Believe Her! The Woman Never Lies Myth
Stephen Morgan
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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* Frank S. Zepezauer is a teacher and writer at 1731 Wright Avenue,
* Sunnyvale, CA 94087. [Back]
But be not ye called Rabbi: for one is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are
brethren. And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father,
which is in heaven. Neither be ye called masters: for one is your Master, even
Christ.
-- Matthew 23:8-10