Last week I wrote a scathing satirical column focusing on the collected accusations against Brett Kavanaugh. To say I got emails in response would be a huge understatement. Critics did everything from question my Christian beliefs to express hope our two daughters would be raped so I would feel more sympathy for sexual assault victims.
Here’s the thing: If Kavanaugh’s accusers did suffer sexual assault during their lives, I believe Kavanaugh wasn’t the perpetrator. I believe they’re accusing the wrong man … and they’re doing it on purpose.
I’ve been informed, with the greatest possible profanity, of how horrible it is when women aren’t believed. Critics asked, “As a woman, how would you feel if no one believed you after an assault?” My response is: “As a man, how would you feel if you weren’t believed when you denied it?”
Now we’re finding out all sorts of interesting things about Kavanaugh’s accusers. How Ford lied when she said she never coached anyone on how to take a polygraph test. How her “second front door” was installed for business, not trauma. How Swetnick confessed a predilection for group sex to one of her lovers.
Do these sound like honest and trustworthy women? Or do they sound like vindictive [w]itches out to “get” a decent, conservative man to further the feminist agenda? If this were a trial, the case would be thrown out of court in a heartbeat. But since was merely a hearing with no legal repercussion for the accusers, anything was fair game.
To understand my hostility toward Kavanaugh’s accusers, let me relate some history.
Back in the mid-’80s, my cousin “Bob” lived in a sprawling apartment complex in the Silicon Valley. Bob is a classic engineering nerd; think “Dilbert” and you’ll have an accurate picture. One evening around 6 p.m. (in winter, so it was dark), he left his apartment and walked across the complex to buy a soda from a vending machine. Suddenly he was approached by a woman flanked by two police officers. The woman pointed at Bob and said, “That’s him!” Next thing he knew, Bob was handcuffed, taken to the police station, strip searched (including body cavities) and jailed.
My uncle and aunt were awakened around 2 a.m. by Bob’s phone call, informing them of his situation and asking them to engage a lawyer on his behalf. His accused crime? He allegedly exposed himself and performed an extremely personal act on this woman’s back porch, right at her glass door.
Three months and tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees later, the case went to court. It took three days – three days! – to present all the “evidence” the woman manufactured (she said my cousin had followed her, had harassed her, had stalked her, had exposed himself to her on numerous occasions, etc.). She embroidered her fantasy so much I think she started believing it herself, thus becoming more convincing to the jury. My cousin denied everything.
At last the jury retired to deliberate, and our family was tied in knots for hours until finally they came back as a hung jury. (One jurist was evidently an early proponent of the “Believe Women” campaign and wouldn’t change her mind, no matter how little evidence the accuser presented.) The judge declared a mistrial, the case was dropped, and my cousin went free.
The stress to our family was staggering. After it was over, my uncle, Bob’s father – a strong and noble man – broke down and cried for 20 minutes, right there in the court room.
As it came out later, the woman who accused my cousin of sexual misconduct was having an affair. She was nearly caught when her husband came home early, and just in time managed to shove her lover out the glass door onto the patio, where he fled. Then she raised a ruckus, shrieking her victimhood to her understandably distraught husband. He called the cops, and they searched the apartment complex. She literally fingered a perfect stranger, accusing him of a vile act.
My cousin came within a whisker’s breath of being convicted as a sexual pervert, required by law to register as a sex offender wherever he went. How would it have impacted his career, his relationships, his finances, his entire future for the rest of his life?
He was never convicted – but the allegations and court case impacted him nonetheless. It was costly not just in money, although it wiped out his own savings as well as that of his parents. It also cast aspersions on his good name, it made coworkers sidle away and eye him warily, and later it took a special and wonderful woman to understand his side and share her life with him.
When I look at Kavanaugh, I see my cousin. I see a good man facing down unprovable allegations from decades before. I see berserk frothing-at-the-mouth feminists clawing him into the ground to fulfill their “women first” victimhood agenda, despite the lack of evidence of any wrongdoing. In the insane defense of women’s feelings, they’re spitting on the feelings of unjustly accused men and their families.
They’re also forgetting something else: The presumption of innocence, which is the bedrock of our legal system.
I have a husband. I have a father. I have brothers, uncles, cousins, nephews and friends. Every single one of these fine upstanding men stands a chance of being accused by a random woman of sexual assault in a “He said/she said” situation … and their only recourse is the courts, a judicial system already stacked against them solely on the basis of their Y chromosome, thanks to the feminists.
Don’t tell me women can’t lie. They can, and they do.
I’m not particularly concerned whether or not Kavanaugh gets on the Supreme Court. That’s not my point. My point is the loathsome ammunition used against him, the lowest possible weaponry imaginable. It’s devastatingly effective, and it never goes away. The more honorable a man, the worse the accusations must be to get rid of him.
It’s clear this immoral and destructive tool will be used again and again for political gain. As a result, real assault victims will suffer from the inevitable backlash. Read that again: Real assault victims will suffer from the inevitable backlash.
Critics are wrong when they accuse me of not being sympathetic to women who have been sexually assaulted. On the contrary, I have the deepest sympathy for women who are truly victims.
It’s for this reason I don’t want to see the claims of genuine victims diluted by the actions of contemptible women who accuse without evidence, and who happily ruin the lives of good men because they are bad women.
“Rape is a devastating crime,” wrote columnist Michelle Malkin. “So is lying about it.”
Victims tell how the raw emotions can still come flooding back, even decades later. They’re right. As I wrote this column and remembered what happened to my cousin, the raw choking hatred did indeed come flooding back, a bitter and vile loathing for the woman who accused an innocent man at random.
You can never forget an assault – and that includes a false one.
