On November 24, 2010, WABC/Good Morning America weather forecaster Heidi Jones, 37, made a false police report when she claimed that two months earlier, a Hispanic man in his 30s or 40s grabbed her from behind in Central Park while she was jogging, then dragged her into a wooded area, and attempted to rape her. The man bolted when two tourists saw the incident, she claimed. Jones also reported that the same man showed up near her Manhattan apartment almost two months later to threaten her. He allegedly told her: “I know you went to the police.”
Police treated the claim very seriously but eventually grew skeptical, and Jones finally admitted she made it up. “I made it up for attention,” she admitted. “I have so much stress at work, with my personal life and with my family.”
The Jones case would be a garden variety false rape claim if it weren’t for the widespread attention it has attracted due to the false accuser’s minor celebrity. But the case does provide several teaching moments, and its lessons are important to anyone who cares about the men and boys falsely accused of rape.
LESSON ONE: Every high profile false rape claim will be used as an occasion to insist that false rape claims are rare.
In high profile false rape case after high profile false rape case after high profile false rape case, you can always find some progressive writer who will insist: “__________ __________ [fill in name] is just further perpetuating the myth that women ‘cry rape’ all the time . . . .”
This past week, that very thing was said about Heidi Jones. See here: http://www.thefrisky.com/post/246-why-weather-woman-heidi-jones-lied-about-sexual-assault/
When you have to keep insisting that one incident after the next only serves to “perpetuate a myth,” doesn’t it becomes obvious that the “myth” isn’t a myth after all?
LESSON TWO: Women lie about rape for any or no reason.
One of the frequent arguments posited to “prove” that false rape claims are a “myth” is the insistence that women wouldn’t lie about rape and subject themselves to a “second rape” of the law enforcement system. When the Jones story first broke, progressive writers were beside themselves trying to “explain” the falsehood.
“I’m going to go out on a limb and say that perhaps there’s something else she really wanted to tell the world through this blatant cry for help,” one writer theorized. “Maybe she’s severely depressed. Maybe there’s someone at work who has been harassing her. Maybe she really was raped by someone she knows and is truly scared to press charges. Maybe she’s trying to work out some sort of sexual assault from her past. Whatever she’s covering up, it has to be big, right?” http://www.meonews.com/heidi-jones-complete-rape-story-meo-news
Well, no, it doesn’t have to be “big.” And it wasn’t. Jones lied for attention, one of the common motivations of false rape accusers cited by experts in the field. In one landmark report, Dr. Eugene Kanin identified “Attention/Sympathy-Getting Device” as one of the three most common reasons for false rape claims in a study he had undertaken. Dr. Kanin wrote: “Although this device seems to be the most extravagant use for which a false rape charge is made, it is also the most socially harmless in that no one was identified as the rapist. Approximately 18% ( n = 8 ) of the false charges clearly served this function. The entire verbalization of the charge is, by and large, a fabrication without base.”
Women, like men, lie about everything under the sun but, mirabile dictu, according to progressive writers, the subject of rape acts as a truth serum, a magic elixir that forces anyone not possessing a Y-Chromosome to speak incontrovertible truth. When it comes to rape, one gender is incapable of telling a lie while the other is incapable of telling anything but lies. (Except, of course, when the woman recants her rape claim: in that instance, she automatically reverts to being a liar, double-X chromosome be damned.)
Cases from the not-distant past prove that women will lie about rape for any or no reason at all. We write about it all the time at False Rape Society — http://falserapesociety.blogspot.com/. By way of example only, a woman tried to destroy the life of a man she didn’t know with a rape lie because he wouldn’t give her a beer. A maid accused her employer of rape because she didn’t like her workload. A girl accused a man of rape for throwing a flower at her. A woman falsely accused her lover of rape because he had the bad manners to go speak with a roommate after having sex instead of staying with her. One woman told a rape lie to avoid trouble for being late for work. Another caused three men to be interrogated for rapes they didn’t commit, all because she wanted a day off from work. Another had her boyfriend arrested for rape because he took too long to buy cigarettes. Several women didn’t want to pay cab fares, so they accused innocent cab drivers — working class nobodys — of rape. Another woman sent a man to prison for five years because she was bored. An 18-year-year-old boy was hauled out of class, arrested, and jailed for a month on a random false rape claim by a girl he’d never met. And I could go on and on and on, but you get the point.
LESSON THREE: The false rape accuser can be the girl next door.
False rape accusers typically don’t wear a sign that identifies them as lunatics to be avoided at all costs. They are able to tell plausible lies precisely because they appear to be normal women. As in this case, they often are attractive, respectable, and well paid. It is impossible to stereotype a false rape accuser because it is impossible to know what is going on in another person’s head, especially someone you don’t know well.
LESSON FOUR: To enhance the plausibility of the lie, women often identify a “scary” male as perpetrator.
False rape claims are not divorced from the culture in which they are made. To enhance the plausibility of the lie and to jack up its scariness factor, many false rape accusers tap into common stereotypes and widely shared prejudices by identifying imaginary minority males as the perpetrator, especially blacks and Hispanics.
Naming a black or Hispanic male as the supposed perpetrator is offensive even to progressive writers. For example: “. . . don’t even get me started on the whiff of racism where she falsely claimed a Hispanic dude attacked her.” http://www.thefrisky.com/post/246-why-weather-woman-heidi-jones-lied-about-sexual-assault/.
Note that it isn’t “the whiff” of misandry that bothers progressive writers. It’s OK that Ms. Jones tapped into the vilest stereotype of males-as-rapists. The offensive aspect is that Ms. Jones named a minority male.
