Nowadays, you can’t suggest that a woman watch her drink, avoid getting blackout drunk or to walk in well-lit areas without being accused of victim-blaming. But why is it okay to claim that students falsely accused of sex crimes somehow deserved to be falsely accused?
The most recent example of this form of victim-blaming, where the men who were falsely accused are the real victims, can be seen in the University of Virginia’s ham-handed response to an uncorroborated but explosive allegation of a brutal gang rape at one of its fraternities. U.Va. responded to the allegation by banning Greek social activities until Jan. 9, and only allowing fraternities and sororities to resume such activities if they sign new contracts. Those contracts are of course much more stringent for fraternities and have led to two campus organizations refusing to sign.
And remember, those new contracts were announced after the Washington Post discovered significant faults in the original rape allegation. The fact that the accuser made up a story about having a date or even being invited to a fraternity party by that fantasy date should have made U.Va. officials think twice about rushing to judgment and condemning Greek life on campus.
The university still wants fraternities to sign the agreements and accept punishment, even though local police found “no substantive basis” for the allegation that the rape in question occurred at Phi Kappa Psi. Instead of punishing just Phi Psi without evidence, U.Va. decided to punish all fraternities without evidence — the stated reason being that past behavior at fraternity parties warrants such restrictive punishment.
The implication is that even if no one at the fraternity actually raped a woman, they still deserve to be punished because the university doesn’t like fraternity parties. Imagine the outcry if women who had been sexually assaulted were punished en masse for underage drinking. Or consider the reaction when women are asked about their past sexual histories when testifying about their sexual assault.
The same thing happened in 2006 at Duke University. Despite not having all the facts, Duke President Richard Brodhead sent out a campus-wide email condemning the lacrosse players for throwing a party with a stripper (which was not against Duke rules), even if no rape had occurred.
“Just days after the scandal broke, Brodhead sent all Duke.edu e-mail accounts a message insisting that whether or not sexual violence had occurred at the party, the decision to hire strippers was ‘irresponsible,’ ‘dishonorable’ and indicative of ‘persistent problems involving the lacrosse team’ requiring ‘substantial corrective action,’” former Duke student Kristin Butler wrote in the campus newspaper two years after the accusation.
Brodhead also said in his first public statement following the accusation that the party was “inappropriate to a Duke team member” and approved of the school’s decision to forfeit two lacrosse games before canceling the season.
Duke’s senior vice president for public affairs, John Burness, would later tell the parent of a lacrosse member that the students never would have been accused if they hadn’t thrown that party. As Burness recounted the conversation to authors Stuart Taylor and K.C. Johnson for their book about the Duke lacrosse case:
“I do recall telling him at the end of the conversation words to the effect that it was worth remembering that the players and the university would not be in this mess had the party not been held and that part of the difficulty was that the team’s behavior over the years around alcohol had contributed to the storm we were in and also to people’s willingness to believe the events of 14 March could have occurred,” Burness said.
Get that? The players’ own behavior led to the false accusation. Perhaps there’s something to that — but imagine the outcry if Burness had been talking about a young woman accusing someone of sexual assault. Imagine if a university president had told her she never would have been assaulted if she had not gone to that drinking party.
Somewhere along the line, hysteria trumped logic and decided that some people have to be protected from common sense and others do not. But we have to remember that students falsely accused of sexual assault are also victims. If blaming a woman for her sexual assault is wrong, blaming a man for being falsely accused should also be wrong.
