Following the unraveling of Rolling Stone’s narrative regarding the reported gang rape of a woman named Jackie by fraternity members at the University of Virginia, radical feminists (who were a little too upset at the prospect that such a horrific rape didn’t occur) rushed to defend the false story as essentially fake but accurate.
Slate’s Amanda Marcotte blamed the fact that people wanted to make sure a brutal gang rape actually occurred before damaging the lives of multiple people on “rape apologists” who believed that if “they can ‘discredit’ one rape story, that means no other rape stories can be true, either.”
And then there was political analyst Zerlina Maxwell, who wrote an article over the weekend originally titled “No matter what Jackie said, we should automatically believe rape claims.” The article has since been softened to read: “No matter what Jackie said, we should generally believe rape claims.”
Maxwell wrote that people will “be tempted to see this as a reminder that officials, reporters and the general public should hear both sides of the story and collect all the evidence before coming to a conclusion in rape cases.” She added that is the tenet of “innocent until proven guilty.”
This, she says, however, “is wrong.”
“We should believe, as a matter of default, what an accuser says,” Maxwell wrote.
But these feminists are essentially arguing for believing rape accusers without verifying their story, because, as Maxwell wrote: “The time we spend picking apart a traumatized survivor’s narration on the hunt for discrepancies is time that should be spent punishing serial rapists.”
Right, forget fact-checking, forget due process, forget any kind of confirmation that a crime actually happened and get to the punishment!
This sentiment was echoed by Julia Horowitz, assistant managing editor of the Cavalier Daily, U.Va.’s student newspaper, who wrote in Politico: “to let fact checking define the narrative would be a huge mistake.” Horowitz was talking about the Rolling Stone’s reporting, but she’s arguing for the same thing as Maxwell: Believe the accuser, no need for verification.
There’s a reason this isn’t how our justice system works — and it’s not unique to rape. If you walk into a police department and report that someone robbed your laptop, or mugged you, or murdered your spouse, the police are going to take your statement, collect evidence and investigate your claim.
If they find that what you said is not entirely accurate, they may have to come back, or they may come to a different conclusion. This is not to say they don’t believe you or are trying to poke holes in your story — they’re trying to verify what you said.
This is why police departments should trust but verify rape accusations. Take the accuser at her word as a jumping off point for an accusation, but don’t substitute her word for that investigation.
