The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 102 - How To Protect Men From False Rape Accusations

00:00:00.000 So I'd like to talk about an issue that isn't discussed enough. There have been recently a

00:00:06.140 number of stories of false rape accusations and the terrible consequences that accompany them.

00:00:14.980 And before we get into the examples, I think the first question, of course, anyone asks is,

00:00:20.260 well, how common is this problem? I mean, how often does it happen

00:00:24.920 that somebody is falsely accused of rape? Feminists and other liberals will, if you've heard them talk 1.00

00:00:32.400 about this, you've probably heard the figure 2%. And here's the thing about feminists. Feminists 1.00

00:00:38.600 love to make up statistics. I think it's their favorite thing to do in the world. They enjoy

00:00:44.940 that even more than yelling and screaming at men. They just love making up statistics. It's really

00:00:51.800 their favorite pastime. So they have this 2% figure that they will often cite. They'll say,

00:00:58.660 well, 2% of all rape accusations are false. Now, I want to give you an example of how that

00:01:06.760 argument is framed. And I was just looking this up online to try to get to the bottom of it. And

00:01:12.800 I found just, for instance, an article on the website quartz.com, which was published in 2017.

00:01:19.980 And it says this, it says, let's start with the idea that false rape accusations ruin lives

00:01:25.160 and are therefore a universal risk to men. Generally, feminists dismiss this idea by arguing 1.00

00:01:32.440 that false accusations are rare. Only between 2% and 10% of all reports are estimated to be false.

00:01:40.100 What's equally important to know, however, is that false rape accusations almost never have serious

00:01:47.040 consequences. Now, we'll get to that almost never have serious consequences thing in a second. But

00:01:54.320 let's look at 2% to 10%. Okay, so that's the range that we've been given here. And so 2% is,

00:02:03.220 you know, like I said, that's, that's what you'll most often hear. Let's look at that. The problem with

00:02:07.340 2% is that, as I said, it's a made up figure. Okay, it's not it's it is not it's just it's not based in

00:02:15.640 reality. A report by a man named Edward Greer, which was published in the Loyola of Los Angeles

00:02:22.840 Law Review, and I think 2000 or 2001, tried to get to the bottom of this figure to find out where it

00:02:29.820 originates. That's why it's a lengthy report where he goes into detail about this idea that only 2% of

00:02:36.460 all of all rape accusations are false. And Greer discovered that it originates from a book written

00:02:44.760 in 1975. And the book gives this figure and cites as its source a speech, which was given by a judge

00:02:53.780 the year before. So Greer contacted the judge's law clerk and found out that nobody really knows

00:03:00.240 or remembers where that figure came from. It's just it's just something that the guy said in the

00:03:05.140 speech. In other words, it's a false statistic from 40 years ago. So when you hear somebody say

00:03:12.940 that, well, only 2% of rape accusations are false. Most likely, here's how it goes. Okay, this is how

00:03:18.700 like to trace the how they came about that figure. What it probably means is that that person saw it on

00:03:27.140 Facebook, from someone who saw it in an article, written by someone who read another article, written

00:03:33.880 by someone who got it from a book, written by someone who got it from a from a from a from a speech

00:03:39.640 given by a judge who doesn't remember where he got it from. Okay, that's, that's how that's how we come up

00:03:45.320 with, with statistics in, in modern America. Now, what about 10%? Because that was the other that was the

00:03:56.020 other figure that we were given 10%. Well, I'm not really sure where 10%. I'm not sure where this 10%

00:04:01.940 figure comes from. But in any case, 10% is pretty high, isn't it? Like 10% of people who are accused

00:04:11.120 of rape are innocent. Isn't that a really high? So if you've got 1000 men in a room, and they've all

00:04:18.540 been accused of rape, 100 of them are innocent. That seems like a high figure to me. And the fact that

00:04:24.960 the author of this article apparently thinks it's a negligible figure is pretty frightening. But here's

00:04:30.400 the other problem. We have no idea how many innocent men are, are really accused of rape, because

00:04:38.900 the only way that we can begin to quantify that number is by looking at the men who have been

00:04:45.600 completely vindicated of the charges. And so they're the only ones that we can even start to quantify. And

00:04:50.940 it's impossible to even quantify them. But that's to assume that every man falsely accused of rape

00:04:57.580 has been vindicated, which of course is not the case. It stands to reason that there's a certain

00:05:02.900 number of men who are in prison right now for rape and who didn't do it, and who are on sex offender

00:05:07.380 registries, yet did not commit the crime. How many of them are? We have no idea. We have no clue.

00:05:13.300 But we do know that false accusations happen. How often do they happen? We don't know exactly. We

00:05:20.880 know that they happen. And we do know also that it's very easy to ruin a man's life and get him put

00:05:30.440 in prison based on a false accusation. So that's really what makes the false accusation thing so scary

00:05:37.320 is that it's really easy to do. All it takes is someone who's willing to tell a lie and tell it

00:05:44.780 halfway convincingly and stick to the lie. And if they're willing to do that, they can probably get

00:05:49.540 you put in prison even without any other evidence. That's what's terrifying about it. Now, so let's give

00:05:58.800 some examples. Exhibit A. A man was, this is a story in the Daily Wire yesterday, about a man who was

00:06:05.900 released from prison, from a 50-year prison sentence, because it turned out that the person

00:06:12.140 who accused him of sexual abuse lied under oath. Now, the accuser is a minor. We don't know her

00:06:18.620 exact age. At least I looked it up. Apparently, we don't know what her age is exactly, so not sure

00:06:24.700 about that. But the accuser said that the guy's name is Joshua Horner. He said Joshua Horner molested her

00:06:31.820 and then shot her dog in order to intimidate her in the silence. That's the story. The story she told

00:06:38.360 is that he molested her and then said, and then I believe it was something like he said, 1.00

00:06:45.580 you know, if you tell anyone, I'm going to kill you. And then in order to demonstrate his seriousness, 0.99

00:06:52.440 he shot and killed the dog. He was then convicted by a non-unanimous jury, not really sure how that

00:06:59.500 happens, and sentenced to 50 years in prison. Now, several months, actually about a year and a half

00:07:06.120 into his sentence, it was discovered that the dog he supposedly killed was still alive and well.

00:07:13.440 never been killed, never been shot. Now, how is it that the police and the prosecutor

00:07:22.220 never thought to check on this key piece of evidence? I don't know. I'm not sure how that

00:07:28.260 happens. The girl said that the man raped her and shot her dog. Well, it seems like if you could find 0.93

00:07:34.160 a dead dog with a bullet hole in its head, then that's a pretty good indication that the accusation

00:07:40.740 is true, right? But if you can't find the dog, then that's a pretty good, that's a pretty relevant

00:07:49.080 evidence on the other side of the equation. But yet nobody checked at all? How is that possible?

00:07:57.140 So this guy, this is what makes it scary. This guy was sent to prison for 50 years based only on the

00:08:08.520 word of this girl. No other evidence, and even the other evidence that could have been used to either

00:08:15.940 vindicate him or indicate his guilt, was never even, nobody ever even thought to check on it

00:08:21.280 until he'd already been in prison for a year and a half. So it turns out that the accuser had lied

00:08:28.520 about that detail at least. And when the investigators came to ask her about all of this, she fled,

00:08:36.640 and she ran away. So Horner was eventually released from prison. Though the DA has said that he doesn't

00:08:43.540 know, he can't say for sure that Horner is actually innocent of molestation, but there isn't any evidence

00:08:49.300 to maintain a conviction. And there is now very good evidence that the accuser is a liar. So he's out.

00:08:55.580 Now, let's just imagine, so we really don't know if the whole story is false or not. But let's just

00:09:04.160 imagine for a minute that Horner is actually entirely innocent of the whole thing. And it

00:09:10.420 seems very possible that he is. It seems even likely that he is completely innocent, because

00:09:17.340 there would be no reason, there'd be simply no reason for a legitimate rape victim to concoct some 0.97

00:09:25.500 bizarre story about her dog getting shot. Like, there's no reason to embellish to that extent

00:09:30.960 if you actually were a victim of this horrible crime. But here's the problem. Horner's life and

00:09:38.720 his reputation are now going to be forever stained, forever ruined because of this accusation, even if

00:09:45.440 it is untrue. So not only does he have to deal with the trauma of spending a year and a half in

00:09:50.660 prison as a supposed rapist, and I remind you that spending time in prison as a rapist is not a fun

00:09:57.680 experience. And it seems also there's a pretty high likelihood that he was a victim of sexual

00:10:04.400 abuse in prison, because that's what they do to rapists in prison. Not only does he have to deal

00:10:08.640 with that, but now he also has a lifetime of suspicion that will never go away. There are other examples,

00:10:17.220 recent examples. There were, and these are just from the last few months, two men were falsely accused

00:10:24.700 of rape by a Sacred Heart University college student. Both men had to leave school and one lost his

00:10:32.900 football scholarship over it. And then it turned out that the girl made up the story because I think

00:10:38.180 she felt guilty after having consensual sex with them. She was worried that her boyfriend would find

00:10:43.640 out or something. And so she ruined their lives, you know, because that's what you do. In another case,

00:10:50.500 there was a man expelled from school and subjected to public humiliation by a woman who accused him of

00:10:57.240 raping her at a frat party. The accuser says that she was drugged and assaulted, but an investigation,

00:11:10.440 including a medical exam and rape kit, found absolutely no evidence that any form of sexual

00:11:15.700 contact took place, consensual or otherwise. So the DA, you know, came out and he said very plainly,

00:11:22.440 he said, her allegations are, quote, simply not accurate. Then there were men, two men who were

00:11:30.740 released from prison a few months ago after serving 26 years for a supposed gang rape that never occurred.

00:11:37.760 The accuser now admits that she invented the story. In another recent case, again, these are all just

00:11:42.780 for the last few months. A woman claimed that two men had kidnapped and raped her at gunpoint.

00:11:48.340 And then she later admitted that the claims were a lie when police found video evidence that

00:11:52.740 contradicted her tail. And again, these are just for the last few months.

00:11:59.400 Notice a couple of things about these cases. Notice how in every case, it was just one small thing

00:12:08.280 that rescued these guys. And in some cases rescued them after they'd already been in prison for a

00:12:13.460 while. But without that thing, they'd all still be in prison. So in one case, the accuser had sent

00:12:20.440 sexually explicit text messages to her alleged rapist, clearly indicating that she didn't think

00:12:25.160 she had been raped after it actually happened. In another, you have video surveillance. In another,

00:12:30.220 there's a dog that they happened to find. In another, there's the small detail of the fact that the

00:12:36.980 guy didn't actually have sex with the woman. If he had had sex with her, even consensually,

00:12:41.240 then he'd be doomed. Notice something else. In every case, the penalties for the false accusers 0.98

00:12:50.180 or potential false accusers range from mild to non-existent. So the woman who made up the gunpoint 0.77

00:12:57.720 rape was charged with a misdemeanor. The woman who invented the frat party rape will face a lawsuit,

00:13:03.740 but as far as I know, no legal penalties. The woman who put two men in prison for 26 years 0.99

00:13:08.440 will not be prosecuted at all because of statute of limitations. The Sacred Heart University students

00:13:14.100 who ruined the lives of two men make him the story. She's going to go to jail for 12 months. 1.00

00:13:20.580 She got the harshest penalty. And as for Joshua Horner's accuser, if she did indeed make up the

00:13:26.620 abuse like she made up the dead dog, there's no indication that she'll be charged with any crime at

00:13:31.480 all. We also don't know her age. So she could be very young. I mean, we don't know. And we also

00:13:37.280 don't know what role the adults in her life may or may not have played in helping her to cover up the

00:13:43.520 lie about the dog. So the thing though, that ties all these cases together

00:13:51.140 is that while the accusers, who all happen to be women in these cases, while the women received 0.97

00:14:00.860 either no penalty or a very light penalty, all of the men, the accused did receive or would have

00:14:07.740 received penalties that far exceeded the punishments that the false accusers face. And this to me just

00:14:15.760 seems like a gross injustice. You know, rape is a monstrous crime because of how it violates and

00:14:23.580 dehumanizes the victim and because of the lifelong devastation that it causes. But falsely accusing

00:14:30.740 somebody of rape is a monstrous crime for the same reason. Let's think about the ways that a false

00:14:42.260 accuser harms her victim. Okay. Um, number one, that years of false imprisonment. So that's pretty,

00:14:49.940 that's pretty big deal. Number two, he faces serial sex abuse while he's in prison because that's how

00:14:57.060 rapists are treated in prison. Number three, his, his reputation is permanently ruined. Number four,

00:15:02.780 his personal relationships, probably his marriage, if he's married will likely be destroyed. Um, number

00:15:08.640 five, he's got loss of employment. Okay. He's never, he's going to, he's going to lose whatever job he

00:15:13.420 had. He's never going to be able to find a good job again, most likely. Um, number six, there's the

00:15:19.480 severe emotional and psychological trauma and then on and on, right? The dozens of other consequences,

00:15:25.840 too numerous to list. Even though that article I read at the top said that, um, rarely are there

00:15:30.240 serious consequences for false rape accusations. I would say that there are always serious consequences.

00:15:36.520 It's just a matter of how serious and how far does it go. And that really depends on how quickly,

00:15:43.700 um, the man can demonstrate his own innocence or if he can ever demonstrate it at all.

00:15:52.660 And if it takes him 26 years, then he's going to be in prison for those 26 years, right? Um,

00:15:58.260 a woman or a man who would subject another human being to all of that. Because again, think about

00:16:09.960 with a false rape accusation, it's not just like, it's, it's, it's, it's not a momentary thing. You

00:16:16.560 are, you are ruining their life. You are taking another human being and obliterating everything 0.75

00:16:24.220 about their life. You're blowing it to pieces. And someone who would do that is no better than a

00:16:32.380 rapist or murderer. I really make no distinction. I make no distinction between a woman who would send 1.00

00:16:40.120 a man to jail, to prison for a rape he didn't commit. I make no moral distinction between her

00:16:46.700 and a man who actually did commit a rape. I think morally they are the same.

00:16:53.440 And not only is that, that false accuser, not only is she morally deranged, but she is a threat 1.00

00:16:59.600 to society. Just as the rapist is a threat to society. So is she because she possesses the, the, 0.98

00:17:07.900 not only the willingness to tell the most damaging kinds of lies, but she possesses the ability to do so

00:17:15.060 convincingly. And so she's a danger. She's a danger to any man who happens to end up in a room alone

00:17:22.880 with her. She's a danger to any man who she, she, she develops a grudge against. Um, she can destroy

00:17:31.460 a man's life with one lie. That's the way it works. She doesn't need any evidence. She needs nothing but 0.98

00:17:39.100 the lie. And that will be enough at the very least. It may be enough to put him in prison at the very

00:17:46.560 least. It'll be enough to destroy his reputation, destroy his life, destroy his relationships and get

00:17:50.640 him fired from his job, get his scholarships taken away, get him kicked out of school. At the very

00:17:55.000 least, just the, just the story, that's it will be enough to do that. Um, and so she's a danger to

00:18:03.720 society. And the only way to protect her next potential victim is to lock her in a jail cell 1.00

00:18:10.100 for a very long time. So it seems obvious to me that false rape accusers, um, at least those who

00:18:20.040 are adults, you know, children who make up stories, even though they also, even though that does happen,

00:18:25.380 like it, maybe it happened with Joshua Horner, it does happen. And it, I mean, um, it, it is

00:18:33.920 devastating for the person who falls victim to that sort of thing. You know, what kind of punishments

00:18:38.060 should, should, should those kids face? And that's sort of a different subject, but for the adults,

00:18:42.660 uh, it seems clear to me that they ought to be given the same sentence that would have gone to their

00:18:48.180 victim. That's, that seems clear. So we have, you know, statute of limitations and all that,

00:18:56.740 but if not for that, then, uh, the woman who put the, those men in jail for 26 years, 0.99

00:19:00.500 she should at a minimum be in jail for 26 years. And then she should have to, from there, 0.81

00:19:07.380 serve out whatever the rest of their sentence would have been. Um, now, of course, look,

00:19:13.380 I'm not suggesting that any, any woman who accuses a man of rape should automatically go to jail if the

00:19:20.340 man is found not guilty. Like, I'm not saying that because obviously just because a rape isn't proved

00:19:26.320 doesn't mean that it was invented. Just as there are men who are falsely accused who are in prison

00:19:33.120 right now for rape, there are plenty of men who have committed rapes and are not in prison because

00:19:36.880 they were never caught or it couldn't be proved in court or whatever. But if evidence is uncovered,

00:19:44.320 which positively indicates a false accusation, then there should be an investigation and a trial.

00:19:50.440 I mean, in all these cases, there was evidence, right? There's the dog, there's the video evidence,

00:19:56.260 text messages, you know, whatever, um, DNA, like all of these things can be positive evidence to

00:20:03.440 positively indicate that a, a, a false accusation has occurred. And if you have that, then there

00:20:08.700 should be an investigation. There should be a trial. Um, and if the woman is found guilty, 0.97

00:20:14.700 she should go to jail for a very long time. Now, you know, rape can be very hard to prove in a court 0.68

00:20:25.260 of law. False accusations can be hard to prove as well, but both of them can be proven. And when they are,

00:20:32.060 it seems obvious to me that they should be treated exactly the same. I mean, that's the only way that

00:20:39.900 you're going to be able to protect men and women too. Although I, you know, I think probably women

00:20:45.380 are falsely accused of rape a lot, a lot less frequently, but, uh, that's the only way to protect

00:20:50.760 people from, from, from these kinds of things. And it's very easy. You know, it's, it's feminists 1.00

00:20:59.020 like to talk all the time about how, you know, men or the, how women live in fear because of, uh,

00:21:05.600 you know, they, they have to worry about walking, you know, in a parking lot by themselves or walking

00:21:10.080 down the street because they have to worry about men, men are monstrous and all this kind of stuff.

00:21:15.120 And I don't doubt that, um, those are concerns that women have to have. And that's a terrible thing

00:21:19.840 because there are some, there are really bad men out there who have the physical ability to

00:21:25.540 dominate women and are willing to use that ability to very evil ends. But on the other end of the 0.93

00:21:32.680 spectrum, you know, you can't completely dismiss this very real fear that men have that some evil

00:21:42.020 woman could come along and just ruin their life with a story because that does happen and it can 1.00

00:21:49.420 happen. It's a very real concern. Feminists just dismiss, they just laugh that off. Like it doesn't 1.00

00:21:53.780 happen, it doesn't matter, but it does happen and it does matter. And I think we have to treat it

00:22:03.060 very seriously when it does happen. I know there's always going to be the concern that, well, you know,

00:22:10.160 if you start penalizing false accusers in this way, then aren't you, um, making women, uh, who are, 0.99

00:22:17.600 who are victims of rape, aren't you making them hesitant to come forward? Well, you know,

00:22:23.480 I kind of think that maybe the opposite is true. That in this environment now where, you know,

00:22:31.540 any story is immediately, is, is immediately believed and, uh, and, you know, any woman could 0.99

00:22:37.480 ruin any man's life just with a story, you know, in this kind of environment where there are false

00:22:41.420 accusations and then you have all these stories that come out of men who, who are released after

00:22:46.160 being falsely imprisoned and all this stuff. I think, I think this environment serves to unfairly

00:22:51.560 discredit, um, women who are actually victims of rape. So if you can weed a lot of that stuff out

00:22:59.940 and start penalizing the real false accusers, then I think ultimately it'll, it'll do the opposite

00:23:06.820 and it'll lend more credibility to the, to the, um, you know, actually true accusations.

00:23:16.160 So just some things to think about. Thanks for watching everybody. Thanks for listening. Godspeed.

The Matt Walsh Show - September 12, 2018

Ep. 102 - How To Protect Men From False Rape Accusations

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