If you find one, you find a group cos like attracts attracts like.
this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2025
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Witches VS Patriarchy
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FWIW I have had to excommunicate multiple people from my life based on credible accusations of sexual assault. One of them was my best friend.
Genuinely curious, how would you handle it if even one of those credible accusations were completely wrong and uncalled for? I have no idea how I would handle it but haven't been in your position
That's a good question. I can only answer this question hypothetically because it's always been something I was reasonably sure of.
With my best friend, I didn't want to believe it but the accusation was damning. I ended up becoming close to a girl he raped and she told me herself that it happened. When confronted, my friends story basically amounted to admitting to date rape. The reality was likely worse but that's immaterial to the end of our friendship.
The other time a good friend of mine essentially told me his plans to date rape a young girl. We were about 18 and he planned to do MDMA with a 14 year old girl alone at his house.
So in both cases the guy essentially told me themselves and just didn't realize that I wouldn't see it the same way they did.
I take these kinds of accusations very seriously. I will always believe victims but at the same time it's demonstrably true that people make false allegations of sexual assault and it ruins lives.
I think we have to be hyper critical of these kinds of accusations. By getting this wrong we run the risk of causing these accusations to lose weight and meaning. That being said we need to be hyper critical in a way that doesn't cause real victims to feel like they can't come forward. I won't say I know what that looks like exactly.
If I found out that I had removed someone from my life due to a false accusation like this I would be very upset. I would feel used and manipulated and I would be actually more upset at the false accusations than I ever was as the alleged rapist. In my view the false accuser has hurt not only the accused and myself, but they have hurt every single legitimate rape survivor.
I really don't have the answer to this myself but I think the best people to ask would be rape survivors and people who have been falsely accused.
Thank you for responding, I really appreciate your attempt. I complete understand that it is hypothetical until it happens you just can't really know.
I know survivors and at least one person who was falsely accused (it was found out and was revealed within a reasonable timeframe in the whole shit show that was happening)
And I have had this come up in a couple times in conversations, its actually what prompted me to ask you.
And I think you are absolutely a good person to ask, because while it sounds like you know a lot more people than I do, I was asked this same question, in different forms, from multiple people and like I mentioned, I really don't know how I would feel about it really until it happened.
But it would anger me a lot I have no doubt. I would feel like I threw away someone who needed me when it was just important.
I don't know how I would handle being falsely accused and getting convicted of it. I wouldn't want to live with living through the people in my life all believing this about me, it's a small pool by most standards and that makes them very precious to me. It could very well be the end for me by me. And I've been told by better than myself it isn't a surprising result.
But like I have been sexually assaulted, and while I'm careful to acknowledge that my experience, while valid, isn't typically useful as a comparison. It does leave me with a lot of compassion and empathy.
What is important is that anyone who is a victim, can speak to the right people, or have someone speak for them with their consent, on their behalf. I was fortunate, entirely too many people aren't.
And the real kicker is that we are all imperfect so we get shit wrong sometimes no matter how much we try to do right