Barbara Kay's great idea....

Make November False Allegation Awareness Month...

Domestic Violence Awareness Month was first observed in October, 1987 and is celebrated on the first Monday in October. That's today, October 6. Fittingly enough, this morning's Globe and Mail carries an editorial on the sometimes tragic effects when innocent men are charged with false allegations of sexual abuse.

The editorial recounts the story of a young father who was savagely beaten to death with a baseball bat by a young man who took the word of two girls, aged 13 and 15, when they claimed the victim had "touched them inappropriately." The girls had lied and clearly incited their male "protector" to violence, but they were not charged with any crime. Nor was an 18-year old woman who accompanied the murderer and presumably, at the very least, approved of his actions. Perhaps she even egged him on. She was only charged with "breaking and entering." The editorial indignantly concludes that "the authorities need to punish" those whose false accusation are at the root of such incidents.

The Globe editorialists' indignation suggests a certain naiveté about the prevalence of this practice. They would profit from spending a few days in family court, where, in the interest of tipping custody battles in their own interest, women's false allegations of domestic violence and sexual abuse of children against their former partners are so rife - and virtually never punished - that it is apparently the best-kept secret crime in the western world. Oh, perhaps these men are not beaten up with baseball bats, but they do lose their homes, their children, often their jobs and friends, spend time in jail, are rarely given the benefit of the doubt - and many of them kill themselves from despair.

In 2000, it was reported that the FBI's DNA testing over a three year period had exonerated more than 30% of their 4,000-plus sexual assault suspects. Going further back, in the FBI's Behavioural Science Unit's 1983 study of False Allegations, a total of 220 out of 556 rape investigations - 40% - turned out to be false. Over a quarter turned out to be actual hoaxes (remember the infamous Tawana Brawley, who at 15 falsely accused a number of white men of a marathon three-day gang rape, some of them police officers? At least she got successfully sued for defamation, but that was small potatoes for the havoc she wreaked in those men's lives). About 4,000 allegations of rape a year are levelled in Manhattan. About half never happened. Police officials in New Zealand state that 64% of rape reports are false.