The psychology of #metoo
Deferred accusations, “character assassination,” and fake allegations
#metoo may have started in Hollywood, but the controversy surrounding sexual assault and misconduct allegations has reached a fever pitch in Washington with the heavily disputed accusations against Judge Brett Kavanaugh, President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee.
The Kavanaugh case has stirred up an especially pungent pot of questions and reactionary statements — conjectures about a Kavanaugh doppelganger, doubts stemming from the accuser’s deferred accusation, and death threats against one of the alleged victims, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford.
Some dismiss the accusations and the attention they’ve gotten in the media and in Congress as merely a partisan attempt at assassinating Kavanaugh’s character or believe Ford but consider the attack irrelevant to Kavanaugh’s nomination since, after all, he was just 17 and “boys will be boys.”
How to talk about rape
With so much fear surrounding the issue of sexual assault, the facts — in terms of real trends and in individual cases of assault — get muddled. In many cases, there is no physical evidence to bring to court, but that doesn’t mean the rape didn’t happen. It just means that the victim was unable to access or opted-out of a rape kit, or that the rape kit simply hasn’t been processed yet, a frequent obstacle in rape cases due to government testing backlogs of thousands of kits in many cities.
But before a case falls under any kind of an investigation, we have to decide how to respond to rape allegations. To truly understand the repercussions of an alleged sexual assault, especially with high-profile suspects like Kavanaugh, there are three points of view to understand: after an alleged rape happens, how does the victim, the accused, and the public react?
Waiting — sometimes forever — to come forward
The traumatic nature of sexual assault cannot be understated. Neither can the traumatic nature of pursuing a sexual assault charge; why relive your trauma, face death threats, pour your savings into a legal team, take extensive time off of work or school, and risk your own name being dragged through the mud only to see your attacker pay a minimum penalty, or worse, walk free? Given these risks, many victims feel safer remaining silent.
How many? Nearly 1 in 5 women and 1 in 71 men will be raped at some point in their lifetime. But that number is much higher when you include unwanted sexual contact outside of rape: 1 in 3 women and 1 in 6 men.
That’s a staggering proportion of the U.S.’s 325 million people. But over 60% of sexual assaults are never reported to the police.
Those that do report face tremendous barriers to getting a conviction, or even a formal investigation. If they waited too long after the fact to report, there may be no physical evidence or the statute of limitations may have already run out. Out of every 1,000 rapes, only 57 lead to arrests, and just seven lead to a conviction.
No wonder #WhyIDidntReport is trending. Men and women across social media are sharing their stories of assault and the crushing barriers — everything from homophobic police officers to unsupportive family members — that prevented their reporting. Many victims are simply too ashamed or traumatized to come forward.
The signs of a fake accusation
In an article for QZ, researcher Sandra Newman describes what she’s learned about false rape accusations after studying hundreds of them.
Almost half of all false rape accusations are made by someone other than the victim, such as a parent — often because a child lied about a rape to get out of the repercussions of an unwanted pregnancy or missed curfew.
Adult false accusers typically have a history of fraud or “bizarre fabrications.” And, most tellingly, a false accuser won’t leave any room for misinterpretation. If anything, their story will be overly lurid and detailed, with zero possibility that it was just a misunderstanding of consent — as in the famous case of the false U.Va. campus rape story in Rolling Stone. Newman writes:
“When a woman says she’s been brutally raped by seven men at a public party on a bed of broken glass, as the UVA accuser did, and when that woman has a history of strange lies, as the UVA accuser also did, there’s nothing wrong with being skeptical. But if a woman without any history of dramatic falsehoods says she went home with a man and, after they’d kissed a while consensually, he held her down and forced her into sex — in the absence of compelling evidence to the contrary, you can just assume it’s true. This is not because of any political dictum like ‘Believe women.’ It’s because this story looks exactly like tens of thousands of date rapes that happen every year, and nothing at all like a false rape accusation.”
While rare and unlikely to hold up in court, false rape accusations do happen. But even men with multiple accusations against them — true or false — rarely face legal repercussions, and if they do lose their jobs, it’s typically after an internal investigation or because they chose to resign before an investigation could take place, as in the case of Al Franken.
Character assassination
Since the fall of Harvey Weinstein, there’s been an increasing fear of “being #metoo-ed”; that a man who isn’t walking on eggshells all the time risks losing his job and facing criminal charges due to a fake or overblown sexual misconduct allegation.
People read the media storm around new allegations and see it as unfair persecution, a violation of “innocent until proven guilty.” As the #metoo floodgates first opened in 2017, Inc even published a guide on “Simple Ways to Avoid Being Accused of Sexual Harassment at Work.”
But these fears aren’t backed by statistics or psychology; a staggeringly small percentage of accusations are fake (2–10%), and it’s not that difficult to identify the tell-tale signs of a fake accusation. More to the point of these alleged “character assassinations,” however, is the fact that, except in the horrendous cases with tens or hundreds of accusers — like Bill Cosby or Larry Nassar — the public is often quick to forgive and forget.
Do you remember what Bill Clinton’s accusers said about him? Or Woody Allen? Or David Bowie?
The sexual assault allegations against men like these aren’t ancient news. But, regardless of the veracity of the claims against them, they’ve remained relatively influential and powerful men, and their alleged crimes have largely faded from the adoring public’s memory.
I’m not saying the public’s short-term memory loss is a good thing when it comes to sexual assault allegations — but it proves that the mere allegation of assault without a conviction is by no means a death knell on any man or woman’s career.
Highly emotional issues like sexual assault tend to elicit a knee-jerk reaction, but it’s crucial — especially in cases involving people close to us or in high-profile, powerful positions — to calmly reflect on the facts of each individual case and what the people involved have at stake.
If you make any generalizations, it should be that few accusers have anything to gain from “crying rape” — besides the slim possibility of some much-needed closure and peace of mind.
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