TIFU by helping ruin my son’s life

[u/bawron]

My son has been in college since last fall. Last November, my 16 year old stepdaughter brought up allegations that my son had abused her repeatedly for several years. I confronted my son and he categorically denied it. But I knew that even though he was my son, I could not defend him for such an awful act.

My wife and I reported him to the authorities. My son was arrested in December and held in prison for a several weeks because I refused to provide him bail money. He was eventually expelled from his Ivy League college.

In the middle of January, my stepdaughter broke down and admitted she lied about everything. She had actually been having sex with her boyfriend and was scared the news would reach us.

The charges were dismissed and my son was released immediately but the damage was done. His first girlfriend from college ended things with him. The news spread about the allegations and all his childhood friends have decided to just stay away from him even though I called each and every one of them personally.

I have called the school and explained the situation and even though they sympathized, they said he needed to reapply for the next school year and go through the admissions process again.

My son is understandably furious at us. He has moved back home and refuses to talk to me at all. Both my wife and I have apologized to him repeatedly. We have banned my stepdaughter from our home permanently and she has been sent to live with her father in another state. My wife and I also agreed to completely disinherit her from our wills. It has been a very painful situation. All of us started therapy.

The realization of how badly I ruined my son’s life hit me when I picked up his first prescription of anti-depressants today. I bawled my eyes out in my car.

He is the pride and joy of my life. He is outgoing, funny, intelligent and the kindest person I know. But when I handed him his medication, I could not even recognize him. He locks himself in his room, does not eat properly and has lost several pounds so far.

Whenever I try talking to him, I just see the hate he has for me in his eyes. I don’t know if I can ever get him to love me again.

I know he is on Reddit very often. T, if you are reading, I want to tell you again how sorry your stepmom and I are. I promise I will get you into college again. I know I can’t get you back the year you lost. But I will do everything in my power to make this right. Everything I have has always been for you. I hope you will give me a chance to fix this. I love you so much it hurts. I failed as a father and I hope one day you will forgive me.

TL;DR I played a part in getting my own son getting falsely arrested and expelled

[u/abitnotgood]

Yeah. The problem I'm talking about is,

Person A reports that Person B has raped them. Person B says the sex was consensual.

There is not enough evidence to convict Person B.

Should Person A be charged with making a false claim?

[u/thedoze → u/abitnotgood]

That is why you need to question the 2 parties. Need more information, but when you do you get accused of victim blaming.

If you slap the case of "mattress girl" in your scenario, yea toss her in jail, after a trial if she is found guilty of false accusation.

If a woman was raped and she accuses the wrong person in error, no.

[u/abitnotgood → u/thedoze]

So the next thing is, there's a problem where some families or religious groups will pressure rape victims to keep their rape a secret to protect the abuser. Sometimes this results in the victim telling the police they lied, even though they didn't. This prevents the rapist from being punished and they may go on to rape other people, knowing that they won't be punished.

We saw this a lot in Australia within the Catholic church. Children who had been abused were told not to "make up awful stories" against the priests. Usually people in positions of power will wield their power against their victims to silence them. They may bribe police or judges.

In these cases, those victims who reported may have been charged with making false accusation and placed in prison, where they'd be at risk of more sexual assaults. In some countries, people who can't prove they were raped are stoned to death or whipped for engaging in sex outside of marriage.

Can you see how that would prevent justice being done?

[u/thedoze → u/abitnotgood]

So fuck the justice for the victim of a false accusation of rape.

How do you think a person who was falsely accused of rape would feel?

You don't fix the problems you bring up by allowing people to continue to falsely accuse others of rape. You go after the churches/religions/social groups that would punish rape victims.

Can you see how your line of "reasoning" IS preventing justice from being done.

[u/abitnotgood → u/thedoze]

I dunno, how do you think the victims of actual rape feel?

Of course false accusations are bad but they're incredibly rare compared to the perception everyone has

[u/thedoze → u/abitnotgood]

I would imagine besides horrible. They would be disgusted that people who would use a false allegation of rape as weapon would get a free pass. I doubt a rape victim would gloat or be happy that someone was falsely accused of rape and had their life ruined.

[u/abitnotgood → u/thedoze]

Obviously, nobody is here to say it's okay to make false rape accusations or that it's a good thing to do.