We are now making false accusations of rape more than a method by which women can avoid guilt, avoid blame for broken responsibilities, and exact revenge. We are also creating positive, proactive incentives for false accusations. As when women who accuse men of rape are turned into feminist heroines even before there is a trial (as with Tawana Brawley and the accusers of Mike Tyson and William Kennedy Smith).
Three less visible social incentives are now adding even more to the temptation for false accusations: (1) monetary incentives; (2) abortion laws, and (3) TV
Monitory incentive*
ITEM Eleven women from the Miss Black America Pageant all daimed Mike Tyson touched them on the*- rears So the founder of the pageant filed a $607 million lawsuit against Mike Tyson. Several of the contestants eventually admitted they had lied n the hope of getting publicity and cashing in on the award money49
Think about it If each woman had the potential for being awarded $20 to $30 million, aren’t we really bribing women to make false accusations? And the Miss Black America Pageant itself got more publicity than it had received in its history. The lawsuit made tabloid headlines, the dropping of the lawsuit was buried in the back pages When we fail to give as much attention to an accusation being false as to the original accusation, the accused is left with an image problem. When this image problem was added to Tyson’s already tarnished image, Tyson was doubtless more likely to be found guilty when one of the Miss Black America contestants (Desiree Washington) accused him of date rape than he would have if tabloid headlines had recently been saying "Black Beauties Bribed by Big Bucks."
We often hear that women are hesitant about bringing up sexual harass ment suits and date rape charges because they won t be believed, their personal lives are invaded, their identities known, etc. This is true. For most women. But it is not true for some women. And from the man’s perspective, it takes only a few women to make dating feel like a minefield — not only of rejection but of life-ruining lawsuits. When dating is a minefield for men, both sexes suffer the loneliness
Abortion laws
ITEM In order to get an abortion. Norma McCorvey. the "jane Roe" of Roe v. Wade, claimed she was raped. Fourteen years later, she acknowledged she had ted.50
If a teenage girl cannot get an abortion unless she says she was raped, she will feel pressure to claim she was raped. The next question is: who was the rapist? Next, there’s a lineup of men. Which often pits the future of an unwed teenage girl against “some boy out there." Next, the media has convicted him. If the boy tries to defend himself by suing for libel, he only gives the girl an incentive never to confess that her accusation is false. If he doesn’t sue for libel, he’s left defenseless I le loses if he defends himself, and loses if he doesn’t.
Is it possible to allow the woman just to say, "I need an abortion — I was raped,’’ without trying to find the rapist? No. This is the same as abortion on demand with the downside of making the woman a liar and the rape statistics soar.
When abortion is made illegal except in the case of incest, a woman will feel pressure to report a family member — usually her father, stepfather, uncle, or brother — in order to get an abortion This does not encourage family unity
Meanwhile, the falsely accused man loses his job and his reputation — even if the woman later reveals, as did Jane Roe, that she had to claim rape just to get an abortion By accusing a man to free a woman, have we really come any further than when we accused blacks to free whites? What used to make both races paranoid now makes both sexes paranoid. When it happens to blacks, we call it racism, when it happens to men, we call it women’s liberation.
Now here’s the rub: Every false report makes police and judges doubt women who genuinely have been raped
TV
ITEM Florida. A 9-year-okJ girl said her mom’s boyfriend. Ivie Cornell Norris, had raped her. No ms spent 513 days n Prellas County jail m Flonda and could have been there for life. Why was he released? When the girl turned 11. she convinced enough people that she had lied.5′
Why did she lie? Her mom and Mr. Norris often argued, and she wanted to get Norris “out of the way.” How was she so convincing at age 9? She based her testimony on an episode of the television drama "21 Jump Street" that depicted a rape case.
Similarly, at least one of the false accusations among the air force women was an exact replica of the television rape drama she had seen earlier in the evening. S2 It was only when the inconsistencies of her story were uncovered that the woman volunteered she had patterned her story on the TV rape drama. The woman’s motivation? She wanted to get her husband to pay attention to her.