Why are Women’s Stories of Assault So Unbelievable?

If you’ve ever been disbelieved for telling the truth, you know how much it hurts.

When I told a guy I was dating I was writing a piece about the allegations against Woody Allen in the continued wake of the #metoo revelations, he sent me an article explaining how his partner Mia Farrow’s behaviour towards their children was questionable too. It was written by a woman, which made it seem more credible.

It didn’t change my thoughts on the situation, but it made me write a different article. This one.

The worrying trend in cases like this is that when women come forward in support of men, it lends credence to their already presumed innocence. As with Scarlett Johansson voicing her support of Allen, it makes it that much harder for other women to break rank from the sisterhood and tell a story that expresses an opposing view.

Okay, there aren’t scores of women coming forward with stories about Woody molesting them or even behaving inappropriately on set.

I concede that this is different from many of the cases of men in the industry but is this cause for celebration? He maybe didn’t keep it in his pants, but at least he kept it in the family. Well done, Woody?

Give them the benefit of the doubt

Let’s just say for the sake of argument, that Woody didn’t molest his young daughter. It does beg the question, why would she continue to claim that he did?

I am only interested in truth, not hearsay. But this can be hard to find when in so many of these cases it is one person’s word against another.

This article was originally precipitated by Larry David also openly supporting Woody Allen’s innocence.

I read the headline about this with horror and, ironically, an element of disbelief.

Larry David is entitled to have a subjective opinion on the matter of Woody Allen’s alleged assault on his daughter. Of course he is. Everyone is entitled to that. But unfortunately, there is a dearth of people coming out in support of his daughter and son who are saying that he did terrible things for which he should be held accountable.

The reason for this? Because he is a man in a position of power and renown.

I am not suggesting that ergo Allen must have abused Dylan, but the fact that in his eyes it was okay for him to fall in love with his partner’s adopted daughter, his junior by 35 years, is distasteful and disturbing in the very least. She was not technically a minor when their relationship began, but she was very young and vulnerable.

According to Allen’s own words:

“I was paternal. She responded to someone paternal. I liked her youth and energy. She deferred to me, and I was happy to give her an enormous amount of decision-making just as a gift and let her take charge of so many things.”

— Woody Allen, talking about his wife, Soon-Yi.

She was a malleable, naive 21-year-old. He has been “paternal” to her in quite a spectacular and uncommon fashion.

Perhaps if his movies were darker, violent studies of tortured souls, we could find his alleged misconduct more believable?

What goes on behind closed doors is always different from what plays out in the public eye. Our private lives can be polar opposites to the public persona seen by everyone outside our closest circle of family and friends.

We all put on masks to get on in life, to hide our fears and our foibles. Some of us are more convincing than others. It is no surprise that actors are preternaturally able to fool us all into thinking they are someone they are not. It’s their job.

Woody Allen tells stories for a living. They are usually thought-provoking, meandering studies of human interaction and psychology. They are often poignant, sweet, and funny. Perhaps if his movies were darker, violent studies of tortured souls, we could find his alleged misconduct more believable?

Is it because of our gender?

I recently read an article about a man convicted of multiple rapes after video evidence enabled a case to be brought against him.

The wording was so unequivocally appalled and offended on behalf of the victims, I was impressed. I was thinking maybe times have changed, finally, we are seeing rightful convictions and an end to victim-shaming. Then I realised that the article was about a man who had been assaulting other men. This is not a lesser offence and I stand in solidarity with those men who were assaulted. It is life-changing and hideous to be so victimized.

They had typically gone into Manchester city centre “wanting nothing more than a good night out with their friends”, said Judge Suzanne Goddard QC.

The same could be said of anyone who goes out for the evening and ends up being sexually assaulted. Most of Sinaga’s victims were so drunk that they went back to his apartment willingly.

Why do we not see the same sensitivity and unquestioning belief afforded to women? Instead, women are still questioned about their provocative clothing and behaviour. The assumption being they brought it on themselves.

My own assault in my first year at college went unreported.

I was still a teenager — coming from a small town I was pretty unaware of some of the nastier side of city life.

I was out enjoying myself with my flatmates. There was a guy one of my friends knew who offered to take me home because I’d had too much to drink.

We all in our naivety assumed he meant to our home, our apartment. That wasn’t what happened. The indignities of that night still haunt me. I blamed myself because I had too much to drink. The aftermath of that night just kept reinforcing my shame.

I contemplated suicide, I felt so disgusted with myself. I hadn’t consented, I had said no but he had made me tell him I wanted it. I didn’t want to endanger myself further so I didn’t fight him off. I never felt confident that my version of events would be believed so I kept quiet, and let it burn inside me instead. As so many victims of assault do.

“They’re just too nice to behave like that”

All too often when we hear reports of a man abusing and killing his partner or entire family, we read that neighbours thought he seemed a lovely man and that they find it so hard to believe he was capable of something like this. Great. Tell that to his dead wife and kids.

If you simply believe someone “isn’t the type” or “isn’t capable of” the horrific things that they are accused of, just ponder for a moment the numerous cases in recent years, where highly-respected and revered men were exposed as rapists and abusers. Not all of them were considered thoroughly upstanding and decent men but many were, prior to contrary evidence.

The brutality of disbelief

The recent Netflix series Unbelievable and the book of the same name details the account of one young woman who was accused of false reporting of a brutal rape.

The girl’s own foster mother told police she thought that she was lying, based on nothing but a hunch.

The way she was treated was appalling, her life was destroyed not just by being raped at knifepoint but by the bullying treatment of investigators in the aftermath of it, who during their rigorous interrogation process, forced her to retract her statement and labelled her a liar.

It was not until there were multiple subsequent rapes by the same man across several states that photographic and video evidence from his own cameras not only proved her innocent of false reporting but showed that she had been telling the truth all along and a great injustice had been done.

All those women assaulted, all that heartache caused because nobody believed her.

The myth of false reports

The facts are that false reporting of rape or sexual assault is extremely rare. It is not something that any woman would consider doing for fun.

What is also infrequently talked about is that the rates for false allegations of sexual violence are no higher than those reported in other categories of crime. Even so, it’s fair to say that victims of other crimes (such as theft or burglary) are not so routinely treated with suspicion as are the victims of sexual violence.

— Lisa Lazard, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, Open University

Assault is all too prevalent

The reality is that a high percentage of women will be victims of sexual assault, often by men that they know rather than a stranger, but this is no less victimizing or terrifying.

There is an epidemic of disrespect of women in our society, so pervasive that we can allow a known misogynist and suspected rapist to be elected to lead one of our global superpowers. No matter how far we think we have come, this is where we are.

Where we go from here is up to us, as a collective of men and women deciding if the future we want is one of acceptance of the undercurrent of abuse, derision, and contempt towards women, as an inferior and subservient sub gender, whose stories are too often deemed unbelievable.

Or perhaps to accept the horrible truth that women are being assaulted on a scale of such magnitude that it’s time we actually sat up and took notice.