A Trial By Accusation

(MENAFN- The Post) ... The inherent dangers of judgement by accusation in sexual harassment cases

The #MeToo movement is inspired by good motives of curbing the prevalence of sexual predators. But as with many good movements or revolutions it bears inherent dangers of being used by vindictive 'people' with evil and self-serving ends.

The word 'people' at this stage is used advisedly, and an informed decision to use the generic word instead of 'women' is, by design, to avoid the tag of misogynist or male chauvinism.

The reality is that evil has no gender – it is innate with the human species. In our professional lives as legal practitioners, we have represented controversial and unpopular clients and, by extension, have written dozens of provocative articles dealing with public policy matters that include hot-button issues that attracted the ire of many.

It is the nature of our profession in this small enclave country.

We may sit under the shadows of the sun trying to filch sleep...but it will affect our kith and kin and perhaps even yours when your innocent male child falls victim to false accusation of sexual harassment.

The victory of our discourse does not stem from acquittals or favourable judgements but from the real debates which guarantee the safeguards provided under the constitution of the Kingdom.

Mindful of its implications, we pen this article with sobriety of thought because we seek to spark and gather attention for dialogue on this public policy issue that requires intellectual engagement as a matter of urgency to protect the male child.

We shall strongly contend that women are as capable as men to be guilty of sexual harassment and, by extension, of falsely accusing men and destroying their lives.

The fierce female supporters of the #MeToo movement must be slow to allow false accusers to hurt the real victims by hiding behind the veil of its virtuous shield that turns this movement into an exploitative weapon against innocent men.

The role played by the media to sensationalise every sexual harassment case with a headline 'sex scandal' with a biased and polarised narrative is a cause for concern because it plays a significant role in fueling a trial and conviction by accusation.

In the past two years alone, this country has seen several media exposés of several high-ranking corporate executives, senior civil servants and prominent businessmen. Social media has played a significant role in giving those stories wider audiences.

There are several other sexual harassment cases doing the rounds in the neighbouring Republic of South Africa and even internationally.

Some of these cases have yielded marathon trials both criminally and civilly, with victims rewarded with convictions of their alleged perpetrators and for some civil suits, yielding millions and turning victims into millionaires.

These eventualities make for an interesting debate. Ours will be an effort to debate the less-heard side of those who are falsely accused for self-serving ends by vindictive and evil women.

And an outcry for policy-makers to open a forum for dialogue on the rights of falsely accused men in sexual harassment cases.

Sexual harassment incidents continue to recur in three institutions of society – the family, the workplace and education.

Sexual harassment of students by either lecturers and students has been the central theme of academic debate for which intellectuals have done justice.

Regrettably, it has not enjoyed elaborate debate in mainstream media or policy platforms. Students are known to have gained academic points for acceding to their teachers for sexual favours.

Some have been punished with poor grades for rejecting those overtures.

Such conduct by the perpetrators, inimical as they are, has always attracted serious public sentiments laced with condemnation, and justifiably so, for the perpetrators and sympathy for the recipients.

However, it is not unusual for weak and gullible female learners, even as young and timid as they may appear at first brush, to stage issues of sexual harassment against their teachers and blame them for their poor academic performances, or even as retaliation against such teachers for not acceding to some of their ignoble and, at times, subtle requests, or sexual advances.

The same argument obtains in respect of employers in the workplace setting where a female employee may fabricate sexual harassment for purely self-serving ends.

The courts are alert to such developments as borne by the caution expressed by Tlhotlhalemaje J in Rustenburg Platinum Mines Limited v UASA obo Steve Pietersen that there should“be an ability to distinguish between an 'attention-seeker', a 'trouble-maker', a 'scorned employee retaliating in the aftermath of a failed office affair'; and a genuine complaint of sexual harassment.”

Such a cautionary note is particularly addressed to employers and those who preside over sexual harassment cases in the workplace.

There is always that temptation on the employer to tilt the scale in favour of the recipient and for the presiding officer in the inquiry, who is remunerated by the employer, to toe the line of the employer, but that is exactly what the law says they must abhor.

Sexual harassment cases attract power dynamics for sexual predators but for false accusers it equally attracts the power of evil prevailing over innocence and innocent people subjected to injustice.

The trend with most of these sexual harassment cases is that with each woman coming forward against a 'prominent man' – the narrative that does the round is that even powerful men can be subjected to the law – but the reality is that for each falsely accused 'prominent man' the power of evil survives and the false victim is characterised when in reality the law must protect the innocent from those whose power derives from evil.

Philosopher Eric Hoffer once described the evolution or devolution of movements of like nature as follows:“Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.” In a scenario where the movement degenerates into a 'racket' the false victim colludes with unscrupulous law enforcement agents, journalists and legal practitioners with the sole motivation of generating profit from a 'prominent man'.

The common approach is for the sexual harassment victim to first publish a damaging accusation with a media outlet or on media platforms before reporting the alleged crime.

This initiative is emotive and a well-calculated measure to subject the victim to the court of public opinion.

The unscrupulous media outlets will then snatch the baton with ease and publish a story bearing the headline 'sex scandal'.

The next step will then to report the alleged crime to law enforcement agencies after having ignited public debate and calibrated the public temperature to the story however false.

The opportunists to the noble cause of #MeToo movement play a part in aiding and abetting women to file false cases or exaggerated accusations against innocent men.

Yet another painstaking reality is that the prosecution often runs a stereotypical narrative that '...that males with money and fame shouldn't get special privileges.'

The prosecution of prominent men in sexual harassment cases is about proving that the reach of the long arm of the law can reach even the rich and powerful.

A presumptuous fallacy that assumes that the so-called poor and vulnerable women bear no propensity to lie against the very same powerful, famous and rich men for self-serving ends.

This narrative has been used by most prosecutors in sexual harassment cases involving high-profile persons. It tilts the constitutional safeguards in favour of alleged victims and prejudices the accused persons.

This is a debate that must be elaborately canvassed to restore confidence of both accused and victims in our justice system and our constitutional safeguards.

The real challenge is that neither Lesotho's Penal Code nor the Sexual Offences Act has a provision that criminalises false accusation.

Perjury serves as an inadequate measure. In some jurisdictions there is an express provision deterring false accusations in sexual offences cases.

With this vacuum in Lesotho's criminal justice system, some women will falsely accuse men for the generation of profit or any other illicit motives and this racket will continue unabated.

The painful reality is that there are some false prophets characterising themselves as gender activists, when in reality, they are misandrists.

The term Gender-Based Violence is mainly attributed to 'men' who abuse 'women' either emotionally or physically when the reality is that statistics show many cases of women who are equally as abusive and some even molest underage children.

The scientific evidence is not even too far-fetched to find in this jurisdiction. It is only that there is a stigma that lies with any male child reporting such crimes perpetrated against them.

Law enforcement agencies and civil society organizations customarily have a department mainly constituted of women who are characterized as 'gender experts' and some of whom are engulfed in prejudices and some of which may gravitate towards borderline misandry.

These structural challenges which have to do with the issue of addressing sexual harassment in any context irrespective of gender pose a serious threat to the survival of the male child and policy-makers must attend to this issue as a matter of urgency.

Karen A. Duncan – an ironically female psychologist and presumably a non-misandrist has a mouthful to say about female sexual predators and measures that parents must embark in to protect their male children and the consequent dark shadows that male children who experience molestation from adult women endure.

This author believes primarily that we cannot prevent sexual abuse and family violence by holding to gender stereotypes.

This is matter for debate to be factored by #MeToo activists if theirs is indeed a noble cause of fighting all evil permeating from sexual predators irrespective of gender.

The so-called gender activists who parade the bigotry and movement in an unpalatable fashion are often convinced that they pursue a righteous cause and bear hallmarks of self-righteousness which is mostly overbearing.

They are overly intolerant of dissenting views on the subject and are mainly driven by the mentality of '...the end justifying the means'.

They consider the safeguards provided by the constitution and, most importantly, the presumption of innocence to be cumbersome barriers to their truth.

They project the following narratives: 'women don't lie' and 'women must be believed' and 'men are inherently evil sexual predators' – these narratives fuel and inspire the 'racket' of false accusers who are enjoying the open end and with no legal safeguards provided by the criminal justice system.

Section 20 of the Sexual Offences Act is clearly not gender sensitive to the extent that it explicitly provides that an accused charged of a sexual offence 'irrespective of gender' – the court shall not draw any adverse inference only from the length of the delay between the commission of the sexual act and the laying of the complaint.

This provision equally protects male children who have been abused by female sexual predators in their young age and such wounded male children can exploit this important statutory provision to bring female sexual predators to book in the same way as female accusers who accuse male sexual predators. This narrative must equally be subjected to publication to alert the male child of his rights in law.

The real debate that we make an effort to trigger is but one: there must be justice both for the victim of false accusations and for those who falsely accuse in sexual harassment cases...even more importantly, just as there are male sexual predators... there are equally harrowing instances of some female sexual predators doing the rounds in our society...The law aims to protect against evil from either gender...

Advocate Christopher Lephuthing and Advocate Monaheng Rasekoai

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