Image: What is Justice without a blindfold? Concept by John Barry, rendered using AI GPT Luna 6.
As a lawyer, I handle more cases than I would like, of men falsely accused of despicable crimes, being slandered without any scruples by people, almost always envious, deranged or simply bad people. It is very curious that many of these accusations of physical assault or even sexual assault on her or her children, occur right during the separation process or divorce of the couple.
For years I have seen how judges and prosecutors support, in custody issues, these women who use false or instrumental complaints to achieve absolute control in a divorce: house, car, children, and pension. Many will think that I put children in third place, and I do so on purpose, since children are often objectified by these people, as one more element of the divorce package. I usually spend hours and hours talking to these men who have been defamed gratuitously in a divorce proceeding. Most of them fall into a "shock" that is difficult to understand.
They lose sleep, health, work, friends and even their own family, who are reluctant to support a man accused of abuse or sexual assault. The trauma suffered by these men is inexplicable to those who have never suffered a false complaint. Many clinical psychologists and psychiatrists know what I'm talking about. Acute traumas that can lead to neurological decompensations, and reactions in which they can even kill. I have seen many people "understand" Palestinians who self-immolated with a bomb in their chests, in Israel, on a crowded bus, or with a group of Israeli policemen.
“I am talking about that silent majority of the "others", since the media and feminist groups already talk a lot about bad men. These other men who did nothing wrong, and on whose list you can enter tomorrow yourself, or your children, or your father or brother, or your friend, etc.”
These falsely reported men need a lot of comfort and support, and we are leaving them alone. I know that my discourse seems dangerous and criticizable, especially when I know that behind these men falsely accused of serious crimes hide, on social networks and in support groups, many other men who have abused their partner or their children, and pretend to be lambs, when in reality they are real abusive wolves, without any empathy for others.
But I am talking about that silent majority of the "others", since the media and feminist groups already talk a lot about bad men. These other men who did nothing wrong, and on whose list you can enter tomorrow yourself, or your children, or your father or brother, or your friend, etc. They are the ones I am talking about in this article.
“A person's reputation, which has taken years or even a lifetime of work and effort, vanishes overnight.“
Faced with these accusations, sometimes made from social networks, but other times through the Courts, these men face a great dilemma: let it pass, and let the slander or slander persist over time as a stain on their prestige, or take legal action against those who used the slander and false accusation against them.
EVERY DAY THERE ARE MORE THAN TEN PEOPLE FALSELY ACCUSED OF A CRIME
As you read this article, in Spain, more than ten people are falsely accused of a crime, before the police.
More than ten personal, family and professional lives are destroyed. A person's reputation, which has taken years or even a lifetime of work and effort, vanishes overnight. Once the complaint is filed, or they are acquitted for lack of evidence, they realize that the damage caused is for life.
It's like when in Germany they pointed with a yellow star to the Jews. They discover, after the stress of having endured public and notorious defamation, that there is no easy solution to restore their "good name". Above all, because the Organic Law on the right to honour, privacy and one's own image (LO 1/1982 of 5 May), imposes an enormous burden of proof and requirements on defamed persons, in order to be able to access judicial recognition of having been the object of defamation.
“The hours of sadness and crying in solitude, of the fear of going out on the street, of the terror of hearing a police siren (‘Will they come for me again’?), feeling the rejection of their friends, and co-workers, is a horror film that few completely overcome.”
In addition, in the case of being able to get the courts to grant him constitutional protection with a favorable sentence, the news that what was done against him, is proven to be a lie, does not have the same personal, professional, or media repercussions. The damage and pain that is caused to the families of these people is not usually evaluated by anyone either. The hours of sadness and crying in solitude, of the fear of going out on the street, of the terror of hearing a police siren (‘Will they come for me again’?), feeling the rejection of their friends, and co-workers, is a horror film that few completely overcome.
EMOTIONAL TRAUMA
These men who suffer such an experience in their skin, do not usually question the system, with things such as claiming the presumption of innocence, illegal detention, or things like that, but the human being that they carry inside them comes out, and they usually allege in their defense the pain and fear that all this produces in their families and their children.
It is a natural response to emotional trauma, from which she suffers a false accusation, in any field, but especially in the sphere of domestic violence. The media are showing themselves as a new inquisition, ready to burn at the stake of television talk shows whoever they put in front of them, for a few share points. Let us remember the case of former minister Juan Fernando López Aguilar.
The only response of people to these defamatory attacks can be emotional, since they respond with allegations about human rights, that does not arouse the empathy of the general public or friends, colleagues, etc. in particular. All of us contribute in some way to the public ridicule of a human being, because we are more interested in the morbidity of the immediate, than in the wisdom of the permanent.
If a man falsely accused shows himself to be human in the face of defamation, no one will believe him in the social context, and he will have to defend himself with his fingernails before the courts, which we need to be as they are: impartial and emotionless in their resolutions. No one will care about the good work of the person falsely accused as a person, as a father, as a man, as a professional. All this is of no use, since we usually look at the specific fact of the accusation, and we will condemn it publicly without prior trial, on social networks, in the media, or in social services, as the Government has recently established.
Politicians and institutions of all kinds are trapped by a new form of totalitarianism, such as the dictatorship of political correctness. Today's neofeminism, which prevails at ease, even in the armchairs of the government, has become the owner of the discourse of political correctness, taking advantage of the totalitarian idea that sustains it.
WHEN THE MURDERER IS A WOMAN...
We see that many times we go out to observe a minute of silence for a murdered woman, but when the murderer is a woman, no one comes out to observe a minute of silence for the victim, be it a woman, man or child. It is as if a social psychosis had taken over the media and institutions. Of all of us. And we are not aware of the danger that it entails for everyone, valuing the life of one human being more than that of another human being.
We were already warned by well-known people such as Nienmöler, Rushdie, Solzhenitsyn, Saramago or Neruda himself, of the consequences of a country or a society, when in a country or in a society, the life of one person is allowed to be valued over another. The most extreme social movements emerge, since, if a human right is allowed to be violated to justify a specific purpose (defense of women, in this case), the door is opened to the claim of being able to violate the rest of human rights.
“We have allowed a law such as LO 1/2004 on violence against women to open the possibility of being able to treat a human being differently because of their sex. Many judges have been carried away by the fear of confronting political correctness”.
In addition, the legalization and social normalization of that argumentation sustains and favors in some way, the appearance of more extremist ideas. Thus, the Nuremberg Court has already established the basis that not only degrading and inhuman treatment, but even unequal treatment of a human being is unacceptable (Vienna Convention).
We have allowed a law such as LO 1/2004 on violence against women to open the possibility of being able to treat a human being differently because of their sex. Many judges have been carried away by the fear of confronting political correctness, while many others have chosen to directly apply what they swore to apply, respect for the EC and the fundamental rights of each citizen, without any distinction. In any case, almost 1,200,000 human beings have been denounced, accused, arrested, tried and convicted or acquitted after a long and tortuous road.
ALMOST 80 PERCENT OF THOSE REPORTED HAVE BEEN NOT GUILTY
Of these reported human beings, almost 80% have turned out not to be guilty of an accusation that contributed to their loss of life (increase in suicides of men), their career, their job, their home, their family, etc. All these human beings have friends, families, acquaintances, co-workers who have seen the injustice of a law that presupposes the guilt of the accused.
Many ask me in amazement, and not only within Spain: how is it that there are courts only to accuse men? Well, these men, after going through a real hell in life, only have to go to court, to ask that they be judicially "recognized" that they have been defamed and obtain, in the best of cases, a meager economic compensation. If you are ever unjustly arrested in Spain and it is proven that there was a false accusation and you were innocent, the state usually pays you an average of about 6,000 euros for each year of your life in prison. Losing your job, your children, your home, your friends, has no value in this country. Or at least it has not yet been judicially established in the form of doctrine.
The European Court of Human Rights does usually condemn the State for this, such as for not being able to see your children for years, after a false accusation, compensation of up to 10,000 euros has been recognized. A state values the lives of people whose lives have been destroyed, it is as if to think that it is not a state of the citizens. In this, other states, such as the United Kingdom, Canada or the United States, are more rigorous when it comes to compensating people for this type of situation. This has contributed to the fact that false accusations by media or people against someone are less numerous.
WE WILL BE ABLE TO COMPENSATE PEOPLE ACCUSED OF SLANDER
I believe that it is necessary to establish some scales of this type of damage suffered by people accused in a slanderous way, to stop this madness of false accusations that exists in our society, not only from people against people, but many other times from digital newspapers that launch this type of news. And in the case of the media that slander, a fine or financial compensation alone would not be enough, but the sanctions should go further, until they can reach the temporary or permanent closure of the media.
“We already see the results in childhood of being so permissive with false accusations: The spectacular increase in bullying and the increase in suicides of young adolescents.”
We want our children to live in an environment with certain values, but we cannot allow, whatever political ideas we have, that the right to insult or slander becomes a social value. We already see the results in childhood of being so permissive with false accusations: The spectacular increase in bullying and the increase in suicides of young adolescents. If we continue like this, no one is safe from all this: tomorrow any citizen, whether man or woman, will be falsely accused of anything, violating their rights, and nothing will happen.
We can see this in the case of the Minister of Justice, whose right to privacy (private conversation in a certain environment) is violated in the name of "freedom of information", or in the case of three jurists recorded in a courtroom, after finishing their work, in an intimacy that they thought they possessed. I cannot go into what they said or did not say, because it is something intimate for each one, and I have no right to give an opinion about something we have known, when their human rights have been violated.
The hornet’s nest has been stirred, and nobody can unstir it. Both the minister and the three jurists are accused for life of these despicable acts (intrusion into their privacy) And they only have the way out of letting it go or requesting that they be given judicial protection in their personal right to their own privacy, image and honor. And this is what we have been doing in our office for a few years: those people who have been defamed after a false accusation, proceed to claim such interference, with different results.
I do not want to fail to say that this article is not against the defense of abused women and its instruments, but precisely for those who read this article and have come this far, reflect on whether it would be good if the resources allocated to that almost 80% of false accusations, dismissed, or resulting in the acquittal of the accused, that there are in Spain in gender violence, could be allocated in a more effective way to those abused women who are abused and have also dared to take the step of denouncing. Because how many women have died because resources were "busy" and collapsed with thousands of unfounded complaints?
This article was originally published in ConfiLegal in 2018, and reproduced here by kind permission of the author.
If you have been falsely accused of abuse in the UK, you can contact one of these organisations for help:
FACT
Facing Allegations in Contexts of Trust (FACT) offer support to victims of unfounded allegations of abuse. Email: support@factuk.org, or for the Legal Helpline: 0333 335 5827 (Mon-Fri: 10am-3pm; Sat: 10am-1pm. Website https://factuk.org
FASO
The False Allegations Support Organisation (FASO) helpline number is 03335 779 377, and is for those experiencing false allegations of various types. Their email is support@false-allegations.org.uk
or visit their website http://www.false-allegations.org.uk
Disclaimer: This article is for information purposes only and is not a substitute for therapy, legal advice, or other professional opinion. Never disregard such advice because of this article or anything else you have read from the Centre for Male Psychology. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of, or are endorsed by, The Centre for Male Psychology, and we cannot be held responsible for these views. Read our full disclaimer here.
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