A little over a year ago, Alyssa Milano tweeted out a call for all survivors of sexual assault to say #MeToo—a phrase coined by activist Tarana Burke in 2006. The results were powerful, with thousands of women using the hashtag to talk about their own experiences with sexual violence and harassment.
Since the start of this #MeToo movement, calls to local and national sexual assault hotlines have increased—as have concerns about how female survivors of abuse are often times not believed. These concerns have been magnified in the wake of Christine Blasey Ford’s nationally televised testimony in the confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.
“Anytime there is a case or social justice movement that focuses on sexual assault, we know that it has a varied impact on survivors,” says Jamie Temple, the coordinator of survivor services at the University Health Services at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Many women, she notes, prefer to use confidential services, as opposed to making “a formalized report, either to the University or to law enforcement.”
During Ford’s testimony in late September, the call frequency to the National Sexual Assault hotline increased by 201 percent. After Arizona Senator Jeff Flake was confronted by survivors’ stories on an elevator, he requested a FBI investigation into Ford’s claims. Hearing their stories in person made it harder for him to deny the believability of Dr. Ford’s case.
During Kavanaugh’s confirmation process, conservatives and Republicans tried to discredit the survivors’ accounts. Donald Trump Jr. shared a photo on Twitter that equated Ford’s accusations of attempted rape to a young boy’s crayon-penned proposal to be his “girlfriend” being denied. Ari Fleischer, a Bush-era press secretary, suggested that Kavanaugh’s assault shouldn’t matter because it allegedly occurred in high school, asking, “Should that deny us chances later in life?” And Senate Judiciary Committee member Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, went into the hearings with his mind made up that Ford wasn’t telling the truth.
Of the roughly 30 percent of sexual assaults that are reported, only 2 to 10 percent of them are false accusations.
Did these men have reason (aside from their political agenda) to be in such disbelief? The facts show that one in every six women will experience sexual assault at least once in her lifetime. (The numbers are even higher for people of color and members of the LGBTQ community.) Of the roughly 30 percent of assaults that are reported, only 2 to 10 percent of them are false accusations.
This causes survivors to be even more reluctant to come forward and risk not being believed. Only a percentage of a fraction of sexual assailants are ever incarcerated, and it’s partly because women won’t come forward when they see others not being taken seriously.
And the impact of not believing survivors is enormous: Ford’s alleged assailant now sits on the Supreme Court of the United States.
It’s true that those accused of crimes in this country are entitled to due process and the presumption of innocence until proven guilty. But an innate disbelief in survivors who report creates its own set of problems.
On college campuses, where women are three times more likely to experience sexual violence, reporting incidents is especially difficult. Reporting processes are often unclear, with multiple routes to take.
According to Cecelia Klingele, a University of Wisconsin-Madison law professor, sexual violence reports that are only given to university officials—and not law enforcement—can only lead to suspensions and expulsions. And that’s only for the few cases that get looked into; in 2017, the UW-Madison investigated just eleven allegations of sexual assault out of 318 reported.
Another problem is that fraternities, if privately operated, are often able to keep functioning off campus, even if their charters are revoked for sexual violence. That’s what happened with the UW-Madison’s Alpha Epsilon Pi, which was terminated for violations of underage drinking and sexual harassment.
Klingele calls for matching the robustness of each investigation with the severity of the offense.
“Homicides get researched to death,” she says. “Because being a murderer is bad, and we want both justice for our victim and we want to make sure that we’re right in imposing that stigma on offenders.”
But sexual assaults are a different story. Here, the amount of resources devoted to investigations is smaller, and the rate of prosecutions and convictions is less, creating unequal outcomes.
“There’s this big divide between the penalties of those who end up convicted, and the lack of any kind of accountability structure for people who don’t make it that far,” Klingele explains.
We need to address the myth that sexual assault claims are fabricated—and one way to do that is to create a national standard for what’s considered a false accusation.
Another positive step could be to address the myth that many sexual assault claims are fabricated—and one way to do that is to create a national standard for what’s considered a false accusation.
According to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, there is no universal definition of a false report that all law enforcement are required to use. This means law enforcement personnel can deem an accusation “false” on basis of things like delayed reporting or vague memory of the incident.
Ford’s accusation against Kavanaugh was never proven false. But in giving him the thumbs up, Senators did say they thought she was lying. It’s damaging to the system to equate an inconclusive accusation with a false one.
But perhaps the step that will most move us in the right direction is continuing to share stories. When we lend believability to just one survivor, it might cause a ripple effect that gives believability to the next one, and every one to follow.