The Cause and Effect of Sexual Assault Allegations
It was suggested — by so very many people that it makes victims and their loved ones want to start punching faces — that if a person is accused of sexual assault it should have absolutely zero impact on their lives until such allegations are proven in a court of law. I would like to take a moment to unpack this rather confusing and irrational thought process a little bit. Because the hypocrisy of how they apply that “innocent until proven guilty, especially in the court of public opinion” shtick is pretty significant.

First let’s establish some basic points.
Should false allegations of any crime, including sexual assault, happen? Of course not. It is wrong to accuse someone of criminal activity while knowing the charge to be false. The illegality of false accusations is another complex matter I’m not going to get into, because the reality is that every acquittal does not equal a false allegation.
Do false allegations of sexual assault happen? Undoubtedly. We know they do. That has never been disputed by anyone.
Do false allegations of sexual assault happen more often than true allegations? There is ZERO EVIDENCE to support such an assertion. There are no valid studies which genuinely suggest that the bulk of sexual assault accusations are false. And until you have very solid, documented, peer reviewed and methodically-sound evidence to support such an assertion, it’s offensive as hell to victims of sexual assault, to claim that any victim is most likely making it up.
Does this mean that every person who is ever accused of sexual assault should be assumed to be a guilty? No, of course not. Again, never have I heard anyone make such a claim, though I’ve had enough people accuse myself and others of having made it. What we have said is that we will not assume a victim is lying by default. Now some would argue that, by default, that means we are assume the person they are accusing is guilty. Well I hate to break it to you, but that’s not the way the brain works. Human beings are capable of listening to a victim with an open mind, hearing other testimony (including from the accused) with an open mind, examining the evidence, and THEN deciding if an assault has been committed. If we weren’t capable of doing that, juries wouldn’t exist. While individual members might, by and large a jury doesn’t treat a victim or a defendant as a liar by default.
Do we acknowledge, as a rational individuals, that when a person is accused of any kind of malfeasance, a certain amount of pressure will come to bear on that person and their reputation? I don’t see how anyone can argue against that. Criminal charges are public for many reasons, including for the safety of a public who could be victimized further while the accused is being tried.
Is it unfortunate that this can result in an innocent person’s reputation being harmed? Again, this is without a doubt true. No one said the justice system is perfect, but protecting the identity of every person accused of a crime, until after their conviction, is not a rational expectation from a logistical standpoint or a public-safety perspective. And charges can and do make innocent people look guilty sometimes too. But they also, quite often, make guilty people look guilty.
And now, for the $10,000 question. If a rational and reasonable society abhors sexual assault, should it be expected that allegations of sexual assault should have a negative impact on that person’s personal and professional reputation? Obviously! I mean, how can you expect such a thing to not damage someone’s reputation? But here’s the problem. Too many people are claiming that there’s something unfair or wrong about un-prosecuted accusations hurting someone’s reputation, pretty much ONLY when the crime they are accused of is sexual assault. And for that matter, too many judges seem to think that if a person did commit sexual assault, any damage that allegation has done to their reputation is sufficient punishment for their crime — even when giving them such leeway PROVES their reputation is still in tact with some people.
It’s not just that we treat victims and defendants differently when it comes to sexual assault accusations, it’s that we treat every element of the process differently, including expecting the protection (and prioritization) of an accused person’s reputation in a way we’d never otherwise bother, much less justify with other crimes.
Let me give you a similar — if reversed — form of this perspective. There are people who will make silly arguments that, if someone becomes famous in their profession — especially if they are an actor, professional athlete, singer or involved in other endeavors where fame is a reasonable expectation — that they should just accept that fame comes with celebrity gossip, being followed by the paparazzi and having their entire lives analyzed and judged by the whole world. And because those people chose that life, they have no business or right to complain about being treated that way. That argument is flawed like a Faberge egg that’s been chopped up with a chainsaw.
If you enter into such a career you have to be conscious and aware of the fact that those things can and might happen. It would be fairly silly and juvenile to say, “Well I didn’t expect to be treated this way,” because you’ve seen enough other people in your industry treated that way that, on some level, you should’ve expected it. But that doesn’t mean that you don’t have a right to complain, in general or directly at those who are ignoring your basic rights to privacy. It doesn’t mean you have to accept having drones flown over your house by the press, that you must tolerate fans trying to sneak into your dressing room, that you don’t have a right to sue a publication who spreads lies or someone who steals and sells personal photos from your cell phone. It doesn’t mean you don’t have the same rights as any other person on the planet, to protect and defend yourself and your family from harm, invasion and defamation. Choosing a profession doesn’t equal voluntarily giving up one’s basic civil rights, but it does mean acknowledging that having your right’s trod upon might be an unintended consequence of fame.
Well if someone is accused of sexual assault, it’s one thing to think it’s unfair for that person’s reputation to be harmed until they are convicted, but to act shocked and appalled by that result is just ridiculous.
From a legal stand point, sexual assault allegations should be considered just allegations until there is a conviction. From a perspective of public opinion, that’s a lot grayer — especially when convictions for such crimes are a lot harder to get the more powerful the perpetrator is. And the expectation that everyone but you should voice no opinions on the person’s guilt or innocence, because you’ve decided they are being treated unfairly, is specious as hell. Do you intend to drink anything handed to you by a certain famous TV dad? Because I sure as hell don’t. You might think it’s unfair of me to say that, when he has yet to be convicted of a crime. I know that it’s irrational of you to expect me to ignore the consistent statements of 60 women, and his own testimony, in support of his being a dangerous man for a woman to be alone with — or for me to simply think less of him, as a person, than I used to.
If a financial adviser is being accused of running a Ponzi scheme, his client list should be expected to shrivel until those allegations are either confirmed or denied. If a home health worker is accused of beating their patients, it’s entirely reasonable that many would discontinue their services until the accusations are resolved. If a restaurant owner is accused of health code violations, you’d expect fewer customers until they’ve fixed the issues or proven they are following the rules. If a builder is accused of using shoddy materials or workmanship, that results in structures they built being unsafe, you’d not be shocked that no one would let them build a skyscraper until such accusations had been laid to rest. No one reasonably expects people to trust those individuals just because they haven’t been proven guilty yet.
But if a powerful and public figure is accused of sexual assault, and their reputation is not harmed, there’s something wrong in the state of Denmark. If they have been accused of assaulting many people, and of continuing to assault people right now, and their population doesn’t diminish? That’s fucked up. And if you are acting like it’s a good thing, that the person’s popularity is only improving after the accusations, that’s even more fucked up. It doesn’t matter if you are celebrating that our society is embracing an accused rapist, or if you are demanding it, it’s all fucked up.
It seems like everyone understands and expects that allegations of causing egregious harm to others impacting a person’s professional standing, UNLESS what they are accused of is sexual assault. Then for some people, it becomes, “Poor them, how dare people jump to conclusions!” But what they miss is that believing a victim isn’t jumping to conclusions. It’s, in point of fact, the opposite of jumping to conclusions. It’s being given a conclusion by a witness to a crime and accepting their testimony as genuine.
You are allowed to disagree with someone’s opinion (though they are of course also allowed to ignore or express contempt your disagreement), but if their opinion is “ based on accusations of sexual assault, that person is no longer trustworthy” you don’t get to complain that they are poisoning the jury pool or ignoring the constitutional provision of “innocent until proven guilty” if they dare to express that opinion out loud. The phrase “the court of public opinion” is only a metaphor, not a literal description of how public opinion is constitutionally obligated to function.
IMPORTANT NOTE: In this article, there are some references to cases/defendants which are very obvious. Most of them are not. There are actually small references to a couple dozen cases in this article, which include alleged perpetrators who are male and female, victims who are male and female, adult film stars, sports figures, celebrities, cases from multiple countries, cases involving violent rape or strictly sexual harassment and cases involving both minor and adult victims. There are clear and ever-present biases in how different victims and defendants in sexual assault cases are treated. Again that is an undeniable fact. But this is article is not about those biases, or how any specific defendant or victim has been treated, by the courts, the press or the public — it’s about a pattern of expectation in how we, as the public, treat sexual assault accusations. Derailment’s, straw-mans, ad-hominems and any other ‘logically fallacious’ attempts to deflect from my theme without addressing it, will be moderated out of the replies. This is your only warning.

