Tuesday, April 21, 2015

Another false sexual abuse accusation

FAYETTEVILLE, AR (KNWA) - Police arrested 20-year-old Lindsey Sweetin Thursday for filing a false police report about a sexual assault she originally said happened in the Harmon Parking garage on the University of Arkansas campus.

According to a police report, on March 8, Sweetin's brother called the University of Arkansas Police Department to report that his sister had been sexually assaulted in the garage on March 5.

When police interviewed Lindsey Sweetin, she told them when she was walking back to her car in the deck after class, a man she described as being between 50 and 60-years-old with gray hair approached her and asked if she had any jumper cables.

Sweetin told officers she told the man she couldn't help, and at that point she said the man "grabbed her and put his hand up her shirt, and then pulled her towards him and put his other hand down her pants and touched her buttocks" and then the man "pushed her against the back of her car and put his hand down the front of her pants, touching her vagina." Sweetin told officers she sprayed the man with pepper spray and got in her car and drove away.

After the interview, police reviewed video footage from the Harmon Parking Garage during the time that Sweetin said the incident happened. Detectives did not find any men in the video matching the description Sweetin provided them. Detectives also spoke to potential witnesses who were in the garage at that time, and they told officers they did not hear or see anything out of the ordinary.

On March 11, Detective Josh Bowen interviewed Sweetin again at UAPD. Detective Bowen asked Sweetin if she was telling the truth about the incident, and Sweetin said no. When asked why she would lie, Sweetin said she did see a man that matched the description she gave on Dickson Street and he scared her, but that the man never followed her into the Harmon deck. (ArkansasMatters.com)
Though I don't go out of my way to look for them, I come across stories like this at least once a week these days: grown women telling elaborate stories of being raped or sexually assaulted, only to admit they lied when their stories unravel under mild scrutiny.

Fortunately, in this case no innocent person's reputation was destroyed by false accusation and arrest. But I happen to fit the description Sweetin gave the police, and it's not hard to imagine my fate had I happened to have business in or around that parking garage that night.

Too often, an innocent man's reputation is ruined, while the woman who lied about him continues to be treated as a victim long after her lie is exposed. This is typically driven by unethical journalists who are more interested in advancing a narrative than they are uncovering and reporting what actually happened.

We hear a lot these days about the War on Women, a "war" that, as far as I can tell has about as much substance to it as Lindsey Sweetin's allegations. It seems to me a stronger case can be made that a War on Men is being waged, at least by a certain demographic and a media that is all too eager to fund it through propaganda (see the recent Rolling Stone malfeasance).

We need to see Lindsey Sweetin and the other women who make these false allegations tried, convicted, and punished. And we need to see journalists held responsible for their part in hyping false stories and ruining lives.

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