Do Not Accuse Anyone Falsely Quotes

Rape culture manifests in a myriad ways…but its most devilish trick is to make the average, noncriminal person identify with the person accused, instead of the person reporting the crime. Rape culture encourages us to scrutinize victims’ stories for any evidence that they brought the violence onto themselves – and always to imagine ourselves in the terrifying role of Good Man, Falsely Accused, before we ‘rush to judgment’. We're not meant to picture ourselves in the role of drunk teenager at her first college party, thinking 'Wow, he seems to think I'm pretty!' Or the woman who accepts a ride with a 'nice guy,' who's generously offered to see her safely home from the bar. Or the girl who's passed out in a room upstairs, while the party rages on below, so chaotic that her friends don't even notice she's gone. When it comes to rape, if we're expected to put ourselves in anyone else's shoes at all, it's the accused rapist's. The questions that inevitably come along with 'What was she wearing?' and 'How much did she have to drink?' are, 'What if there was no rape at all? What if she's lying? What happens to this poor slob she's accusing? What if he goes to prison for a crime he didn't commit?

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.

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.

foot soldiers with him, so he probably wasn’t bringing down a scale. When a scale came down the mountain, a captain would come himself and pick someone personally to bestow a “gift” in a display of yet another perverse power the army had over their lives. Caleb had seen the people around him throw themselves at the captains, any captains, to try to win their favor in case they found themselves in possession of a scale. He’d seen mothers send their daughters to flirt with captains; he’d seen children scrubbing boots; he’d seen old men with gnarled knuckles polishing armor. Caleb didn’t do that. He wasn’t clinging to his pride, no matter how many people accused him of holding himself higher than the rest of them. He didn’t believe in false hope; he’d seen the pattern too many times to think it made a difference. The captains would take all that adulation and desperation and use it all up, and then they’d choose whoever they wanted anyway. A few times, a favorite lover would win a scale, but the price wasn’t worth the reward. Besides, this time, the captain was clearly there looking for workers, not favors. He directed his men through the crowd, picking out a few kids (especially girls) for “kitchen staff,” according to the soldiers, though the worried looks on the faces of every mother in the camp had Caleb wondering which kitchen the girls would tend—the army’s or the dragons’. Caleb could see that the soldiers were looking for more than maids as they picked through the crowd, scrutinizing anyone who looked remotely able-bodied—though the refugees obviously offered slim pickings. Years

This doesn’t make any sense. I’ve been working here for six years, and I’ve never, ever been accused of doing anything wrong. I’ve trained most of the other techs, and they respect me. I’m just not the type of person who would do something like that. Why would I risk my job for some damn oxycodone?” Jan wants to persuade you that you’re barking up the wrong tree, and her game plan is to accomplish that by painting herself with a halo. Everything she said was either true—she did indeed train most of the other techs, and they do indeed respect her—or irrefutable—whether or not she’s the type of person who would do something like that is yet to be determined. Those convincing statements are powerful because they’re so, well, convincing. You can even imagine yourself saying something like that if you were falsely accused of the theft. The difference is that in all likelihood, while you might find yourself making one of these statements during the exchange, your focus would be on making the point that you didn’t do it, rather than on coming up with a raft of convincing statements as a means of painting that halo. So when you hear those statements from Jan, you need to recognize them for what they are, and sap their power by neutralizing them. The way to do that is to simply agree with them: “Jan, listen, you’re exactly right—everyone in the store knows how hard you work. I’m always hearing the other techs say how helpful you are, and you’ve certainly been very helpful to me over the years.”   USING AGREEMENT TO NEUTRALIZE CONVINCING STATEMENTS •    By agreeing with Jan, you’ve conveyed that you have, without question,

Most people think because they are sexy and beautiful they can get away with murder. They can charm or seduce their way out of any situation. They can get whatever they want or make anyone do whatever they want, when their plans fail to use their bodies or looks to exploit and take advantage of others. They start sobbing and act like victims. They start fabricating the truth about what happened. They start lying and exaggerating things. They deflect accountability. Most perpetrators pretend to be victims when their plans or missions fail.