The War on Rape & The Problem of False Rape Charges

Rape and the false accusation of Rape are two of the most heinous deeds that human beings are capable of committing.  Both deeds have to be willful in the way that even murder does not have to be.  Blind rage can lead someone to kill someone.  If I stumbled upon someone who was molesting my child, I think it is safe to say that it would take the very hand of God to keep me from instantaneously moved to inflict deadly harm upon the molester.  There would not even be the reflection on my part of a nanosecond.  However, neither rape nor the false accusation of rape stem from the natural response of anger to a most insidious and morally repugnant wrong. 

It is by accident that today I stumbled across a story in the United Kingdom, where Gary Wood had been falsely accused of rape by Natalie Jefferson.  Then I did a search to discover, much to my surprise, that this charge occurs with alarming frequency. 

At any rate, both rape and the false accusation of rape bespeak a moral callousness that is beyond my imagination.  Why, I have trouble sitting at the same table with someone who prefers that I not be there.  So the very idea of having sex with someone who does not in any way wish me to do so is truly unfathomable to me.  Yes, yes: I understand that rape is not supposed to be about sex, but about power.  Still, I have difficulty seeing how the exercise of this form of power is in anyway affirming to a man’s masculinity.  And if the rape is not about affirming in some way the manhood of the rapist, then what is it about? 

False accusations of rape are heinous from a very different direction.  And it is a sad commentary on the character of American society that such accusations are not all that rare.  And such accusations have been unwittingly facilitated by a shift in the countries moral climate.  There was a time when legally a man could not be accused of raping his wife even if he forced her to have sex with him.  Furthermore, a woman very nearly had to dress with the modesty of nun in order not to be accused of “asking for it”.  Well, it should certainly be obvious that wanting sex is one thing and wanting to be raped is surely quite another.

At any rate, the moral climate has shifted in favor of women in the following ways.  One the one hand, the sexuality of women has been acknowledged; on the other, there is proper insistence that acknowledging the sexuality of women does not give men an entitlement to have sex with a woman.  Indeed, no one is entitled to have sex with a woman—not even her spouse.  Needless to say, respect for women is rightly held to be inextricably linked to just this fact.

In the meantime, and out of respect for women, the standards for rape have shifted in that a woman no longer has to show evidence of enormous violence against her.  And it is this shift that has facilitated the heinous false the allegation of rape. 

Rightly so, a woman no longer has to be ashamed of having an interest in sex.  So merely being in the bed with a man no longer counts against a woman as being in a compromising position.  There is a respect in which the charge of rape operates somewhat like the charge of racism in that in both cases the accuser is given what I shall presumptive credibility, owing to the respective histories of injustice.  If, nowadays, a black says that a white treated him in a racist manner, then tendency is to look for ways in which this could be true rather than to question the credibility of the black. 

Nowadays, all that is needed to make the charge of rape is something akin to the following: “I said “stop”, he kept going; and I was afraid”.  While signs of violence certainly serve to substantiate a charge of rape, they are no longer necessary in order for that charge to have credibility.  The most famous illustration of this latter point in recent history is the accusation that three white lacrosse players of Duke University had raped a black woman.  These three white students were pretty much tried, convicted, and hung by the jury of public opinion.  As it turns out, all the charges were dropped.  Indeed, the charges proved to be notoriously unfounded in the first place.

With the charge of racism, people rush to prove that they are politically correct, and so that they are not racist.  With the charge of rape, people likewise rush to prove that they are politically correct,

But, alas, here is a most profound difference—a difference that should not surprise us.  The charge of racism can range from the trivial to the profound.  The charge of rape is always profound.  One consequence of this difference is that the charge of rape has considerable residue even after it has been dropped.  While racism is wrong, not every form of racism constitutes a criminal offense.  Indeed, some forms of racism seem to flow from sheer stupidity.  No so with rape.

By contrast, rape is necessarily a criminal offense.  So when the charge of rape is made, there a great deal of social and institutional sullying that takes place even before the trial occurs.  A person so charged may be suspended from his position and he may be placed under house arrest.  Indeed, just about everything that he does will be subject to some manner of legal inspection.  .  While neither charge is trivial, the charge of rape has greater social residue, if you will, than the charge of racism unless the charge of racism involves something particularly flagrant kind of case. 

One horrendous consequence of this fact about the charge of rape is that a false charge of rape can continue to ruin a person public standing even after he has been cleared of the charge.  The case of Scott Michael Waite is a chilling example of this reality.  Although I have referenced an important blog regarding false rape accusations, the story about Scott Michael Waite originally appeared in The Star Tribune.

As a result of the criminal proceedings there were injurious things about Waite’s past and private life that otherwise no one would have ever known about were brought to life.  This is and would be true of anyone who is subject to investigation on account of being accused of rape.  Waite, for instance, used to smoke marijuana—something that would not have become public record but for the charge of rape against him.  What is more, his name is associated with having been accused of rape; for that is the story that made headlines.  The fact that the charges were dropped is relegated to the back pages.  Thus, the dropping of the charges did not suffice to undo the sullying of his reputation.  So it is for any man falsely accused of rape.  

Notice that a woman’s past cannot be as easily used against her; for the fact that a woman has had sex on numerous occasions with different partners does not make it the case that she was not raped. 

I hold a very simple truth, namely that we must be ever vigilant on two accounts.  Rape is surely wrong.  And in the marvelous words of Cathy Young, written in the Boston Globe (“A Rush to Injustice in the Duke “Rape” Case”): 16 April, 2007), there is nothing whatsoever anti-male in embracing this truth.  It is equally the case, alas, that the false accusation of rape is wrong and some women are disposed to commit this wrong.  By parity of reasoning, as Young notes, there is nothing at all anti-female in embracing that truth. 

Political correctness seeks to turn the history of a group’s having been victimized into a kind moral non-culpability zone for those who are a members of the group in question.  This is to ignore the very poignant truth that being a victim of system wrongdoing has rarely if ever turned folks into model moral citizens.  Victimization and evil motivation are not incompatible pairings‑‑either logically, conceptually, or practically.  Neither blacks nor women nor any other group of people, however, defined have turned out to be the exception to this truth.