Title IX

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3uMgcRUYBs

Some consequences of this well-intentioned U.S. legislation

As the United States Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) launched its investigation into the Title IX complaints against the Michigan State University in 2015, the University empowered a single official not only to investigate but also to prosecute all claims of student-on-student sexual assault.

This single individual, acting alone, was also given the ability to pass judgement on the alleged perpetrators. Under this ‘single investigator-adjudicator' system a single, legally unqualified person effectively serves as not only detective and prosecutor but also as judge and jury.

The all-important question must now be asked:

"If the legal system itself is incapable of due process, (demonstrated by its presumption that an ‘accuser’ is a victim and the ‘accused’ is a perpetrator), as well as the CPS failing in almost half its prosecutions to comply with their disclosure obligations (according to the report from Her Majesty's Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate July 2018), how much less able would an unqualified group of unpaid volunteers 'risk assessors' be in determining innocence and guilt to deliver justice?"

What do risk assessors know?

In the case of one innocent and exonerated man (myself) who had been falsely accused of sexual assault, although a senior social worker would be at his risk assessment meeting, neither the social worker nor any of the other participants had heard the actual spoken evidence as presented in the crown court. Neither had they bothered to be present to hear the personal apology given by the judge at the behest of the Crown in court for a wrongful prosecution. They had not witnessed the formal acknowledgement by the CPS that they had no evidence - not just 'insufficient evidence' to offer at the Crown Court, or actually heard the police apology, or observed the judge determining the level of compensation (full travelling expenses for myself and my supporters) to be granted.

I am the subject of this proposed ‘risk assessment’. I am a proven innocent Anglican clergyman, in possession of a legal testimonial declaring that I had been wrongly hounded and prosecuted and falsely accused, who has emerged from the lengthy police investigation and 15-month trial process with multiple myeloma and medically diagnosed as suffering from PTSD precipitated by that extreme stress.

On discovering that the Church of England and the Methodist Church were determined to put me through this second, ecclesiastical trial - (in effect, two further trials - one for each church), placing unbearable stress on my already weakened immune system and and mental health, I wrote the following:

Guidelines and prejudices

“None of those at the planned risk assessment, meeting(s) to discuss the case and my future, would know anything directly about how the case had proceeded. All they had was their opinion of me based on their confidential ecclesiastical files [unseen by me at the time and encrypted] hidden at Lambeth Palace and in various diocesan personnel files, and whatever files the Methodist Church had on me, plus any personal prejudices these individuals entertained towards me and the safeguarding officer’s professional guidelines (guidelines neither church had followed during the progress of the case through the courts). What guarantee was there that they would start to do so now?”

Why and How

What would have been helpful to them in a genuine attempt to find the truth would have been a letter from the court saying why and how the case had been brought to a close, and a written statement which explained in detail why and how I was found to have been not remotely guilty, and why and how I had been wrongly prosecuted, and why and how the prosecution had been unable to bring any evidence against me, and why and how this deranged and rancorous woman, my false accuser, had been so wrapped in her own pain that it had been stated by my barrister that any deviation into rationality from her display of madness in the court would be hopelessly unavailable to either prosecution or defence counsel.

Innocent and coincidental grooming

Both prosecution and defence barristers had found it impossible to elicit any response from her that deviated from a well-scripted, regularly rehearsed, high-decibel and hysterical, vitriolic vengefulness into which, I cleric firmly believe, she had been painstakingly groomed, like a pet canine, by some of her supporters. These, I suspect had included not only the police counsellors and prosecution representatives but also the worst excesses of some personally involved feminist rape crisis ideologues - appointed as 'victim supporters' by the court. These, I am convinced had colluded with the accuser over many months until with constant repetition and reiteration her script had become shaped into a liturgy that could be recited without any reflection. A religious repetition in which every word and turn of phrase slotted into place like a precision engineered machine. Once launched from the curtained witness box, preventing me, her victim from seeing her face-to-face, there was no stopping her.

Terrifyingly for me, she would allow no pause for a question or clarification. Any interruption from either prosecution or defence barrister would elicit floods of tears and a manic scream of angry protest from what sounded to me the depths of Hell, where her yowl of pain was followed by an immediate return to the safety of the script.

Following my exoneration, no-one requested that I make an 'Impact Statement' . Presumably it was assumed that there had been no impact! Presumably, though entirely innocent, because I had been charged, I remained in the eyes of the CPS 'the perpetrator' and she remained 'the victim'.

Later I was to comment that I had been granted the nightmare of witnessing the opening-up of the mouth of Milton’s Pandaemonium and Dante’s Inferno as I stood being judged and maligned in the dock.The video recording of this woman’s terrifying testimony is now filed, and as far as I know, remains in the court’s record to this day.

Saint Shushanik

My accuser was a very angry, desperately damaged woman, whose struggles with a poor command of the English language could only add to any empathy naturally felt by the jury for someone undergoing her vividly-described agonies. I later learned that even her own testimony had been doctored by the prosecution, to excise some of the more extreme descriptions she had made about the physical damage I had allegedly caused to her body, there being no physical evidence of such damage, and because of the unbelievable nature and extremity of that alleged damage.

It turned out that my accuser’s alleged agonies followed in remarkable detail those of the Armenian martyr Saint Shushanik, a saint with whom my religious accuser shared a regular, obsessive devotional identity. I believe she had become Shushanik! For many years she had closely identified with Shushanik's legendary sufferings. The legendary saint was an early medieval Christian Armenian martyr, murdered by her husband after undergoing various macabre and unimaginably cruel forms of imprisonment, sexual torture, isolation and humiliation by him. The details of her tortures are not described in detail here, so horrific had they been. But they included the sewing-up of her vagina and the multiple piercing of her breasts with needles. But my accuser’s original testimony had been edited and rehearsed to remove the remarkably similar vile details of her own delusional recall.

The great Excision

These gory and bizarre details were not included in the summary evidence or transcript of her testimony. So fantastic had the details of her claim been that the mention of them in court would doubtless have raised questions before the jury, not least for the fact that she would have been unable to produce the physical evidence of that torture having taken place.

Not that it is ever the practice of the court to demand such evidence from a victim – only from a perpetrator. Not that, as a victim, unlike her innocent prey, she would be required to undergo the humiliation of having to bare her naked body to the court as testimony to support her claims. It seemed to me as the defendant in this case that the final draft of her testimony had been the result of a carefully tutored and edited version of an original, much more bizarre testimony. Although in fact, her ‘evidence’ that her attacker had a large red scar across his chest resulting from a knife or scalpel wound I had suffered at some point, there being no such scar, was still taken seriously by the court, even though I was required - an an elderly Anglican clergyman - to strip to the waist in public court to demonstrate the absence of any such scar.

Even after I had stripped to the waist before the jury to show there was no such injury, such was the power of her testimony and the empathy of the court towards her that I commented afterwards in my Journal:

“I looked at the jury as I stripped and displayed my naked torso, and I could see that even then some of them still believed her. It was as though they preferred to believe that I had by some devilish means caused the scar that had been there to suddenly disappear!”

As an innocent person I had realised yet again that justice and truth sometimes bore little relationship to one another except as aliens in the judicial process.

The unbridled mustang

It seems to me as I observe all of this going on that the church is now clinging on to the back of an unruly mustang of a moral campaign to display itself as beyond reproach in the light of past and presently being revealed criminal perversions and omissions by high-and-low-ranking church officials in their desperate struggle to rescue the reputation of the institution. I see their incompetence and occasional unwillingness to address their shame. And so the National Secular Society is having the time of its life with each new revelation of ecclesiastical incompetence and perversion. Current disclosures of sadomasochism against public schoolboys by a leading evangelical Anglican known to have worked with the archbishop himself, and to other archbishops’ cover-ups of colleagues’ perverted sexual proclivities is adding fuel to the secular crusade. The question is truly being put whether the Gospel itself in now in question.

Is there a Safeguarding 'Mafia'?

It seems to me that these localised 'safeguarding mafia,' working on the basis of 'he balance of probability' rather than beyond reasonable doubt are largely a law to themselves, and in their evangelical zeal to ‘root out evil’, have a vested interest in ignoring the suffering of the innocent and falsely accused. Innocent people do not seem to figure in their deliberations unless they can qualify by claiming to have been abused. Or by being prepared to say that they have been abused. For these people, there seems to be no innocent accused. Everyone who comes before them is a risk, even when there is no risk.

Innocent falsely accused people complicate the issue by witnessing against the popular trend. In the thirst for public moral purity the whole system is thus weighted unfavourably against innocent people. I also suspect that the weight given to safeguarding Safety Agreements and Risk Assessments rely in a varying degree on the personal opinion and level of willingness to bear potential risk and preference of the local bishop or Methodist Supervisor, according to the credibility he/she allows in his/her jurisdiction.

National College of teaching & Learning.

A clear example of this trend in another caring profession may be found in the behaviour of the NCTL.

If you are a teacher, the NCTL will hold a hearing to listen to your version of events. It is not worth attending. They will bar you from teaching whatever you say. A similar procedure is followed by the church who may decide to require a Risk Assessment and Safety Agreement based on transcripts of the trial. According to the advice given to me by the church, an appeal against a negative risk assessment decision will cost the appellant upwards of £5,000. It is worth noting that exactly 100% of teachers accused of any kind of sexual misconduct are barred by the NCTL, mostly for life.

In any case, I have a principled moral objection to any innocent person submitting to such a speculative precautionary measure. Thirty years ago, Sir Leon Radzinowicz argued that

“This approach asserts that it is an offence to present oneself as a risk even though it has to be admitted, on the empirical evidence that the risk may not be high, and in more cases than not will fail to materialise.”

The idea in this case appears to me to have fallen prey to the philosophy that it is better to throw a few sheep to the wolves to keep the wolf pack at bay. I was next in line for being one of those sacrifices. No doubt viewing themselves as enlightened progressives, these officials are in danger of operating a kind of makeshift ‘kangaroo court’ that would make Donald Trump read a retraction from an autocue and stick with it for more than a day, or a 1950’s US Southern sheriff intent on a hanging blush.

For evidence of this

My would-be risk assessors had my barrister’s summary of what had transpired in court, but these risk assessors, I was to discover later, would not permit me to have anything from my barristers, nor indeed any legal representation. They were to come to a judgement based on the civil proof of ‘the balance of 51% probability’ concerning a separate allegation about my ‘use of language’ (something they had dug-up from some unremembered comment I may have made to someone way back in the past - I still have not been told what this alleged 'use of language' was - in the presence of an anonymous complainant. Neither the name nor status of this complainant would be disclosed to me. Nor was I to be given the content of the allegation.

This leaves me frankly baffled as to the church’s notion of justice. But there was a precedent. U.S District Judge F. Dennis Saylor, commenting on a similar refusal of the authorities in charge at Brandeis University, in Waltham Massachusetts, to allow one Matt Francis, accused by Joseph Babeu of having ‘numerous inappropriate, non-consensual sexual interactions with me' to continue with his academic course, but placed him on emergency suspension based solely on this non-specific accusation.

The judge's comment,

“I don’t understand how a university could possibly think that was a fair procedure to not allow the accused to see the accusation. Our constitution provides for a right of confrontation, a public proceeding in which you confront your accuser, the right of cross-examination. Part of that is knowing the charge. Knowing precisely what it is you’re responding to…Most of these schools [in my case, ‘dioceses and districts’] have this one-sided procedure. I don’t understand how a college could set this up. I don’t understand it.” He went on to say in a subsequent 89-page ruling that this procedure “appears to have substantially impaired, if not eliminated a student’s right to a fair and impartial process … whether someone is a ‘victim’ is a conclusion to be reached at the end of a fair process, not an assumption to be made at the beginning.”

What was the content of the complaint made against me to the bishop and his safeguarding team? Who was the complainant? Where was my solicitor? All negative. Just like the university student in the U.S., Matt Francis, the trap had been primed. I had become a mouse. All it now needed was for this mouse to skip innocently into it.

After reading about this and many other instances of planned entrapment, and having no idea of what hidden agenda might be behind the church’s choice of this procedure in this case, I have decided not to walk into their mousetrap, even though it means I remain deprived of my professional ministry for the rest of my life as a consequence.

Informal rape lobby groups

The simple fact is, that throughout all of this, I and my wife have been victims of two lobby-groups; this false accuser and her groomers and this wrongly-weighted ecclesiastical process which was dependent upon the allegation of another, this time anonymous, accuser, the content of which allegation could not be disclosed to us. Having just managed to survive the ordeal of one false accusation, I am not ready to face yet another.

There appears to be no instrument for dealing with this unjust procedure. The innocent falsely accused are simply told on the one hand by the court,

‘We have no evidence against you’ ‘You have been wrongly charged’ and ‘You have been wrongly prosecuted. Sorry!’ And that is it. ‘Here’s your travelling expenses. Now go off and deal with the rest of what remains of your devastated lives’, and on the other hand by the Church, ‘We have a complaint against you but we won’t tell you what it is or who is complaining. Just let us put you through a trial without representation and we’ll let you know the result.’ Ironically, a recent re-write of The Lord's Prayer includes the plea to the Heavenly Father 'Do not bring us to the time of trial'

Egyptian slavery

So this small family had become a devastated city, a heap of rubble. We are supposed to go back into this devastated place and rebuild it. But like the Hebrew slaves in Egypt, we have no materials with which to make bricks. And on returning to rebuild this city what do we find? A corps of soldiers from the Safeguarding wing. ‘Stop right there’, they say, ‘While you are rebuilding this devastated city we require you to face another onslaught. One from us. So that whilst you build, we will uproot.’ A daunting prospect indeed.

But at least this time, we had a choice, even though it meant I would have to sacrifice everything in making it.

At the end of a life of dedicated service towards others, from which kindly activity I achieve great joy, none of this was easy. Only those who took the trouble to be present in the court heard the submissions or the apology. My barrister knew, and wrote it in a Legal Note for me. The offer of an apology was published in the local press and then on the internet but only because a very assertive, legally trained friend insisted that it be done, the police being disinterested in confirming it. No doubt they had moved on to other cases. To them this was a failed prosecution, and best treated as yesterday's news.

Levelling the valley

From very early on we had realised that the church would not be discussing how to restore me to office nor to address the false accusation, nor how to alleviate our suffering, nor how to restore my reputation after the deprivation of my status, role, employment - even though voluntary and unpaid - or my dignity or reputation, or how to remove the stigma, compensate me financially, acknowledge our psychological suffering and social alienation, or anything else of this kind. That was, and remains our situation.

But in any case, this was not their agenda, and they held the reins of power. They would not be considering how to rescue us from the devastation of our personal terrain, leaving us alone in an alien landscape. A devastated city. More likely, I think, they would be discussing how to patch-up, or cover over the cracks of a dysfunctional ecclesiastical work environment for an incompetent structure and leadership. It was a case of the self-preservation society having done rather more than ‘blown the bloody doors off!’, or even to have blown the whole vehicle apart! From our perspective they had done even better than Isaiah’s Messiah had yet managed to do, and levelled the whole bloody valley!”

The safe womb of liturgical rote

Safe within the bubble of the building. Eyes fixed firmly on the saints-books and holy incantations, the priests were fulfilling their task. The scribes were at work in the recesses of the hushed building, clothed in their fine golden robes. The votive candles silently burned. Wisps of black smoke rising to the vaulted ceiling. Their task? Offering worship to a modern God whose interest appeared to lie more in getting personal praise from obedient and biddable servants reading from the official texts than in getting justice for the oppressed. Light a candle. Say a prayer. Cross yourself. Let the people stand in honour to the priests and their acolytes as they process down the aisle. Wear the cassock and the stole, and tell that stranger in the back pew to remove his hat in respect for God. Recite the liturgy.

For your prayers and sermons? Go with the latest news of the latest disaster deemed reportable by the television news editors, Fox, and Daily Telegraph. Keep the various and increasing required minute’s silences with the rest of the nation to fulfil your need for recreational grief. The Anglicans know how to do an ‘occasion’! So everyone can see. Stand at the crossroads where two ways part and be seen to be doing the right thing. Ignore the innocent unless they happen to grab a headline for the day.[1] Do not let justice roll down like a flood or an everlasting stream. Leave the poetry to the isolated, broken and insane.

“Thus says the LORD, ‘Do justice and righteousness, and deliver the one who has been robbed from the power of his oppressor. Do not mistreat or do violence to the stranger, the orphan, or the widow; and do not shed innocent blood in this place.’[2] "Take away from Me the noise of your songs; I will not even listen to the sound of your harps. But let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.[3]

Paranoia or insight?

I did wonder if my accuser regarding my alleged use of inappropriate language was an individual who had been my friend and colleague over many years. Also, although i had no evidence, I suspected that my new accuser had been among the most prominent groomers of my false accuser. He was the only individual apart from my counsellor in whom I had confided bluntly my true feelings about the situation as me and my family had suffered through it. My reluctance to submit to a risk assessment by my two institutional churches was heightened by the fact that their safeguarding guidelines banned representation at the procedure by a legal representative. In other words, this process was being done by untrained, anonymous (to me) non-professional amateurs.

Guidance on the Risk Assessment Process

“The assessment is not a legal process, and therefore the respondent’s lawyer does not need to be part of the assessment process. The respondent may choose to seek legal advice before agreeing to the terms of reference for the assessment. Experience shows the respondent is often constrained in their engagement when accompanied by a supporter as it can be more difficult for them to open up and reveal information that they may have previously denied or hidden. This should be explained to the respondent at the beginning of the process. If, however the respondent has specific support needs, for instance related to disability or language, these must be addressed and provided for accordingly. If the respondent chooses to be accompanied by a supporter, then it is good practice to agree and to clarify their role. The role of the supporter is to listen, so they can talk through what was said with the respondent after the interview. The supporter is not an advocate for the respondent, must be independent of the issue causing the assessment to be undertaken, and should not be a legal representative.”

Is this classism?

My wife and I find this hard to accept, although on reflection, in private conversation our colleague had always left much to be desired when gossiping about others who were, or had been, under his management and in his employment. I recently discovered that he had been spreading egregious and damaging lies about my behaviour around the community in which he works as a priest. I reported him to the bishop, but the bishop refuses to discipline him for this. The safe-guarders were failing to see the irony that having been proved innocent of the really serious crime and freed by the crown, I was now to be tried by their local in-house committee or cabal for some inconsequential comment I was alleged to have made to someone in the midst of my grief, with the likely outcome that mine and my family's lives would remain shipwrecked. Innocent, but hated nevertheless. I reflect, how angry these people must have been, and still must be to know of my vindication. Their victim had eluded them. This, and the fact that I had emerged from a dockside slum and prison, and risen to an academic pinnacle in theology despite, unlike most of the privileged clergy never having been admitted into Oxford or Cambridge universities, surely had nothing to do with their chagrin!

Rescue the institution: a matter of public interest?

On reflection, hearing this story it seems to my somewhat now cynical mind that the primary goal of modern ecclesiastical administrators is to purchase peace during their time of tenure. To preserve the appearance of competence on their watch. This is an appearance essential to the development of their careers, and to diverting attention away from external scrutiny of the organisation. It is also in the public interest to preserve this aspect of the status quo. And that’s OK if it brings civilised peacefulness. Some of the work the churches do is incredibly positive and nation-building and precious to the peace and mental and spiritual stability of our society. Since the willingness of secular militants on the cultural left renders them abler to disrupt the organisation than the power of civil libertarians to support due process, it is clear where the organisation will place its money. It is a way of thinking that does have its supporters.

But from a personal perspective, it was up to us as a couple, and us alone to go out and publish the process I was being subjected to so that at least my friends could understand.

My own false accuser, a proven confabulating fantasist, continues to be seen as the victim by the way the organisation is structured and politicised. The ‘CPS Policy for Prosecuting Cases of Rape’ in which the accuser is referred to as ‘the victim’ over 100 times, making me, the accused, even though falsely accused, by the same token ‘the perpetrator’ continues in force today.

An uncertain future.

I had no doubt that my accuser still had a coterie of helpers, sympathisers and supporters ministering to her victim needs, including some local salaried workers. Indeed, I would not have been surprised to learn that to this day – had she not in the intervening time died - she would have continued to peddle and believe in the same fantasies, and to be receiving the same comforts, grooming and consolations from the same people as she had become accustomed to during her time of ranting accusations in the courts. Perhaps she would have alighted on another man on whom to pin her fantasies.

Perhaps I should not, but I have become very suspicious of people who rant and scream in public. At the trial of Harvey Weinstein Jessica Mann, 34, acknowledging a lengthy relationship with Mr. Weinstein nevertheless also identified him as “my rapist.” On one occasion she broke down on the witness stand and was ushered out of the court for a break. Her sobs turned to screams that could be heard in the courtroom.

“Those were screams that wanted to come out while Harvey was raping me,” she told the judge.

Her words made me shudder when I head them. My own false accuser who has caused me so much damage duplicated this possibly genuine behaviour while giving her testimony in person and on video in the court. It was total fantasy. It is an unsettling truth that the rants and screams of someone who is a potential victim cannot be taken as conclusive evidence that the victim’s behaviour is genuine.

People - especially religious folk - can find it hard to change their firmly-held beliefs even in the face of overwhelmingly contradictory facts. Choosing to avoid the uncomfortable psychology of having to hold two opposing beliefs in balance, they withdraw into well-trodden patterns of credal behaviour. They strengthen their brother-and-sisterhood ties within the small group and pretend that the questions have gone away. After all, they have the mortgage to pay. Television programmes such as ‘Broadchurch’ in which the raped woman is continually reassured by the police and others that “You will be believed” briefly highlighted the special plight of the falsely accused, and underlined the weight of prejudice against them implicit within the system.

Partiality and incompetence

And here we were, having to continue suffering the consequences of these salaried workers’ partiality and proven incompetence. We knew it. We had experienced it. It had been clearly demonstrated by our defence. But it was never acknowledged to us directly by the church. Well, no-one from the church had been present at the trials. How could they have a view? How could they offer consolation when they had not become incarnate? This much they must have sensed. Surely in their own theological perspective this was what God had had to do in order to reassure the human race that He cares? This left us to wonder whether the church had the courage, clearsightedness, or even the desire to acknowledge and therefore do something about it. Yet without it, I will remain an outsider and viewed as a pariah within its institution for the rest of my life. The church had revealed itself to me in its nakedness. I was broken by it and ashamed of it.

It felt then and continues to feel as though the church’s agenda, under cover of the safeguarding process, is to expunge me from its system and effect my alienation. They crucified Christ. They persecuted their saints and killed their prophets. They still do. Look at Bishop George Bell's hounding and rejection by the high episcopacy of the C of E. Could I expect any less? As the Lord Jesus Himself had observed,

“A prophet is not without honour except in his own town, amongst his own

relatives and in his own home.”

It is the way religious institutions – or at least in our experience, the Anglican and Methodist hierarchies - seem to be operating in my case. They are not the first and will not be the last to subscribe to the idea that it is better for ten innocent men to be judged guilty and to suffer unjust punishment than for one guilty man to go free.

Post-Title IX

The whole procedure bore a remarkable similarity to the Duke University Lacrosse case, following the Title IX legislation. This was a 2006 criminal process in which three members of the Duke lacrosse team had been falsely accused of rape. Leading to the ultimate disbarment of its leading prosecutor Durham County District Attorney Mike Nifong, who was later demonstrated to have been a liar. The case raised enormous media interest, including public discussion of media bias, racism and due process. Some of the college’s professors held Wendy Murphey, a former Massachusetts prosecutor and adjunct professor at the New England School of Law, in high esteem. It was this woman who made misleading statements regarding the lacrosse team’s players, asserting that they were rapists, asserting for example that exculpatory photographs taken by one player at the party where the offence had allegedly taken place had been doctored

“I bet one or more of those players was, you know, molested or something as a child.”[4]

All men are rapists and the penis is a weapon of abuse.

The perception of men as rapists and women as their victims has led to civil and criminal procedures, including legislation that propounds inaccurate and frightening statistics[5], erring towards presuming all men to be guilty sexual predators and dangerous rapists, using the penis as a weapon, whether they have done the deed or not. This however removes responsibility and choice from women who elect to engage in sexual activity, characterising all women as victims of sex whether they consent or not.

In fact, using Rape Crisis’s own website figures in 2018, in answer to the question, “Are false accusations of rape and sexual assault rare?” Rape Crisis figures for 2018 claim that, “Nearly half a million adults are sexually assaulted in England and Wales each year.” At the same time, the Office for National Statistics figures record that for 2016, “There were 106,098 police recorded sexual offences in the year ending March 2016” That means that even on Rape Crisis’s own figures, there are 499,893 false allegations, 'no crimed' by the police each year.

In other words, either there is insufficient evidence for the CPS to bring a case and/or there are nearly half a million liars, fantasists, compensation or revenge seekers making false allegations of sexual crime every year. And yet, the myth that false allegations are rare is still believed and peddled. Even the otherwise excellent book, ‘The Secret Barrister’ unreflectively buys into this myth.

From the sublime...

On May 1st 2006, ten Duke sociology professors and twenty-seven sociology graduate students released the following open letter to the campus based on the unfounded assertion that, "At Duke and many campuses, sexual assault is endemic." Based on the myth quoted above, that false allegations are rare, it presumes guilt. Presuming guilt and offering no actual evidence of its assertion, they demanded that Duke become…

"A proactively anti-racist, anti-sexist, non-homophobic, non-heteronormative and anti-classist place in order to explode the myth of the meritocratic ideal,,,[that] allows individuals to justify the continuation of racial and gender inequality." [6]

REFERENCES

[1] “Near Golgotha strolls many a priest, And in their faces there is pride That they were flesh-marked by the Beast By whom the gentle Christ's denied. The scribes on all the people shove And bawl allegiance to the state, But they who love the greater love Lay down their life; they do not hate.” Wilfred Owen. [2] Jeremiah 22:3 [3] Amos 5:23 [4] op cit K. C. Johnson & Stuart Taylor. p.75. [5] Sommers, C. H. 1995 ‘Researching the “Rape Culture” of America’. The Real Issue, 14(2): 1-13. Yoffe, E. 2014. ‘The College Rape Overcorrection’, Slate, 7 Dec. Available online. [6] Sociology professors and students, letter to campus Culture Initiative, May 1st 2006. Quoted and commented upon in ‘Campus Rape Frenzy’. K. C. Johnson & Stuart Taylor Jr. p74.