======== Continued From Previous Message ==========

original divorce litigation.

Even then he may find himself in jail or in court ordered therapy while his
accuser has won de facto custody not only of the children but of the house.
Should he eventually win vindication, a process which can literally take
years, he may enjoy at best a hollow victory which leaves him financially
and emotionally drained, nursing a permanently injured reputation and
functioning as an "absent" father with a sparse schedule of controlled
visits.  It is no wonder, then, that to express the reality commentators
have sometimes used dramatic language, such as "the ultimate weapon" or the
"atom bomb."

The impressive results that are so often easily achieved with false
allegations in custody disputes suggest the kind of temptations women may
feel in other situations.  Among those found to have lied about rape or
sexual harassment, for example, a number of motivations have been
identified.  The McDowell report listed those they uncovered in declining
order of appearance.  "Spite or revenge" and "to compensate
for feelings of
guilt or shame" accounted for 40% of such allegations (Farrell, 1993, p.
325).  A small percentage were attributed to "mental/emotional disorder or
attempted extortion."  In all cases, then, the falsely alleging woman had
any of several strong motives to lie.  But, as with the S.A.I.D. syndrome,
the most common motive was anger, an emotion which prompts more than a few
embattled women to reach for "the ultimate weapon.

Although money gained through extortion ranked low among the motives for
false rape allegations, it appears to rank higher when sexual harassment
claims prove to be unfounded.  A casual survey of some of the suits that
have been filed suggests why.  In the eighties, successful claims often
brought damages in the $50,000 to $100,000 range.  After the explosion
ignited by the Hill/Thomas case, not only the number of claims but damage
awards have skyrocketed.  A clothing store cashier successfully sued her
employer for $500,000.  Employees of Stroh's Brewery claimed that the
company's commercials, which showed the "Swedish Bikini Team," constituted
harassment and sued for damages ranging between $350,000 and $550,000.  In
the famous locker room harassment case, Lisa Olson was reported to have
received a settlement ranging between $250,00 and $700,000.  Damage claims -
and awards - in the millions are becoming more common.

In some cases which were later proved to be false, the financial stakes were
particularly high.  One lawyer was charged with coaching six of his clients
to "embellish or lie" about some of the incidents on which they based a
sexual harassment case.  They had asked for $487,000 (Gonzales, 1993).
Eleven women from the Miss Black America Pageant, after claiming that Mike
Tyson had touched them on their rears, filed a $607 million lawsuit against
him.  Several of the contestants later admitted they had lied in the hope of
getting publicity and cashing in on the award money which would have given
them around $20 million each (Farrell, 1993, p.328).

But where extortion does appear, the motivation may be political as well as
monetary not only in particular cases but in the growth of the entire sexual
misconduct crisis.  Whether it is rape or sexual harassment or
divorce-related child molestation or recovered incest memory, many of the
investigators eventually mention the influence of ideological feminism.
Katie Roiphe, for example, found feminist politics at work in the phony rape
story invented by Mindy, the imaginative Princeton co-ed.  Norman Podhoretz,
who wrote about "Rape in Feminist Eyes," attributes the current
over-publicized obsession with rape to "the influence of man-hating elements
within the (women's) movement (which) has grown so powerful as to have swept
all before it" (1992, p.29).  As far back as 1985 John Sullivan attributed
the overheated denial of false accusation to attempts to defend the
"feminist theory of rape."  And Philip Jenkins (1993), who reported the
trend toward automatically-assumed female credibility, stated that it was
part of a larger campaign to establish "feminist jurisprudence."

Whatever their motivations in particular cases, there is little doubt that
ideological feminists have achieved significant political gains from
publicizing the sexual misconduct crisis.  Lisa Olson's feelings of
harassment may for example have been genuine, but as the focus for a
prolonged media event that established for female reporters an access to
locker rooms it was as unpopular with the general public as it was with male
athletes.  The real Anita Hill may or may not have been lying, but the
Hill/Thomas affair propelled sexual harassment into a hot issue that rapidly
generated a subindustry of scholars, consultants, and bureaucrats, prompted
a "Year of the Woman" campaign that helped several women into congress, and
revived a flagging women's movement.

The same spectacular results may follow from the Tailhook Scandal, which,
like Hill/Thomas, is raising serious questions about motive and credibility.
Whether Paula Coughlin's testimony will become as clouded as Anita Hill's,
her whistle-blowing has already scuttled the careers of a still growing
number of naval officers, not to mention the Secretary of the Navy himself,
intensified in-service anti-sexual harassment campaigns, reinforced an
already strong feminist presence in the armed forces, and helped soften the
military's granitic opposition to women in combat.  These incidents also
helped to power a "Violence Against Women" bill through congress which will
channel still more millions of government money into women's programs, not
to mention winning congressional validation of feminist jurisprudence.
That's a lot of political gain achieved by the words of a few women who
suffered little more than an affront to their sensibilities.


Conclusions

This growing gap - between the anguish suffered by the victims of
traditionally-defined sex crimes and what is suffered by victims of
ideologically-defined crimes - suggests that the crisis we face is not the
result of a sexual misconduct epidemic but of the crisis mentality itself,
an ever more hysterical vision of a "rape culture."  It has a foundation in
reality.  In what has become a ritual disclaimer, those who have exposed the
surprising number of false allegations of sexual misconduct have also
admitted the appalling number of genuine accusations.  And those who have
attacked the incompetence, self-interest, and zealotry that has denied the
extent of false allegation have also recognized the courage and energy that
has exposed the problem of honest allegation begging vainly for belief.
They have therefore applauded the effort to seek for this long ignored
injustice both social and legal remediation.

But that effort, carried too far and exploited too often, has generated
another gap: between our awareness of the now highly visible victims of
sexual misconduct and the almost invisible victims of false allegation.  The
lesser known victims have their own stories to tell, enough to reveal
another long ignored injustice that demands remediation.  False allegations
of sexual misconduct have deprived a rapidly growing number of men and women
of their reputations, their fortunes, their children, their livelihood, and
their freedom; have wasted the time and money of countless tax-supported
agencies; have destroyed not only individuals but entire families and
communities; and have left some so desperate that they have taken their
lives.

For that reason, in the current revision of our sexual misconduct code, we
must retain as a guiding premise the realization that women can lie because
we know that, for several reasons, more than a few women have lied, more
often than researchers into false allegation had expected, far more often
than "rape culture" ideologues have admitted ... too often, in
any event, to
be ignored by our jurisprudence, feminist or otherwise.


Endnote
      1. These assertions are themselves widely disputed.  However, one of
the most extensive studies on the subject, by Strauss and Gelles (1990)
reports that for physical abuse, the rate is higher for mothers than for
fathers: 17.7% for mothers vs. 10.1% for fathers.  They found that preteen
boys are slightly more likely to be abused than their sisters but that the
pattern changes alter puberty.  Strauss and Gelles, however, also refer to
some contravening studies that show higher rates for fathers.

      Susan Steinmetz (1977/78) who has collaborated with Strauss and
Gelles, reported independently that "mothers abused children 62% more often
than fathers, and that male children were more than twice as likely to
suffer physical injury" (p.499).

      David C. Morrow (1993) reports: "Drawing upon reports of the American
Humane Association, the Association of Juvenile Courts, the National Center
for the Prevention of Child Abuse, and the FBI's 1978 crime report, John
Rossler of Equal Rights for Fathers of New York State estimated that mothers
commit over two-thirds of all child abuse, 80% of it in sole custody and
none in joint custody situations, while boyfriends and new husbands
perpetrate most of the rest.  A similar study conducted a few years earlier
in Utah by Ken Pangborn showed abuse 37% higher among single mothers than
the general population and 67% of all abuse in the doing of women of whom
80% are single mothers."

      Diane Russell (1986) reports that of adult women in San Francisco who
reported one or more experiences of incestuous abuse, overall 4.5% were
abused by a father (biological, step, foster or adoptive).  But the abuse
was much more likely to occur with a stepfather.  Russell reports that 17%
of the women who were raised by a stepfather were abused by him compared to
2% of the women who were raised by a biological father.  This indicates the
greater risk to a girl of growing up in a household without her biological
father.

      Thomas Fleming (1986) cites a Canadian study that concluded that
preschoolers were 40 times as likely to be abused in broken and illegitimate
families as compared to those in intact two-parent families.

      The consensus thus appears to support the assertion that child abuse
is much more common in single parent families or families missing the
biological father, that women are more often the abusers, and that male
children are more often the victims.



--
Men are everywhere that matters!





--- UseNet To RIME Gateway {at} 2/16/05 5:24:06 AM ---