Honest talk about Tara Reade

Tara Reade’s sexual assault allegation against Joe Biden stands on shakier ground after the publication last week of several articles severely damaging to Reade’s credibility. The turn has also prompted some feminist reassessment of the famous slogan, “Believe women.”

Should Reade be branded a false accuser? And more broadly, what have we learned about how to react to public allegations of sex crimes?

Reade, who worked in Biden’s Senate office in 1992-93, first came forward a year ago as one of the women complaining about Biden’s notorious (but non-sexual) handsy ways. Then, she resurfaced in March with a far more serious accusation: that one day when she chased down Biden from his office to bring him a gym bag, he pushed her against the wall, groped her under her skirt and penetrated her with his finger.

I thought from the start that the story didn’t make sense. Aside from Biden’s lack of any record of sexual predation, Reade’s account implied he attacked her in a public place. Her lawyer Doug Wigdor later clarified that it happened in “an alcove.” But a thorough investigation by PBS NewsHour found no alcove or other secluded space on the route in question.

Meanwhile, Politico interviewed several people who described Reade as dishonest and manipulative, while Laura McGann in Vox and Michael Tracey in Spectator USA cast some doubt on the corroborating witnesses who said she told them about the alleged assault in the mid-1990s. My own article in the online magazine Quillette discussed a previous instance of likely fabrication by Reade: her 2009 essay about surviving domestic violence described unspeakable brutalities by her ex-husband, including strangulation and threats to kill their child, that did not appear in her own 1996 petition for a restraining order during her divorce.

None of this definitely proves that Reade is lying. But it is certainly a strong possibility.

The existence of false allegations of sexual assault or rape has been something of a taboo in our culture since the rise of feminist anti-rape advocacy in the 1970s, and especially since the past decade’s feminist revival. Even after Rolling Stone’s shocking tale of a fraternity gang rape at the University of Virginia was exposed as a hoax in early 2015, pundits such as legal analyst Sunny Hostin stressed that the supposed victim, a student named Jackie, should not be branded a liar. (Evidence showed that the main perpetrator Jackie named was a made-up boyfriend she had impersonated in messages to friends.) Hostin noted that “only about 2% of rapes that are reported are false.”

Yet that often-used figure appears to have no credible source. While Hostin and others have attributed it to the FBI, the bureau’s statistics show that 8-10% of rape reports to law enforcement are “unfounded” (i.e., closed by police after determining that no crime occurred). These figures undoubtedly include some reports that are not false, but they also likely miss some false reports as well. (A large number of complaints are never resolved; some wrongful allegations result in prosecution or even conviction.) Studies of campus sexual assault reports show a similar pattern.

Ultimately, no one knows the “real” rate of false allegations — especially ones made to the media, not to authorities. False rape accusations are not the “epidemic” claimed by some anti-feminist blogs, but they are not such a rarity that we should reflexively believe every accuser without worrying about condemning the innocent. And while this issue often draws forth misogynistic rhetoric, some women’s bad acts hardly reflect on women in general.

Many feminists, from author Susan Faludi in a New York Times op-ed to actress/activist Alyssa Milano on Twitter, now argue that “Believe women” never meant that all women who say they have been sexually assaulted must be believed; it’s simply shorthand for “listen to their stories and consider the evidence.” There is much revisionism in these claims. But if, as Milano says, the new feminist principle is to support fairness and due process for both sides, count me in.

Young is a contributor to Reason magazine.