There have been several famous men who, when a tidal wave of sexual abuse charges gets leveled against them, essentially respond by saying “I am a prominent figure and all of these women are just looking at a shot of fame/money by making up stories against me”, many of them who then rapidly capitulate as more evidence comes out and admit that all the stories were true.
It’s happened to Bill Cosby, Donald Trump, several Silicon Valley VCs, a fictionalized food celebrity on Masters of None and, most recently, Seattle Mayor Ed Murray as well as I’m sure many others.
There’s been instances before of when a single woman accuses a man of rape and the claim is later proven to be a fabrication on the part of the woman. However, I’m not aware of any previous case in which multiple women (or men as in the case of Murray) come forward in which it was later shown the women were doing it for the fame/money. It seems to me that when women come forward detailing a system of abuse that spans decades, the overwhelming preponderance of evidence indicates that the events actually happened.
Like I said, we already know of many instances where a single woman falsely accuses a man of sexual abuse. I’m asking specifically about a case where one woman first makes the accusation and then multiple other women come forward with stories, often spanning decades with suspiciously similar patterns. And that, regardless of whether the original claim was true or not, it was revealed that the subsequent women came forward because they made up something to gain fame/money.
(my emphasis)
Is this actually the typical pattern? I would have expected it to be that investigators get solid evidence on some subset of the cases, enough to enforce a very stiff penalty on the accused, and the accused then admits that those specific stories were true, while leaving all of the rest unresolved.
And Bill Clinton. Which I mention not just to point out how odd it is he was omitted, but what I think it points to an underlying reality.
Why would people neutral toward the celebrity (let’s group them all as being under that umbrella) to start with, care if one of several accusations was made up? Except if that implied all the stories were made up. Knowing from a ‘God’s eye’ view that some of the stories were not made up, it would lower the neutral person’s view of the celebrity, and the neutral person is still likely to think that if the ‘shown to be made up’ case doesn’t suggest collusion with the other accusers.
The people positive about the celebrity no matter what, or at least unwilling to let ‘the other side win’ will think or refrain from thinking as necessary to not change their view. This is where Bill Clinton comes in, it tends in his case to come out as ‘but that was consensual!’ by having brain lock on the Lewinsky and Flowers situations rather than three other women who said they were sexually harassed to forcibly raped by Bill Clinton. More likely the never say die pro-celebrity people accept the basic truth of the allegations in some part of their minds, but believe other aspects (‘don’t let the other side win’ is often paramount) outweigh it.
People negative about the celebrity, and/or which ‘side’ he’s on, naturally dismiss the possibility any of the stories are made up.
On basic logic if single women have been shown to have made up accusations as single victims, it stands to reason some of the women making claims in multiple independent victim cases were making it up, perhaps even more likely given the bandwagon effect. The OP wasn’t really clear about that, ‘the women’. But cases here all ‘the women’ were ‘later shown’ (to every reasonable person’s satisfaction) to have made it up, I think we’d all already know it if there’d ever been a case like that against any reasonably famous person.
The problem is that “she was just making it all up” is usually even more difficult to prove than “he really did it”. The majority of cases won’t reach either conclusion, just “he said, she said, and we don’t know”. So it would be very rare for someone to have multiple accusers, and then for all of the accusers to be proven to have made it up.
Celebrities have been able to prove some paternity claims were false. Not quite the same thing as the OP is asking about but there are plenty of circumstances where people will make false claims for personal gain. There were false claims following 9/11, plenty of insurance fraud following natural disasters, not to mention plenty of fraud based on events that never happened or were choreographed. Unfortunately given enough serial sexual misconduct by celebrities as well as the rich and powerful if it hasn’t happened yet it probably will some day.
Were the paternity suits cases of multiple women all claiming paternity and being proven false?
I think there’s a different etiology between single accusations of sexual abuse and multiple ones coming out at once. Basically, I think “she’s doing it for the fame/money” is the “my phone got hacked and someone else tweeted out pictures of my dick” of excuses. It’s not at all consistent with what we know about human psychology, the risk/reward of being a woman accusing a man of sexual assault and how these cases evolve. And that using that as an excuse is basically a sure sign that someone is actually guilty. I’d love to see examples that disprove this hypothesis though.
I agree with Salmanese about different etiologies. In the single case thing, the false complainant can almost always demonstrate opportunity. She always has some sort of connection with the accused to get the story off the ground in the first place. Put another way, she chooses from within her circle.
But bandwagoning on a celebrity is much harder. A false complainant would have to be very lucky to have a plausible connection with the celebrity to demonstrate basic opportunity.
I’m not sure why. In cases of false accusation, the motive often is rather futile. In the example given in a link in this thread, it was gaining the affection of some other guy the girl was interested in. She apparently had no qualm putting in the balance the lives of three other men if her accusations had stuck (and the accusations had a deep impact on them, since they had to renounce to their career path, despite not being even tried), and her own future if it was shown she had lied. The other examples I’ve read/heard about had equally petty motivations : 30 euros not reimbursed, a domestic dispute, hiding an affair, deflecting blame to someone else, being late for work, not having done one’s homework (seriously).
People do a lot of things, including bad things for money and fame. Women make false accusations for extremely minor reasons. I’m not sure why you would assume they wouldn’t for fame and money.
A celebrity will have met a lot of people in his life. In fact I assume that you and me too could have had the opportunity to rape thousands of women during our lives, despite not being celebrities.
Can’t say, I’d have to research it. I’m thinking there were multiple paternity suits involving Elvis and others, but I don’t know how they were resolved. And it’s not really the same thing you talk about, Elvis may not have encountered any unwilling women.
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I think there’s a different etiology between single accusations of sexual abuse and multiple ones coming out at once. Basically, I think “she’s doing it for the fame/money” is the “my phone got hacked and someone else tweeted out pictures of my dick” of excuses. It’s not at all consistent with what we know about human psychology, the risk/reward of being a woman accusing a man of sexual assault and how these cases evolve. And that using that as an excuse is basically a sure sign that someone is actually guilty. I’d love to see examples that disprove this hypothesis though.
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I agree with what you are saying, it’s the excuse of a guilty person. When people are falsely accused of something their first reaction is a flat out denial, not some story of a motivation behind the accusation. I think that applies across the board. The circumstance you are looking for may not exist, or would be exceedingly rare if they do.
However, I will point out the child-molestation hysteria of the 1980s as an example of how human behavior defies logic and consistency. Once something seems real to people, no matter how far-fetched, people will double down on the incredible. Sometimes the more far-fetched the notion the more people will accept it in defiance of common sense.
Indeed, the definition of a celebrity, in some sense, is that they’re someone who meets lots of people. You don’t need very much of a connection at all to make an accusation plausible: Say, for instance, that the celebrity was shooting a movie in your city, and you ran into him at a bar, and he slipped something into your drink. At the very least, anyone worthy of being called a celebrity will have spent plenty of time in Los Angeles and New York, so that’s already a pool of tens of millions of potential partners (and hence potential accusers). How many women out of that population would be willing to falsely accuse a celebrity of something? I dunno.
Not celebrity, but have you forgotten the McMartin case. Where there were multiple accusations; all of which were demonstrably bullshit. Just because there are multiple claims does not make them false.
In fact getting away from people wishing to “connect with you”, you are trying to throw them off. I recall one anonymous celeb who was quoted in a magazine recalling that women would hit on him and make propositions so blatantly, sometimes his wife was standing right there.
Of course, the flip side of this is that if you get yeses so easily and also lots of invites, you might not realize or be inclined to care when you get a “No”.
The trouble with any such allegations is that - especially much after the fact - they are essentially he-said-she-said unless like Crosby, the man is stupid enough to admit the substance of the case.
The cases listed are of a single woman making an accusation of rape or gang rape that turns out to be false. Although, Kahn’s is different. The case was dropped only because the (alleged) victim decided to get some money from the ordeal by having a paid interview with a newspaper. It was never definitive that the event was fabricated. A second woman in France, very prominent already, alleged the same pattern of behavior.
And this is the problem with these accusations. Other than 15 minutes of fame there’s no real upside. Paula Jones may have netted $800,000 (less lawyer fees) off Clinton, but the ordeal was pretty stressful with the back and forth - and most likely her claim was true, since testimony showed a likely pattern of behavior. However, in a civil case generally he-said-she-said without corroborating additional evidence may be hard to prove.
In the good old days before DNA paternity claims were much more potentially lucrative. (Except in the case of Michael Jackson, where she lost and he probably made a tidy fortune off “Billie Jean”).
People do a lot for 15 minutes of fame. In the case of minor or has-been celebrities, it’s a chance to jumpstart their careers, but even for ordinary people it’s a very tantalizing prospect.
A civil case may be hard to prove, but there’s a much higher chance of getting the accused to pay off anyway, as Cosby did. Many of the accused people have a lot of money, and reputations/images to protect.
A civil case is also a lot easier to prove against someone than a criminal case. In a civil case, the jury just has to decide which side is more likely to be correct. In a criminal case, though, you need to prove that the accused did it to beyond a reasonable doubt, which is never precisely pinned down, but a lot tighter than just 50%. So if A is trying to get B jailed for rape, and B is trying to get A jailed for filing false police reports, it’s quite possible for both to fail, even though someone’s going to win the lawsuit.