Never question the victim

Something over on Facebook and Twitter has stirred up an old memory.  It's not the kind of thing I usually put here, but it just feels like I'd be splashing ancient drama on my Facebook timeline if I put it there.

A long, long time ago I was dating someone I had no business dating.  She was substantially younger than me, but I was lonely, stupid, naive, and still pretty young myself.  This would best be described as the very early gestational stages of my 'Stupid Years'.

She was decidedly more attractive than any girl who'd ever paid attention to me, and she was paying attention.  In spades.  Came out of nowhere.

So we dated.  Lots of making out.  She was aggressive, I was willing, etc.

But, I didn't want to have sex.  I still hadn't had sex, and was still under the thinking that I should wait.  (I was already engaging in all kinds of sexual activity, but not sex itself, so that seemed like a good thing...did I mention I was stupid?)

We were only together for a few days.  During that time, there was a compelling reason not to get involved below the belt.

Once that circumstance cleared itself up, I found her with a reason to spend the night at my house.  Turns out it was entirely manufactured, but I trusted her, so she was on the sofa.  I lived with my parents at the time, so we didn't exactly have much privacy, and there was no way she was going to be sleeping in my room.

That said, we still fooled around.  I kept wanting to go to bed, she'd drag me back.  It became clear she wanted to go all the way.  I kept dodging.  Finally, my dad got up for work and I went to bed, exhausted from pulling an all-nighter canoodling.

Next day comes, she goes home, and there's drama because of that manufactured reason for having to stay with us.  She was grounded or whatever, that was that.

Sometime soon after (days, not sure) I find out via mutual friends that she's accused me, to them, of 'trying something sexual' with her in my front yard that night, and it was only when she screamed and woke my dad that I stopped and let her go.

My reaction was to laugh.  For one thing, the truth of the night was that she wouldn't leave ME alone, we were in my living room the whole time, and I never forced a thing on anyone in my entire life.  At that point I'd only kissed four people, I hadn't exactly had a lot of opportunity to do much of anything.

Also, the story was pathetic.  We were outdoors?  Why?  Against a tree?  Huh?  And my dad woke up?  My dad could have slept through a nuclear explosion, my mom is a very light sleeper.  She didn't even know us well enough to know that pretty common information.  My mom would have been outside telling us to quiet down if we'd just been talking normally!

So none of the facts of the accusation even passed a basic sniff test.  Add to it her history of lying (did I mention I was stupid to be with her at all?) and my history of being, well, a harmless lovable little fuzzball known to be WAY too trusting with women, and you've got a closed case.

But my friends believed her.

I can't remember ever feeling that way before or, thankfully, since.  Helplessness, rage...just the embodiment of injustice.  It was WRONG.

And they didn't care.

Ended those friendships for a little while, to say the least.  Sometime after my accuser finally got what what wanted, we reconnected.  Turns out she'd been going from older guy to older guy trying to get knocked up so she'd have a way out of her house and have someone to take care of her.  She accomplished that mission with the guy after me, and that was that.

Look, I understand the drive behind the statement 'don't question the victim'.  For way too many years, as a culture, we refused to listen to claims of abuse, especially from women and girls.  That was a travesty...and it's over now.  If it happens now, it's not due to some patriarchal societal prejudice, no matter what modern feminism tells you.  If it happens now, it's isolated, and God help the people who ignored the claims if it's later found that they're true.  The only people we consider lower than the abuser are those who allow the abuser to continue their dark work out of malice or foolishness.

What we have now is the opposite: it's not, 'never question the victim', it's 'never believe the accused'.  As the great Maha Rushie says, it's the seriousness of the charges, not the weight of the evidence.

We cannot continue to exist as a culture unless we adhere to the most basic tenet of justice: innocent until proven guilty by evidence brought forth in open court.  It's a sad, simple fact that sexual abuse often leaves absolutely no physical evidence.  Because of this, many abusers get away with their crimes.

However, that's not to say that evidence doesn't exist.  When it's a 'he said, she said' case you have to look at everything surrounding the accuser and the accused.  Their past, testimony of others who have come in contact with them, etc.

Listen to me here: people who force sexual contact on other people do not do it one time and then stop.  They do not succeed the first time without continuing.  They rarely succeed the first time at all, but rather have several hesitant attempts to work up to what they seek.  To force sexual contact on another human being, you have to have a very specific set of mental pathologies.  Things wrong with how your brain works that keep you from behaving like everyone else.

This is why we have non-offending pedophiles.  They may have the attraction, but they'd never force themselves on other people.  That's also why we have sexual offenders against children who aren't pedophiles.  Their pathology drives them to force themselves onto others, and it doesn't matter if they're sexually attracted to their victim or not.  Ever wonder, as George Carlin did, why you hear about 85-year-old women being raped by young guys?  That's why.

Either way, people who force themselves on others simply have things that drive them to do it, to overcome personal morality, cultural norms, societal repercussions, risk of legal punishment, and nature itself.  It is no small thing to violate another human sexually.  It isn't casual, simple, or easy unless you are profoundly broken.  And if you are, it is no small matter to appear normal to everyone in your life.
 
Because of this, we can corroborate independent accusations of abuse by looking at patterns of behavior, finding previous victims, and seeking psychological evidence of abnormal pathology.

In short: offenders look and act like offenders, even if it is in very subtle ways.  And if they don't, if there's no evidence at all, not even circumstantial...a simple accusation just isn't enough.  That means sometimes bad guys get away with it.  But it means that every time, if it works right, innocent men walk free.

We HAVE to adhere to this.  It's the foundation of order in our culture.  When we allow emotion and our own prejudices to break down this most basic logical function, we're destroying what allows us to be free.  We can look back at witch hunts of the past, and we see them as times of great injustice, ignorance, and tragedy...and yet we're entering a time when the world shouts via social media 'burn the witch' and everyone starts looking for kindling and matches.

I can only encourage you, as someone who has been falsely accused, to THINK.  Don't feel, THINK.  Examine more than testimony and claims.  Look at facts, evidence, and patterns.  Apply Occam's Razor at every turn.  Ask yourself: what do I have to believe, in order to believe this claim?  What do I have to believe to disbelieve it?  Critical, analytical thinking, devoid of emotion beyond the passion to do the right thing.

And yes, ALWAYS question the victim.  Question the victim, the accuser, and everything surrounding them. Question everything, or the next one accused might be you.