This is very important issues by Amazing Atheist please for you who care shared it, like it, and comment on his ytb page to break the silence! to change mainstream view about rape by female on boy or even men.
men
It’s Only Sexist When Men Do It – 2
The Amazing Atheist
3 days ago
If feminists didn’t have double standards, they’d have no standards at all.
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789 like
MrRepzion
2 days ago
This is one of my new favorite videos by you. Example and example of these god-damn double standards that these feminists deem to ignore to suit their own agenda.
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101 like
5 Sexist Things MEN Have To Deal With!
Although i don’t like the front picture of this vid, but how they discuss about sexist thing towards men are okey
“The expectations are high and the line is thin.
So, you get into a fight, suddenly you are a caveman, an animal; you don’t and then you are a coward, a pussy.
When you are not in the mood for sex there is something very seriously wrong with you or you don’t love her, for whatever reason if you cant get it up you don’t love her, if you don’t cum you don’t love her, if she doesn’t cum then something is wrong with you, if she is not in the mood then it’s okay, she’s not a sex machine after all.
If you don’t have a job then you are not wanted and you are a scrub, a sissy, incapable, etc. Being a housewife is perfectly fine for women.
If you don’t (want to) talk about about a certain female’s body then you are “gay”, if you do then you are looked at, from outside the group, as a primitive sex addicted caveman.
And there are a lot more “can’t-win” situations.” Masta sukeh
Mens’ Rights vs Feminist Rape Culture explained using Puzzle Pieces
1 per 4 women being rape by male ?
Allison Tieman explained biased of radical feminism research
Sexual Abuse of Men and Boys: Lynne MacDonell’s Talk at U of T (Sam Allouba)
On October 9, 2014, the University of Toronto’s Men’s Issues Awareness Society hosted a talk by Lynne MacDonell, who spoke about sexual abuse of men and boys, in particular abuse of boys within the penal system. The talk was sponsored by the Canadian Association for Equality (CAFE, pronounced café). CAFE is a non-profit charity that seeks to address issues of gender inequality in society, with a focus at this time on issues faced by men and boys. The event went well, despite a couple of setbacks beforehand, such as a police presence being required and a venue change.
MacDonell is mental health practitioner, therapist, and men’s support group leader. She is also part of the team that runs MaleSurvivor.org, which is an online support group dedicated to men who are victims of sexual assault. They offer resources, access to health care professionals, and recovery programs for their patients. MacDonell spoke about her time in the mental health field and how she found that, while working in an addiction treatment centre, the one thing that affected the male patients the most was childhood sexual abuse. She sought to understand why this was the case. She also worked with women in this capacity, but eventually realized that female victims had plenty of places to which they could be referred to for further treatment. As one would expect, there weren’t any available to men.
Some of the facts she provided were unsettling, to say the least. Approximately one out of every six men has been sexually abused in their lifetime. It has been reported that 90% of sexual exploitation incidents within juvenile facilities are perpetrated by female guards against young males, according to Josh Vorhees in the National Post. Or if you prefer something more hard-hitting, have a look at this report from the U.S. Bureau of Justice Studies, published in 2012. Specifically, go to page 23 and see table 14. An estimated 92.4% of youth who reported staff sexual misconduct said they were victimized by female facility staff. This sort of behaviour is wrong on so many levels. These women are in positions of authority and they are abusing that authority while they’re supposed to be ensuring a safe environment for the boys in the penal system. If that isn’t rape, I don’t know what is, despite what certain members of academia would like us to believe.
MacDonell also outlined ways in which men cope with their victimization, such as internalizing their problems or believing that they aren’t true victims because they’re men. She pointed out what happens to men who come forward and seek help. If these men aren’t flat-out denied the help they want, then they are told that sexual assault against men is simply impossible by virtue of their being male, or that the institution they have gone to doesn’t know to how to help them. MacDonell believes that the social atmosphere surrounding male victims will change in time, even if people are only just starting to catch on. After all, nothing lasts forever.
CAFE, of course, is famous (or infamous, depending on who you ask) for the protests that have been known to accompany their events, most notably in November 2012 when Warren Farrell came to the University of Toronto and again in April 2013 when Paul Nathanson and Kathy Young came to the same campus. Thankfully, this event proceeded without incident. There was one attendee who walked in with two of her friends and, based on the way she presented herself, seemed like the sort of person who was going to cause a scene, but they left about 10 minutes into MacDonell’s talk. I must admit that I was disappointed by that. When you see the video footage from the previously mentioned events as much as I have, part of you eventually starts to wonder if it could happen in reality for a third time. I would like to experience it for myself, just for the sake of it, but I think the esteemed VIPs have decided that being recorded singing about crying rivers over male suicide victims isn’t the best idea in the world.
Ultimately, at the end of the talk, the big question I had for myself (and I suppose I should’ve asked MacDonell this in person) is why do we, as a society, have such a hard time admitting to ourselves that men can be victims and women can be criminals? The thing is, we know both of these things are possible. Even the staunchest, most rabid, misandric feminists know this. But even more moderate people who don’t associate with any kind of ideological group have a hard time admitting either of those things without coming up with some kind of excuse. To my original question, well, I don’t have an answer. I wish I did, but I don’t. I only take solace in the knowledge that there are people like Lynne MacDonell out there giving male victims the help they need and that there is a little bit the rest of us can do too. It’s why I took time out of my Thursday evening. I hope more of us decide to do the same in future.
When women sexually assaulted men
How gendered cultural scripts help conceal and laugh away a legitimate problem.
In news coverage of campus sexual assaults in recent years, scenarios with male victims aren’t depicted too frequently. When they are, the language often looks something like this:
This may seem bizarre that a guy who is presumably laying back and having oral sex and one assumes enjoying it—or at least tolerating it—is not consenting simply by doing that, but under that definition if he didn’t say ‘yes,’ she’s a sexual violator.
That’s the way George Washington University law professor John Banzhaf spoke to U.S. News & World Report about the new
California law requiring colleges and universities to adopt a “yes means yes” standard for their sexual assault policies. Banzhaf’s selection of this particular hypothetical is an obvious one. A description of a man performing sex acts on an unresponsive woman would have raised a lot of red flags for most of us: Is she conscious? Is she too drunk or too afraid to speak up? If the supposed victim is a man, these questions vanish or become a sort of tired parlor joke. The assumption that men always want sex and that women are inevitably more reluctant is so universal in our culture that the unambiguous rape of men by women can serve as a punch line in popular movies.
However, the reality is not humorous: Women do sexually assault men on college campuses, on a regular basis. Each year, according to an estimate in a literature review, roughly 19 to 31 percent of male college students experience some kind of unwanted sexual contact, and researchers say the vast majority of that is perpetrated by women. These men’s experiences usually aren’t as horrific as those of women who are assaulted, but they represent a clear, and mostly hidden, problem. They also contradict standard assumptions and cultural scripts about male aggression and female passivity.
Cindy Struckman-Johnson, a psychology professor at the University of South Dakota, has studied male victims of sexual assault since 1985. Studies showing widespread sexual coercion and assault by women against men, on college campuses and elsewhere, have trickled in consistently for decades, but they haven’t entered the public discussion of sexual violence, she explains. “It’s so contrary to the stereotypes of female behavior,” Struckman-Johnson says. “When you talk to the general public, there’s the idea that this can’t happen. They just can’t put it together.”
THE NOTION THAT SEXUAL assault of a man by a woman is impossible, and even laughable, rests on the same gendered assumptions that are also used to downplay assaults on women by men. Even after decades of feminist activism, many discussions of sexual violence still center on telling women to stay sober and be cautious around men. The ideas behind that advice—the image of men’s sexual desires as constant and all-consuming and of women as the gatekeepers to sex—also makes it impossible for many people to imagine men as victims. If men are always seeking sex, and frequently shot down by disinterested women, then they should be grateful—or at least not traumatized—by any kind of sexual attention from a woman. Taking sexual coercion against men seriously gives us even more reason to fight against those stereotypes.
“For one male that I interviewed it was devastating. He wanted his first time to be with somebody he deeply cared about, that he chose. And she took that away from him.”
Assumptions about male and female sexuality are deeply engrained in the way with think about sexual encounters. Research consistently shows that Americans are more likely to find coercion of men by women acceptable, compared with the reverse. We’re also more apt to label an incident of heterosexual sex as rape if it involves a male aggressor and female victim, perhaps in part because men are seen as more threatening. In some cases, people code coercive behaviors by men as aggressive but coercion by women as romantic and seductive.
News reports and training programs on sexual assault may acknowledge that it’s possible for men to be victims, but they typically focus almost entirely on male-on-female assaults rather than the reverse. “It reinforces the old stereotypes of men being the sexual predator, always sexual, always wanting something,” Struckman-Johnson says.
But, if dismissing sexual assaults against men goes against the evidence, assuming that their experiences are the same as women’s does too. While coercion and assault are surprisingly common experiences for college men, they’re still much more common for college women. A 2003 study that Struckman-Johnson led found that 58 percent of college men had been pressured for sex after saying no (since age 16), but for women that rate was 78 percent.
Women also typically use less violent tactics than men to push for sex. The paper, which considered “post-refusal tactics” including repeated touching, emotional manipulation, intoxication, and violence, found that 22 percent of women and nine percent of men had been physically restrained by a member of the other gender demanding sex.
IN A 1985 SURVEY of University of South Dakota students, Struckman-Johnson asked victims of coercive tactics to describe what happened. In this sample, 55 percent of the female victims reported having physical force used against them, compared with 10 percent of the men.
Among the men’s descriptions is one of a woman who “came over out of the blue just to talk. She started getting fresh, I pushed her off 3-4 times. I said no and told her I didn’t want to do it with her. I gave in. End of story.” Another man described having a woman lock her car door when he tried to leave and said she was able to pressure him into sex partly because they were a distance from town and she was driving. A third wrote: “She layed on top of me when I was drunk and took my clothing off and went to work.” One of the few descriptions of serious violence by women came from a man who wrote that a first-time date grabbed his penis and refused to let go until he had sex with her.
Men who experience sexual assault or other violence by intimate partners are less likely than women to report the incidents to the police. They frequently think no one will believe a woman sexually assaulted them, are embarrassed at not being able to fend off an attack by a woman, or harbor fears of being perceived as “gay” or not masculine for not wanting to have sex, Struckman-Johnson suggests.
The reported effects of coercive experiences are also markedly different for men than women on average. More than a quarter of the male students in the 1985 survey said they had good or very good experiences with the sex despite their initial refusals, while none of the women did. Another 27 percent of the men called the experience bad or very bad, compared with 88 percent of the women. Only 22 percent of men reported bad long-term effects, compared with 78 percent of the women.
Some of the difference in long-term trauma may be related to the lower levels of serious violence faced by the men, but there’s also evidence that men may not always give accurate accounts of the impact of sexual coercion on their lives. Particularly when women are the perpetrators, assumptions about appropriate gender roles may make them less likely to acknowledge lasting effects.
The literature suggests that around one in five men who are sexually coerced experience long-term effects. For those who do, the fallout can be serious, including symptoms of post-traumatic stress. The negative effects are particularly common in cases where older women take advantage of teenage boys, especially when alcohol is involved.
“For one male that I interviewed it was devastating,” Struckman-Johnson says. “He wanted his first time to be with somebody he deeply cared about, that he chose. And she took that away from him.”
Assumptions about male and female sexuality are deeply engrained in the way with think about sexual encounters. Research consistently shows that Americans are more likely to find coercion of men by women acceptable, compared with the reverse.
Violent attacks are also likely to have long-term consequences. Even when a man is physically stronger than his attacker, Struckman-Johnson says, a woman trying to lock him in a room or hitting him can be traumatizing.
“Even if that woman is not terrifically strong, she’s usually pretty terrifying to them,” she says. “They report long-term effects of feeling nervous around women, staying away from relationships, not trusting women…. For both sexes, it can really turn them off of relationships.”
WHO ARE THE WOMEN who commit these kinds of attacks? Some research suggests that sexual aggression in either gender is correlated with a history of sexual abuse, a tendency to see relationships with the opposite sex as adversarial, and higher levels of arousal to depictions of rape.
Struckman-Johnson says there’s not a huge amount of research on female perpetrators, but popular perceptions of men and women’s sexuality may make it easier for women to rationalize sexual aggression.
“Because of the idea that men are sexually oriented and wanting it all the time, it kind of lets them off the hook,” she says. “They get to assume they’ve got a ready and willing partner here who would just love to have sex with them. That is not the case, that’s denying individuality, it’s denying personality, it’s denying people’s rights to choose their sexual situations.”
In fact, college students sometimes seem surprisingly willing to downplay sexual coercion by either gender. In one 2006 study, researchers presented students with scenarios in which “John” and “Carla” are on a date and one of them clearly states that he or she doesn’t want to have sex. The aggressor ends up having sex with the partner anyway, either by threatening to end the relationship, getting him or her drunk, or physically holding the other down. On a seven-point scale of victimization, students rated John at only 4.6 when he was held down, but even in the reverse scenario, the rating for Carla was only 5.18. In contrast, Carla was rated 6.02 for promiscuity in the scenario where she got John drunk.
The study suggests that sexual coercion isn’t particularly worrisome to many college students. If that’s a depressing conclusion, it isn’t necessarily a surprising one. Our cultural stereotypes about men, women, and sex lead directly to that view. If men are constantly, ravenously seeking sex, then it seems as if it’s up to women to protect themselves by staying sober and keeping male friends out of their dorm rooms. And, by the same token, if women are uncharacteristically pushing, or even forcing, men into sex, then it seems like the only acceptable response is gratitude. Throwing out these traditional scripts could mean rethinking sex as something that can, and should, be sought and enjoyed by everyone involved.
Livia Gershon
Livia Gershon is a freelance writer in New Hampshire. She’s a regular contributor to JSTOR Daily and has also written for publications including Salon and Aeon. Follow her on Twitter @liviagershon.
Manwomenmyth-Misandry-Men are Disposable part 2
Credit to manwomenmyth and jockeyVXO
Oppressed Gender (Let’s Switch The Gender Role)
To Feminist especially in Asia, u think u where oppressed? how about if we truly switch the gender role like in this video? still feel unfair right? that means the unfairness u feel in this video are sexism toward men in the reality.
Now you know
Kepada aktivis perempuan terutama kawasan Asia, merasa di perlakukan tidak adil? bagaimana jika gender rolenya ditukar dengan sempurna seperti di video? masih merasa tidak adil? berarti yang kau rasakan tidak adil di video itu adalah seksisme yang terjadi pada laki-laki di realita.
Credit to France: Pierre Benezit, Marie-Lorna Vaconsin, Marie Favasuli, Céline Menville.
Related Links :
More shaming? Ehh who cares
Credit to Barbarossaaaa
“I noticed the very same thing years ago when i was a kid at summer camp. One day, they mobilized the whole camp for a big cleaning day and we were cleaning the girls bathrooms and i noticed they had a ton more amenities than the guys bathroom. It was like the girls got first class and the guys had to sit in coach. Not that we were unhappy with our situation, just that it wasn’t equal. If thats cool with everyone, then lets at least be honest about it and say that women need special treatment, that they can’t go camping without being pampered. You can’t claim to be equal AND demand special treatment, ya gotta pick one ladies!” mrkrabappleson qoutes
Why in some of my legal society, ladies cleaner have rights and very free to enter male toilet & see men peeing? Why this okey but the reverse situation- we make men cleaner free to enter female toilet, will be count as sexist and inappropriate? even society will get mad. This is unfair either both are allowed or both are prohibited #equality.
Mengapa sebagian tempat pembersih wanita diizinkan untuk bebas terang-terangan masuk wc pria dan melihat “aktivitas” pria di toilet-pipis dimana jika situasi dibalik akan dianggap ketidakadilan bagi wanita dan pastinya tidak mungkin dilegalkan di Indonesia ini! Ini diskriminasi, idealnya sama-sama tidak melihat bukan? Mengapa masyarakat menganggap “merendahkan” jika terjadi ke wanita tapi “mengokeykan” jika ke pria? #AktivisLaki
The Anatomy of False Accusations: A Skeptical Case Study by Ben Radford
Some boy-meets-girl stories are charming and romantic; others are chilling and repellent. This is a true story, fully documented in police reports and a handful of brief local news stories. Though this incident occurred at a small Iowa university, other cases like this happen far more often than most people realize. The relative obscurity of this case suggests its prevalence. This was not an extraordinary, sensational case that made national news, nor was it featured on one of many true-crime shows like Dateline NBC. Instead, it involved two relatively unknown, ordinary people that resulted in extraordinary circumstances.
False accusations are of particular interest to skeptics because skepticism has often been at the forefront of giving voice to the wrongly accused. From the Salem witch trials (in which innocent young women were falsely accused of being witches) to the Satanic Panic moral panic of the 1980s and 1990s (in which dozens of innocent men and women were falsely accused of sexually assaulting children and others) and hundreds of examples in between, skeptics have often been there to remind the public to ask for evidence before rushing to judgment. Indeed, the brilliant CSI Fellow Carol Tavris just recently wrote an e-skeptic piece about this in relation to recent accusations against Woody Allen.
The Crime
Robin Levitski, an eighteen-year-old student at Clarke University, told police in late 2013 that she had been abducted and sexually assaulted by a man she had met online several months earlier, and who she had dated.
For the details we can look at the police report: “Levitski told Cpl. Welsh that she met a [twenty-year-old man, here named John] on the web site meetme.com in late October and began chatting with him. Levitski said that on October 23, 2013 at approximately 10:30 PM she was at a pumpkin carving event in Clarke’s student activities center when she was approached by John. Levitski said that John displayed a knife and told her to leave the center with him. Levitski said that John led her to a waiting vehicle and made her enter it.”
She was then driven to “a residence on Rhomberg Avenue. Levitski said that she was led by John at knifepoint to an upstairs bedroom at this residence where she was forced to perform sex acts on John. Levitski added that John was photographing this incident with his telephone. Once John was done sexually assaulting her, Levitski said she was driven back to the Clarke campus… around midnight on October 24. Levitski additionally told Cpl. Welsh that John sent the images he took during the sexual assault to her phone. However Levitski said that her grandmother saw these images on her phone and deleted them.”
“Cpl. Welsh then located and interviewed John at his residence on Rhomberg. John said that he met Levitski on meetme.com a couple weeks prior and they started dating. John admitted that Levitski had previously spent the night at his residence but was adamant that she did not stay with him on the night of October 23.”
It was a he-said / she-said story-except that the accused man had photographs of their encounter, taken during what Levitski described as a sexual assault. The photos provided independent documentary evidence of what happened between the two of them behind closed doors. The police officer accessed John’s cell phone and “recovered images depicting sexual acts between John and Levitski.” The police officer, however, immediately detected a problem: “The time date stamp on these images however was October 27 and Levitski could be seen smiling while lying next to John in one photo.” Why would a woman be seen smiling next to a man who was sexually assaulting her, and why did the information in the photograph file indicate that the photos were taken on a different date than Levitski claimed?
There were other problems with Levitski’s story. For example police “obtained key fob activity reports from Clarke University for Levitski’s assigned campus keycard…. during the time of the alleged kidnapping Levitski had used her key at and within Clarke University.” Unless Levitski’s key fob was stolen and used by someone else-something she denied and never reported-clearly she could not be at an off-campus house being sexually assaulted by John while at the same time being on campus. Furthermore a friend of Levitski’s told police that she had been with Levitski at the pumpkin carving event on the night of October 23. Instead of John arriving and abducting Levitski at knifepoint as she claimed, Levitski and her friend left the event together uneventfully.
In order to get to the bottom of the mystery, police re-interviewed Levitski at Clarke University on November 8. “Cpl. Welsh explained to Levitski that she had reported a Class A felony that was punishable by up to life in prison if John were found guilty. Cpl. Welsh asked if she thought this would be a fair punishment for John based upon what she was reporting. Levitski said that she didn’t think he needed to serve that long a sentence but he should have to do ‘several years.’ Cpl Welsh told Levitski that her honesty was imperative if this investigation were to continue and Levitski was adamant that the details she provided were true and accurate. Cpl. Welsh gave Levitski an opportunity to change or correct her statement if she thought at this time that there was something that may have been misreported. Levitski maintained that her story was accurate.”
Police “then presented Levitski with the evidence that they had uncovered which was contrary to her statements. After maintaining that she was telling the truth for approximately thirty minutes Levitski finally admitted that the entire story was fabricated to act as some sort of cover for the images that her grandmother had located on her cell phone. These images being of her and John engaged in sex acts. Levitski admitted that these photos were taken during a consensual sexual encounter between her and John on a date later than October 23, contrary to what she had reported.”
A Closer Look
This case is fascinating and offers insight into the rarely-discussed dynamics of a demonstrably false report of abduction and sexual assault. This is not a case in which the circumstances are ambiguous, or authorities concluded that there was insufficient evidence to establish the accused person’s guilt. This is an open-and-shut case in which all of the evidence, including the alleged victim’s statements, clearly demonstrate that the accusation was false.
It also provides insight into how easy it is to make a claim, and how difficult it can be to disprove it. It took Levitski only a few minutes to make her claim to her grandmother, and then perhaps an hour to repeat the accusation to police. Investigators, however, spent many days on the case conducting multiple interviews, researching phone records, analyzing key entry data, and so on. This is as it should be: a thorough investigation into a young woman’s serious accusations and a young man’s life and liberty were on the line. But it does demonstrate the gross imbalance between the time and effort it takes to make a claim and the time and effort it takes to prove or disprove it. It is much easier to prove that something did happen (a positive claim) than to prove that something did not happen (proving a negative). False reports drain an enormous amount of time and money on police departments-time and money that could have been spent on investigating real crimes, with real victims.
What would make a person think that falsely accusing another person-much less a friend and former lover-of sexual assault and abduction was acceptable? There is no indication that Robin and John had any sort of falling out, or that her accusations were made in retaliation for his infidelity or abuse. It would be comforting to think that Levitski is the rare exception, but there is nothing in the record suggesting that she is aberrant in any way; Robin has no previous criminal record, and appears to be a typical young college student, whose interests include cheerleading, The Big Bang Theory, Kanye West, Kesha, and photography.
Why Make a False Accusation?
Why would a person make it up? Only a person with a truly blinkered moral compass would even think of using a false accusation-much less one as serious as sexual assault-as a tool of revenge or convenient excuse for engaging in consensual sex. There is only one circumstance in which an accusation of sexual assault is appropriate: in the case of a genuine sexual assault. Not as a way to get back at someone you’re upset with for other reasons. Not as a way to explain away embarrassing photos to your grandmother. False accusations are also a slap in the face to real victims of sexual assault.
Actually, Levitski’s reason is mundane and common: the false report of a sexual assault is often used as cover story for consenting (but illicit) sexual activity. There are any number of reasons why a person might falsely claim to have been sexually assaulted, including revenge, seeking sympathy or attention, or to cover up for some crime, indiscretion, or infraction. Here’s a few examples.
In 2007 a thirteen-year-old North Carolina girl told police that she had been abducted from her school bus stop by four Hispanic men in a dark red Ford Explorer, taken to nearby woods, and raped. Police canvassed the neighborhood but found nothing, and no eyewitnesses saw the incident. A medical exam revealed no evidence of any assault. Eventually the girl admitted that she had lied about the abduction and assault because she didn’t want to get in trouble for skipping school.
On January 22, 2014, a twelve-year-old girl reported that she was approached by a white male as she was walking home from school; she said the man grabbed her and pulled down her pants before she was able to get away. Police searched the area but found no evidence that anything happened; the following day the girl confessed that she had not been assaulted at all; she had made up the story because she didn’t want to get into trouble for missing her school bus. She is fortunate that an innocent man who happened to be in the area and who matched her general description was not pulled over and arrested on suspicion of attempted sexual assault.
In mid-February 2014 Alexandria Westover, a Florida woman, told police she had been assaulted on the Florida Turnpike after getting a flat tire. She claimed that a man pulled over to help her but eventually raped her. After police spent over 100 man-hours of investigation in a fruitless search for evidence, Westover eventually admitted to having fabricated the story because she didn’t want to get in trouble for missing work.
Then there’s the tragic case of Darrell Roberson, a Texas man who arrived at his home to find his wife Tracy underneath another man in the back of a pickup truck in their driveway. Tracy Roberson cried that she was being raped, upon which Mr. Roberson pulled out a gun and killed the other man with a shot to the head. It was soon determined that Tracy Roberson and the dead man, Devin LaSalle, had been caught in the middle of a consensual sexual affair. Though most cases do not result in anyone’s death, false accusations of sexual assault often stem from an attempt to hide sexual infidelity from a partner.
What these cases have in common is that the person making the false report did not think through the consequences of their accusations. In fact this is a recurring theme in false claims of many serious crimes, including carjackings, robberies, school shootings, and even sexual assaults and kidnappings. When asked by police or reporters why a person made false report of a crime, typical responses are “I didn’t realize it would be that big a deal” or “I didn’t think it would get this far.”
Of course, this is nothing new; people routinely do things without thinking about their consequences. Drunk driving is a classic example: Millions of people drink and drive despite ads and ubiquitous public awareness campaigns warning of the dangers (and the severe penalties) associated with DUIs. It’s not that drunk drivers don’t know that what they’re doing is wrong or illegal, or that they don’t know that the consequences can be severe. Instead, the knowledge of what they will have to go through if caught does not act as deterrent because they don’t think they will get caught, and they aren’t thinking about the consequences of impaired driving. People routinely make decisions about whether to do countless things, from moving to a new state to dating someone new to running a red light, without thinking about the consequences.
The Consequences
What are those consequences? Perhaps the most chilling aspect of this case is Levitski’s utter indifference to the consequences of her claims for the man she recently dated. John might have been convicted of Sexual Abuse in the Second Degree (Iowa Code §709.3), which as a class B felony would have been punishable by up to 25 years in prison; or Sexual Abuse in the Third Degree (Iowa Code §709.4), which as a class C felony would be punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a fine of between $1,000 and $10,000. On abduction charge, he could have faced Kidnapping in the First Degree (“when the person kidnapped…is intentionally subjected to torture or sexual abuse”), which is a Class A felony and is punishable by life imprisonment (Iowa Code §902.9).
When Robin Levitski is told that her statement might imprison an innocent man for life, she hedges a bit and states that such a punishment may be extreme; perhaps only “several years” in federal prison for her abduction and rape would be sufficient to teach him a lesson. The phrase “several years” may roll off Levitski’s tongue as a trifling, abstract punishment for something that never happened, but pause for a moment and consider what that really means for the true victim in this case: the innocent man she falsely accused.
It means that the man she slept with is arrested and charged with a crime. His family, friends, co-workers, and others find out, through rumor, gossip, and the local news, that he was arrested for abducting and sexually assaulting a young college woman. His name and mug shot in the local newspaper and on web sites, easily available to anyone with internet access. Once John is arrested he may be disenrolled and banned from campus by the university; what administration needs the negative publicity of allowing a man accused of abducting and raping another student back on their campus?
He loses his job when he goes to prison, if not long before during his arrest and trial. If he is married or has a family, he may lose them too. He and his family may have to pay tens (or hundreds) of thousands of dollars in legal fees to defend him-and why wouldn’t they? Who wouldn’t spend all they have to avoid a conviction and prison time for a crime they did not commit? These legal fees, of course, are non-refundable; even if he was found not guilty, he and his family may be left bankrupt by the accusations. His friends view him with suspicion: in their eyes he is a rapist-human garbage only a step or two removed from murderers and child molesters. John will be subject to the stress and dangers of prison life, possibly including rape or murder.
Because of his conviction and after he has served his “several years” for something he didn’t do, he will have to register as a sex offender for years or possibly the rest of his life. Anyone who calls the local police station or looks online can find his name and address, and see that he served a prison sentence for abduction and rape. Think of how you would react if you found that information out about your next door neighbor, how you would treat him from then on, what you might say to warn other neighbors or visiting friends, about the predator next door. That (and much worse) is the reality of what “several years” in prison means. When you don’t have to pay-or even think about-the consequences of your accusation it’s easy to dismiss or minimize the damage done to an innocent person.
It’s also easy to assume that Levitski’s accusations are less serious because the case against the man never would have gone to trial, or that he never would have been convicted. However such faith in the justice system rests on shaky ground; the fact is that innocent men and women have been convicted of serious crimes on the basis of little more than the alleged victim’s word. While it is likely that the man Levitsky accused would not have been indicted or convicted, it is far from a certainty-especially if he is poor or underprivileged and must rely on a public defender.
If she would do this to an innocent man who had done her no wrong, who else might she do it to, in response to some real or perceived slight? We like to hope that Levitski has learned her lesson, but maybe not. This seems to be Levitski’s first and only false accusation, but the situation is far more grave if the person has a history of making false claims. Once may be chalked up to incredibly poor judgment or remarkable malice. But repeated false accusations against innocent people may be a sign of mental illness, perhaps a dissociative disorder (inability to distinguish truth from fiction); factitious disorder (creating dramatic personal narratives, often of victimhood, for attention or personal gain); or even paranoid schizophrenia (delusions of persecution and paranoia). This does not, of course, excuse the behavior, but it may provide a framework for addressing it and getting help. If left untreated, he or she may not only do extensive damage to those they falsely accuse, but also to their own lives and careers and those of loved ones.
Why We Believe the ‘Victim’
Not just John and Robin’s lives have been affected by her lies. What of those who rallied behind Robin Levitski, her family and friends who consoled her and supported her during the investigation, and those who joined her in accusing John? They of course had no reason to doubt Levitski’s claims-why in the world would she make it up if it wasn’t true?
Even those who knew both Robin and John might not have completely believed all the accusations, but assumed that he must have done something inappropriate to her. Maybe he didn’t actually “abduct” her in the usual sense of the word, but maybe he held her against her will despite her repeated requests to leave, and she was scared of him. Even if John hadn’t actually abducted or sexually assaulted her, there must surely be something to it; after all, where there’s smoke there’s fire, and people don’t just make up these sorts of serious accusations out of thin air. It was much easier to “believe the victim” and assume that some sexually aggressive college boy had gone too far. No rational, sensible, moral person would falsely accuse an innocent man of abduction and sexual assault-and certainly not to hide the fact that the eighteen-year-old was sexually active. Yet, as bizarre and implausible as it sounds, that is exactly what happened.
Of course, most reports of sexual assault, abduction, and other serious crimes are true. The vast majority of the time when a man says he was carjacked, or a woman says she was assaulted, it really did happen. No one doubts or denies that, and that is part of the reason that victims are believed-as they should be, unless further evidence and investigation reveals that it did not happen. As Alan Dershowitz pointed out during a recent appearance on BBC News, most people who are accused of a crime are in fact guilty. We would not want to live in a world where most people, or even half of the people, who are accused of, or arrested for, a crime were innocent. We give lip service to the presumption of innocence of the accused, but the simple fact that someone in a position of authority took a claim seriously enough to investigate it suggests to many reasonable people there is likely some basis to it.
Most people do not go around accusing other people of things they did not do, and as a result we tend to assume that there must be some reasonable basis for the allegation-even if it ends up being a misunderstanding. A friend of mine noted that part of the reason that sexual harassment and assault claims are believed (on their face, even in the absence of evidence) is that they are so extreme and outrageous that the thought of the accusations being false is itself a violation of social norms. To falsely accuse an innocent man of sexual harassment and assault is so patently unethical and beyond the pale of acceptable behavior that many assume it pretty well must be true. “Why in the world would she make it up if it wasn’t true?” is likely the first and only thought needed to accept her claims. No rational, responsible, moral person would do that, and therefore the question is then framed as either the college student who’d never been in trouble before and presumably had no reason to lie is lying, or there is at least some truth to it. We saw this in the decades-old rehash of allegations against Woody Allen in early 2014. The assumption that a grain of truth must exist somewhere amid the claims is a powerful one.
Saul Kassin, a social psychologist who appears in the documentary film The Central Park Five, explains why it is often very difficult for people to change their minds once they have decided that a person is guilty: “The problem is that once you form a strong belief that someone is guilty of a crime, the contradicting details are just that: they are details that don’t fundamentally change our belief in their guilt.”
It may be hard to sympathize with a man or woman falsely accused of a crime unless you’ve been in that situation yourself. Many people may assume that they would never be in relationship with a person who would falsely accuse them of something as serious as sexual harassment or sexual assault. However the fact is that any of us could be in that position; the man Levitski accused of abduction and assault was a friend and recent sex partner, who presumably had no idea what she was capable of. Think about how you would feel if this happened to your wife, husband, daughter, son, brother, sister, mother or father.
Coming Clean
Not only was Levitski completely indifferent to the damage she did to the man she accused, but perhaps even more shocking was Levitski’s adamant refusal to admit that she lied. Over and over, on at least three occasions, police asked if there was anything she wished to admit or correct about her statement. She said no, sticking to her story over and over, denying and denying the truth. The fact that it took nearly half an hour of police questioning before Levitksi finally admitted her lies is a fair measure of how determined she was to stick to her story, regardless of the consequences for John.
Telling the truth and admitting that a person made a false accusation can surely be a terrifying prospect. It requires a person to accept responsibility for their choices and behavior and admit having done a grievous injustice to an innocent person. It can’t be easy, but often doing the right thing-even eventually-is not easy. It means giving up the status of victim, admitting mistakes, and trying to undo the damage done. For falsely accusing an innocent man of crimes that could have left him imprisoned for the rest of his life, Robin Levitski was given probation and fined $315 (the minimum allowed by law) plus court costs.
As of January 2014, her meetme.com profile was still active.
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