Believe Women or Believe Evidence

There are some feminists of both genders who subscribe to a believe women ethos which means that to them the default should be to automatically and uncritically accept allegations of misbehavior that any and all women make, particularly if such charges have to deal with sexual or other violence against women. 

Some such people get frightfully wroth if anyone is impolitic  enough to point out that women, like other human beings, are capable of being mistaken or deceitful. I think that any standard we use, whether in criminal court, civil court, or the court of public opinion, must have some provision for evidence. In other words no one should be uncritically believed without evidence.

Such faith might be something that individuals give to intimates or close relatives but it's not something that society can or should give to anyone who makes a claim. I recently read about another example of this.

Six weeks after Sherri Papini was arrested and charged with faking her own kidnapping in 2016, the so-called Super Mom from Northern California has signed a plea deal and will admit that she orchestrated the hoax, her attorney told The Sacramento Bee on Tuesday.

William Portanova, a prominent Sacramento defense attorney who signed onto the case in late March, said Papini, 39, signed a plea agreement Tuesday morning in which she will plead guilty to counts of lying to a federal officer and mail fraud.

“We are taking this case in an entirely new direction,” said Portanova, a former federal prosecutor. “Everything that has happened before today stops today.”.

Papini was arrested by FBI agents March 3 and charged with lying to federal agents and wire fraud following years of investigation into the supposed kidnap case.

She was accused of lying to authorities in an August 2020 interview with the FBI despite agents warning her in advance that lying to the FBI is a crime, court documents say.

“She was presented with evidence that showed she had not been abducted,” U.S. Attorney Phil Talbert’s office said in a statement announcing the charges. “Instead of retracting her kidnapping story, Papini continued to make false statements about her purported abductors.”

She also had a story about her “abduction,” telling authorities “two Hispanic women” had kidnapped her and tortured her for weeks as they kept her chained to a pole in a closet and played “that really annoying Mexican music” loudly, court documents say.

Her disappearance generated international headlines and rallies supporting her, as well as a GoFundMe account that raised $49,000.

She also received $30,000 from the California Victim Compensation Board, and used the money for therapy sessions, ambulance services and $1,000 to buy window blinds for her home, court documents say. The use of those funds is the basis for the mail fraud charge.

LINK

Women are no more or less moral or truthful than men. We should remember that. I hope that Papini  gets enough time to deter others from attempting the same scam.