Innocent until proven guilty protects all of us

One evening, my senior year in college, there was a knock at my door. When I answered, a student I didn’t know was standing there. He asked my name, and when I told him, he very politely asked if I would perform a sex act on him. After I told him he was out of his mind (or words to that effect), he said, “I’m sorry. I heard you did that sort of thing.” I was dumbstruck. I asked where he’d heard that, and he gave me a name. It was another male student I’d never met.

I was baffled. Furious. And now, on a mission.

It took several days of unannounced visits to referred strangers before I tracked down the source of the rumor: a fellow student I did know, who worked with me at the campus bar. Months earlier, the entire staff had stayed after work one night. The rumor-starter was holding a stand microphone, which was connected to the bar sound system. As some of us sang along to ’80s tunes, he danced from person to person, holding the mic up to our faces to capture our voices. But he was perilously close to smacking me in the mouth with it, and I told him to knock it off.

That was the source of the rumor. My co-worker took an innocent statement about not wanting to be hit in the mouth with a microphone, infused it with unsubtle sexual innuendo and spread the story around campus. In short order, I morphed from an obscure bartender/disc jockey into a notorious hussy whose sexual services were available on request.

I had forgotten about this incident until watching Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh defend against decades-old allegations of sexual misconduct — some absurd, none with any witnesses or other corroborating evidence.

I will never be a nominee for the Supreme Court, but I could certainly be considered for positions for which character matters. If someone determined to torpedo my shot at a plum job floated an unprovable allegation, how many people from college could come forward and attest that they’d heard sordid things about me? Beyond emphatic denials, how could I ever defend myself, decades later?

There are women across the U.S. who are incensed that a man they’ve been told is a sexual predator could end up on the nation’s highest court.

I have not — thank God — been the victim of rape. But I have been harassed. I’ve been groped. I have witnessed indecent exposure. I’ve been slammed up against a wall (for saying no) and suffered other sorrows at the hands of predatory, abusive and/or irresponsible men. So I’ve got my #MeToo bona fides.

But I am also an attorney, trained in the Anglo-American legal tradition. Our system is not perfect; it is protracted, expensive and often frustrating. But it is nevertheless one of the sturdiest legal systems in the history of civilization.

The question is not whether we “believe” Christine Blasey Ford. The question is whether she has proof necessary to overcome the presumption of innocence that is the cornerstone of our system.

There are reasons our legal system requires proof of allegations. Conviction by accusation has a horrific pedigree. The terms “witch hunt” and “lynching” are not hyperbole: In Salem, in 1692-93, 20 people were hanged — most of them women. Nearly 4,000 blacks were lynched in the U.S. between 1877 and 1950 — many for false accusations of sexual assault against white women.

People whipped into a fervor of righteous indignation, unconstrained by process and the rule of law, do unspeakably evil things. False accusations can destroy someone’s career, livelihood and reputation. (This is why we have defamation laws.)

We cannot punish one man for the sins of others. We cannot countenance the abolition of the presumption of innocence. Nor can we — even out of commiseration with the victim of an alleged assault — say her accusation is enough to convict someone, whether in a court of law or in the court of public opinion.

This isn’t cruel. It isn’t heartless. And it certainly isn’t patriarchy. It’s self-preservation. Women have been hanged. Women have been lynched. Women have been falsely accused and have been the false accusers.

Women can be destroyed, too.

Laura Hollis is a syndicated columnist.