“If this trial prevents one little girl or one mother or father from reporting suspected abuse then this is profoundly sad for our society.”
—-Lee J. Danforth, attorney,making a lightly veiled argument that his clients should suffer no penalties for ruining a teacher’s career and reputation with a false accusation of “inappropriate touching,” because such penalties would discourage future legitimate accusations.
“Oh, you all were lying when you got John Proctor hung as a witch? Well, that’s okay—we wouldn’t want to punish you, because it might discourage a real victim, in case there really IS a witch one of these days…
Mr. Danforth was defending a San Jose, California family in a defamation suit by a former Catholic school physical education teacher, John Fischler, who claimed that they methodically destroyed his reputation with a campaign of rumors and lies, led by his main accuser, an 11-year-old girl right out of “The Children’s Hour” or “The Crucible.” Danforth is a lawyer (Danforth was also the name of the judge in the Salem witch trials, speaking of “The Crucible” and false accusations) , and it is sometimes necessary, and thus ethical, for lawyers to make otherwise unethical arguments in the zealous representation of their despicable clients. Remember, legal ethics does not allow Danforth to temper his advocacy out of concern for future, genuine victims, unlike his clients. They are not his concern, and even bad people have a right to vigorous legal representation. Nonetheless, his statement embodies an unethical rationalization for letting diabolical and vicious false accusers escape the just consequences for their actions.
Danforth’s reasoning has long been employed by prosecutors who refuse to press charges against women who falsely sent innocent men to prison for rape. It is also similar to the argument against punishing corrupt prosecutors who withhold evidence that would prove a criminal defendant innocent, and who is ultimately convicted of a crime he didn’t commit. After all, we don’t want to discourage legitimate prosecutions by making prosecutors fearful that they will be sent to jail for a good faith error, do we?
The objective of liability is to compensate the victims of wrongs, ensure that misconduct is met with sufficiently negative consequences, and to protect future victims of similar misconduct by making the price sufficiently steep that it discourages future offenders. Letting a girl and her family escape justice after creating a false story that impugns a teacher’s character encourages future abuses. It also unfairly establishes the principle that a current victim should have no effective remedies so that it is easier for future victims of a different offense to get the justice they deserve. The “if it leads to one unjust consequence” argument can be used to attack the enforcement of almost any law, or all laws. Making false accusers pay for the damage they intended to do by compensating their victims discourages future false accusers. It does not discourage real victims from seeking justice, but even if it did: what is Danforth advocating, open season on teachers, so students who want to get revenge on a disliked instructor can falsely label him a sexual predator without fear of reprisals?
At least the unethical and illogical argument didn’t work: the family that followed the lead of its cruel 11-year old ring leader was ordered to pay $362,653 in compensatory damages to John Fischler.
Good.
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Facts: San Jose Mercury News
Graphic: Jonesborough Rep Theater
Ethics Alarms 
Remind me, what charges did the prosecutor’s office bring against the accuser in the Duke Lacrosse rape case?
And please don’t mention the feckless shitpiles that taught there and penned that letter proclaiming their guilt…
I don’t have the reference in front of me, although checking out the blog Durham in Wonderland would have more information. I do know that Nifong got pretty well hammered on the whole deal, professionally speaking, although I don’t think any charges were brought. The “Group of 88” got off scot-free, of course, except the ones who no longer teach at Duke… because they were hired to better positions elsewhere.
I am glad I can agree with you here. False accusors should be punished, period.
And to be clear (to anyone who might come in thinking otherwise) one is not a false accusor just because the defendent was found not guilty. In order to be a false accusor one has to be shown to have knowingly lied about it.
Exactly.
And glad to have you back. Just because I jump all over you doesn’t mean your opinion isn’t valued.
I noticed it while we were arguing on an earlier thread, and in the midst of heated disagreement seemed the wrong time to bring this up, but have you ever noticed how very much the thumbnail version of your gravatar looks like Santa Claus in black and white?
The neck of the microphone is a white fur collar, the shadows around the base are the shoulders of a dark colored suit, the bottom half of the grill of the mic is a white beard and the top half where it looks a bit darker is the face. The band across the top is the white fur edge of the hat across the forehead, and the pivot on the left is the white ball at the tip of the hat…
Anyone else? Anyone?
I have tried to see how Mr. Danforth’s argument makes any sense what so ever in any way. I can’t see it. His argument could be effectively used to prosecute the false accuser, but never to protect them. How did he ever imagine it would be persuasive? I must be missing something.
He is saying that if you prosecute a false accuser, a legitimate accuser might refuse to come forward for fear that she would be disbelieved and punished as a false accuser. Therefore, you shouldn’t punish false accusers, like this one.
How stupid. No one but a shyster lawyer would think of that.
Oh. I get it.
It seems an excellent justification for a class-action lawsuit against his clients by those kids who have been raped, but disbelieved, because of past false accusations by others.
It’s not just the teacher who has suffered damage.
You should be a lawyer!
And my answer is so what? That is just collateral damage.
Do we refrain from prosecuting drug dealers because it would put their employees out of work?
If the cause is just, any amount of collateral damage is worth it.
JM, I think your argument against such suits, to the effect that they only exert a chilling effect on the genuinely guilty and not on good faith accusers, would only hold if at least three conditions were both met:-
– That the burden of proof was the criminal one, of being beyond reasonable doubt, rather than the civil one, of the preponderance of the evidence. But that is not the situation.
– That litigation itself would not be burdensome to good faith accusers, i.e. that they would and could be made whole afterwards (at any rate if shown to be good faith accusers) or supported at the time (even without showing that they were good faith accusers). Mostly, neither applies.
– That the accused were not in such a position of actual and effective power that they could (ab)use it for payback. This overlaps the litigation, in that the accused can use their positions to fund it, and so on.
Without meeting those needs there, any good faith accusers with a sound assessment of the situation must necessarily fear being caught on technicalities that they could not have known, being destroyed in health and/or finances by the litigation itself, being destroyed separately under the cloak of authority, etc. As things stand, the prospect of all this is bound to have some chilling effect.
All of which is not to say that accusers should all be immunised regardless, but rather that it really is difficult to craft the sort of immunity that bypasses the guilty if it is always to immunise good faith accusers.
I really do not give a fuck of whether punishing false accusers would discourage genuine accusations. After what happened with Grant Snowden, Gerald Amirault, and Timothy Coler, the pendulum should swing so far the other way that it would leave the galaxy! Even if all genuine accusers are deterred, so what? That is just collateral damage, and why should we as a society care about collateral damage, as long as the cause is just?
I advocate for the criminal prosecution of false accusers. This, of course, would require the criminal burden of proof.
Perhaps one thing that could be done to help with the harm that is done by false accusations is to protect the anonimity of both the accusor and the accused.
Protect neither.
What benefit do we as a society have to know who is charged as an alleged rapist?
LOVE the picture–the little girls straight from the Scarlet Letter. Where did you find it?
The link is at the bottom—it’s from a regional theater production of “The Crucible.” I always appreciate it when readers notice the graphics.
I have in the past made a similar argument, that prosecuting false accusers who were coerced as young children, as in the case of the “San Antonio Four,” would discourage other young women who lied as children or teens from coming forth and recanting, but this and a few other cases have been so egregious that I have pretty much done a 180 on that.
If they were coerced as young children, that would, at a minimum, diminish their culpability.
Oh, I totally agree, and in this particular case, as soon as they, or at least one of the two, was old enough to remember that it never happened, she recanted and has continued to do so ever since, and it still took 15 years and a finding of erroneous evidence and the Innocence Project to set them free.