When Innocent Men Are Accused

We must believe women, but also the facts

I agree with the motto “Believe Women” because we must change the climate of shame and distrust in which two out of three cases of sexual assault go unreported; because the rape culture we live in ruthlessly exposes girls and women to harassment on the street, which limits their ability to move freely in public; and because in the vast majority of reported cases of sexual violence, women are telling the truth.

But not all of them.

I care about this issue because my adult son, who has a major mental illness, has been accused of sexual assault. But here’s the thing. His accuser is his nurse, a woman who’s been coming to his house every week for months to count his pills and make sure he’s taking his medication. And guess what else she’s been doing at his house?

He didn’t say anything about their relationship at first, when he called me from jail, because he was trying to protect his “secret girlfriend” and her job. It’s an enormous violation of ethics for a nurse to have sex with her mental patient, and both of them knew they should keep it under wraps. But lest you think he’s delusional (a known symptom of his illness)— or that I am — let me add that he has evidence of the sexual nature of their relationship: naked pictures sent from her phone to his.

That’s what I heard the prosecutor say at his arraignment, which was the first clear understanding I or my son got about what exactly he was being accused of

So we know they had a relationship, of sorts. But that doesn’t excuse an assault. In fact, 90 percent of sexual assaults on women are committed by an intimate partner or an acquaintance. So did my son assault his nurse? As far as I can tell, no. What I think happened is that he bought her lingerie and some sexual paraphernalia, and had them laid out when she arrived. He asked her to wear them. She said no. Then she “got away” when he left the room.

That’s what I heard the prosecutor say at his arraignment, which was the first clear understanding I or my son got about what exactly he was being accused of. Neither he nor I were allowed to look at the complaint the nurse made, nor at the report the police made when they came to his house and arrested him.

And about that arrest… According to my son’s report, police showed up to his house and said the nurse had asked them to do a wellness check because she was worried about him. She thought maybe he had gotten a hold of some bad street drugs. My son invited the police into his apartment, invited them to search it for drugs, and blithely answered all their leading questions. The next thing he knew, they were carting him off to jail. (Note to son: do not invite police into your apartment. Do not answer their questions without a lawyer present.)

So why would the nurse make a complaint about our son if he did nothing wrong? My guess is that he was manic, and he frightened her. I know he was maniacal that week because he called me twice, and I gave him that feedback. He also got into an argument with his brother. When I asked him later what had tipped him over the edge, he said he’d gone two nights without sleeping. For him — that will do it. But he had managed to regain his balance by the following week, until this shitshow started.

Here are the consequences he’s suffered so far:

• Spent a week in jail
• Was denied his meds for the week he was in jail, despite asking for them daily
• Became destabilized due to the trauma of being arrested, jailed, accused of something unclear by his supposed secret girlfriend, and being denied his meds
• Spent $1,015 to bail out of jail in order to go home and take his meds
• Lost a $150 pair of shoes (his only pair), or more accurately, the jail did, releasing him with just one
• Lost his phone, or more accurately, the jail kept it for evidence upon his release, cutting him off from family and needed supports
• Got his services cancelled, including his monthly meeting with his psychiatrist, three times weekly meeting with his case worker, as well as his once weekly meeting with his nurse
• Got his participation in the court’s mental health diversion program revoked (which is another story) until this issue is resolved
• Is anxious and depressed about what will happen next since horrible sounding charges are hanging over his head
• Has been assigned a public defender who is impossible to reach to ask questions or get reassurance; mostly, we just chase him down the courthouse hall
• Got court dates far in the future, guaranteeing this nightmare will go on for a long time, after waiving his right to a speedy trial on the last-second advice from his ghostly lawyer, who literally advises him during his hearing, not before

This has happened to my son before

Believe it or not, this is the second time my son has been accused of sexual assault in a mental health setting. The first time, he was in a locked psychiatric facility when I got a call from a nurse or administrator there. She told me my son was having sex with a patient who was practically in a coma and unable to consent. She threatened to press charges and have him taken straight from the hospital to jail.

I was horrified and upset and didn’t know what to think or do. I don’t believe my son is the kind of man to force himself on anyone. But here was a person in authority telling me that he was.

I would have believed her and spent the rest of my life grieving over the depravity of my crazy son if my daughter hadn’t been visiting him at the facility that very night. She told me of another patient who introduced herself as his girlfriend and wouldn’t leave them alone. My daughter had taken her brother into a secluded conference room for privacy, but this other patient kept interrupting them, waving at the window and making faces, coming into the room and chattering away, until my daughter had to ask the staff to intervene so she could spend the visiting hour with her brother.

This was the woman the nurse had described to me as “practically in a coma.” My daughter wrote them a sternly worded letter and the matter was dropped.

But what made the nurse think my son was assaulting this other patient in the first place? The best I can figure is that it had more to do with the nurse’s own personal history than what was going on in the ward. She found out that two patients were having sex and assumed the man must be instigating it.

But according to my son, the other patient came into his room at night wanting sexual action — not the other way around — and he did his best to accommodate her, more out of comaraderie than lust.

My son is a handsome, intelligent, and charismatic young man, and for all these reasons, he isn’t perceived as vulnerable. But he was just as vulnerable as all the other patients in that hospital, and more vulnerable than the nurse who came to his home every week to count his pills. Yet the people who are supposed to be helping and protecting him are harming and criminalizing him instead.

And even before the incident described above, when my son was still in a relationship with his baby mama, a woman he’d met in that very same psychiatric facility when she came up to him and asked if he would have sex with her to save her life (a story she related to me in a rare moment of coherent calm), I witnessed how she would rain trouble upon them and he would get the blame.

The two of them were homeless for awhile. And sometimes he’d walk quickly down the street with her trailing about 10 feet behind him, screaming and crying and shouting the most obscene words that you’ve ever heard at his back. Then the police would show up and arrest my son for disturbing the peace. God’s truth.

Asking for a bit of grace

So why am I telling you this? Mostly, I suppose, it’s to relieve my troubled mind. But also, to say that we shouldn’t jump to conclusions — to ask for a bit of grace. Because the crazy man isn’t always wrong. The person in authority isn’t always right. And sometimes it’s best to withhold judgement.

Strike that. I meant to say all the time.

Besides writing about women and mental illness and voodoo and politics and books and movies on Medium, I’ve published two novels here: Thirsty Work and Count All This. Check them out! And if you’re a writer with a passion for equality, submit to Fourth Wave.