When men are wrongfully accused of sexual assault

I read with great sympathy Lupita Nyongo’s piece last week on how the now disgraced powerful Hollywood mogul and producer, Harvey Weinstein, sexually harassed her before her break out role in ’12 Years A Slave’ – making her give him a massage in his mansion and so on.

Lupita is a lady I knew and respect greatly for her talent. I interviewed her for a double spread in a sister magazine a decade ago – and after she won the Oscar I did the page three story about it, her father Governor (then Senator) Nyong’o personally phoned me to say it was one of the best pieces he read on her win. High praise, indeed.

Anyway, Weinstein, after a newspaper expose and two dozen women – our Lupita included – coming out to say how he had harassed, attacked or been sexually inappropriate with them (after one Italian actress went to shower, Harv the Perv showed up in her bathroom, stark naked, asking please could he join her in the shower?, it has been a hot day and he’s ‘kinda sweaty), he got what he deserved.

Fired from the company he helped found with his brother Bob, divorced by his wife, disgraced on both sides of the Atlantic and at least three criminal investigations on his tail.

But what happens when the situation is the exact opposite – where a man is wrongfully accused of sexual assault or harassment, yet he is innocent?

Let me tell you from experience – there are more than a few vengeful and vindictive vixens out there, eager to wreck a man’s reputation if they feel he has somewhat messed with them or let them down. Some are outright delusional – the schizophrenics, neurotics and bipolar disordered.

It happens. And there are more than a few men-folk languishing in jails across the country for ‘crimes’ against women that they did not commit. I know of one case in Kamiti where this man had married a divorcee lady, and adopted her seven-year-old daughter.

After four years, he had had enough of her violent temper tantrums, and he told her he was leaving her for another gentler, younger woman he had been seeing for solace. That is when she told her daughter to tell the police that her ‘dad’ had been touching her inappropriately.

A magistrate sentenced him to ten years in prison. It is only now, after the daughter turned 16 and admitted she lied about her dad at her mom’s instigation, that the case is under review.

This has been happening since Biblical times, from when Joseph was jailed for seven years in Egypt after Potiphar’s wife falsely accused him of attempted rape, to modern days where a well known TV anchor lost his international job after a ‘mzungu’ woman made wild sexual allegations.

It took years for us to learn this Swede had a track record of such lies against famous guys.

By then, the damage is often done – especially in this age of Twitter and Blogs where such salacious ‘news’ spread like wild fire (compared to the more bland and ‘boring’ news that the allegations have proven unfounded, often later, like months down the line).

Of course one can always sue for libel – but defamation suits tend to drag on for years – three to seven, and by the time you’ve won, people can barely remember the fuss in the first place.

Except you, of course, scarred and embittered and less trusting after the horrid ordeal.

Even at the time of accusation, while women victims get a whole lot of sympathy (complete with #MeToo hashtags), a male victim of these vicious lies is supposed to be ‘manly,’ shrug it off. Then in that universal and hopeless means of male support, ‘Let’s have a beer and forget about it.’

The very worst thing is to find a Weinstein-type who thinks you two think the same.

And you want to punch the guy, and finish the folks who made him think you’re fish cut similar fabric. Bring back Section 38 of the Sexual Offences Bill, I say, where people who lie about being victims are imprisoned.