J’Accuse

My former mother-in-law was the matriarch of a far-flung Irish clan living mostly in Connecticut. One day when we were shooting the breeze the topic turned to child abuse. She told me about a lecherous uncle who would ask young girls in the family to “sit on his lap and pull his thumb.” The women in the family closed ranks and made sure that one of them was always in the same room to head off the uncle at holiday gatherings. Today, many women would derisively call those protective mothers “enablers.” Off with his head! Nobody called the police; nobody would have called a child abuse hotline even if there had been one back then. But it wasn’t because they were bad mothers or didn’t love their daughters. It was because, in their pragmatic 1940s Catholic world view, it was better all around to head off any potential abuse at the source rather than imprison a family man, likely dooming his wife and numerous children to poverty and homelessness. This was the reality and the social context within which many housewives lived in early mid-twentieth-century America.

Take the case of the third U.S. President Thomas Jefferson, much maligned in our post #MeToo world for fathering six children with his Black slave Sally Hemings after his wife died. (There remains some dispute as to exactly how many of those kids were fathered by Jefferson, though his relationship with Hemings is recognized.) What is not disputed is that his sexual relationship with Hemings almost certainly began in France, when Jefferson was in his mid-40s and Hemings was between 14 and 16. Until DNA came along, Jefferson historians denied this possible paternity for some 150 years.

In Jefferson’s time such liaisons were not uncommon, and, the sex-with-a-minor issue aside, his views on slavery itself were complicated, especially since he reportedly owned 600 slaves himself. I remember an observation by one of Jefferson’s biographers that I read many years ago: the fact that he owned slaves was beside the point since wealthy white men of his time and class universally owned them. What made him an outlier was that, unlike most of his contemporaries, he came to believe that slavery was wrong. Like all of us, he lived within the cultural norms of his time. So far, I haven’t read of any efforts to erase Jefferson from our history, pilloried by twenty-first century outrage at his (alleged) behavior at the dawn of our republic.

This is not the case with more contemporary dethroned cultural icons. Consider the swift takedown of the late Cesar Chavez, cofounder of the National Farmworkers Association and hero to agriculture workers everywhere. A hero until a week ago, that is, until a child living in his La Paz community, Ana Murguia, accused him of sexually abusing her beginning when she was 13 and Chavez himself was 45. Marguia said that she decided to come forward 50 years after the fact when she recently learned that a street near her home in Bakersfield was to be named in honor of the celebrated labor activist and civil rights leader. Today Chavez’s reputation and accomplishments lay in tatters as a tsunami of public protest is systematically erasing all evidence of his existence. No matter that his labor movement transformed the lives of generations of farm workers. Everything he created during his lifetime has fallen victim to the #MeToo eraser.

A unique feature of a sexual abuse charge is that it is assumed to be true without due process and absent any evidence to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Proponents of this assumption of guilt cite the hidden nature of this alleged crime, its “he said she said” dynamic that happens in the dark behind closed doors. It holds the dubious distinction of assuming guilt upon public exposure rather than upon conviction; offhand I can’t think of another type of crime where the accused is guilty until proven innocent. Chavez is dead and can’t face his accuser though, sadly, public shaming often short-circuits the legal process anyway.

Take Al Franken, the liberal Democratic U.S. Senator from Minnesota who became an early casualty of the #MeToo movement when conservative talk-radio host Leeann Tweeden accused him of forcing a kiss on her a decade earlier. Seven other women levied similar allegations, and poof! Franken was gone within days. Many women in the Senate, including liberal icons and passionate due process defenders Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris, immediately called upon Franken to resign – which he did. Today Franken says he regrets not fighting for his day in court and the chance to clear his name. But these days to be accused is to be guilty, in Tweeden’s accusation guilty of an alleged 10-year-old stolen kiss. Elected officials and judges alike are terrified of being tarred by #MeToo and, along with them, their reputations and positions. It’s McCarthyism with a uniquely feminine twist.

Though in the United States most states still set the minimum age of sexual consent at 10 to 12 as late as the 1880s, almost all states had raised that minimum age to between 16 and 18 by 1920. In cases of sexual abuse of a minor, a universally abhorrent crime, the degrees of punishment have kept pace with the times. In California, for example, statutes of limitation have been effectively erased for many categories of sex with a minor including oral copulation, lewd and lascivious acts, and separate categories for minors younger than 10 and minors younger than 14.

Sexually abusing children is a horrible crime and there is broad agreement that those convicted of it should be severely punished. But in cases of unproved allegations, those accused should share the same assumption of innocence and legal protection as alleged perpetrators of other crimes. Allowing allegations of an unwanted kiss long past to destroy, unchallenged, the lives of those accused is an ethical crime in itself.