Don’t Punish “False Rape Accusations”

The misrepresentation of rape accusations by the manosphere

Misogyny has become fashionable again. After election of a man with a long string of allegations of rape and sexual assault, we got Neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes who coined the term “Your body, my choice, forever” to mock how rights to bodily autonomy is being taken away from women in America.

This is of course just one of many displays of it. I could go on about all the actors in this space, but today I want to focus on the topic of false rape accusations. There is a concerted effort by the modern misogynist manosphere movement to create a perception that rape is an overblown problem and that false rape accusations are widespread. The evidence we have suggests they are very rare. One right-wing pundit on X went so far as to propose women coming with false rape accusations should be executed.

The Dean Cage 1995 Rape Trial

But the issue of false rape accusations is far more complex than they like to present it. A clip from 2008 on Dr. Phil has resurfaced. It is presented as being about a man, Dean Cage, being false accused or rape and spending 14 years in prison. In the clip, we see the “accuser” Loretta Zilinger making a tearful apology to Cage.

Commenter on X explode. It feeds into the narrative the manosphere tries to construct about the fake and manipulative tears of women. We are led to believe that here is a selfish woman that ruined a man’s life by accusing him of rape. The short segment provided gives no further context. It is all engineered to stoke anger and create a wave of angry demands that Loretta is put in prison and that we stop believing in women talking about being raped.

The problem is that here a lot of context is missing. When you hear about a woman making a false rape accusation, then what comes to mind? We are led to believe that Loretta somehow was angry at the accused Dean Cage and decided to punish him by inventing a false rape accusation. Perhaps they were co-workers, and he rejected her advances so she decided to punish him?

What Actually Happened

What if I told you that Loretta was a 15-year-old school girl at the time this “rape accusation” was made? She didn’t know Dean Cage (then 26 years old in 1994). In fact, she had never met him. Now you must be puzzled. What motive could a 15-year-old school girl have to accuse a man she never met of rape?

That would make no sense. They don’t tell you this in the clip because they want you to believe it is a case of a nasty woman who was never raped trying to hurt a man she didn’t like.

Reality is that Loretta Zilinger was indeed a rape victim. A horrible rape that gave her sexually transmittable diseases. The Manosphere wants to make you believe that she was’t raped, but she was. Loretta never singled out Dean Cage on her own initiative.

Let us look at the story from Prison Legal News.

Dean Cage was 27 years old when he was arrested for the November 1994 rape of a 15-year-old girl as she walked to school on a dark Chicago street. The victim, Loretta Zilinger, was attacked from behind and brutally raped orally and anally in a stairwell. After treatment at a hospital, she helped police create a composite sketch of a tall African-American suspect.

When somebody suggests Loretta falsely accused Dean it gives you the idea that she pointed out a man she already knew, but that is not what happened.

There was no physical evidence tying Cage to Zilinger’s rape. His conviction rested upon the detectives’ use of “unduly suggestive procedures to secure an identification of him by the rape victim,” according to the law firm of Loevy & Loevy, which represented Cage in his lawsuit.

Back in the 1990s, police in many places had very bad and manipulative ways of handling young witnesses such as Loretta. In my native Norway this was highlighted by a massive scandal called “Bjugn-saken” in 1992. Investigations began in a pre-school, leading to conclusions that pretty much all the kids had been abused by some 29 grownups. A total of 33 children got status as victims and got compensation. It was the scandal of the century but it all turned out to be false.

So what happened? Police at the time had far more aggressive interrogation tactics and ways of dealing with witnesses. There was also a lack of understanding of child psychology. The problem existed many places in the West. The US had numerous trials of made up satanic rituals and sacrifices. So that school girls Loretta was misled and manipulated was not surprising given the time period.

Loretta was not the one at fault here. It was the police which had decided they wanted to get Dean. Let me give another quote from Prison Legal News:

Detectives “manufactured ‘evidence’ that falsely implicated” Cage, the complaint alleged. That included Chicago crime lab analysts who tested Zilinger’s clothing and created a misleading report about the presence of biological evidence that concealed exculpatory evidence.

Information on the alleged “anonymous tip” that implicated Cage, as well as all information received as a result of the publication of the composite sketch, was destroyed by the police.

Cage also had an alibi:

Cage testified in his defense at his 1996 trial, maintaining his innocence. “His fiancée provided an alibi, confirming that he had not yet left the house for work at the time the attack was reported to have taken place.

Furthermore, there was DNA evidence that could be used but which they refused to use:

His appeals were denied, as were efforts to have DNA evidence tested at his family’s expense.

It was not until much later in 2006 that Cook County State Attorney’s Office agreed to allow DNA testing. So what is the story here? The story is that the police did not do their job. They had every reason to believe they did not have the right guy, and they should have looked further to find someone matching Loretta’s description.

Instead, they manipulated evidence and pushed Loretta to agree that this was the guy so they could score a win and get a case closed. It was not for her justice. Yet the Manosphere wants to spin a story about police framing of an innocent man as being about “evil women lying falsely accusing men of rape.”

Now you may understand why I wrote “False Rape Accusations” in quotation marks. False rape accusations is a serious matter, but that is not what this was. A false rape accusation implies multiple things:

1. The girl was never raped. But Loretta was actually raped. She didn’t lie about that.
2. That the girl singles out a man with malicious intent or for some other benefit. She never did that.

Intent is important. I see numerous people say “he is lying,” when in fact the person is simply wrong. Being wrong about something is not the same as lying. Lying means you know the truth but say something different.

If I walk up to someone, points to him and say “he stole my iPhone,” and I know that is not true, then that is a false accusation. On the other hand, if the police line up suspects and I pick the wrong guy, then I am not engaging in a false accusation. Then it is a case of mistaken identity. I make an honest mistake. Perhaps the man looks very similar to the actual perpetrator.

Loretta’s case was about mistaken identity. It was an honest mistake. It would never have happened if the police did not manipulate her and all the other evidence. A 15-year-old school girl is not responsible for how a criminal investigation is carried out.

The Problem with Criminalizing False Rape Accusations

It is already illegal to lie in court. But Loretta was not lying, she was mistaken after being manipulated. Yet, many on X want to pin the blame of the whole case on her. They want her punished.

Imagine the precedence this would set. What witness would testify in any trial if they were told that if they got it wrong, they would face 14 years of prison, or whatever the suspect would face. Witnesses do make mistakes because human memory is not perfect. It deceives us. We must distinguish between deliberately lying and being wrong. Intention matters. Are you genuinely trying to help the police find the perpetrator, or are you deliberately trying to hurt someone?

And if this should be a principle for witnesses, then why not extend it to the police? If the cops arrest and accuse the wrong guy, the must go to prison for equal time. Does that sound like a good idea to you? Being wrong must be allowed. Deliberately lying or gross neglect ought to have consequences, but that must be weighed against our need to get witnesses to speak out.

It is telling about the rising misogyny today that the calls for punishing liars is only directed towards women and only in relation to rape cases. In other words, an attempt to silence women in one of the most serious crimes affecting women.

Let us look at some statistics from National Sexual Violence Resource Center and from the CDC:

• One in five women and one in 71 men will be raped at some point in their lives .
• Rape is the most under-reported crime; 63% of sexual assaults are not reported to police (o). Only 12% of child sexual abuse is reported to the authorities
• More than of women experienced some kind of sexual violence.

So this is a serious problem that should not be trivialized. MeToo got big because it is a big problem.

There is no reason why problems mainly facing women should be targeted specifically unless it is a manifestation of misogyny. If false accusations should be punished, then it should apply to all false accusations. One should not narrow it down to rape specifically. But as we see we rape it problem is not over reporting of rape but underreporting. Most rape victims don’t report it. So, as a society, the goal should be to encourage more women to speak up. Threatening them with punishment will not make that happen. Many avoid it already due to the stigma. Women are asked why didn’t you report it earlier? Why did you go out with that guy if you didn’t trust him? Why are you acting like this? That is not how a rape victim is supposed to act.

False accusing someone of rape is of course a serious matter, but we already have laws against that. Lying in court is punishable. There have been countries where women have gone to prison after being raped because they couldn’t prove the rapist did it. Is that a society we want? That the evidence was not strong enough to convict a rapist does not mean he was innocent.

When you are not convicted in court, that is not proof of innocence. It merely means we have not proven someone guilty. I see this misconception pop up all the time. A lot of people are obviously guilty, but the evidence we have just doesn’t reach the high standards a criminal court demands. But the court of public opinion does not require that same level of evidence.

Hence, it is possible to accuse someone of rape. They can sue you, but will lose if evidence suggests you are likely a rapist. That evidence may however, not reach the level that allows someone to be sent to prison for it. Unfortunately, this is how our justice systems have to work. We must allow for such parallel realities where someone is found to be a likely rapist or killer without being sent to prison for it. Remember to go to prison for a serious crime, there can be no doubt. That is the standard of the modern Wester justice system. Or rather, that is what we aspire to. The detectives in the Loretta Zilinger 1995 rape case manipulated the evidence.

I am not surprised that this happens. If you look at movies like Dirty Harry or other American cop movies, you always get the sense that honorable hero cops are always thwarted by the system. “The system” is always presented as protecting the criminals. Hence, we are led to sympathize with cops cutting corners to get the job done. That is the practice we should target. Going after 15-year-old rape victims is not the way.