It’s easy to claim someone you don’t know is guilty or innocent based on personal bias, but once that “someone” is a person close to you, particularly a loved one, all bets are off.
Such is the case of Time’s Up CEO Lisa Borders, who resigned last week after her son was accused of a groping a woman during a “healing” session in Santa Monica, CA, the Los Angeles Times reported. In her resignation announcement, Borders said she was stepping down to “address family concerns that require my singular focus,” according to Page Six. Karol Markowicz of the New York Post explains Borders’ predicament:
Borders didn’t step down as CEO because of embarrassment or proximity to someone accused. She stepped down because she is planning to vigorously defend her son, and this wouldn’t align well with the work of an organization that preaches zero tolerance for ‘discrimination, harassment or abuse.
Borders’ son, whom I will not name because I don’t like ruining someone’s life over an unproven accusation, was accused of touching a woman’s genitals, kissing her neck, and rubbing his clothed penis against her during a “healing session” at her home. An attorney for the accused man said Borders’ son was giving the woman a requested “healing massage,” and provided a text message exchange showing the accuser thanked the accused afterward and saying the massage was “gentle and authentic and loving.”
The accuser, while coming forward, said she wanted “to be strong and stand my ground and speak my truth.”
It seems the only way to get the “Believe Women” crowd to start accepting due process and the presumption of innocence is for one of their loved ones to be accused, as sad as that is. As Markowicz notes, both actress Lena Dunham and attorney Michael Avenatti changed their tunes on due process once the accusations hit home.
For Dunham, her friend and fellow “Girls” writer Murray Miller was accused of sexual assault. Dunham defended Miller even after she went to bat for all accusers. Avenatti has been referred for criminal investigation over the role he played in orchestrating an impossible accusation against then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, only to believe in due process again once a domestic violence claim was lodged against him.
We’ve seen this occur on college campuses, too. In August 2018, a student at the University of Texas wrote that she was all-in for the #MeToo movement until one of her male friends was accused and sent through the kangaroo campus court system.
Accusations without the need for proof – as #MeToo demands – have had dire consequences. Last year, a famous opera singer opened up about her husband’s suicide following what she said were false accusations printed about him.
The #MeToo movement may have started just two years ago, but the sentiment that due process is the enemy of justice has been around for much longer. The military and college campuses are now forced to provide pseudo-investigation and court procedures or face nasty press coverage or lost funding. It has been creeping into our public discourse and court systems as well, where “experts” claim that trauma causes victims to lie and change their stories and reach out to men after they were allegedly assaulted to tell them they enjoyed their evening.
Naturally, attitudes about due process change when it is not some stranger being accused, as David French wrote of the Borders situation in National Review:
It turns out that when accusations are leveled at people you love, “#BelieveWomen’”or ‘”believe survivors” becomes not just a slogan but a millstone around the neck of a son or spouse — a son or spouse who you may believe to the bottom of your heart is innocent of any wrongdoing. In that case, due process transforms in an instant from a tool of the patriarchy to your loved one’s last and only hope.
