Believe Her! The Woman Never Lies Myth
Dusty
Believe Her! The Woman Never Lies Myth
Frank S. Zepezauer*
ABSTRACT: Empirical evidence does not support the widespread belief that
women are extremely unlikely to make false accusations of male sexual
misconduct. Rather the research on accusations of rape, sexual harassment,
incest, and child sexual abuse indicates that false accusations have become
a serious problem. The motivations involved in making a false report are
widely varied and include confusion, outside influence from therapists and
others, habitual lying, advantages in custody disputes, financial gain, and
the political ideology of radical feminism.
Male sexual misconduct - rape, incest, stalking, sexual harassment, child
molestation, pornography trafficking - has, according to some observers,
become a problem so big that it demands a big solution, not only the reform
of our legal system but of our entire society. Yet the increasingly heated
debate over this crisis has focused primarily on how these misbehaviors are
defined and how often they occur. The estimated numbers keep mounting. We
hear that perhaps 31 million women are suffering from some form of rape, 41
million from harassment, 58 million from child sexual abuse, and all 125
million of them - from toddlers to grandmothers - from a toxic "rape
culture" that suffocates the feminine spirit.
Much less discussed is how often an allegation of male sexual misconduct is
false. The question seldom enters the debate because, presumably, it had
long ago been settled. Pennsylvania State Law Professor Philip Jenkins
(1993), in a review of the "feminist jurisprudence" which leads the sex
crisis counterattack, reports that in response to the question its
proponents have established an "unchallengeable orthodoxy." It is that
"women did not lie about such victimization, never lied, not out of personal
malice, not from mental instability or derangement" (p.19).
Jenkins is not the first to cite this will to believe. Wendy Kaminer (1993)
reported that "it is a primary article of faith among many feminists that
women don't lie about rape, ever; they lack the dishonesty gene" (p.67).
Eight years earlier, in 1985, John O'Sullivan discovered a widespread
defense of the belief that "no woman would fabricate a rape charge" (p.22).
Feminists themselves admit as much. Law Professor Susan Estrich stated that
"the whole effort at reforming rape laws has been an attack on the premise
that women who bring complaints are suspect" (Newsweek, 1985, p.61). Some
feminists believe that even defending that premise is a sex crime. Alan
Dershowitz (1993) reports that he was accused of sexual harassment for
discussing in class the possibility of false rape allegations.
Believing the self-proclaimed victim of sexual misconduct has thus evolved
from ideological conviction to legal doctrine and, in some jurisdictions,
into law. California now requires that jurors be explicitly told that a
rape conviction can be based on the accuser's testimony alone, without
corroboration (Associated Press, 1992; Farrell, 1993). Canada is proposing
that a man accused of rape must demonstrate that he received the willing
consent of a sexual partner.
These new rules rest on the assumption that women do not lie because they
have no motive to lie. Consequently, as Jenkins (1993) states, the question
of the "victim's credibility" has now become "crucial."
Is that credibility warranted, particularly as feminist jurisprudence would
want it established, as nearly automatic? Not if we consult recent history.
And if we do, we will find that we do indeed face a sexual misconduct
crisis, but not the one radical feminists now insist is ubiquitous in our
society.
False Accusations of Rape
Begin with evidence of false accusation of rape, the crime which has become
not only the metaphor for all cases of sexual misconduct but for male
sexuality itself. Alan Dershowitz (1991), for example, has further harassed
his students by telling them that an annual F.B.I. survey of 1600 law
enforcement agencies discovered that 8% of rape charges are completely
unfounded. That figure, which has held steadily over the past decade, is
moreover at least twice as high as for any other felony. Unfounded charges
of assault, which like rape is often productive of conflicting testimony,
comprise only 1.6% of the total compared to the 8.4% recorded for rape.
Consult also a recent development, DNA testing, which is now becoming
routine in rape investigations (Krajik, 1993). Also routine is the
discovery that a third of the DNA scans produce non-matches. Consequently,
a growing number of men are not only gaining acquittals but are also being
released from prison. As with all rape statistics, these figures need
careful scrutiny. Police investigators warn, for example, that a mismatch
proves innocence only when the DNA could have come from no one but the
assailant and its profile or makeup doesn't match the suspect's. Even so,
the DNA tests, primarily a prosecutorial weapon, have now been added to the
arsenal of defense attorneys, and more evidence of false allegation is
appearing.
Although useful, the F.B.I. and DNA data on sex crimes result from
unstructured number gathering. More informative, therefore, are the results
of a focused study of the false allegation question undertaken by a team
headed by Charles P McDowell (McDowell & Hibler, 1985) of the U.S. Air Force
Special Studies Division. Its significance derives not only from its
scholarly credentials but also its time of origin, 1984/85, a period during
which rape had emerged as a major issue, but before its definition included
almost any form of non-consensual sex.
The McDowell team studied 556 rape allegations. Of that total, 256 could
not be conclusively verified as rape. That left 300 authenticated cases of
which 220 were judged to be truthful and 80, or 27%, were judged as false.
In his report Charles McDowell stated that extra rigor was applied to the
investigation of potentially false allegations. To be considered false one
or more of the following criteria had to be met: the victim unequivocally
admitted to false allegation, indicated deception in a polygraph test, and
provided a plausible recantation. Even by these strict standards, slightly
more than one out of four rape charges were judged to be false.
The McDowell report has itself generated controversy even though, when rape
is a frequent media topic, it is not widely known. Its calculations are no
doubt problematic enough to raise serious questions. If, out of 556 rape
allegations, 256 could not be conclusively verified as rape, then a large
number, 46%, entered a gray area within which more than a few, if not all,
of the accusations could have been authentic. If so, the 27% false
allegation figure obtained from the remaining 300 cases could be badly
skewed. Moreover, the study itself focused on a possibly non-representative
population of military personnel.
The McDowell team did in fact address these questions in follow-up studies.
They recruited independent reviewers who were given 25 criteria derived from
the profiles of the women who openly admitted making a false allegation. If
all three reviewers agreed that the rape allegation was false, it was then
listed by that description. The result: 60% of the accusations were
identified as false. McDowell also took his study outside the military by
examining police files from a major midwestern and a southwestern city. He
found that the finding of 60% held (Farrell, 1993, pp. 321-329).
McDowell's data have received qualified confirmation from other
investigators. A survey of seven Washington, D.C. area jurisdictions in the
1991/2 period, for example, revealed that an average of 24% of rape charges
were unfounded (Buckley, 1992). A recently completed study of a small
midwestern city was reported by Eugene J. Kanin (1994) of the Department of
Sociology and Anthropology at Purdue University. Kanin concluded that
"false rape allegations constitute 41% of the total forcible rape cases
reported during this period" (p.81).
Kanin provides significant confirmation of McDowell's findings in several
ways. Kanin's subject, for example, covered a nine-year period - 1978-87 -
during which rape had become a highly-politicized issue. Members of the
police department from which the data was taken were therefore sensitive to
the kinds of misperceptions about which parties to the dispute had
complained. The city offered a relatively useful model: free of the
unrepresentative populations found in resort areas, remote from the extreme
crime conditions plaguing large communities, small enough to allow careful
investigation of suspicious allegations, but large enough to produce a
useful sample of 109 cases. The investigators also separated "unfounded"
from "false" rape allegations, a distinction sometimes blurred in other
reports. Moreover, among the strict guidelines used to determine an
allegation's unreliability was McDowell's requirement that only unambiguous
recantations be used.
Equally revealing were addenda following Kanin's basic report. They
reported studies in two large Midwestern state universities which covered a
three-year period ending in 1988. The finding of the combined studies was
that among a total of 64 reported rapes exactly 50% were false. Kanin found
these results significant because the women in the main report tended to
gather in the lower socioeconomic levels, thus raising questions about
correlations of false allegation with income and educational status. After
checking figures gathered from university police departments, he therefore
reported that "quite unexpectedly then, we find that these university women,
when filing a rape complaint, were as likely to file a false as a valid
charge." In addition, Kanin cited still another source (Jay, 1991) which
supported findings of high frequency false allegations in the universities.
On the basis of these studies, Kanin felt it reasonable to conclude that
"false rape accusations are not uncommon" (p.90).
Sexual Harassment
Alan Dershowitz's experience with an esoteric definition of sexual
harassment also raises questions about false allegations in this
newly-defined but widely publicized crime. Skeptical checking has revealed
that, as with rape, the percentage of unfounded accusations of sexual
harassment may reach astonishingly high levels. That was the claim of Randy
Daniels, whose confirmation for New York City's Deputy Mayor was almost
derailed by a sexual harassment charge he was able to refute. To see
whether his experience was relatively rare, Daniels checked with the Equal
Employment Opportunity Commission. He found that in 1991, the EEOC
investigated or mediated 2119 cases of sexual harassment and found that 59%
were determined to have no cause (Daniels, 1993, p. 1). Since the
Hill/Thomas affair they have gone up sharply - up 64% in one year - but so
have false allegations, remaining steadily in the plus 50% range.
Child Sexual Abuse
This rape and sexual harassment pattern - expanding definitions, rapidly
increasing accusations, intensely politicized publicity campaigns, and
significantly high percentages of false allegations - has also appeared in
still another arena, the agencies which deal with the sexual molestation of
children. With this kind of sexual misconduct the credibility of a third
party, the child, becomes a factor, and we hear, in addition to appeals to
"believe the woman" an appeal to "believe the child." We are now learning
that children can be manipulated into supplying dramatic testimony of sexual
abuse and that in most cases the accusation originates not with the child
but with the mother. Thus the question of credibility once again focuses on
women. As one lawyer put it, "For a lot of these people 'believe the child'
is just code. What they really mean is, 'believe the woman, no questions
asked"' (Stein, 1992, p. 160).
To keep this issue in perspective, note three significant facts. The first
is that of the 2,700,000 cases of child abuse reported every year less than
10% involve serious physical abuse and only 8% involve alleged sexual abuse
(Schultz, 1989). The second is that, contrary to the male victimizer/female
victim paradigm of feminist ideology, at least as many boys as girls are
victimized by child abuse, if not more. The third is that the majority of
child abusers are women, that the most dangerous environment for a child is
a home formed by a single mother and her boyfriend, and the safest is formed
by a married mother and a husband who is the child's biological father.1
In many cases allegations of child sexual abuse occur in a nasty divorce
made nastier by a custody fight. It is now so common that it has received
scholarly attention and its own acronym, S.A.I.D. (Sexual Allegations in
Divorce). The consensus is that in "S.A.I.D. syndrome" cases the number of
such allegations increased so rapidly - up from 7 to 30% in the eighties -
that one scholarly team called it an "explosion." Others, noting how often
the guilt of the accused was assumed, used the word "hysteria" and searched
for analogies in the Salem and the McCarthy witch hunts (Stein, 1992).
Another consensus is being reached: that the majority of these allegations
are false. Melvin Guyer, Professor of Psychology at the University of
Michigan, reports that "in highly contested custody cases where the
allegation is made, a number of researchers have found the allegations to be
false or unsubstantiated in anywhere from 60 to 80% of those cases "
(Felten, 1991). Another investigative team stated that of 200 cases they
studied" about three-fourths have ultimately been adjudicated as no abuse"
(Felten, 1991). Some studies have come in with a lower but still
significant estimate. For example, a 1988 study by the Association of
Family and Conciliation Courts said that sexual molestation charges in
divorces are probably false one-third of the time (Dvorchak, 1992).
Allegations of child abuse, both divorce related and in general, are flying
out so frequently that those who believe themselves victimized by false
charges have organized a nationwide support group, VOCAL (Victims Of Child
Abuse Laws), which now includes 80 local chapters. This group refers its
members to both informal and professional counsel, sends out a newsletter,
and offers access to a rapidly expanding data base. In 1989, its summary of
relevant statistics cited 23 studies which reported findings on both sexual
and non-sexual child abuse. Among these, the lowest assessment of false
allegation was 35%, the highest 82%, averaging at 66%.
Recovered Memories
Those joining VOCAL are finding that an even more dramatic form of child
abuse allegation is now sweeping the country. It originates with a
"recovered memory" of sexual atrocity, often involving incest or satanic
ritual abuse, usually made by an adult daughter against her father, and
almost always discovered in therapy. This form of allegation made the
headlines when celebrities such as Roseanne Arnold, La Toya Jackson, and
Suzanne Sommers declared they had suddenly remembered a long repressed
victimization. It is also claiming celebrities among the accused, most
notably Cardinal Bernardin of the Roman Catholic Church, which was however
later recanted.
In such cases the question of credibility applies not only to the accuser or
accused but also to the therapist as well as the therapeutic technique and
its supporting theory. Because cases of recovered memory of abuse have
surfaced relatively recently, skeptical criticism is just now beginning to
appear in the media although the underlying issues have been under debate
for decades. One result has been the formation of an organization whose
title already makes an assertion, the False Memory Syndrome Foundation.
Thus to VOCAL we can add FMSF among the acronyms coined in response to the
false allegation problem.
It appears to be widespread. The FMSF reported that within two years of its
founding in 1991, it had built a file of 12,000 families who believed
themselves victimized by accusations prompted by false memories. Eleanor
Goldstein (Goldstein & Farmer, 1992) estimates that the actual number of
involved families reaches into the tens of thousands. She also cites data
from the National Committee for the Prevention of Child Abuse on the highly
inflated estimates of victimization. Contrary to statements that one in
four women have been abused prior to the age of 18, retrospective surveys
reveal great variations, from 6 to 62%, which means, Goldstein says, "that
we don't have any valid statistics at all" (p.2).
How many of those reports of remembered child abuse, whether in the high or
low range, were false? Several sources suggest that they may match figures
on false allegations in reports of rape and sexual harassment. The National
Center for Child Abuse reported that false allegations, which were 35% of
all claims in 1975, had by 1993 reached 60% (FMSF Newsletter, 1993).
Other sources suggest that the kind of child abuse caused by satanic ritual
cults is almost totally a myth. There may be a satan and he may have
followers but, contrary to widely held belief in the mid-eighties, they did
not surface all over middle America. Where accusations actually led to
trials, as in Jordan, Minnesota and in Los Angeles in the McMartin Preschool
Case, prosecutors suffered embarrassing defeats. An extensive New Yorker
report of a Washington State case reveals that at least one conviction was
indeed achieved. However, after a careful analysis of the facts, the writer
concludes that it was a grievous miscarriage of justice, one more ghastly
example of the recovered memory theory gone amok (Wright, 1993).
With regard to recovered memory cases which do not involve satanism, other
indications point to a high number of false allegations. A strong phalanx
of professional opinion has raised significant doubts about the veracity of
long repressed memories even within a carefully disciplined therapeutic
context. For that reason emphatic warnings are now being issued against
their being used in a courtroom - not to mention a press conference -
without persuasive corroboration, which, it appears, is often missing. Some
mental health experts make the point more pungently. Dr. Paul Fink, head of
Psychiatry at Albert Einstein Medical Center said, "If a therapist says 70
to 80% of patients remember abuse, I say the therapist ought to be a
shoemaker" (Sifford, 1992). Dr. Richard Ofshe, a member of the FMSF
professional advisory board who exposed the proliferating fallacies in the
Washington State case, stated that "the incidence of cases in which
repressed memories correspond with facts about abuse is as common as Siamese
twins joined at the head" (Brzustowicz & Csicsery, 1993, p.8).
Motivations of Accusers
Even so, reasonable doubts about a woman's veracity in all these often
sensationalized sexual misconduct cases do not necessarily mean that she has
deliberately lied. She may, for example, have suffered from confusion, a
problem now proliferating as the definition for sex crimes becomes
increasingly complicated and inclusive, leaving all parties struggling with
questions about definition and propriety. Or she may have been affected by
emotional instability or mental illness, which one study reported was a
factor in 75% of false allegation in divorce cases (Wakefield & Underwager,
1990). In some cases a woman or her defenders might exaggerate a
misdemeanor into a felony or, as happened in Washington state, translate bad
parenting into sexual misconduct.
In addition, there has been a tendency to emphasize what a victim felt
rather than what happened. Thus, a woman can truthfully say she felt raped,
abused or harassed by behavior which is actually non-criminal. Moreover,
the woman's feelings are often influenced by outside parties with whom she
has confided - friends, family members, social workers, therapists,
clergymen, rape counselors, lawyers, political activists - any of whom can
interpret her emotion as a sign of felonious abuse.
With regard to recovered memory, evidence published by the FMS Foundation
suggests that the woman may be as much victimized by therapy or by recovery
movement" enthusiasm as by a perpetrator hidden in her subconscious. Ericka
Ingram, the primary accuser in the Washington State case, had come under the
influence of both secular and religious counselors. Their intrusive
encouragement helped to loosen a flood of wild charges she leveled against
her father and mother as well as two of her father's colleagues. These
realizations have led to an increasing number of lawsuits now being filed by
former patients against incompetent or overzealous therapists. By the same
token, among the divorcing wives who file sexual molestation charges against
their husbands are some who have been coached by self-serving lawyers.
Columnist Barbara Amiel (1989) stated that "a lawyer is coming close to
negligence if he does not advise a client that in child custody cases and
property disputes, the mere mention of a child abuse allegation is a
significant asset" (p.25).
In The Morning After, Katie Roiphe (1993) reported still another cause of
false allegations: political passions generated by activities such as the
"Take Back the Night" marches. She tells about "Mindy" who so wanted to be
a "part of this blanket warmth, this woman-centered nonhierarchical
empowered notion" that she was "willing to lie" (pp. 40-41). A similar
story was told by a Stanford University professor whose daughter was, he
claimed, behind a conspiracy to murder him. He testified that he had had a
good relationship with her until she attended an anti-rape rally. "She
appeared to have gotten swept up ... and was experiencing great emotional
distress" (Wykes, 1993).
These mitigating circumstances have often softened the judgment of
authorities who confront women guilty of misrepresentation. In the
Washington D.C. area, for example, police send women who lied about rape not
to the court room but to a counseling center. The Princeton woman who
accused a fellow student suffered no more than an obligation to write a
public apology. Because of these sometimes compelling reasons for a
departure from the truth, many officials hesitate to call a woman a liar.
But it appears, some women with little or no evidence do not hesitate to
call a man a rapist. It also appears that more than a few of them have in
fact knowingly and willfully lied. Regardless of the influences working on
Ericka Ingram, for example, there came a point when the evidence openly
confounded her story, leaving her with the choice either to persist or
recant. Because she not only persisted but further embellished her story,
Richard Ofshe called her an "habitual liar" (Wright, 1993, p.69). Whether
Anita Hill lied about Clarence Thomas still cannot be determined, but David
Brock demonstrated that in several other matters she had indeed lied. And
as Charles P. McDowell and other rape allegation researchers have
discovered, at least one out of four women in their study population have
openly admitted to having lied.
Such disclosures should encourage skepticism toward the now widely held
belief that, in accusations of sexual misconduct, women never lie. The same
skepticism should be activated when we hear its supporting explanation: that
filing such a charge is so painful that only a truthful woman would proceed.
That belief, although equally strong, is equally suspect. The research that
revealed how many sexual misconduct allegations are false has also revealed
how often these unfounded accusations are strongly motivated.
The clearest example of compelling motive can be found in the Sexual
Allegation in Divorce (S.A.I.D.) syndrome. In such cases questionable
allegations multiply because the accuser has far more to gain than to lose.
Simply charging a divorcing spouse with child molestation - or wife
battering or spousal rape - can turn a hot but evenly balanced custody
battle into a rout. In many cases, the accused husband must vacate what had
been the "family" home and submit to prolonged alienation from his children.
He also finds himself ensnared by both the criminal justice and the social
service bureaucracies whose conflicting rules of evidence can deny him the
presumption of innocence. In a process that only a Kafka can describe, he
must then devote his resources to defending himself rather than pursuing the
original divorce litigation.
Even then he may find himself in jail or in court ordered therapy while his
accuser has won de facto custody not only of the children but of the house.
Should he eventually win vindication, a process which can literally take
years, he may enjoy at best a hollow victory which leaves him financially
and emotionally drained, nursing a permanently injured reputation and
functioning as an "absent" father with a sparse schedule of controlled
visits. It is no wonder, then, that to express the reality commentators
have sometimes used dramatic language, such as "the ultimate weapon" or the
"atom bomb."
The impressive results that are so often easily achieved with false
allegations in custody disputes suggest the kind of temptations women may
feel in other situations. Among those found to have lied about rape or
sexual harassment, for example, a number of motivations have been
identified. The McDowell report listed those they uncovered in declining
order of appearance. "Spite or revenge" and "to compensate for feelings of
guilt or shame" accounted for 40% of such allegations (Farrell, 1993, p.
325). A small percentage were attributed to "mental/emotional disorder or
attempted extortion." In all cases, then, the falsely alleging woman had
any of several strong motives to lie. But, as with the S.A.I.D. syndrome,
the most common motive was anger, an emotion which prompts more than a few
embattled women to reach for "the ultimate weapon.
Although money gained through extortion ranked low among the motives for
false rape allegations, it appears to rank higher when sexual harassment
claims prove to be unfounded. A casual survey of some of the suits that
have been filed suggests why. In the eighties, successful claims often
brought damages in the $50,000 to $100,000 range. After the explosion
ignited by the Hill/Thomas case, not only the number of claims but damage
awards have skyrocketed. A clothing store cashier successfully sued her
employer for $500,000. Employees of Stroh's Brewery claimed that the
company's commercials, which showed the "Swedish Bikini Team," constituted
harassment and sued for damages ranging between $350,000 and $550,000. In
the famous locker room harassment case, Lisa Olson was reported to have
received a settlement ranging between $250,00 and $700,000. Damage claims -
and awards - in the millions are becoming more common.
In some cases which were later proved to be false, the financial stakes were
particularly high. One lawyer was charged with coaching six of his clients
to "embellish or lie" about some of the incidents on which they based a
sexual harassment case. They had asked for $487,000 (Gonzales, 1993).
Eleven women from the Miss Black America Pageant, after claiming that Mike
Tyson had touched them on their rears, filed a $607 million lawsuit against
him. Several of the contestants later admitted they had lied in the hope of
getting publicity and cashing in on the award money which would have given
them around $20 million each (Farrell, 1993, p.328).
But where extortion does appear, the motivation may be political as well as
monetary not only in particular cases but in the growth of the entire sexual
misconduct crisis. Whether it is rape or sexual harassment or
divorce-related child molestation or recovered incest memory, many of the
investigators eventually mention the influence of ideological feminism.
Katie Roiphe, for example, found feminist politics at work in the phony rape
story invented by Mindy, the imaginative Princeton co-ed. Norman Podhoretz,
who wrote about "Rape in Feminist Eyes," attributes the current
over-publicized obsession with rape to "the influence of man-hating elements
within the (women's) movement (which) has grown so powerful as to have swept
all before it" (1992, p.29). As far back as 1985 John Sullivan attributed
the overheated denial of false accusation to attempts to defend the
"feminist theory of rape." And Philip Jenkins (1993), who reported the
trend toward automatically-assumed female credibility, stated that it was
part of a larger campaign to establish "feminist jurisprudence."
Whatever their motivations in particular cases, there is little doubt that
ideological feminists have achieved significant political gains from
publicizing the sexual misconduct crisis. Lisa Olson's feelings of
harassment may for example have been genuine, but as the focus for a
prolonged media event that established for female reporters an access to
locker rooms it was as unpopular with the general public as it was with male
athletes. The real Anita Hill may or may not have been lying, but the
Hill/Thomas affair propelled sexual harassment into a hot issue that rapidly
generated a subindustry of scholars, consultants, and bureaucrats, prompted
a "Year of the Woman" campaign that helped several women into congress, and
revived a flagging women's movement.
The same spectacular results may follow from the Tailhook Scandal, which,
like Hill/Thomas, is raising serious questions about motive and credibility.
Whether Paula Coughlin's testimony will become as clouded as Anita Hill's,
her whistle-blowing has already scuttled the careers of a still growing
number of naval officers, not to mention the Secretary of the Navy himself,
intensified in-service anti-sexual harassment campaigns, reinforced an
already strong feminist presence in the armed forces, and helped soften the
military's granitic opposition to women in combat. These incidents also
helped to power a "Violence Against Women" bill through congress which will
channel still more millions of government money into women's programs, not
to mention winning congressional validation of feminist jurisprudence.
That's a lot of political gain achieved by the words of a few women who
suffered little more than an affront to their sensibilities.
Conclusions
This growing gap - between the anguish suffered by the victims of
traditionally-defined sex crimes and what is suffered by victims of
ideologically-defined crimes - suggests that the crisis we face is not the
result of a sexual misconduct epidemic but of the crisis mentality itself,
an ever more hysterical vision of a "rape culture." It has a foundation in
reality. In what has become a ritual disclaimer, those who have exposed the
surprising number of false allegations of sexual misconduct have also
admitted the appalling number of genuine accusations. And those who have
attacked the incompetence, self-interest, and zealotry that has denied the
extent of false allegation have also recognized the courage and energy that
has exposed the problem of honest allegation begging vainly for belief.
They have therefore applauded the effort to seek for this long ignored
injustice both social and legal remediation.
But that effort, carried too far and exploited too often, has generated
another gap: between our awareness of the now highly visible victims of
sexual misconduct and the almost invisible victims of false allegation. The
lesser known victims have their own stories to tell, enough to reveal
another long ignored injustice that demands remediation. False allegations
of sexual misconduct have deprived a rapidly growing number of men and women
of their reputations, their fortunes, their children, their livelihood, and
their freedom; have wasted the time and money of countless tax-supported
agencies; have destroyed not only individuals but entire families and
communities; and have left some so desperate that they have taken their
lives.
For that reason, in the current revision of our sexual misconduct code, we
must retain as a guiding premise the realization that women can lie because
we know that, for several reasons, more than a few women have lied, more
often than researchers into false allegation had expected, far more often
than "rape culture" ideologues have admitted ... too often, in any event, to
be ignored by our jurisprudence, feminist or otherwise.
Endnote
1. These assertions are themselves widely disputed. However, one of
the most extensive studies on the subject, by Strauss and Gelles (1990)
reports that for physical abuse, the rate is higher for mothers than for
fathers: 17.7% for mothers vs. 10.1% for fathers. They found that preteen
boys are slightly more likely to be abused than their sisters but that the
pattern changes alter puberty. Strauss and Gelles, however, also refer to
some contravening studies that show higher rates for fathers.
Susan Steinmetz (1977/78) who has collaborated with Strauss and
Gelles, reported independently that "mothers abused children 62% more often
than fathers, and that male children were more than twice as likely to
suffer physical injury" (p.499).
David C. Morrow (1993) reports: "Drawing upon reports of the American
Humane Association, the Association of Juvenile Courts, the National Center
for the Prevention of Child Abuse, and the FBI's 1978 crime report, John
Rossler of Equal Rights for Fathers of New York State estimated that mothers
commit over two-thirds of all child abuse, 80% of it in sole custody and
none in joint custody situations, while boyfriends and new husbands
perpetrate most of the rest. A similar study conducted a few years earlier
in Utah by Ken Pangborn showed abuse 37% higher among single mothers than
the general population and 67% of all abuse in the doing of women of whom
80% are single mothers."
Diane Russell (1986) reports that of adult women in San Francisco who
reported one or more experiences of incestuous abuse, overall 4.5% were
abused by a father (biological, step, foster or adoptive). But the abuse
was much more likely to occur with a stepfather. Russell reports that 17%
of the women who were raised by a stepfather were abused by him compared to
2% of the women who were raised by a biological father. This indicates the
greater risk to a girl of growing up in a household without her biological
father.
Thomas Fleming (1986) cites a Canadian study that concluded that
preschoolers were 40 times as likely to be abused in broken and illegitimate
families as compared to those in intact two-parent families.
The consensus thus appears to support the assertion that child abuse
is much more common in single parent families or families missing the
biological father, that women are more often the abusers, and that male
children are more often the victims. [Back]
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