The word “rape” is more taboo today than ever before (and rightfully so), due to thousands of women finding the strength to come forward and publicly testify against their abusers.
Despite the tone set by our current President, our country has generally begun to make progress in properly addressing sexual assault accusations and displaying a greater emphasis on the proper treatment of women. Women who are able to find the courage to report such deeply personal and traumatic incidents should be protected at all cost and should seek punishment for their abusers to the fullest extent of the law.
However, when one step is made forward to progress, another is taken backward by those who capitalize on the vulnerability of others to benefit themselves.
In September of 2016, my cousin, Allen Artis, a Division I football player at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill was accused of sexually assaulting a fellow student in a press conference that instantly made headlines.
While an investigation was already being conducted by the university when the press conference was made, his accuser and her lawyer decided to disregard the proper manner of Title IX proceedings and made a public statement about the investigation. While the court of law is the legal determinant of wrongdoing, his accuser’s premature decision destroyed Allen in the court of public opinion, which is equally permanent and often more powerful than the court of law.
Complying with Title IX ethical rules, Allen was advised to suspend his Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat accounts, delete his Instagram, and his attorney suggested that he stay silent on the issue. Without the chance to publicly defend himself, Allen’s name was destroyed in the media.
Even I had no knowledge of the accusations whatsoever until I randomly checked Twitter and saw Allen’s name in the headline of the top Twitter Moment of the day reading, “North Carolina Football Player Allen Artis Accused of Rape” during French class one afternoon.
Thousands of tweets were immediately sent slandering Allen's reputation and denouncing UNC’s campus police as “proponents of rape culture,” almost every daily news source wrote articles about the story that were shared thousands of times. It was even covered as breaking news on ESPN.
Searching his name on Twitter or Google still generates results comparing him to Brock Turner, the convicted rapist from Stanford who brutally raped an unconscious woman last year and walked away basically unpunished.
As a feminist, I could easily see myself being equally outraged that another Division I athlete appeared to be getting away with rape and can still understand why the story gathered so much national attention, yet the problem underlying the tweets, articles, and opinion videos was that Allen was, in fact innocent.
Investigations of any kind can take months to years, especially in sexual assault cases when evidence needs to be collected, potentially DNA tested, and authenticated- the latter of which was questioned at a point in Allen's case.
Allen’s investigation had started six months prior to him being tried and convicted in the court of public opinion. His accuser knew exactly what she was doing when she made a public statement to incite outrage against Allen and the university, as any decent person feels that rape accusations should be followed with such a response, and that the abuser should be punished to the fullest extent of the law.
Defending any claims against a rape accuser is extremely difficult because we are so used to men who clearly assaulted women living lives free of consequences, then seeing their accusers be ostracized by society while living the rest of their lives with irreversible emotional damage.
However, it is abundantly clear that Allen was innocent and was taken advantage of by this young woman for reasons I do not feel the need to continue to speculate about. Allen is the closest thing I have to a brother, yet I can honestly say our close bond would have been broken if he had actually done what the general public believed he had.
There is absolutely no excuse for rape under any circumstances, and the fact that he made company that would even have the thought of accusing him of such a thing is more than unfortunate on his part.
Allen has since been cleared of all misdemeanor charges and reinstated to the football team, where he may decide to return and play out the rest of his eligibility. Although there was overwhelming evidence that the interaction between him and his accuser was completely consensual, there was no headlining Twitter Moment about the outcome, and major news sources like ESPN only wrote short blurbs about the resolution of the case - if anything at all.
It is extremely disturbing that our society apparently cares more about making rape accusations national news rather than verifying them, and later making an equal effort to clear a young man's name once he is proven innocent.
Whether the fact that a white woman accused a black man of something he did not do and almost got away with it is a race issue more than a gender issue can be up for interpretation, yet either way she is at fault for using her gender and race privilege in this scenario to hurt someone else whose only privilege was being considered valuable to his school.
Even though Allen is legally cleared and completely innocent, his name will forever be associated with this incident thanks to an easy Google search, and the emotional damage it ensued will likely last several years.
My cousin is not "another Brock Turner." This is not another example of a twisted family member stopping at nothing to defend their relative's inexcusable actions in order to gain sympathy or save the family name.
This is about innocent vs. guilty and fact vs. fiction.
Our patriarchal society has a standing history of protecting male rapists rather than female victims which is something that urgently needs to be fixed. Women have the constitutional right to be protected at school, their jobs, and even their homes, and men cannot continue to receive slaps on the wrist or walking free after violating this right.
While a rape victim should never feel guilty for being too uncomfortable or scared to report sexual assault or testify against her rapist, it is the responsibility of all women to not negate from all of the progress that has been made in the legal protection of these victims once they do find the courage to come forward by making horrendous false claims.
Making claims that are so easily proven false is unbelievably insulting to all women who have seen their rapists walk free or given sentences like Brock Turner's. It's also insulting to all judges and lawyers who do understand how important it is to bring rapists to justice.
Consensual sex that is later followed by regret does not give you the excuse to "cry rape." Everyone makes mistakes and does things they may later wish they hadn't, but publicly accusing someone of such an abhorrent act in order to protect yourself after making a mistake is inexcusable, and should have equal consequences in the court of law AND public opinion.
