot of time to prepare his case, and it sounded pretty solid to me, but the judge just snickered the whole time he was presenting his case in the most disrespectful way, and then found him guilty anyway. It wouldn’t have been so bad to find him guilty if the judge had at least acknowledged the man for the good job he did. Too many of the people sitting on the bench are rude, thoughtless, and uncaring when it comes to the rights of the American people on BOTH sides. Unfortunately in R.O. cases, the people don’t even get an opportunity to speak for themselves.
I am still so horribly affected by this whole thing that I have trouble going in public places, I wake up in the night in terror and cannot go back to sleep, and I feel depressed to the point where I do want to end it all on and off. It DOES ruin lives and in a most unfair way. Most often the people who have put out the R.O.’s don’t have a shining set of ethics at all; in fact, I believe they are the real culprits. Every R.O. I put against those who were trying to put one against me was found in their favor, and yet when mine came up, I was immediately found guilty without so much as a thought. People can falsify every bit of evidence – even photographs, and people are allowed to photograph people on their own property doing things that are everyday things without their permission.
These people used this kind of falsified information to get the attorney of the park where I lived to come and hear their complaints to the management – complaints that the manager and owner totally ignored when I was the one who put them out about the things going on in the park. I was not invited to speak for myself, nor did I even have knowledge of the meeting, and that was just plain wrong. I am the one in the park who had actually fixed up my home and did not bother anyone else. These people were the solid bullies who made it unsafe for any of us seniors who did not fit into their ugly little world. They taunted us with horrible statements about us, stalked us in the park, stole from us, and damaged our property numerous times. And the police, the supposed Adult Protective Services, and all the other agencies who were supposedly there to protect us did absolutely nothing. I am not the only senior who has been bullied and driven to the point of near-suicide, as you have clearly pointed out.
I feel so hopeless living in this country. I don’t believe that justice even exists anymore.
Thanks for what you do.
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Moderator
April 22, 2015
I have read and linked to some of Dr. Corry’s work, yes. I was glad to see he’s still at it when I came across a 2014 piece.
What you’ve complained of is something I’ll keep writing about. There’s a blindness to the implications of “false accusation.” The only forceful objections have come from men who’ve been abused by court process—typically family-court-related violations—and they’ve been labeled “MRAs.” This stands for “men’s rights activists.” It’s a pejorative term you can find everywhere in feminist writing (which doesn’t mean exclusively female writing). Since complaints about legal abuse and false accusations are identified with “misogyny” per such writing, they’re automatically discounted across the board.
Journalists are as in the dark as anyone.
No one understands what accusation entails. Critics have some sort of Sesame Street idea of it—as if you’re slipped a paper than says, “You’re accused,” and then you slip a paper back that says, “I didn’t do it,” and then one way or the other everything works itself out and blows over like a bad hair day. Critics have no sense of what the lived experience is…or its aftermath. They think, besides, that they’re defending women (whose woes are the “more important”). It basically boils down to religious zealotry, people’s “defending their faith.” Put another way: “You pays your money, and you takes your choice.”
What I want to emphasize is that pain isn’t a contest, and no one’s pain is more “valid” or “urgent” than anyone else’s. I’ve known rape victims, and of course I feel for them. But violation is violation, whether it’s physical or psychic, and because one person is violated physically in a 20-minute ordeal doesn’t mean that someone else’s being humiliated and treated as an object of contempt “doesn’t count.” Victims of legal abuse may lose everything. That may be big stuff like money, home, children, and property. Or it may be “little” stuff: the ability to volunteer, faith in the world, and a sense of security and respectability. To the individual, these things, whether “big” or “little,” may be what make life worthwhile, and their absence may make life meaningless.
A woman wrote the other day who’s run through $300,000 and is living on welfare. She’d been through over 100 procedures. Who can say this is less traumatic than being sexually assaulted? In a very real sense, what’s more, false accusation is worse than a physical violation, because a victim isn’t assaulted by an attacker; s/he’s assaulted by the awesome power of the state (the whole tribe), and that assault is deliberate, protracted, public, and indefinite.
As useful, Anne, as petitioning might be to make contacts. Find others, bring them here or to a related forum, and talk. I try to respond to people, because I have no faith that others will, and it pains me to think someone in hell feels ignored or slighted. You’re free, though, to have totally independent conversations. This kind of networking and disclosure may be as useful—or more useful—than anything else. It might motivate more people to come forward.
If you were to hunt around the posts and pages I’ve put up here, you’d find that the ones that attract response are long ones or ones lots of others have responded to. People who are leery of scrutiny sometimes even bury their comments. They’ll find an old comment and reply to it so their response or query is layers deep instead of bobbing on the surface.
If a point is reached when people can talk about this stuff the way it should be talked about—BS bureaucratic interference that derails people’s lives—then I think the stigma will dissipate.
It’s sustained on propaganda, prejudice, and intimidation.
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bettykrachey
April 19, 2015
Reblogged this on false accusers.
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