The National Sexual Violence Resource Center (NSVRC), a rape victims advocacy group, reports that out of 2,059 cases of alleged sexual assault reported in a recent year, 7.1% of the reports turned out to be false. That statistic seems to reinforce the claim made in recent weeks by supporters of Christine Blasey Armstrong that the majority of women who come forward with assault allegations are truthful.
But there’s another side to that statistic: 146 of the allegations were falsely made. That number may seem insignificant next to the 1,913 cases of assault that really happened, but it’s hardly insignificant for the males whose lives were turned upside down by falsified charges.
One of those males is a teen from the town of Zelienople, Pa., outside of Pittsburgh, who was accused by five “mean girls” who falsely accused him of raping them. (The term mean girls, popularized by a movie starring Lindsay Lohan, is a “tween” expression used to describe girls who exhibit anti-social behavior.)
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According to station WPXI, the boy, identified only as T.F., was accused of attacking one of the girls at a swimming pool where he worked, while another claims he assaulted her at her home. As a result of the accusations, T.F. was fired from his job at the pool and — according to a 27-page criminal complaint filed against his accusers — “forced to endure multiple court appearances, detention in a juvenile facility, detention at home, loss of his liberty, and other damages until several of the girls reluctantly admitted that their accusations were false.”
You read that last phrase right. The girls ultimately confessed that the whole thing was a hoax.
Now T.F.’s parents are suing the parents of the five girls, the school district, and Butler County District Attorney Richard Goldinger.
The suit claims that the couple’s son … was terrorized by “mean girls” who “…conspired in person and via electronic communication devices to falsely accuse T.F. of sexual assault on two occasions.”
[…]
In one example, the lawsuit said students last year placed masking tape with the word “predator” written on it on his back without his knowledge.
While T.F.’s case may be the exception rather than the rule, it highlights the danger of presuming that the accused is guilty, as the Democrats did in the case of Brett Kavanaugh.
