Do We Due Process? Or Don't We?

When I was in high school (Judge Kavanaugh would have been in my graduating class), I remember being educated in my health class about what to do in the case of rape.  A local woman police officer came to our class and talked to us about what was necessary in law enforcement in order to bring a successful case against a rapist. 

 It was shocking; shocking that we had to go to the hospital first, that this thing called a "rape kit" with semen samples and vaginal fluids would be collected, that pictures would be taken, immediately, in order to see bruises in the vaginal area before they disappear.  I remember thinking that it would be like being raped all over again.  This is what women do every day in our country; they "suck it up," get rape kits and go through unadulterated hell, again, in order to bring their rapist to justice. 

 I remember thinking that it was monumentally unfair that a woman, who had just been violated, would have to be violated all over again in order to put her attacker behind bars. This is one of the reasons that women are different, why they deserve support, why I belong to an organization that supports them, because women have an extra burden in our society and in our system of justice, a burden that men do not have.   In order to bring a rapist to justice, women have to endure hell, again. 

Due process is one of those foundational concepts in a society that depends on the rule of law. Should we put it aside for women who come forward many, many years later? Should we give the benefit of doubt to the accuser? The burden is an awesome one. And what if the woman has an agenda? Are we to believe that women cannot lie?  

_;The statistics cited for false accusations are ambiguous and indeterminate.  For instance, most sources cite that as much as 10% of accusations of rape are proven false and that of those, a very tiny percentage result in jail time for the accused.  It's good that a tiny percentage are falsely imprisoned, but imprisonment is not the only result that can ruin the accused.  Just the accusation made by a woman who has no record of suspicious behavior is enough to result in lost job opportunities, broken marriages and the types of things that happen in cases where one's reputation is destroyed.  The statistic that may be more interesting is the number of accusers who spend time in jail for falsely accusing someone which I am guessing is roughly equivalent to the number of those who spend time in jail after being falsely accused. Neither of these numbers help us in our search for truth and justice.  Simply citing a statistic and claiming that 9 out of 10 women are telling the truth and that makes false accusation OK is like saying that 9 out of 10 murderers are lying about not killing someone, so the person who says they didn't kill someone is a murderer.  A low percentage chance of a false accusation is not a good defense of the accusers' believability.  That's 1 out of 10, and that's enough for me to look for corroborating evidence.  I no more want to convict an innocent person of murder than I want to convict an innocent man of rape. Percentage chances are lousy determinative factors; they are what they are: percentage chances, not evidentiary proof.

There are women on social media right this minute saying that they don't care, that men deserve to lose their jobs, their families, and that those who are prosecuted unjustly should just "get over it."  Statements that separate the men in our lives from us as if it is always someone else's man who will be accused are unrealistic and reckless.  Most women don't exist separately from the men in their lives: their fathers, brothers, husbands, and sons. We love them, we care for them, and we receive love and support from them.  So, making statements that "men deserve it," or that we don't "care" what happens to them are idiotic and sexist, in the worst possible way.

Women every day, in business and in the criminal justice system depend on due process in their own lives.  If we throw due process under the bus, we will ;become a dictatorial country where, I can assure my readers, women are not treated well.  Ask women in Venezuela or Estonia where they would rather reside, in a country where the rule of law is respected or a country where you can be accused and convicted in the same sentence?  

After listening to an emotionally devastated Judge Kavanaugh list the many women who testified on his behalf, I believe that those who come forward saying things like, "I believe Dr. Ford," are not being intellectually honest.  Judge Kavanaugh deserves to have our Senators consider the preponderance of the evidence.  Those who follow the Chuck Schumer playbook will exclaim that they don't believe a Judge who has kept a calendar from 36 years ago and has submitted a letter from 65 women through all walks of his life who have testified to his non-violent nature.  Those people are not weighing the evidence without bias.  They are letting the Democrat playbook determine their vote.  

Dr. Ford has offered no supporting evidence in the form of corroborating testimony or written journals.  The people she claims were near or in the room have submitted written testimony that they were not there and the event did not take place.  The Democrats are demanding an FBI investigation, of course. What, exactly, is the FBI going to investigate?  They would take statements from Judge Kavanaugh (and would likely give him a high degree of credibility due to his long record of service free from accusation), and they would take statements from Ms. Ford.  The FBI would not take the lie detector testimony into consideration.  Mr. Judge has already submitted his testimony.  The FBI would take the testimony, fill out the 302 forms and send them back up to the committee.  If the Democrats honestly cared about the truth, they would have insisted on investigating these claims when they received Dr. Ford's letter many months ago.  It could have been done in closed session, privately, saving Dr. Ford from unpleasant confrontations.  But I think the Democrats were looking for political theater and they have gotten it, in spades.

The Judiciary Committee is performing the very same "investigation" that the FBI would perform and there is no conclusion because they cannot come to one based on Dr. Ford's testimony.  The FBI, as Joe Biden has famously declared, does not "make conclusions," so Sen. Durbin's theatrics as he asks Mr. Kavanaugh to turn to his left and ask a lawyer there to begin an FBI investigation is just that, theatrics. Theatrics in the face of emotional testimony on both sides where lives are being changed are despicable, but that is  typical for Senator Durbin who faithfully carries the party line and has not let an original thought cross his mind in many years.  

If we are going to destroy people's lives with no evidence, we are a country that will believe anything.  Will we no longer require that women provide rape kits as supporting evidence, or file police reports, or document the incident in a journal or tell their best friend, no matter the difficulty?  If we no longer require evidence, we set ourselves up for the worst kind of division.  False accusers will be able to level charges against your father, my brother, your son, and my dad without having to do the hard work required to make sure that evidence is collected and the accused gets his day in court.

The hard work of collecting evidence may not be popular with the women who write emotional stories about long-ago assaults, but it is vital to those who are serious about convicting violent offenders.  Due process is necessary and needed in a world where women must be taken seriously when they provide painful testimony, go through the process required to provide rape kits to a judge or jury, and show incredible bravery in testifying against someone who has harmed them physically.  We NEED due process and I, for one, support the rule of law.  

Are we to throw out due process because women are psychologically damaged and because they are damaged, they don't report?  This kind of accusation, if it is taken seriously by our political bodies, creates division between those in our society who believe in the rule of law and those who believe that there need be no evidence to prove assault, not to mention the division it will create between men and women!  Women have asked to be treated as equals in our society, but now we are asking for something more, to be believed no matter the situation.  We are asking for a special status, and for what?  For politics?  I don't believe that it gives our gender an advantage to request special status.  It might bring some women immediate gratification as men are trotted off to jail, but in the end, it will harm us by dividing us.

We can now expect, on both sides of the isle, to see a parade of accusers come forward with baseless accusations from 36 years ago in order to have their political "way" with the confirmation of judges.  Our courts should not be subject to this drama. I've heard women I respect say that coming forward 36 years later is "not political" and that claim is not based in reality.  Of course it's political: it's part of how we exist in our society and how we live within a society that is based on the rule of law.  

I will support women who do the hard work of collecting evidence and testifying under terrible pressure, but I will not support women who come forward 36 years after a drunken house party that never told anyone, never reported it to the police and never did the hard work. Testimony like Dr. Ford's diminishes the efforts of women who are, as we speak, doing the hard work to make the case against their attackers in our nation of laws.