I was reading the book 'Self Control, It's Kingship and Majesty' by William George Jordan and I came across a chapter called The Crimes of the Tongue. For me, it was a powerful insight into why false rape accusations and other damaging lies aimed at innocent men are considered something not to be ignored or taken lightly. I'll post a few excerpts here.

"The Second most deadly instrument of destruction is the dynamite gun, the first is the human tongue. The gun merely kills bodies; the tongue kills reputations and, ofttimes, ruins characters. Each gun works alone; each loaded tongue has a hundred accomplices. The havoc of the gun is visible at once. The full evil of the tongue lives through all the years; even the eye of the Omniscience might grow tired in tracing it to its finality."

"At the hands of thief or murderer few of us suffer, even indirectly. But from the careless tongue of friend, the cruel tongue of enemy, who is free?"

"Each newspaper is not one tongue, but a thousand or a million tongues, telling the same foul story to as many pairs of listening ears. The vultures of sensationalism scent the carcass of immorality afar off. From the uttermost parts of the earth they collect the sin, disgrace and folly of humanity, and show them bare to the world. They do not even require facts, for morbid memories and fertile imaginations make even the worst of the world's happenings seem tame when compared with their monstrosities of invention. These stories, and the discussions they excite, develop in the readers a cheap, shrewd power of distortion of the acts of all around them."