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A L S O+T O D A Y [ MOTHERS WHO THINK ]
T A B L E+T A L K School reform is gaining momentum, but is privatizing education taking things a step too far? Take your side in the Education area of Table Talk
R E C E N T L Y Where have we gone? $400 million and a mule? Genocide, and
drug-trafficking too Let the sexual healing
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Who says women never lie about Rape?
BY CATHY YOUNG | Juanita Broaddrick's explosive charge that President Clinton raped her 21 years ago has elicited the feminist movement's toughest -- and most confused -- response yet to Clinton's chronic woman troubles. National Organization for Women president Patricia Ireland issued a statement that managed to be simultaneously too harsh and too weak. Too harsh because it essentially forbade Clinton to defend himself, denouncing in advance as a "nuts and sluts" tactic any claim that Broaddrick made the story up or was depicting consensual sex as assault. Too weak because, after endorsing her "compelling" account, it urged the country to move on and "stop wasting time on unprovable charges." If you believe we probably have a rapist in the White House, shouldn't you be demanding his resignation? Clearly, feminists remain torn between loyalty to Clinton -- or at least reluctance to do anything that would aid his political opponents -- and the belief that a woman who makes an accusation of rape must be supported. This is not a dilemma for me. I have never voted for Clinton; as a libertarian conservative, I question most of his "pro-woman" policies, from affirmative action to the Violence Against Women Act. As for Broaddrick, I have no way of knowing if her story is true. The allegation is deeply disturbing; so is the fact that the president of the United States has so little credibility that his denials count for nothing. But I am also troubled by the "believe the woman" zealotry that may be as bad for feminism as knee-jerk allegiance to a political ally. This zealotry is now being embraced by some conservatives, who are uttering the stock feminist lines about how lack of support for Broaddrick will discourage other victims from coming forward. Many have said that in 1978, a rape victim -- particularly one involved in an adulterous affair, as Broaddrick was -- was likely to face disbelief and opprobrium if she came forward. Actually, by then things were changing rapidly; by 1980, 46 states had "rape shield" laws preventing the use of the woman's sexual history in a rape trial. But the feminists who helped bring about these changes were undoubtedly fighting real injustices. Well into the '70s, jurors in rape trials were commonly advised to treat the woman's testimony with special caution since a charge of rape was "easily made and difficult to defend against, even if the accused is innocent" (the "Hale warning," based on the dictum of 17th century British jurist Lord Matthew Hale) and to consider "unchaste character" as damaging to the accuser's credibility or suggesting consent. All too often, however, feminist rhetoric merely replaced the old stereotypes that viewed most rape complainants as scorned women or sex-crazed neurotics with an equally simplistic cliché: "Women don't lie about rape." Legal theorist Catharine MacKinnon asserts that "feminism is built on believing women's accounts of sexual use and abuse by men." Some colleges with speech codes have equated talk of false rape allegations with "discriminatory harassment." Activists may even refuse to believe "victims" who admit that they lied, suggesting that women recant out of fear or denial, and many bristle when the media publicize stories of falsely accused men. Actually, FBI statistics show that about 9 percent of rape reports are "unfounded" -- dismissed without charges being filed. The feminist party line is that most of these are valid complaints, nixed because the authorities lack sufficient proof or distrust acquaintance rape claims. But dismissals because of insufficient evidence usually occur further down the pipeline and are not in the "unfounded" category. Generally, a complaint is unfounded when the accuser recants or when her story is not just unsupported but contradicted by evidence. Measuring false allegations is all the more difficult since policies on unfounded complaints differ between jurisdictions. A Washington Post investigation in Virginia and Maryland found that nearly one in four rape reports in 1990-91 was unfounded. When contacted by the newspaper, many "victims" admitted they lied. More shocking figures come from a study by now-retired Purdue University sociologist Eugene Kanin published in Archives of Sexual Behavior in 1994. After reviewing the police records of an Indiana town, Kanin found that of 109 reports of rape filed in 1978-87, 45 -- or 41 percent -- turned out to be false, as the women themselves admitted after the investigation. Could real victims have recanted under pressure from sexist cops? The town's police used the controversial practice of lie detector tests, which have been attacked on scientific as well as political grounds (the test rarely misses liars but may have a high error rate with truthful subjects). But Kanin also analyzed police files from two state universities -- where lie detectors were not used and all victims were interviewed by a female police officer -- and came up with similar results. Moreover, when a specific man was accused, the details of the recantation always matched his story. N E X T+P A G E+| "False rape accusations are not uncommon" - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - |
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