On March 29, 1991 – about six weeks from a life-changing event (graduating college) – my life changed forever.
I was charged with first-degree rape.
I sat in jail for four days with nothing to do but replay the events of March 28th. I considered her a friend. We hung out a few times. I was her teaching assistant in a class. We ran into each other at a bar called the Bomb Shelter. She seemed upset about something. I asked her if she was OK. She whispered something about her boyfriend. I asked her if she needed me to do anything for her. She never answered. She walked away, and I went back to my friends.
A short time later, she came back and said she wanted to dance. So we did. We were having a good time. We had a few more drinks and hung out. She asked me how I was getting back to campus. I told her I didn’t live on campus, but I would find a ride. We left the Bomb Shelter together.
We took a cab from the bus stop to campus, flirting the whole time. I paid the fare, and we went to her dorm room. More flirting led to kissing. Our clothes came off. We had sex. After we had put on our clothes, her roommate came in. We all chatted for a few minutes. I asked if I could use the phone to get a ride to my place. When I couldn’t reach anyone, I told the girls I was leaving, kissed them both on the cheek and left.
The next morning, campus police picked me up for questioning. They asked me what happened between me and my friend. I told them everything. I asked what was wrong. They finally told me what she told them. I was floored. She was my friend. She asked me to dance. She asked me for a ride back to campus. She invited me into her dorm room. Why would she say that? That’s what one of the interrogators asked me. I didn’t have an answer. But they had one. The cops said I confessed to rape.
The events of March 28 and 29th, 1991 shattered me. I became a recluse. I received death threats. I remember overhearing a speakerphone conversation between one of my roommates and his girlfriend. She thought I did it. He didn’t believe it. It would be like that for the next 8 months – being judged by people who had no information about what happened – until I was judged by 12 people who would learn everything.
On the third week of November 1991 – a few days before Thanksgiving – a jury acquitted me. At the moment, I felt vindicated but empty. I remember my lawyer asking me if I wanted to pursue charges against my friend. I wanted to but couldn’t afford it. I decided to return to Washington, DC and move on with my life.
But nothing would be the same.
Instead of dealing with it, I buried it. I pretended to live a happier life, to travel, to date, to leave it in the past. But in hindsight, that never happened. I never had a serious relationship in the following years. I preferred one-night stands and strip clubs because we all had one thing in common: we were seriously damaged and used each other to get what we needed at that moment. But years of doing that leave you with little or no soul. And my soul kept crying out for help.
Therapy helped a little, but a surprise Christmas card did more. It was from one of the jurors. She wrote to see how I was and said how sorry she was for what I’d been through. She revealed she was a victim of domestic violence and knew from her own experience that I wasn’t capable of doing such a crime. We became pen pals over the next few years, then lost touch. We recently re-connected on Facebook. She’s the angel who gave me hope. She showed me the world isn’t that evil.
But one thing kept bugging me: why did my “friend” say I raped her?
The answer came a few years ago from an anonymous friend who knew both of us. He told me she had gotten into a fight with her boyfriend that night, went out with her friends, saw me at the Bomb Shelter, ditched her friends who wanted to leave (and had a car!) and approached me.
A light came on. Did she use me to make her boyfriend jealous? I went back into my case. Two things stood out; 1) when I kissed the girls good-bye and left their dorm room, according to her testimony, the first person they called wasn’t campus security or the police. They called her boyfriend! 2) During a campus hearing, I came face-to-face with her boyfriend. Before his testimony, he told me, “Don’t worry, man. Everything’s gonna be all right”. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but now I was floored.
I was played and lost almost everything because of it. For nearly a quarter of a century.
I woke up from my senseless guilt and began to write, research and reach out. I tried to find other men who had been through similar trauma. One of two things emerged: either not many men had been through what I had, or not many men would admit they had been through what I had.
Then came Brian Banks.
In the summer of 2002, the promising football player was 16. She was 15. She was a classmate and friend. They made out on the Long Beach Polytechnic High School campus. He said they never had sex. But by the end of the day, he was arrested for kidnapping and rape. He told the detectives he didn’t do it. No one believed him. At age 17, having never been in trouble before or in a situation like this, the system tricked him into agreeing to a 90-day psychological observation that might lead to probation.
He got seven years in prison.
Brian Banks lost almost everything. His scholarship to USC. His dream of becoming a NFL player. Almost ten years of his life. Gone.
A few years ago, Banks’ “friend” reached out to him on Facebook. According to Banks, she was hoping he would “let bygones be bygones” and hang out again. He got her to confess on video to an investigator that he never kidnapped or raped her. Banks went to the California Innocence Project and got his record cleared.
Why did she do it? Was it for the $1.5 million the Long Beach School District paid out to her? Was she trying to make someone jealous? Why?
Banks is trying to move on. But it’s difficult. I know.
Then the Bill Cosby scandal resurfaced.
I didn’t want to believe it. Still don’t. But why would all those women lie? Why did they wait until now to talk? Why didn’t they speak up when it happened? Then it hit me.
I did the same thing.
I buried it. I pretended it didn’t happen. Besides, who would believe me? After my acquittal, I was on a bus sitting near a couple who was discussing my case. The man said, “Yeah, he probably didn’t do it, but I bet he did something else bad, so he got what he deserved.”
I had done nothing wrong, was exonerated but still seen as guilty of something.
The denial. The burial. I began to understand why rape victims don’t come forward. Even if you did nothing wrong, you’ll always be guilty in someone’s eyes.
In my research, I came across something more disturbing. In 2009, a Hofstra University student claimed she was gang-raped in a dorm bathroom. When video of the incident surfaced, casting doubt on her story, she recanted. According to a female junior student at the time, “I guess she completely lied about it and it’s not fair to the guys that were involved. Everyone was shaken up by the whole thing, and now we were shaken up for nothing."
In March 2013, Mary Gullickson, a North Dakota State University student, told police she was kidnapped and raped on campus. Officials sent out an alert. A man stepped forward to say he had been corresponding with Gullickson after seeing a Craigslist ad asking for someone to help carry out a rape fantasy. An investigation revealed Gullickson got so many responses, she began asking for $100 in exchange for sex. The Fargo native received probation for giving false information to law enforcement.
In March 2014, Elizabeth Renee Martinez’s husband came home to surprise his wife for lunch. He found her being raped by a stranger. The Happy Valley, Oregon Police was called. The stranger told them he answered a Craigslist ad placed by the wife who wanted to fulfill a rape fantasy. He showed them the text messages telling him she left the backdoor unlocked. Martinez insisted she had been raped and submitted to a test at a hospital. She was sentenced to two years probation and 100 hours of community service for improper use of the 911 system.
This is the black eye of our current rape culture that no one wants to acknowledge. False reports such as these have created a “Chicken Little atmosphere” in which the “the sky is falling” lies taint the truth when it finally falls.
And that makes it tougher for real victims to get justice.
Then there’s that word – victim. I hate it. It doesn’t fit. People who go through this are more than victims. They’re more than survivors. They’re soldiers. In any act of violence, soldiers fight. Through the agony, through the pain, through the tears. They don’t quit even if the battle seems lost. A woman being raped doesn’t quit fighting her attacker even if he’s stronger because despite his perceived conquest, he will always know he was never victorious because she never gave in. That’s what soldiers do. But when the fighting’s over, how do we honor our soldiers? The same way we treat women who are raped and men who are falsely accused. We cast them aside.
I wanted to build an army to help fight a culture that dishonors our soldiers. I called the Rape Foundation in Santa Monica, CA, The Coalition for Family Harmony in Oxnard, CA, NoMore.org, the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network (“RAINN”) in Washington DC and authors/rape survivors such as Liz Seccuro, who was recently featured in a Washington Post article about the UVa Rolling Stone scandal which called into question whether “Jackie”, a student who claimed to have been gang-raped during a fraternity party, was truly a victim. Seccuro expressed concern that the debacle would affect sexual assault survivors’ credibility. I wanted to work with these people and organizations to come up with smart ways to fight this difficult war.
None of them wanted to work with me.
I was disappointed but not surprised. They’re part of the problem. They don’t want to acknowledge the plague of false reports because it may “cloud” their mission. What they don’t get is it has already clouded the culture, especially in law enforcement. Yet these organizations are calling on men to help them battle domestic violence and rape under campaigns such as #HeForShe. They recruited actress Emma Watson who gave an impassioned speech at the United Nations last fall. I was moved to help.
Nothing.
Why?
Until these organizations address this glaring problem, I don’t believe men will help in the numbers necessary to facilitate change (I applaud the ones who are). It’s difficult to ask a father who loves and cares for his children to help when his estranged wife threatens to lie to a judge he raped and abused her unless he gives her full custody and child support. It’s tough for a CEO to join the cause when a woman he’s been dating but no longer wants to see threatens to lie to the press about abusing her unless he pays her off. Professional athletes should be key players in recruiting men to combat domestic violence – especially in the aftermath of the Ray Rice scandal. But most of us know why that will never happen.
We need to confront this issue the right way. Acknowledge the tremendous impact of false reports. Team up with people like Brian Banks to show that all crimes – real rapes and false reports of it – will not be tolerated. Show those soldiers that you mean what you say in these campaigns.
I came across an incredible quote from author Jessica Valenti – “Rape is as American as apple pie. Until we own it, nothing will change.” I reached out to her to see if she wanted to work with me to make this better.
She never called me back.