Here’s the thing: statistically speaking, you know a survivor of sexual assualt or rape. Statistically speaking, that person is a woman, or women in your life. All I ask anyone in this thread is that if and when they come to you and tell you that they’ve been sexually assaulted, that you believe them. Even if that person is a man, maybe especially so, believe him.

This isn’t about “women should be blindly believed” - how could anyone think that, this person went to jail, went to court first, had a trial, etc. This wasn’t a woman “blindly believed” and then put in jail. This was an innocent black man who was jailed, and that’s a bit more common. Despite what the content you consume might tell you, we aren’t living in a society where women are “blindly believed” for fucking anything, my guy. It’s understandable not to believe someone you don’t know, which is why I’m just asking you to do it for the people you do know. This shouldn’t be a difficult ask.

Just to be absolutely clear because it seems like I need to - false accusations, false imprisonment for crimes, including rape does happen. However, at least in the case of rape and sexual assualt, far more women are raped without ever telling anyone (as they are either in unsafe situations they can’t escape and/or have been told they will be killed if anyone finds out), far more women go through a rape kit examination but those kits sit unprocessed, far more women go to trial only to find their rapist (as in, the guy who actually raped them) go free, than do men go to jail for being falsely convicted of rape.

If you can, consider reading this thread from the viewpoint of someone who’s been raped, but who (for reasons mentioned above) never saw their rapist go to trial or never be convicted; who may have lost their job because their rapist was their coworker and now no one feels comfortable working with her because “he was such a nice guy he couldn’t have done this she must’ve just had a bad date or something”, etc… Statistically speaking, survivors of sexual assault have already done this. Read through this thread, full of men displaying their scrutiny for women who women who say they were survivors of sexual assault.

I don’t know the details of this case. Maybe this woman was still raped, and maybe this was mistaken identity. There’s very little incentive for a person to go after an innocent person for sexual assault. There’s very little incentive for a person to lie about being raped. This isn’t some sort of “weird trick” that “men hate” that lets women jail any guy who crosses them. I’m not advocating for any gender discrimination when it comes to sentencing. Before all that, for the women in your life who have been survivors of sexual assault, I just ask, please, for them… believe them.