Being Falsely Accused Quotes

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Like every false rumor, it gained credibility while being repeated, and before long it was practically a fact.
John Grisham (The Accused (Theodore Boone, #3))
People are often unreasonable, illogical and self-centered. Forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Be kind anyway. If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies. Succeed anyway. If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you. Be honest and frank anyway. What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight. Build anyway. If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous. Be happy anyway. The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow. Do good anyway. Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough. Give your best anyway. You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and your God. It was never between you and them anyway.
Mother Teresa
Feminists don’t single out rape jokes because rape is “worse” than other crimes—we single them out because we live in a culture that actively strives to shrink the definition of sexual assault; that casts stalking behaviors as romance; blames victims for wearing the wrong clothes, walking through the wrong neighborhood, or flirting with the wrong person; bends over backwards to excuse boys-will-be-boys misogyny; makes the emotional and social costs of reporting a rape prohibitively high; pretends that false accusations are a more dire problem than actual assaults; elects officials who tell rape victims that their sexual violation was “god’s plan”; and convicts in less than 5 percent of rape cases that go to trial.
Lindy West (Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman)
After the fog lifts and you awaken to the truth about abuse, the narcissist and flying monkeys will minimize the facts about what took place. They will discredit you. They will undermine your own perception. They will accuse you of being insane. Even if you took the time to explain yourself, they will cast all blame onto you.
Dana Arcuri (Soul Rescue: How to Break Free From Narcissistic Abuse & Heal Trauma)
It takes real feelings to create the illusion that others have power to offend and anger us. Projecting such interpretations upon everything around us is in many ways like living in a box of our own making... you might think of these walls as a falsification of reality-- a distorted way of seeing, feeling, and thinking about other people that makes them seem offensive or malicious or otherwise untrustworthy. Remember, the people are really there, but we all ourselves off from the truth about them by the false way we picture them... Living in a box means being convinced that other people and our circumstances are responsible for our feelings and our helplessness to overcome them. What we can't see when we're in the box is that the way the world appears to us is a projection, and that we are making this projection to justify ourselves in self-betrayal. We cannot see that it's not others' actions but our accusations that result in our feeling offended.
C. Terry Warner (Bonds That Make Us Free: Healing Our Relationship, Coming to Ourselves)
1. That reason is a gift of God and that we should believe in its ability to comprehend the world. 2. That they have been wrong who undermined confidence in reason by enumerating the forces that want to usurp it: class struggle, libido, will to power. 3. That we should be aware that our being is enclosed within the circle of its perceptions, but not reduce reality to dreams and the phantoms of the mind. 4. That truth is a proof of freedom and that the sign of slavery is the lie. 5. That the proper attitude toward being is respect and that we must, therefore, avoid the company of people who debase being with their sarcasm, and praise nothingness. 6. That, even if we are accused of arrogance, it is the case that in the life of the mind a strict hierarchy is necessary. 7. That intellectuals in the twentieth century were afflicted with the habit of baratin, i.e., irresponsible jabber. 8. That in the hierarchy of human activities the arts stand higher than philosophy, and yet bad philosophy can spoil art. 9. That the objective truth exists; namely, out of two contrary assertions, one is true, one false, except in strictly defined cases when maintaining contradiction is legitimate. 10. That quite independently of the fate of religious denominations we should preserve a "philosophical faith," i.e., a belief in transcendence as a measure of humanity. 11. That time excludes and sentences to oblivion only those works of our hands and minds which prove worthless in raising up, century after century, the huge edifice of civilization. 12. That in our lives we should not succumb to despair because of our errors and our sins, for the past is never closed down and receives the meaning we give it by our subsequent acts.
Czesław Miłosz (New and Collected Poems: 1931-2001)
This distinction between believing-a-lie and disbelieving-the-truth is important because it forces attention to the twin dangers for the lie catcher. There is no way to avoid completely both mistakes; the choice only is between which one to risk more. The lie catcher must evaluate when it is preferable to risk being misled, and when it would be better to risk making a false accusation.
Paul Ekman (Telling Lies: Clues to Deceit in the Marketplace, Politics, and Marriage)
We are accused of being obsessed by property. The truth is the other way round. It is the society and culture in question which is so obsessed. Yet to an obsessive his obsession always seems to be of the nature of things and so is not recognized for what it is. The relation between property and art in European culture appears natural to that culture, and consequently if somebody demonstrates the extent of the property interest in a given cultural field, it is said to be a demonstration of his obsession. And this allows the Cultural Establishment to project for a little longer its false rationalized image of itself.
John Berger
A social environment that is conducive to false accusations could lead us to people being falsely accused of falsely accusing others.
Bradley Campbell (The Rise of Victimhood Culture: Microaggressions, Safe Spaces, and the New Culture Wars)
he is afraid of being falsely accused. Worried that if he looks afraid people will think he is a liar, he may try to conceal his fear so that
Paul Ekman (Telling Lies: Clues to Deceit in the Marketplace, Politics, and Marriage)
Police and prosecutors are morally and professionally obligated to make every effort to identify specious rape reports, safeguard the civil rights of rape suspects, and prevent the falsely accused from being convicted. At the same time, however, police and prosecutors are obligated to do everything in their power to identify individuals who have committed rape and ensure that the guilty are brought to justice. These two objectives are not mutually exclusive. A meticulous, expertly conducted investigation that begins by believing the victim is an essential part of prosecuting and, ultimately, convicting those who are guilty of rape. It also happens to be the best way to exonerate those who have been falsely accused. Rape victims provide police with more information--and better information--when detectives interview them from a position of trust rather than one of suspicion.
Jon Krakauer (Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town)
Niccolò, for God’s sake, they accused me of being an accessory to murder, they said I planted a gun at that villa, they’ve indicted me for making false statements and obstruction of justice! They threatened me if I ever return to Italy. And you tell me I shouldn’t be concerned?” “My dear Douglas, anyone who is anybody in Italy is indagato. I offer you my congratulations on becoming a genuine Italian.
Douglas Preston (The Monster of Florence)
Scholars call this false equivalency. It means that when you find a mountain to expose in one person or party, you have to pick a molehill on the other side and make it into a mountain to avoid being accused of bias. The built-up molehills also have large benefits: increased coverage on the evening news, millions of retweets, and more talk-show fodder. When the mountains and molehills all look the same, campaigns and governments devote too little time and energy debating the issues that matter most to our people. Even when we try to do that, we’re often drowned out by the passion of the day.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
Resolution doesn’t mean that everyone is happy, but it does mean that perhaps fewer people are being blamed for pain they have not caused, or being cast as the receptacle of other people’s anxieties, so that fewer people are dehumanized by false accusation.
Sarah Schulman (Conflict Is Not Abuse: Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility, and the Duty of Repair)
What I have most wanted to do throughout the past ten years is to make political writing into an art. My starting point is always a feeling of partisanship, a sense of injustice. When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, ‘I am going to produce a work of art’. I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing. [...] My book about the Spanish civil war, Homage to Catalonia, is of course a frankly political book, but in the main it is written with a certain detachment and regard for form. I did try very hard in it to tell the whole truth without violating my literary instincts. But among other things it contains a long chapter, full of newspaper quotations and the like, defending the Trotskyists who were accused of plotting with Franco. Clearly such a chapter, which after a year or two would lose its interest for any ordinary reader, must ruin the book. A critic whom I respect read me a lecture about it. ‘Why did you put in all that stuff?’ he said. ‘You've turned what might have been a good book into journalism.’ What he said was true, but I could not have done otherwise. I happened to know, what very few people in England had been allowed to know, that innocent men were being falsely accused. If I had not been angry about that I should never have written the book.
George Orwell (Essays)
What do you think you’re doing?” she asks, hands on her hips. Her lips quiver a bit as she speaks, though, and I get the distinct impression she’s trying not to laugh. I sigh, used to being falsely accused of wrongdoing by my naturally suspicious parents. “I fell.” I attempt to shrug my shoulders, but they don’t move. “And now I’m stuck,” I add.
Wendy Mass (Finally (11 Birthdays, #2))
There was never any evidence that candidate Trump had personal conversations or contacts with Russian government officials or anyone connected with the Kremlin. Indeed, he consistently denied it and no one has come forth to assert that he did. His frustration over being falsely accused of “colluding” with a foreign power during his campaign was understandable. It is why he asked Comey and others to reveal the truth that no evidence existed that would prove otherwise. People who are wrongfully persecuted feel compelled to try to clear themselves of the taint of impropriety. It is the natural instinct in us all. Trump had the same right as a private citizen or public figure or presidential candidate.
Gregg Jarrett (The Russia Hoax: The Illicit Scheme to Clear Hillary Clinton and Frame Donald Trump)
Know what else is tough?” I asked. “Getting falsely accused of being a pervert in front of the Secret Service.
Stuart Gibbs (Spy School Secret Service)
Thomas Jefferson would be the first in the history of American politics to suffer the false charge of being a Muslim, an accusation considered the ultimate Protestant slur in the eighteenth century.
Denise A. Spellberg (Thomas Jefferson's Qur'an: Islam and the Founders)
Scholars call this false equivalency. It means that when you find a mountain to expose in one person or party, you have to pick a molehill on the other side and make it into a mountain to avoid being accused of bias.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
To The Reader Who Employs His Leisure Ill Whoever you may be, I caution you against rashly defaming the author of this work, or cavilling in jest against him. Nay, do not silently reproach him in consequence of others' censure, nor employ your wit in foolish disapproval or false accusation. For, should Democritus Junior prove to be what he professes, even a kinsman of his elder namesake, or be ever so little of the same kidney, it is all up with you: he will become both accuser and judge of you in his petulant spleen, will dissipate you in jest, pulverize you with witticisms, and sacrifice you, I can promise you, to the God of Mirth. Again I warn you against cavilling, lest, while you culumniate or disgracefully disparage Decmocritus Junior, who has no animosity against you, you should hear from some judicious friend the very words the people of Abdera heard of old from Hippocrates, when they held their well-deserving and popular fellow-citizen to be a madman: "Truly, it is you, Democritus, that are wise, while the people of Abdera are fools and madmen." You have no more sense than the people of Abdera. Having given you this warning in a few words, O reader who employ your liesure ill, farewell.
Robert Burton
You’ve been barely eating lately.” Mom said, trying to sound ‘motherly’. “And we’re becoming increasingly concerned.” “She’s right,” Dad added. “You barely eat anything, well except for salad and water and maybe a piece of actual food here and there.” It was bullshit! Complete and utter bullshit. If I had a problem, which I don’t, it was because of her! I inhaled a deep breath, feeling angry. “And whose fault is that. You’ve been drilling my head for the last few months” I snipped. “This is what you wanted.” I eyed Mom, feeling my eyes water. “All Summer, you harassed me, pried into my personal space, made me keep a food diary. I’m doing what you want.” Her jaw dropped. “This wasn’t what I wanted.” Mom shook her head. “I didn’t want you to starve yourself and just eat salad.” “You didn’t?” I practically yelled. I took a breath and let it out. “Last Summer…...EVERY SINGLE TIME YOU found out that I didn’t eat anything from your precious food manual you practically threw a fit.” Mom shook her head, eyeing Dad like she was being falsely accused. “It wasn’t like that.” She stammered. “It was.” I snapped. “It was like that every day.
Sarah Tork (What My Heart Wants (Y.A #3))
Those who support such survivors of abuse often find it difficult to hear the reality of those survivors' lives and experience and are often unsupported themselves. Rather than being supported, workers are often ridiculed, castigated or accused of being gullible or of giving the survivor false memories. Many workers work in isolation and a climate of hostility and are unable to talk about the work they do. Yes, despite all the odds, survivors of ritual abuse are beginning to speak out about their experiences, and some people, mainly in voluntary organisations, are beginning to listen to them and support them. [Published 2001]
Laurie Matthew (Who Dares Wins)
We rarely get the chance to see things anew. I remember a Latin translation that caused me to fail an exam at school because one of the words, translated for us at the bottom of the page and intended to help, was invalid. I read this to mean false, null, illegal. The opposite of valid. But it was meant to be understood as invalid as in a sick person. It torpedoed my entire translation. Instead of tending to the sick, priests were being accused of fraudulence and neglecting their duties. Even though it didn't match up with the grammar, or the story, I kept on returning to that word to check, and every time I saw it only as I had done already—invalid, null, void.
Olivia Sudjic (Sympathy)
In 1938, blues musician Lead Belly sang a song he wrote about “the Scottsboro boys,” a group of Black teenagers who were sent to jail after being falsely accused of raping two white women on a train (one of the women later admitted it was a made-up charge). After the song, Lead Belly talked about the case and advised fellow Black Americans “to stay woke—keep their eyes open.” Stay woke. The term has been a part of the Black American lexicon for a very long time. In more recent years, the term has evolved from the way Lead Belly was using it—warning Black people to stay alert to dangerous situations that might arise—to a broader meaning about staying aware of racist systems of oppression. After the release of Erykah Badu’s 2007 song Master Teacher, with a chorus that repeated the line “I stay woke,” the term exploded into the mainstream.
Tim Urban (What's Our Problem?: A Self-Help Book for Societies)
Today, acknowledgement of the prevalence and harms of child sexual abuse is counterbalanced with cautionary tales about children and women who, under pressure from social workers and therapists, produce false allegations of ‘paedophile rings’, ‘cult abuse’ and ‘ritual abuse’. Child protection investigations or legal cases involving allegations of organised child sexual abuse are regularly invoked to illustrate the dangers of ‘false memories’, ‘moral panic’ and ‘community hysteria’. These cautionary tales effectively delimit the bounds of acceptable knowledge in relation to sexual abuse. They are circulated by those who locate themselves firmly within those bounds, characterising those beyond as ideologues and conspiracy theorists. However firmly these boundaries have been drawn, they have been persistently transgressed by substantiated disclosures of organised abuse that have led to child protection interventions and prosecutions. Throughout the 1990s, in a sustained effort to redraw these boundaries, investigations and prosecutions for organised abuse were widely labelled ‘miscarriages of justice’ and workers and therapists confronted with incidents of organised abuse were accused of fabricating or exaggerating the available evidence. These accusations have faded over time as evidence of organised abuse has accumulated, while investigatory procedures have become more standardised and less vulnerable to discrediting attacks. However, as the opening quotes to this introduction illustrate, the contemporary situation in relation to organised abuse is one of considerable ambiguity in which journalists and academics claim that organised abuse is a discredited ‘moral panic’ even as cases are being investigated and prosecuted.
Michael Salter (Organised Sexual Abuse)
Police and prosecutors are morally and professionally obligated to make every effort to identify specious rape reports, safeguard the civil rights of rape suspects, and prevent the falsely accused from being convicted. At the same time, however, police and prosecutors are obligated to do everything in their power to identify individuals who have committed rape and ensure that the guilty are brought to justice. These two objectives are not mutually exclusive.
Jon Krakauer (Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town)
The presumption of innocence for gender crimes has been inverted into a presumption of guilt; knowingly false accusations are unpunished and even encouraged; patently innocent men (and some women) are taken away in handcuffs and put behind bars without being convicted, tried, or even charged; clear miscarriages of justice are rationalized and excused by government officials and politicians with legal jargon and weasel words about “progress” and “changing attitudes.
Stephen Baskerville
any. Make sure your drink doesn’t get spiked. Don’t drink too much to make yourself vulnerable. Make sure you don’t get an unlicensed cab. Don’t let yourself get picked in the wrong way. Look at this woman in the papers who has had more than three boyfriends – the slut. A guy grabbing your arse in the club is a compliment. A guy telling you you’re ugly is actually him saying he likes you. Do you know how many men are falsely accused of rape? Isn’t it disgusting? Don’t ever lie about something so terrible. We won’t believe you anyway. Go to a festival and see no women onstage, but try to have fun, when it’s not safe to be near the front. You’re so basic to put a flower in your hair. Go to the cinema and see men grow, and women help them grow while wearing next to no clothes and then getting raped and dying. Give it an Oscar. Fuck like a porn star. Make me a sandwich. Stop being difficult. Shut up. Put up. Use this anti-ageing cream. Nobody wants to fuck you any more, Karen. Oh, come on, it’s only a joke.
Holly Bourne (Girl Friends: the unmissable, thought-provoking and funny new novel about female friendship)
Well before she became famous — or infamous, depending on where you cast your vote — Loftus's findings on memory distortion were clearly commodifiable. In the 1970s and 1980s she provided assistance to defense attorneys eager to prove to juries that eyewitness accounts are not the same as camcorders. "I've helped a lot of people," she says. Some of those people: the Hillside Strangler, the Menendez brothers, Oliver North, Ted Bundy. "Ted Bundy?" I ask, when she tells this to me. Loftus laughs. "This was before we knew he was Bundy. He hadn't been accused of murder yet." "How can you be so confident the people you're representing are really innocent?" I ask. She doesn't directly answer. She says, "In court, I go by the evidence.... Outside of court, I'm human and entitled to my human feelings. "What, I wonder are her human feelings about the letter from a child-abuse survivor who wrote, "Let me tell you what false memory syndrome does to people like me, as if you care. It makes us into liars. False memory syndrome is so much more chic than child abuse.... But there are children who tonight while you sleep are being raped, and beaten. These children may never tell because 'no one will believe them.'" "Plenty of "Plenty of people will believe them," says Loftus. Pshaw! She has a raucous laugh and a voice with a bit of wheedle in it. She is strange, I think, a little loose inside. She veers between the professional and the personal with an alarming alacrity," she could easily have been talking about herself.
Lauren Slater (Opening Skinner's Box: Great Psychological Experiments of the Twentieth Century)
ITEM. Eleven women from the Miss Black America Pageant all claimed Mike Tyson touched them on their rears. So the founder of the pageant filed a $607 million lawsuit against Mike Tyson. Several of the contestants eventually admitted they had lied in the hope of getting publicity and cashing in on the award money.49 Think about it. If each woman had the potential for being awarded $20 to $30 million, aren’t we really bribing women to make false accusations? And the Miss Black America Pageant itself got more publicity than it had received in its history. The lawsuit made tabloid headlines; the dropping of the lawsuit was buried in the back pages. When we fail to give as much attention to an accusation being false as to the original accusation, the accused is left with an image problem. When this image problem was added to Tyson’s already tarnished image, Tyson was doubtless more likely to be found guilty when one of the Miss Black America contestants (Desiree Washington) accused him of date rape than he would have if tabloid headlines had recently been saying “Black Beauties Bribed by Big Bucks.
Warren Farrell (The Myth of Male Power)
YOU WISH TO KNOW ME? POSIT YOURSELF AS THE PINPOINT CENTER OF ONE OF YOUR KALEIDOSCOPES, AND GRASP TIME AS THE COLORFUL FRAGMENTS ERUPTING FROM YOU IN A MULTITUDE OF DIMENSIONS THAT CONSTANTLY EXPAND OUTWARD IN AN EVER-WIDENING, EVER-SHIFTING, INFINITE ARRAY. SEE THAT YOU CAN CHOOSE AND EXPAND FROM ANY OF THOSE UNCOUNTABLE DIMENSIONS AND THAT, WITH EACH CHOICE, THOSE DIMENSIONS WIDEN AND SHIFT AGAIN. INFINITY COMPOUNDED EXPONENTIALLY. UNDERSTAND THAT THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS REALITY: THE FALSE GOD YOUR RACE WORSHIPS WITH SUCH BLIND DEVOTION. REALITY IMPLIES A SINGLE POSSIBLE. YOU ACCUSE ME OF ILLUSION. YOU—WITH YOUR ABSURD CONSTRUCT OF LINEAR TIME. YOU FASHION FOR YOURSELF A PRISON OF WATCHES, CLOCKS, AND CALENDARS. YOU RATTLE BARS FORGED OF HOURS AND DAYS, BUT YOU’VE PADLOCKED THE DOOR WITH PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE. PUNY MINDS NEED PUNY CAVES. YOU CANNOT GAZE UPON TIME’S TRUE FACE ANY MORE THAN YOU CAN BEHOLD MINE. TO APPREHEND YOURSELF AS THE CENTER, TO SIMULTANEOUSLY PERCEIVE ALL COMBINATIONS OF ALL POSSIBLES, SHOULD YOU CHOOSE TO MOVE IN ANY DIRECTION—“DIRECTION” BEING A VERY LIMITED METHOD OF ATTEMPTING TO CONVEY A CONCEPT FOR WHICH YOUR RACE HAS NO WORD—THAT IS WHAT IT IS TO BE ME.
Karen Marie Moning (Shadowfever (Fever, #5))
In the most egregious instances, women will effectively be punished for being, and claiming to be, the victims of misogyny. They will then be systematically disbelieved and maligned, notwithstanding strong evidence of the wrongdoing they have suffered. In 2009, for example, a young woman in Washington State who told police she had been raped at knifepoint was fined $500 for supposedly filing a false report—a report that, it later turned out, had been accurate. This came to light in 2011 because the rapist, who had a distinctive egg-shaped birthmark on his calf, was subsequently accused of rape by another female victim in a nearby district.
Kate Manne (Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women)
Dr Bone was over sixty when she was arrested in Hungary in 1949. A notable linguist, she had been invited to Hungary to translate English scientific books into Hungarian. She herself had joined the Communist Party in 1919. She was accused of being a British agent, but refused to make a false confession or in any way to collaborate with her interrogators. This elderly lady spent seven years in prison before she was finally released in November 1956. For three of those years she was denied access to books or writing materials. The cell in which she was first confined was bitterly cold and had no window. Worse was to come. For five months she was kept in a cellar in total darkness. The walls ran with water or were covered with fungus; the floor was deep in excrement. There was no ventilation. Dr Bone invented various techniques for keeping herself sane. She recited and translated poetry, and herself composed verses. She completed a mental inventory of her vocabulary in the six languages in which she was fluent, and went for imaginary walks through the streets of the many cities which she knew well. Throughout these and other ordeals, Dr Bone treated her captors with contempt, and never ceased to protest her innocence. She is not only a shining example of courage which few could match, but also illustrates the point that a well-stocked, disciplined mind can prevent its own disruption.
Anthony Storr (Solitude: A Return to the Self)
Senseless people name evil good, call good evil. As you are doing. You accuse Us of passing false judgement: you do Us injustice. We shall prove this to you. You ask who We are: We are God’s handle, Master Death, a truly effective reaper. Our scythe works its way. It cuts down white, black, red, brown, green, blue, grey, yellow, and all kinds of lustrous flowers in its path, irrespective of their splendour, their strength, their virtue. And the violet’s beautiful colour, rich perfume, and palatable sap, avail it nought. See: that is justice. Our justification was acknowledged by the Romans and the poets, for they knew Us better than you do. You ask what We are: We are nothing, and yet something. Nothing, because We have neither life, nor being, nor form, and We are no spirit, not visible, not tangible; something, because We are the end of life, the end of existence, the beginning of nullity, a cross between the two. We are a happening that fells all people. Huge giants must fall before Us; all living beings must be transformed by Us. You ask where We are: We are not ascertainable. But Our form was found in a temple in Rome*, painted on a wall, as a hoodwinked man sitting on an ox; this man wielded a hatchet in his right hand and a shovel in his left hand, with which he was beating the ox. A great crowd of all kinds of people was hitting him, fighting him, and making casts at him, each one with the tools of his trade: even the nun with her psalter was there. They struck and made casts at the man on the ox, he who signified Us; yet Death contested and buried them all. Pythagoras likens Us to a man’s form with the eyes of a basilisk: they wandered to the ends of the Earth, and every living creature had to die at their glance. You ask where We are: We are from the Earthly Paradise. God created Us there and gave Us Our true name, when he said: «The day that ye bite of this fruit, ye shall die the death.» And for that reason We call ourself: «We, Death, mighty ruler and master on Earth, in the air, and in the rivers of the sea.» You ask what good We do: you have already heard that We bring the world more advantage than harm. Now cease, rest content, and thank Us for the kindness we have done you!
Johannes von Saaz (Death and the Ploughman)
[Bisexuality] is seen as threatening the homosexual/heterosexual and male/female dichotomies, or binarisms, which underpin our gender and sexual identities to such a large extent. In the case of the first three stereotypes, there is a refusal even to acknowledge the existence of bisexuality. It is simply wished out of existence. You can either be homosexual or heterosexual but anything else is just a phase, just playacting, not real. As Udis-Kessler argues [‘Challenging the Stereotypes’, in Rose and Stevens (eds), Bisexual Horizons: Politics, Histories, Lives. 1996. London: Lawrence and Wishart, pp. 45-57], this reflects an ideology of essentialism which dismisses the idea that sexuality may be fluid, not fixed, and that its forms can change over a person’s lifetime. This ideology assumes that there is a ‘true’ sexuality which we are working our way towards and that bisexuality is not really ‘true’ or ‘serious’ because it is a transition towards that other state… As Udis-Kessler points out, transitions are not a rehearsal for life. Life is a series of transitions: points of arrival become new points of departure, and vice versa. So why should we assume that the way we experienced our sexuality ten or twenty years ago is necessarily less ‘true’ or important than the way we experience it now, or that the way we experience it now will necessarily be the same in ten or twenty years time? Obviously this applies not only to bisexuality, but it is an argument which those - including some lesbian and gay activists - who accuse bisexuality of being a sort of ‘false consciousness’ seldom get to grips with… lesbians and gay men, anxious to create safe spaces where they are not subject to homophobic rejection or oppression, may (consciously or unconsciously) seek to exclude bisexuals[…].Unfortunately, as soon as this happens, as with every oppressed or stigmatised group, it can lead to others being oppressed or stigmatised in turn.
Richard Dunphy (Sexual Politics: An Introduction)
[Refers to 121 children taken into care in Cleveland due to suspected abuse (1987) and later returned to their parents] Sue Richardson, the child abuse consultant at the heart of the crisis, watched as cases began to unravel: “All the focus started to fall on the medical findings; other supportive evidence, mainly which we held in the social services department, started to be screened out. A situation developed where the cases either were proven or fell on the basis of medical evidence alone. Other evidence that was available to the court, very often then, never got put. We would have had statement from the child, the social workers and the child psychologist’s evidence from interviewing. We would have evidence of prior concerns, either from social workers or teachers, about the child’s behaviour or other symptoms that they might have been showing, which were completely aside from the medical findings. (Channel 4 1997) Ten years after the Cleveland crisis, Sue Richardson was adamant that evidence relating to children’s safety was not presented to the courts which subsequently returned those children to their parents: “I am saying that very clearly. In some cases, evidence was not put in the court. In other cases, agreements were made between lawyers not to put the case to the court at all, particularly as the crisis developed. Latterly, that children were sent home subject to informal agreements or agreements between lawyers. The cases never even got as far as the court. (Channel 4, 1997)” Nor is Richardson alone. Jayne Wynne, one of the Leeds paediatricians who had pioneered the use of RAD as an indicator of sexual abuse and who subsequently had detailed knowledge of many of the Cleveland children, remains concerned by the haphazard approach of the courts to their protection. I think the implication is that the children were left unprotected. The children who were being abused unfortunately returned to homes and the abuse may well have been ongoing. (Channel 4 1997)
Heather Bacon (Creative Responses to Child Sexual Abuse: Challenges and Dilemmas)
And Satan spoke unto a certain prince, saying: 'Fear not to use the sword, for the wise men have deceived you in saying that the world would be destroyed thereby. Listen not to the counsel of weaklings, for they fear you exceedingly, and they serve your enemies by staying your hand against them. Strike, and know that you shall be king over all.' "And the prince did heed the word of Satan, and he summoned all of the wise men of that realm and called upon them to give him counsel as to the ways in which the enemy might be destroyed without bringing down the wrath upon his own kingdom. But most of the wise men said, 'Lord, it is not possible, for your enemies also have the sword which we have given you, and the fieriness of it is as the flame of Hell and as the fury of the sun-star from whence it was kindled.' " 'Then thou shalt make me yet another which is yet seven times hotter than Hell itself,' commanded the prince, whose arrogance had come to surpass that of Pharaoh. "And many of them said: 'Nay, Lord, ask not this thing of us; for even the smoke of such a fire, if we were to kindle it for thee, would cause many to perish.' "Now the prince was angry because of their answer, and he suspected them of betraying him, and he sent his spies among them to tempt them and to challenge them; whereupon the wise men became afraid. Some among them changed their answers, that his wrath be not invoked against them. Three times he asked them, and three times they answered: 'Nay, Lord, even your own people will perish if you do this thing.' But one of the magi was like unto Judas Iscariot, and his testimony was crafty, and having betrayed his brothers, he lied to all the people, advising them not to fear the demon Fallout. The prince heeded this false wise man, whose name was Blackeneth, and he caused spies to accuse many of the magi before the people. Being afraid, the less wise among the magi counseled the prince according t pleasure, saying: "The weapons may be used, only do not exceed such-and-such a limit, or all will surely perish.
Walter M. Miller Jr. (A Canticle for Leibowitz (St. Leibowitz, #1))
I can hardly believe that our nation’s policy is to seek peace by going to war. It seems that President Donald J. Trump has done everything in his power to divert our attention away from the fact that the FBI is investigating his association with Russia during his campaign for office. For several weeks now he has been sabre rattling and taking an extremely controversial stance, first with Syria and Afghanistan and now with North Korea. The rhetoric has been the same, accusing others for our failed policy and threatening to take autonomous military action to attain peace in our time. This gunboat diplomacy is wrong. There is no doubt that Secretaries Kelly, Mattis, and other retired military personnel in the Trump Administration are personally tough. However, most people who have served in the military are not eager to send our young men and women to fight, if it is not necessary. Despite what may have been said to the contrary, our military leaders, active or retired, are most often the ones most respectful of international law. Although the military is the tip of the spear for our country, and the forces of civilization, it should not be the first tool to be used. Bloodshed should only be considered as a last resort and definitely never used as the first option. As the leader of the free world, we should stand our ground but be prepared to seek peace through restraint. This is not the time to exercise false pride! Unfortunately the Trump administration informed four top State Department management officials that their services were no longer needed as part of an effort to "clean house." Patrick Kennedy, served for nine years as the “Undersecretary for Management,” “Assistant Secretaries for Administration and Consular Affairs” Joyce Anne Barr and Michele Bond, as well as “Ambassador” Gentry Smith, director of the Office for Foreign Missions. Most of the United States Ambassadors to foreign countries have also been dismissed, including the ones to South Korea and Japan. This leaves the United States without the means of exercising diplomacy rapidly, when needed. These positions are political appointments, and require the President’s nomination and the Senate’s confirmation. This has not happened! Moreover, diplomatically our country is severely handicapped at a time when tensions are as hot as any time since the Cold War. Without following expert advice or consent and the necessary input from the Unites States Congress, the decisions are all being made by a man who claims to know more than the generals do, yet he has only the military experience of a cadet at “New York Military Academy.” A private school he attended as a high school student, from 1959 to 1964. At that time, he received educational and medical deferments from the Vietnam War draft. Trump said that the school provided him with “more training than a lot of the guys that go into the military.” His counterpart the unhinged Kim Jong-un has played with what he considers his country’s military toys, since April 11th of 2012. To think that these are the two world leaders, protecting the planet from a nuclear holocaust….
Hank Bracker
When one of my early teachers, for instance, recognized that many ritually abused clients were still being abused while in treatment, she insisted that they could not be treated on an outpatient basis, but should be hospitalized and kept from their families. She was targeted with a series of court cases involving false accusations that she had allegedly abused clients in hospital. The experience was devastating to her. And she was not alone. Many others faced persistent attempts to discredit their professional expertise, or legal assaults that robbed them of time, energy, and even the courage to continue to treat clients, write, or teach. Therapy professionals in both direct services and policy making, members of the criminal and civil justice systems, and the general public were systematically indoctrinated via the media. Many now share the view that people who disclose ritual abuse or mind control content suffer from "false memories” induced by "over-zealous therapists," and that dissociative disorders are iatrogenic (or else they do not exist at all).
Alison Miller (Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control)
Scholars call this false equivalency. It means that when you find a mountain to expose in one person or party, you have to pick a molehill on the other side and make it into a mountain to avoid being accused of bias. The built-up molehills also have large benefits: increased coverage on the evening news, millions of retweets, and more talk-show fodder. When the mountains and molehills all look the same, campaigns and governments devote too little time and energy debating the issues that matter most to our people. Even when we try to do that, we’re often drowned out by the passion of the day. There’s a real cost to this. It breeds more frustration, polarization, paralysis, bad decisions, and missed opportunities. But with no incentive to actually accomplish something, more and more politicians just go with the flow, fanning the flames of anger and resentment, when they should be acting as the fire brigade. Everybody knows it’s wrong, but the immediate rewards are so great we stagger on, just assuming that our Constitution, our public institutions, and the rule of law can endure each new assault without doing permanent damage to our freedoms and way of life.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
What happened to factual, down-the-middle reporting? That’s hard to even define anymore, as the line between fact and fiction, between truth and lies, gets murkier every day. We can’t survive without a free press, dedicated to preserving that fine line and secure enough to follow the facts where they lead. But the current environment imposes serious pressures on our journalists, at least those who cover politics, to do just the reverse—to exercise their own power and to, in the words of one wise columnist, “abnormalize” all politicians, even honest, able ones, often because of relatively insignificant issues. Scholars call this false equivalency. It means that when you find a mountain to expose in one person or party, you have to pick a molehill on the other side and make it into a mountain to avoid being accused of bias. The built-up molehills also have large benefits: increased coverage on the evening news, millions of retweets, and more talk-show fodder. When the mountains and molehills all look the same, campaigns and governments devote too little time and energy debating the issues that matter most to our people. Even when we try to do that, we’re often drowned out by the passion of the day.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
Everything leads me to believe it,” he replied. “They got their hands on this communist who wasn’t one, while still being one. He had a sub par intellect and was an exalted fanatic—just the man they needed, the perfect one to be accused. . . . The guy ran away, because he probably became suspicious. They wanted to kill him on the spot before he could be grabbed by the judicial system. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen exactly the way they had probably planned it would. . . . But a trial, you realize, is just terrible. People would have talked. They would have dug up so much! They would have unearthed everything. Then the security forces went looking for [a clean-up man] they totally controlled, and who couldn’t refuse their offer, and that guy sacrificed himself to kill the fake assassin—supposedly in defense of Kennedy’s memory! “Baloney! Security forces all over the world are the same when they do this kind of dirty work. As soon as they succeed in wiping out the false assassin, they declare that the justice system no longer need be concerned, that no further public action was needed now that the guilty perpetrator was dead. Better to assassinate an innocent man than to let a civil war break out. Better an injustice than disorder. “America
David Talbot (The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles and the Rise of America's Secret Government)
One year later the society claimed victory in another case which again did not fit within the parameters of the syndrome, nor did the court find on the issue. Fiona Reay, a 33 year old care assistant, accused her father of systematic sexual abuse during her childhood. The facts of her childhood were not in dispute: she had run away from home on a number of occasions and there was evidence that she had never been enrolled in secondary school. Her father said it was because she was ‘young and stupid’. He had physically assaulted Fiona on a number of occasions, one of which occurred when she was sixteen. The police had been called to the house by her boyfriend; after he had dropped her home, he heard her screaming as her father beat her with a dog chain. As before there was no evidence of repression of memory in this case. Fiona Reay had been telling the same story to different health professionals for years. Her medical records document her consistent reference to family problems from the age of 14. She finally made a clear statement in 1982 when she asked a gynaecologist if her need for a hysterectomy could be related to the fact that she had been sexually abused by her father. Five years later she was admitted to psychiatric hospital stating that one of the precipitant factors causing her breakdown had been an unexpected visit from her father. She found him stroking her daughter. There had been no therapy, no regression and no hypnosis prior to the allegations being made public. The jury took 27 minutes to find Fiona Reay’s father not guilty of rape and indecent assault. As before, the court did not hear evidence from expert witnesses stating that Fiona was suffering from false memory syndrome. The only suggestion of this was by the defence counsel, Toby Hed­worth. In his closing remarks he referred to the ‘worrying phenomenon of people coming to believe in phantom memories’. The next case which was claimed as a triumph for false memory was heard in March 1995. A father was aquitted of raping his daughter. The claims of the BFMS followed the familiar pattern of not fitting within the parameters of false memory at all. The daughter made the allegations to staff members whom she had befriended during her stay in psychiatric hospital. As before there was no evidence of memory repression or recovery during therapy and again the case failed due to lack of corrobo­rating evidence. Yet the society picked up on the defence solicitor’s statements that the daughter was a prone to ‘fantasise’ about sexual matters and had been sexually promiscuous with other patients in the hospital. ~ Trouble and Strife, Issues 37-43
Trouble and Strife
There followed a three-year spectacle during which [Senator Joseph] McCarthy captured enormous media attention by prophesying the imminent ruin of America and by making false charges that he then denied raising—only to invent new ones. He claimed to have identified subversives in the State Department, the army, think tanks, universities, labor unions, the press, and Hollywood. He cast doubt on the patriotism of all who criticized him, including fellow senators. McCarthy was profoundly careless about his sources of information and far too glib when connecting dots that had no logical link. In his view, you were guilty if you were or ever had been a Communist, had attended a gathering where a supposed Communist sympathizer was present, had read a book authored by someone soft on Communism, or subscribed to a magazine with liberal ideas. McCarthy, who was nicknamed Tailgunner Joe, though he had never been a tail gunner, was also fond of superlatives. By the middle of 1951, he was warning the Senate of “a conspiracy so immense and an infamy so black as to dwarf any previous such venture in the history of man.” McCarthy would neither have become a sensation, nor ruined the careers of so many innocent people, had he not received support from some of the nation’s leading newspapers and financing from right-wingers with deep pockets. He would have been exposed much sooner had his wild accusations not been met with silence by many mainstream political leaders from both parties who were uncomfortable with his bullying tactics but lacked the courage to call his bluff. By the time he self-destructed, a small number of people working in government had indeed been identified as security risks, but none because of the Wisconsin senator’s scattershot investigations. McCarthy fooled as many as he did because a lot of people shared his anxieties, liked his vituperative style, and enjoyed watching the powerful squirm. Whether his allegations were greeted with resignation or indignation didn’t matter so much as the fact that they were reported on and repeated. The more inflammatory the charge, the more coverage it received. Even skeptics subscribed to the idea that, though McCarthy might be exaggerating, there had to be some fire beneath the smoke he was spreading. This is the demagogue’s trick, the Fascist’s ploy, exemplified most outrageously by the spurious and anti-Jewish Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Repeat a lie often enough and it begins to sound as if it must—or at least might—be so. “Falsehood flies,” observed Jonathan Swift, “and the truth comes limping after it.” McCarthy’s career shows how much hysteria a skilled and shameless prevaricator can stir up, especially when he claims to be fighting in a just cause. After all, if Communism was the ultimate evil, a lot could be hazarded—including objectivity and conventional morality—in opposing it.
Madeleine K. Albright (Fascism: A Warning)
(AIR) THE BOOK OF LUCIFER THE ENLIGHTENMENT The Roman god, Lucifer, was the bearer for light, the spirit of the air, the personification of enlightenment. In Christian mythology he became synonymous with evil, which was only to have been expected from a religion whose very existence is perpetuated by clouded definitions and bogus values! It is time to set the record straight. False moralisms and occult inaccuracies must be corrected. Entertaining as they might be, most stories and plays about Devil worship must be recognized as the obsolete absurdities they are. It has been said "the truth will make men free". The truth alone has never set anyone free. It is only with DOUBT which will bring mental emancipation. Without the wonderful element of doubt, the doorway through which truth passes would be tightly shut, impervious to the most strenuous poundings of a thousand Lucifers. How understandable that Holy Scripture should refer to the Infernal monarch as the "father of lies" - a magnificent example of character inversion. If one is to believe this theological accusation that the Devil represents falsehood, then it surely must be concurred that it was HE, NOT GOD, THAT ESTABLISHED ALL SPIRITUAL RELIGIONS AND WHO WROTE ALL OF THE HOLY BIBLES! When one doubt is followed by another, the bubble, grown large from long accumulated fallacies, threatens to burst. For those who already doubt supposed truths, this book is revelation. Then Lucifer will have risen. Now is the time for doubt! The bubble of falsehood is bursting and its sound is the roar of the world!
Anton Szandor LaVey (The Satanic Bible)
Treating Abuse Today (Tat), 3(4), pp. 26-33 Freyd: I see what you're saying but people in psychology don't have a uniform agreement on this issue of the depth of -- I guess the term that was used at the conference was -- "robust repression." TAT: Well, Pamela, there's a whole lot of evidence that people dissociate traumatic things. What's interesting to me is how the concept of "dissociation" is side-stepped in favor of "repression." I don't think it's as much about repression as it is about traumatic amnesia and dissociation. That has been documented in a variety of trauma survivors. Army psychiatrists in the Second World War, for instance, documented that following battles, many soldiers had amnesia for the battles. Often, the memories wouldn't break through until much later when they were in psychotherapy. Freyd: But I think I mentioned Dr. Loren Pankratz. He is a psychologist who was studying veterans for post-traumatic stress in a Veterans Administration Hospital in Portland. They found some people who were admitted to Veteran's hospitals for postrraumatic stress in Vietnam who didn't serve in Vietnam. They found at least one patient who was being treated who wasn't even a veteran. Without external validation, we just can't know -- TAT: -- Well, we have external validation in some of our cases. Freyd: In this field you're going to find people who have all levels of belief, understanding, experience with the area of repression. As I said before it's not an area in which there's any kind of uniform agreement in the field. The full notion of repression has a meaning within a psychoanalytic framework and it's got a meaning to people in everyday use and everyday language. What there is evidence for is that any kind of memory is reconstructed and reinterpreted. It has not been shown to be anything else. Memories are reconstructed and reinterpreted from fragments. Some memories are true and some memories are confabulated and some are downright false. TAT: It is certainly possible for in offender to dissociate a memory. It's possible that some of the people who call you could have done or witnessed some of the things they've been accused of -- maybe in an alcoholic black-out or in a dissociative state -- and truly not remember. I think that's very possible. Freyd: I would say that virtually anything is possible. But when the stories include murdering babies and breeding babies and some of the rather bizarre things that come up, it's mighty puzzling. TAT: I've treated adults with dissociative disorders who were both victimized and victimizers. I've seen previously repressed memories of my clients' earlier sexual offenses coming back to them in therapy. You guys seem to be saying, be skeptical if the person claims to have forgotten previously, especially if it is about something horrible. Should we be equally skeptical if someone says "I'm remembering that I perpetrated and I didn't remember before. It's been repressed for years and now it's surfacing because of therapy." I ask you, should we have the same degree of skepticism for this type of delayed-memory that you have for the other kind? Freyd: Does that happen? TAT: Oh, yes. A lot.
David L. Calof
Two other highly vocal FMSF Advisory Board members are Dr Elizabeth Loftus and Professor Richard Ofshe. Loftus is a respected academic psychologist whose much quoted laboratory experiment of successfully implanting a fictitious childhood memory of being lost in a shopping mall is frequently used to defend the false memory syndrome argument. In the experiment, older family members persuaded younger ones of the (supposedly) never real event. However, Loftus herself says that being lost, which almost everyone has experienced, is in no way similar to being abused. Jennifer Freyd comments on the shopping mall experiment in Betrayal Trauma (1996): “If this demonstration proves to hold up under replication it suggests both that therapists can induce false memories and, even more directly, that older family members play a powerful role in defining reality for dependent younger family members." (p. 104). Elizabeth Loftus herself was sexually abused as a child by a male babysitter and admits to blacking the perpetrator out of her memory, although she never forgot the incident. In her autobiography, Witness for the Defence, she talks of experiencing flashbacks of this abusive incident on occasion in court in 1985 (Loftus &Ketcham, 1991, p.149) In her teens, having been told by an uncle that she had found her mother's drowned body, she then started to visualize the scene. Her brother later told her that she had not found the body. Dr Loftus's successful academic career has run parallel to her even more high profile career as an expert witness in court, for the defence of those accused of rape, murder, and child abuse. She is described in her own book as the expert who puts memory on trial, sometimes with frightening implications. She used her theories on the unreliability of memory to cast doubt, in 1975, on the testimony of the only eyewitness left alive who could identify Ted Bundy, the all American boy who was one of America's worst serial rapists and killers (Loftus & Ketcham, 1991, pp. 61-91). Not withstanding Dr Loftus's arguments, the judge kept Bundy in prison. Bundy was eventually tried, convicted and executed.
Valerie Sinason (Memory in Dispute)
But nothing in my previous work had prepared me for the experience of reinvestigating Cleveland. It is worth — given the passage of time — recalling the basic architecture of the Crisis: 121 children from many different and largely unrelated families had been taken into the care of Cleveland County Council in the three short months of the summer of 1987. (p18) The key to resolving the puzzle of Cleveland was the children. What had actually happened to them? Had they been abused - or had the paediatricians and social workers (as public opinion held) been over-zealous and plain wrong? Curiously — particularly given its high profile, year-long sittings and £5 million cost — this was the one central issue never addressed by the Butler-Sloss judicial testimony and sifting of internal evidence, the inquiry's remit did not require it to answer the main question. Ten years after the crisis, my colleagues and I set about reconstructing the records of the 121 children at its heart to determine exactly what had happened to them... (p19) Eventually, though, we did assemble the data given to the Butler-Sloss Inquiry. This divided into two categories: the confidential material, presented in camera, and the transcripts of public sessions of the hearings. Putting the two together we assembled our own database on the children each identified only by the code-letters assigned to them by Butler-Sloss. When it was finished, this database told a startlingly different story from the public myth. In every case there was some prima fade evidence to suggest the possibility of abuse. Far from the media fiction of parents taking their children to Middlesbrough General Hospital for a tummy ache or a sore thumb and suddenly being presented with a diagnosis of child sexual abuse, the true story was of families known to social services for months or years, histories of physical and sexual abuse of siblings and of prior discussions with parents about these concerns. In several of the cases the children themselves had made detailed disclosures of abuse; many of the pre-verbal children displayed severe emotional or behavioural symptoms consistent with sexual abuse. There were even some families in which a convicted sex offender had moved in with mother and children. (p20)
Sue Richardson (Creative Responses to Child Sexual Abuse: Challenges and Dilemmas)
There is no solution for Europe other than deepening the democratic values it invented. It does not need a geographical extension, absurdly drawn out to the ends of the Earth; what it needs is an intensification of its soul, a condensation of its strengths. It is one of the rare places on this planet where something absolutely unprecedented is happening, without its people even knowing it, so much do they take miracles for granted. Beyond imprecation and apology, we have to express our delighted amazement that we live on this continent and not another. Europe, the planet's moral compass, has sobered up after the intoxication of conquest and has acquired a sense of the fragility of human affairs. It has to rediscover its civilizing capabilities, not recover its taste for blood and carnage, chiefly for spiritual advances. But the spirit of penitence must not smother the spirit of resistance. Europe must cherish freedom as its most precious possession and teach it to schoolchildren. It must also celebrate the beauty of discord and divest itself of its sick allergy to confrontation, not be afraid to point out the enemy, and combine firmness with regard to governments and generosity with regard to peoples. In short, it must simply reconnect with the subversive richness of its ideas and the vitality of its founding principles. Naturally, we will continue to speak the double language of fidelity and rupture, to oscillate between being a prosecutor and a defense lawyer. That is our mental hygiene: we are forced to be both the knife and the wound, the blade that cuts and the hand that heals. The first duty of a democracy is not to ruminate on old evils, it is to relentlessly denounce its present crimes and failures. This requires reciprocity, with everyone applying the same rule. We must have done with the blackmail of culpability, cease to sacrifice ourselves to our persecutors. A policy of friendship cannot be founded on the false principle: we take the opprobrium, you take the forgiveness. Once we have recognized any faults we have, then the prosecution must turn against the accusers and subject them to constant criticism as well. Let us cease to confuse the necessary evaluation of ourselves with moralizing masochism. There comes a time when remorse becomes a second offence that adds to the first without cancelling it. Let us inject in others a poison that has long gnawed away at us: shame. A little guilty conscience in Tehran, Riyadh, Karachi, Moscow, Beijing, Havana, Caracas, Algiers, Damascus, Yangon, Harare, and Khartoum, to mention them alone, would do these governments, and especially their people, a lot of good. The fines gift Europe could give the world would be to offer it the spirit of critical examination that it has conceived and that has saved it from so many perils. It is a poisoned gift, but one that is indispensable for the survival of humanity.
Pascal Bruckner (The Tyranny of Guilt: An Essay on Western Masochism)
Treating Abuse Today (Tat), 3(4), pp. 26-33 Freyd: You were also looking for some operational criteria for false memory syndrome: what a clinician could look for or test for, and so on. I spoke with several of our scientific advisory board members and I have some information for you that isn't really in writing at this point but I think it's a direction you want us to go in. So if I can read some of these notes . . . TAT: Please do. Freyd: One would look for false memory syndrome: 1. If a patient reports having been sexually abused by a parent, relative or someone in very early childhood, but then claims that she or he had complete amnesia about it for a decade or more; 2. If the patient attributes his or her current reason for being in therapy to delayed-memories. And this is where one would want to look for evidence suggesting that the abuse did not occur as demonstrated by a list of things, including firm, confident denials by the alleged perpetrators; 3. If there is denial by the entire family; 4. In the absence of evidence of familial disturbances or psychiatric illnesses. For example, if there's no evidence that the perpetrator had alcohol dependency or bipolar disorder or tendencies to pedophilia; 5. If some of the accusations are preposterous or impossible or they contain impossible or implausible elements such as a person being made pregnant prior to menarche, being forced to engage in sex with animals, or participating in the ritual killing of animals, and; 6. In the absence of evidence of distress surrounding the putative abuse. That is, despite alleged abuse going from age two to 27 or from three to 16, the child displayed normal social and academic functioning and that there was no evidence of any kind of psychopathology. Are these the kind of things you were asking for? TAT: Yeah, it's a little bit more specific. I take issue with several, but at least it gives us more of a sense of what you all mean when you say "false memory syndrome." Freyd: Right. Well, you know I think that things are moving in that direction since that seems to be what people are requesting. Nobody's denying that people are abused and there's no one denying that someone who was abused a decade ago or two decades ago probably would not have talked about it to anybody. I think I mentioned to you that somebody who works in this office had that very experience of having been abused when she was a young teenager-not extremely abused, but made very uncomfortable by an uncle who was older-and she dealt with it for about three days at the time and then it got pushed to the back of her mind and she completely forgot about it until she was in therapy. TAT: There you go. That's how dissociation works! Freyd: That's how it worked. And after this came up and she had discussed and dealt with it in therapy, she could again put it to one side and go on with her life. Certainly confronting her uncle and doing all these other things was not a part of what she had to do. Interestingly, though, at the same time, she has a daughter who went into therapy and came up with memories of having been abused by her parents. This daughter ran away and is cutoff from the family-hasn't spoken to anyone for three years. And there has never been any meeting between the therapist and the whole family to try to find out what was involved. TAT: If we take the first example -- that of her own abuse -- and follow the criteria you gave, we would have a very strong disbelief in the truth of what she told.
David L. Calof
Sung was a land which was famous far and wide, simply because it was so often and so richly insulted. However, there was one visitor, more excitable than most, who developed a positive passion for criticizing the place. Unfortunately, the pursuit of this hobby soon lead him to take leave of the truth. This unkind traveler once claimed that the king of Sung, the notable Skan Askander, was a derelict glutton with a monster for a son and a slug for a daughter. This was unkind to the daughter. While she was no great beauty, she was definitely not a slug. After all, slugs do not have arms and legs - and besides, slugs do not grow to that size. There was a grain of truth in the traveler's statement, in as much as the son was a regrettable young man. However, soon afterwards, the son was accidentally drowned when he made the mistake of falling into a swamp with his hands and feet tied together and a knife sticking out of his back. This tragedy did not encourage the traveler to extend his sympathies to the family. Instead, he invented fresh accusations. This wayfarer, an ignorant tourist if ever there was one, claimed that the king had leprosy. This was false. The king merely had a well-developed case of boils. The man with the evil mouth was guilty of a further malignant slander when he stated that King Skan Askander was a cannibal. This was untrue. While it must be admitted that the king once ate one of his wives, he did not do it intentionally; the whole disgraceful episode was the fault of the chef, who was a drunkard, and who was subsequently severely reprimanded. .The question of the governance, and indeed, the very existence of the 'kingdom of Sung' is one that is worth pursuing in detail, before dealing with the traveler's other allegations. It is true that there was a king, his being Skan Askander, and that some of his ancestors had been absolute rulers of considerable power. It is also true that the king's chief swineherd, who doubled as royal cartographer, drew bold, confident maps proclaiming that borders of the realm. Furthermore, the king could pass laws, sign death warrants, issue currency, declare war or amuse himself by inventing new taxes. And what he could do, he did. "We are a king who knows how to be king," said the king. And certainly, anyone wishing to dispute his right to use of the imperial 'we' would have had to contend with the fact that there was enough of him, in girth, bulk, and substance, to provide the makings of four or five ordinary people, flesh, bones and all. He was an imposing figure, "very imposing", one of his brides is alleged to have said, shortly before the accident in which she suffocated. "We live in a palace," said the king. "Not in a tent like Khmar, the chief milkmaid of Tameran, or in a draughty pile of stones like Comedo of Estar." . . .From Prince Comedo came the following tart rejoinder: "Unlike yours, my floors are not made of milk-white marble. However, unlike yours, my floors are not knee-deep in pigsh*t." . . .Receiving that Note, Skan Askander placed it by his commode, where it would be handy for future royal use. Much later, and to his great surprise, he received a communication from the Lord Emperor Khmar, the undisputed master of most of the continent of Tameran. The fact that Sung had come to the attention of Khmar was, to say the least, ominous. Khmar had this to say: "Your words have been reported. In due course, they will be remembered against you." The king of Sung, terrified, endured the sudden onset of an attack of diarrhea that had nothing to do with the figs he had been eating. His latest bride, seeing his acute distress, made the most of her opportunity, and vigorously counselled him to commit suicide. Knowing Khmar's reputation, he was tempted - but finally, to her great disappointment, declined. Nevertheless, he lived in fear; he had no way of knowing that he was simply the victim of one of Khmar's little jokes.
Hugh Cook (The Wordsmiths and the Warguild)
Brennan’s best small role is in Fritz Lang’s Fury (May 29, 1936), another MGM production. Brennan plays “Bugs” Meyers, a deputy who locks up Joe Wilson (Spencer Tracy), falsely accused of murder, and is almost lynched. Brennan’s portrayal goes way beyond the scope of what is actually in the film’s script. He plays a new modern type, an ordinary man suddenly elevated to importance because he plays a small but highly visible part in a widely publicized crime story. In short scenes, Bugs’s ego expands as he becomes recognized as an “authority” on what happened. Brennan’s conception of the character is profoundly original. Bugs becomes a creation of publicity—and, suddenly, a figure of significance to himself—and his enjoyment of his new, expanded role, is palpable in the joy that suffuses Bugs’s face with the excitement of being—or rather acting like—he is in the know.
Carl Rollyson (A Real American Character: The Life of Walter Brennan (Hollywood Legends))
Even relatively routine misconduct by Ferguson police officers can have significant consequences for the people whose rights are violated. For example, in the summer of 2012, a 32-year-old African-American man sat in his car cooling off after playing basketball in a Ferguson public park. An officer pulled up behind the man’s car, blocking him in, and demanded the man’s Social Security number and identification. Without any cause, the officer accused the man of being a pedophile, referring to the presence of children in the park, and ordered the man out of his car for a pat-down, although the officer had no reason to believe the man was armed. The officer also asked to search the man’s car. The man objected, citing his constitutional rights. In response, the officer arrested the man, reportedly at gunpoint, charging him with eight violations of Ferguson’s municipal code. One charge, Making a False Declaration, was for initially providing the short form of his first name (e.g., “Mike” instead of “Michael”), and an address which, although legitimate, was different from the one on his driver’s license. Another charge was for not wearing a seat belt, even though he was seated in a parked car. The officer also charged the man both with having an expired operator’s license, and with having no operator’s license in his possession. The man told us that, because of these charges, he lost his job as a contractor with the federal government that he had held for years.
U.S. Department of Justice (The Ferguson Report: Department of Justice Investigation of the Ferguson Police Department)
The Accuser jumped in, “But why does a loving God punish at all? Is it not his obligation to forgive all transgression large or small? What kind of a loving God punishes imperfection? What kind of a loving God casts people into Sheol? That is not love, that is cruelty.” Enoch sighed. He was already weary of hearing “what kind of a loving God” preface a horde of false accusations. But in the interest of fairness, he sought to address each one. “Firstly, I would like to establish that counsel is repeating a falsehood already laid to rest. It is not imperfection that is being punished, it is iniquity. Secondly, may I remind my accusing adversary that a just God is not obligated to forgive anyone anything. A just God punishes sin. Forgiveness without propitiation is the true cruelty. Worse, it is to denigrate the criminal’s own worth to nothing. For if the criminal is forgiven without the penalty being served, then both victim and victimizer have no value. But neither is “love” obligated to forgive, for that would make such actions duty and no longer gracious.” “Ah,” interrupted the Accuser, “But there you are on the horns of a dilemma. For Elohim to be just, he must punish, but for Elohim to be loving, he must forgive. So if he punishes, he is unloving, and if he forgives, he is unjust. So I ask the Judge with humility, submission and deference, which art thou, cruel or impotent?” Now that was a coup, thought the Accuser as he let his impeccable logic sink in to the minds and hearts of ten million “holy ones.” Holy, my rear end.
Brian Godawa (Enoch Primordial (Chronicles of the Nephilim #2))
Enoch strutted before the throne. He lifted his chin high in thought. He then spoke like a scribe would speak to his students. “This Accuser has laden his argument with so much emotional invective and blind hatred that one can only wonder where he received his credentials. I am not aware of any apkallu wisdom sage on earth or in heaven who teaches insulting, appeals to pity, appeals to force, and popular sentiment, false dilemmas, slippery slopes, equivocation and question begging as actual legal strategy.” That was good, thought Enoch. He did not hear the expected chuckles from the divine witnesses. But then again, they did follow strict rules of sobriety in trials. All his years of being an apkallu were bearing fruit in him now. It was as if it were all
Brian Godawa (Enoch Primordial (Chronicles of the Nephilim #2))
Brother, if any man thinks ill of you, do not be angry with him. For you are worse than he thinks you to be. If he charges you falsely on some point, yet be satisfied, for if he knew you better he might change the accusation and you would be no gainer by the correction. If you have your moral portrait painted and it is ugly, be satisfied. For it only needs a few blacker touches and it would be still nearer the truth. “I will be base in my own sight.” This was well said. Perhaps if David had carried it out more fully and had been rendered watchful thereby, it might have saved him from his great fall. A sense of electing love will render you base in your own sight.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon (The Complete Works of Charles Spurgeon - Volume 34, Sermons)
(4) The Roots of Violence and Oppression  “Greed, hatred, and delusion of every kind are unwholesome.¹⁶ Whatever action a greedy, hating, and deluded person heaps up—by deeds, words, or thoughts—that too is unwholesome. Whatever suffering such a person, overpowered by greed, hatred, and delusion, his thoughts controlled by them, inflicts under false pretexts upon another—by killing, imprisonment, confiscation of property, false accusations, or expulsion—being prompted in this by the thought, ‘I have power and I want power,’ all this is unwholesome too.”  (from AN 3:69; I 201–2)
Bhikkhu Bodhi (In the Buddha's Words: An Anthology of Discourses from the Pali Canon (The Teachings of the Buddha))
Jesus is always being falsely accused, and there is never a time when he is not being accused.… He is still silent in the face of this and does not answer with his own voice. But he makes his defense in the lives of his genuine disciples, for their lives cry out the real facts and defeat all false charges.
Ben Myers (The Apostles' Creed: A Guide to the Ancient Catechism (Christian Essentials))
For instance, when I was younger, I thought that the fruit that Adam and Eve ate were apples, so I would always think that every apple was the Forbidden Fruit. I was emotionally dedicated to this theory. So one time, my father was eating an apple, and he was reading this National Geographic Magazine with a picture of a serpent. Even though I read an abridged Bible with my father, and he, as a professor in a seminary, clearly proved that humans were casted out of the Garden of Eden and hence can’t access the fruit, I let my emotions overcome me and kept believing in the theory. When I saw Dad eating the apple and looking at the serpent, I thought that he was transformed into a devil. For three days, I remembered this as an instance where my father was sinning, even though he was not. I kept accusing him of being possessed by a devil. Now I know that this memory, due to the emotional input, is false and the fact that Dad was a devil was just an imagination.
Lucy Carter (The Reformation)
Clarence Thomas after being falsely accused: “This is a circus. It’s a national disgrace. And from my standpoint, as a black American, it is a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves, to do for themselves, to have different ideas, and it is a message that unless you kowtow to an old order, this is what will happen to you. You will be lynched, destroyed, caricatured by a committee of the U.S. Senate rather than hung from a tree.
Ilya Shapiro (Supreme Disorder: Judicial Nominations and the Politics of America's Highest Court)
It became clear that if I believed that only bad people who intended to hurt others because of race could ever do so, I would respond with outrage to any suggestion that I was involved in racism. Of course that belief would make me feel falsely accused of something terrible, and of course I would want to defend my character (and I had certainly had many of my own moments of responding in just those ways to reflect on). I came to see that the way we are taught to define racism makes it virtually impossible for white people to understand it. Given our racial insulation, coupled with misinformation, any suggestion that we are complicit in racism is a kind of unwelcome and insulting shock to the system. If, however, I understand racism as a system into which I was socialized, I can receive feedback on my problematic racial patterns as a helpful way to support my learning and growth. One of the greatest social fears for a white person is being told that something that we have said or done is racially problematic. Yet when someone lets us know that we have just done such a thing, rather than respond with gratitude and relief (after all, now that we are informed, we won’t do it again), we often respond with anger and denial. Such moments can be experienced as something valuable, even if temporarily painful, only after we accept that racism is unavoidable and that it is impossible to completely escape having developed problematic racial assumptions and behaviors.
Robin DiAngelo (White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism)
Kimmy, who spent most of the time making lame excuses for Jason’s behavior, apparently worried that I might blab to the press that the president’s son was a jerk—or worse, that I’d seen the first daughter’s panties. “Jason has been under a lot of pressure lately,” Kimmy explained weakly. “It’s tough to be a kid when the public is watching you all the time.” “Know what else is tough?” I asked. “Getting falsely accused of being a pervert in front of the Secret Service.” “Er . . . yes,” Kimmy conceded. “I suppose it would be. Would a souvenir White House key chain make you feel better?” “A little,” I admitted. By the time Cyrus arrived fifteen minutes later, I had scored an additional four White House key chains, three White House reusable water bottles, a model of Air Force One, a set of fancy pens with the presidential seal on them, and three dozen packets of official White House jelly beans.
Stuart Gibbs (Spy School Secret Service)
I mentioned the other day that any reports about what I was going to do when I finished being President were made entirely without consultation with me. I forgot to mention one report that is going around. I mention it now because I don’t want to be accused of acquiring property under false pretenses. I am having sent to me quite a number of jackknives. I don’t recall that I ever made any suggestion that after I finished my term of office I was going to engage in the occupation of whittling. I did some when I was a boy. I haven’t applied myself to that for a good many years. I hesitate to spoil anything like a good newspaper story, but, as I say, I don’t want to keep getting jackknives under false pretenses.
Calvin Coolidge
being falsely accused
Aaron Karmin (Anger Management Workbook for Men: Take Control of Your Anger and Master Your Emotions)
TERFS are not allowed near me, around me, or anywhere in my vicinity, and anyone who falsely accuses me of being a TERF, is simply put, a liar. Trans rights are human rights.
Minna Nizam
Not surprisingly, the exchange of wives from couples who are often polar opposites has led to the show’s fair share of scandals. An Oklahoma man sued the show for misrepresentation and distress when his “wife” turned out to be a gay man. A man on the UK version of the show committed suicide after being humiliated when his sexual practices were made public. A participant who lost his job and received death threats after being labeled “the worst husband in America” accused the producers of manufacturing a character for him to play. He claimed that, under duress of constant cameras and the threat that he was not being entertaining enough, they persuaded him to amp up his hostility toward his swapped wife. Another participant, who was a teenager when her show aired, sued the show, claiming that she was represented in such a false light on air that she suffered bullying at school that ruined
Eileen Ormsby (Small Towns, Dark Secrets: Social media, reality TV and murder in rural America (Tangled Webs True Crime))
Not surprisingly, the exchange of wives from couples who are often polar opposites has led to the show’s fair share of scandals. An Oklahoma man sued the show for misrepresentation and distress when his “wife” turned out to be a gay man. A man on the UK version of the show committed suicide after being humiliated when his sexual practices were made public. A participant who lost his job and received death threats after being labeled “the worst husband in America” accused the producers of manufacturing a character for him to play. He claimed that, under duress of constant cameras and the threat that he was not being entertaining enough, they persuaded him to amp up his hostility toward his swapped wife. Another participant, who was a teenager when her show aired, sued the show, claiming that she was represented in such a false light on air that she suffered bullying at school that ruined her confidence. The lawsuit was settled for an undisclosed sum.
Eileen Ormsby (Small Towns, Dark Secrets: Social media, reality TV and murder in rural America (Tangled Webs True Crime))
when Bannon states that his armed and authoritarian posse is being “othered” by leftists and liberals, he is appropriating an important term that analysts of authoritarianism have used to describe how fascists cast their targets as less than human, making them easier to discard and even exterminate. But he is doing more than that, too. He is also making a mockery of the whole concept of othering, which in turn makes it harder to use the term to name what Bannon does as a matter of course—to migrants, to Black voters, to trans and nonbinary youth. Similarly, when Trump, after the 2016 election, accused half the press corps of being “fake news,” he was beginning a process that would lead his supporters to doubt everything they read and watched in the mainstream press. But he was also doing something else. He was appropriating a term that had been used by communications scholars to describe a very real phenomenon: manufactured propaganda that is designed to seem like real news but is entirely made-up. Fake articles like that had been a boon to Trump, including one particularly viral one that falsely reported that the pope had endorsed him. But now, thanks to his appropriation of the term “fake news,” we were all robbed of a useful phrase to describe the phenomenon.
Naomi Klein (Doppelganger: a Trip into the Mirror World)
That was the irony; men feared false accusations, but survivors were the ones being wrongly smeared. No matter how much evidence there was to support an allegation, for months afterwards accusers were demanded to #ThinkFirst
Yomi Adegoke (The List)
The law must protect the innocent. Both from being falsely accused or convicted, and from being a victim of a crime. So no one should get left behind in the pursuit of justice on account of the law not being present.
Bhuwan Ribhu (Just Rights : Why Justice Should be A Fundamental Right)
A corrupt and dynastic political party is antithetical to the rule of law and to carefully crafted constitutional checks and balances to prevent abuse of power. A tendency towards autocracy and consequent institutional subversion is inevitable with a party thus configured. The result is a prime minister bereft of real power, subservient to the dynastic head and a mute spectator to the loot and plunder of the nation’s resources; a president who is a loyal camp follower and will faithfully rubber stamp the decisions ordained by the dynasty: witness how unhesitatingly President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed signed the Proclamation of Emergency at Mrs. Gandhi’s bidding in 1975 and ponder whether Mrs. Pratibha Patil, (besieged as she was by her co-operative sugar factory in liquidation, her co-operative bank bankrupt, and her family embroiled in the murder case of a popular intra-party rival in Jalgaon at the time of her nomination by Mrs. Sonia Gandhi), would have done otherwise; or for that matter whether President Pranab Mukherjee, whose many acts of subversion of the Constitution during the Emergency have been documented by the Shah Commission, is so radically transformed that he would now protect it; a judiciary accused of judicial overreach when it censures the government or brings its ministers to book while its inconvenient judgments are subjected to review or Presidential Reference; a CAG whose findings against the government’s decisions are vilified as being patently erroneous, in excess of jurisdiction and even motivated, although that august body, the Constituent Assembly had opined that as the guardian of the nation’s finances, the CAG was as important a Constitutional functionary as the justices of the Supreme Court; a CVC appointed despite the taint of corruption and over the protest of the leader of the Opposition, whose appointment was finally quashed by the Supreme Court; and a CBI whose only role on empirical evidence is to falsely implicate political opponents and wrongly exonerate the regime’s members and cronies.
Ram Jethmalani (RAM JETHMALANI MAVERICK UNCHANGED, UNREPENTANT)
Deviations of heretics from the truth 1. The rule of truth which we hold, is, that there is one God Almighty, who made all things by His Word, and fashioned and formed, out of that which had no existence, all things which exist. Thus saith the Scripture, to that effect “By the Word of the Lord were the heavens established, and all the might of them, by the spirit of His mouth.” And again, “All things were made by Him, and without Him was nothing made.” There is no exception or deduction stated; but the Father made all things by Him, whether visible or invisible, objects of sense or of intelligence, temporal, on account of a certain character given them, or eternal; and these eternal things He did not make by angels, or by any powers separated from His Ennoea. For God needs none of all these things, but is He who, by His Word and Spirit, makes, and disposes, and governs all things, and commands all things into existence,—He who formed the world (for the world is of all),—He who fashioned man,—He [who] is the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, above whom there is no other God, nor initial principle, nor power, nor pleroma,—He is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, as we shall prove. Holding, therefore, this rule, we shall easily show, notwithstanding the great variety and multitude of their opinions, that these men have deviated from the truth; for almost all the different sects of heretics admit that there is one God; but then, by their pernicious doctrines, they change [this truth into error], even as the Gentiles do through idolatry,—thus proving themselves ungrateful to Him that created them. Moreover, they despise the workmanship of God, speaking against their own salvation, becoming their own bitterest accusers, and being false witnesses [against themselves]. Yet, reluctant as they may be, these men shall one day rise again in the flesh, to confess the power of Him who raises them from the dead; but they shall not be numbered among the righteous on account of their unbelief.
The Church Fathers (The Complete Ante-Nicene & Nicene and Post-Nicene Church Fathers Collection)
There are dozens of documented cases of Roma or Irish Travelers being falsely accused of stealing children over the twentieth century, and back through modern European history, to the extent that it features in a nineteenth-century nursery rhyme: Hush nae, hush nae, dinna fret ye, The black Tinkler winna get ye. According to Thomas Acton, a professor of Romani studies at the University of Greenwich, there isn’t a single verifiable case of Roma stealing non-Roma children in history. In the modern age, it’s
Adam Rutherford (A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Human Story Retold Through Our Genes)
Camille Cosby released a statement of her own. In it she lashed out at the media, at Steele, and at the entire prosecution team. She compared her husband’s case to that of Emmett Till, a fourteen-year-old African American boy who was lynched in 1955 Mississippi after being falsely accused of leering at a white woman, and Darryl Hunt, an African American man who served nineteen years in prison after being falsely convicted of raping and murdering a white woman in North Carolina in 1984.
Nicole Weisensee Egan (Chasing Cosby: The Downfall of America's Dad)
It was a glorious exoneration of Aisha, and all the more powerful in that it demanded not one but all of four people to contradict her word. Unless there were four witnesses to an illegal sexual act, it said, the accused was blameless, and the false accusers were the ones to be punished. For a wronged woman, there could have been no better outcome, yet the form of it would be cruelly turned around and used by conservative clerics in centuries to come to do the opposite of what Muhammad had originally intended: not to exonerate a woman but to blame her. The wording of his revelation would apply not only when adultery was suspected but also when there had been an accusation of rape. Unless a woman could produce four witnesses to her rape—a virtual impossibility—she would be considered guilty of slander and adultery, and punished accordingly. Aisha’s exoneration was destined to become the basis for the silencing, humiliation, and even execution of countless women after her. She had no idea that this would be the case, of course. What she knew was that the accusations against her had been declared false, and by no less than divine authority. Her accusers were publicly flogged in punishment, and the poets who had composed the most scurrilous verses against her were now suddenly moved to compose new ones in lavish praise of her. She returned to her chamber in the courtyard of the mosque and resumed her role as the favorite wife, though now with the added status of being not only the sole person in whose presence Muhammad had received a revelation but also the only one to have had a revelation specifically about her.
Anonymous
Summary There is a small group of cases, initially treated as rape where there is no evidence of an assault: primarily where a third party makes the report and the victim subsequently denies; or where the victim suspects being assaulted while asleep, unconscious or affected by alcohol/drugs but the medical/forensic examination suggests no sex has taken place. How the police should designate such cases is problematic. - Eight per cent of reported cases in the sample were designated false by the police. - A higher proportion of cases designated false involved 16- to 25-year-olds. - A greater degree of acquaintance between victim and perpetrator decreased the likelihood of cases being designated false. - Cases were most commonly designated false on the grounds of: the complainant admitting it; retractions; evidential issues; and non co-operation by the complainant. - In a number of cases the police also cited mental health problems, previous allegations, use of alcohol/drugs and lack of CCTV evidence. - The pro formas and the interviews with police officers suggested inconsistencies in the complainant’s account could be interpreted as ‘lying’. - The authors’ analysis suggests that the designation of false allegations in a number of cases was uncertain according to Home Office counting rules, and if these were excluded, would reduce the proportion of false complaints to three per cent of reported cases. - This is considerably lower than the estimates of police officers interviewed." A gap or a chasm?: attrition in reported rape cases.
Liz Kelly
as I prayed, the heavens were opened, and I see the woman whom I had desired saluting me from the sky, and saying, “Hail, Hermas!” And looking up to her, I said, “Lady, what doest thou here?” And she answered me, “I have been taken up here to accuse you of your sins before the Lord.” “Lady,” said I, “are you to be the subject of my accusation?” “No,” said she; “but hear the words which I am going to speak to you. God, who dwells in the heavens, and made out of nothing the things that exist, and multiplied and increased them on account of His holy Church, is angry with you for having sinned against me.” I answered her, “Lady, have I sinned against you? How? or when spoke I an unseemly word to you? Did I not always think of you as a lady? Did I not always respect you as a sister? Why do you falsely accuse me of this wickedness and impurity?” With a smile she replied to me, “The desire of wickedness arose within your heart. Is it not your opinion that a righteous man commits sin when an evil desire arises in his heart? There is sin in such a case, and the sin is great,” said she; “for the thoughts of a righteous man should be righteous. For by thinking righteously his character is established in the heavens, and he has the Lord merciful to him in every business. But such as entertain wicked thoughts in their minds are bringing upon themselves death and captivity; and especially is this the case with those who set their affections on this world, and glory in their riches, and look not forward to the blessings of the life to come. For many will their regrets be; for they have no hope, but have despaired of themselves and their life. But do thou pray to God, and He will heal thy sins, and the sins of thy whole house, and of all the saints.
The Church Fathers (The Complete Ante-Nicene & Nicene and Post-Nicene Church Fathers Collection)
Everything leads me to believe it,” he replied. “They got their hands on this communist who wasn’t one, while still being one. He had a sub par intellect and was an exalted fanatic—just the man they needed, the perfect one to be accused. . . . The guy ran away, because he probably became suspicious. They wanted to kill him on the spot before he could be grabbed by the judicial system. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen exactly the way they had probably planned it would. . . . But a trial, you realize, is just terrible. People would have talked. They would have dug up so much! They would have unearthed everything. Then the security forces went looking for [a clean-up man] they totally controlled, and who couldn’t refuse their offer, and that guy sacrificed himself to kill the fake assassin—supposedly in defense of Kennedy’s memory! “Baloney! Security forces all over the world are the same when they do this kind of dirty work. As soon as they succeed in wiping out the false assassin, they declare that the justice system no longer need be concerned, that no further public action was needed now that the guilty perpetrator was dead. Better to assassinate an innocent man than to let a civil war break out. Better an injustice than disorder. “America is in danger of upheavals. But you’ll see. All of them together will observe the law of silence. They will close ranks. They’ll do everything to stifle any scandal. They will throw Noah’s cloak over these shameful deeds. In order to not lose face in front of the whole world. In order to not risk unleashing riots in the United States. In order to preserve the union and to avoid a new civil war. In order to not ask themselves questions. They don’t want to know. They don’t want to find out. They won’t allow themselves to find out.” These astonishing observations about Dallas were captured in Peyrefitte’s memoir, C’était de Gaulle (It Was de Gaulle), which was published in France in 2002, three years after the author’s death. Snippets of the conversation appeared in the U.S. press, but the book was not translated and published in America, and de Gaulle’s remarks about the Kennedy assassination were never fully reported outside of France. A
David Talbot (The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles and the Rise of America's Secret Government)
Feminists don’t single out rape jokes because rape is “worse” than other crimes—we single them out because we live in a culture that actively strives to shrink the definition of sexual assault; that casts stalking behaviors as romance; blames victims for wearing the wrong clothes, walking through the wrong neighborhood, or flirting with the wrong person; bends over backwards to excuse boys-will-be-boys misogyny; makes the emotional and social costs of reporting a rape prohibitively high; pretends that false accusations are a more dire problem than actual assaults; elects officials who tell rape victims that their sexual violation was “god’s plan”; and convicts in less than 5 percent of rape cases that go to trial. Comedians regularly retort that no one complains when they joke about murder or other crimes in their acts, citing that as a double standard. Well, fortunately, there is no cultural narrative casting doubt on the existence and prevalence of murder and pressuring people not to report it. Maybe
Lindy West (Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman)
Therefore it came as no surprise when Andy wrote: My dearest Young, Your correspondence brings an abundance of joy to my heart. Although we’ve both grown older (and hopefully wiser), you are still the boy I knew and the boy I left behind many years ago in London. I love listening to your experiences after our separation. Keep them coming, it’s like listening to your sweet voice all over again. As I mentioned in my previous email, I should have ended my relationship with Toby before it began. Our four-year relationship lasted with a copious amount of quarreling, disgruntlement and resentment. I wanted to end the relationship three months after our sexual rendezvous, but Toby threatened suicide if I left. Those years were not easy for either of us. Pettifoggery often led to intense bickering, and he would sulk for days, waiting for me to kiss and make up with him. I resented having to admit that the squabbles were my fault and having to apologize to keep peace. These prolonged melodramas sent me into a psychological and physical tailspin. I had difficulty concentrating on my studies. One day, I told the boy I wanted to end our relationship. He was devastated and immediately started to blame me for the pain I caused him. He did not listen to what I had to say before he stormed back to our lodging. I was speechless. I felt guilty for what I had done, even though it was the best solution for us. I tried explaining that I loved you and I had mistakenly used him as a substitute, but it was no use. Toby proceeded to use this as ammunition, accusing me of perjury. Instead of being sound of reason, he turned the tables around, saying that I had falsely led him to fall in love with me. As you are well aware, it takes two to tango. Toby reminded me of Oscar’s charge, Srihan. Their parents spoiled them materialistically when what they most needed was love. Toby grew up not knowing how to love. Love, to him, was about taking; he knew nothing about giving. Unlike our relationship which was built on mature love, Toby’s and my relationship was the complete opposite…
Young (Unbridled (A Harem Boy's Saga, #2))
With the false claim that the Germans murdered six million Jews, mostly in gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland during WWII, since the end of WWII, the world has been saturated with films, documentaries and books on the Holocaust. Anyone worldwide who dares to investigate the Jewish Holocaust claims, is branded an Anti-Semite and Holocaust Denier. In our democratic world, a person who is accused of a crime is deemed innocent until irrefutable evidence proves them guilty. What has happened to democracy in Germany, Poland, France and Switzerland where people accused of Holocaust Denial are not allowed to provide any evidence that would prove that they are not guilty? In the Middle Ages, people accused of being witches, were also allowed no defence and were burned at the stake. As burning at the stake and crucifiction is not allowed in today's world, the best that the Jewish leaders and holocaust promoters can achieve is incarceration where no one can hear claims backed by years of very thorough research. The Jewish success in blocking my book "The Answer Justice", their failed attempts to stop the book "Chutzpah" written by Norman Finkelstein whose mother and father were held in German concentration camps, the incarceration of revisionists Ernst Zundel and Germar Rudolf in Germany and David Irving in Austria: these are all desperate attempts to end what they call Holocaust Denial. The English historian David Irving was refused entry to Australia in 2003 at the behest of the Jewish community (representing only 0.4% of the Australian population) thus denying the right of the other 99.6% to hear what David Irving has to say. Proof of Jewish power was the blocking of the public viewing of David Irving's film. The Jewish owners of the building locked the film presentation out which resulted in the headline in the "Australian" newspaper of: " Outrage at Jewish bid to stop the film by David Irving called "The Search For Truth in History" . Sir Zelman Cowan who was Governor General of Australia and a man much reverred in the Jewish community, has stated in the Jewish Chronicle (London) that "The way to deal with people who claim the holocaust never happened, is to produce irrefutable evidence that it did happen". I agree 100% with Sir Zelman Cowan. I am quite certain that he and other Zionist Jewish (Ashkenazim) world leaders are aware that a United Nations or International forensic examination of the alleged gas chamber at No. 2 Crematorium at Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland, would irrefutably prove the truth to the world that xyclon B cyanide has never been used as alleged by world Jewry to kill Jews. In 1979 Professor W.D. Rubenstein stated: "If the Holocaust can be shown to be a Zionist myth, the strongest of all weapons in Israels's propaganda armory collapses. The Falsification of history by Zionist Jews in claiming the murder of six million Jews by Germany, constitutes the GREATEST ORGANISED CRIME that the world has known.
Alexander McClelland
Origen pointed out that the way of Jesus doesn’t really need any defense. He wrote: Jesus is always being falsely accused, and there is never a time when he is not being accused.… He is still silent in the face of this and does not answer with his own voice. But he makes his defense in the lives of his genuine disciples, for their lives cry out the real facts and defeat all false charges.38
Ben Myers (The Apostles' Creed: A Guide to the Ancient Catechism (Christian Essentials))
How do we know who to vote against?” asked Mathro. “Everyone has their own methods. The candidates spend months making up lies about one another. That’s a dangerous game, though. Some people prefer to vote against the obvious liar, while others enjoy the spectacle so much they vote against whomever’s stories are the least salacious. Some people vote against the candidate who presents the most harmful policies, and of course that itself is a point of contention, while others vote against the candidate who keeps bringing up boring talk of policy rather than a proper mudslinging. Rather than governing, seated representatives spend most of their time creating traps for their political adversaries in order to swing votes against them in the next election. It’s a system born of deceit and propaganda, and ultimately you have to admit that the information you’ve received is so unreliable that you may as well flip a coin.” Diani raised her hand, and Wicksap nodded to her. “My father says he voted against Hefstus two years ago because Elder Rodity said that Hefstus once dug a canal through a graveyard just so he could attach a waterwheel to his house to turn a fan by his bed.” “Which was demonstrably false!” said Wicksap with a smile. “Hefstus invited people for tours of his home to disprove the story, but Rodity repeated it loudly enough and with such conviction that he handily won the election. People voted against the man accused of desecrating a graveyard to afford himself a minor comfort, not the man who spread lies.” Diani’s hand shot up again. “But now they’re saying that Rodity filled the canal with rocks and that’s why Hefstus died of stale air over the winter.” “That’s exactly the method, my girl. Hefstus is both alive and running against Rodity this fall, and now he has to prove to the people that he’s not an impostor, a zombie, or any of a dozen undead creatures that Rodity could accuse him of being. That’s an odipublic in action!
Steve Thomas (Mid-Lich Crisis)
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) has so often been accused of being fascism’s progenitor that his case requires particular care. Intended for the Lutheran pastorate, the young Nietzsche lost his faith and became a professor of classical philology while still extraordinarily young. For his remaining good years (he suffered permanent mental breakdown at fifty, perhaps related to syphilis) he invested all his brilliance and rage in attacking complacent and conformist bourgeois piety, softness, and moralism in the name of a hard, pure independence of spirit. In a world where God was dead, Christianity weak, and Science false, only a spiritually free “superman” could fight free of convention and live according to his own authentic values. At first Nietzsche inspired mostly rebellious youth and shocked their parents. At the same time, his writing contained plenty of raw material for people who wanted to brood on the decline of modern society, the heroic effort of will needed to reverse it, and the nefarious influence of Jews. Nietzsche himself was scornful of patriotism and the actual anti-Semites he saw around him, and imagined his superman a “free spirit, the enemy of fetters, the non-worshipper, the dweller in forests.” His white-hot prose exerted a powerful intellectual and aesthetic influence across the political spectrum, from activist nationalists like Mussolini and Maurice Barrès to nonconformists like Stefan George and André Gide, to both Nazis and anti-Nazis, and to several later generations of French iconoclasts from Sartre to Foucault. “Nietzsche’s texts themselves provide a positive goldmine of varied possibilities.
Robert O. Paxton (The Anatomy of Fascism)