a bonobo humanity?

not in Australia

So while I await the DCSI’s long-delayed decision on my clearance, I’m a little too nerve-frayed to focus on something completely other than myself, and Trump’s downfall – always an easy topic. So, until that time, I can do little more than diarise, my neologism. So I might be drifting from my case to that of the Trump, and back. On my case, I’ve spoken to a criminal lawyer, a friend of a friend, who’s agreed to help me, and as he’s also a friend of my former lawyer in the original court proceedings, he may be able to access further documentation, the stuff I’ve been trying to get hold of.

What was of more interest to me, though, was his insight into the way this state government has weighted legislation, over time, to favour the accuser over the defendant in cases of alleged sexual abuse. Some would argue this is a good thing, because it’s surely fair to say that in the past, allegations of rape for example, have not been given the full treatment they deserve, in our patriarchal society. We’re at last much more prepared to believe the women, and I agree that women very rarely lie about such things. But very rarely doesn’t mean never, and I would stick my neck out to say that children are more likely to lie about such things than adults, though again such lies are still rare. In my case, the liar was a fourteen-fifteen year old boy, whose motives I made clear to the police and to my lawyer at the time. But of course I never had my day in court, to examine the matter, such as it was.

The problem, as the lawyer put it, is that there are some zealots within the Screening Unit of DCSI, and they may be the ultimate decision makers, rather than the coal-face workers who interviewed me back in early December. That interview went well, and I came out of it feeling confident. For the first time I had something equivalent to my ‘day in court’, and I foolishly fantasised that it would all be wrapped up within a week or two, in my favour. We’re now in the twentieth week since my review lodgement, and I’m beginning to share the pessimistic views of this lawyer and of a teacher colleague – ‘these bureaucrats really hate admitting they were wrong’. Not to mention the jeopardy they’ve placed themselves in, in terms of the suffering they’ve put myself and others through, and the resentment and the desire for compensation and damages they’ve stirred up.

All of which makes me think this could become a much bigger issue, even a scandal of sorts, if only it was possible to determine how many people are involved. If there are few – and I must bear in mind that false accusations are rare – then nothing may come of it. After all, these ‘complex cases’ mentioned in the Ombudsman email may be more like borderline infractions, where the level of seriousness is in question, not whether something actually happened or not. Even so, they may have enough in common with those falsely accused for us to make common cause, in some kind of class action. Teachers, care workers and others are having their careers and reputations destroyed for questionable infractions and false allegations that happened to make it into the court system, with no recourse, because the screening unit has decided to ‘err’ on the side of caution. And considering the truly vast numbers of people being screened nowadays, even a small fraction of innocent people being done down, because of this decision that it’s acceptable to commit errors, may amount to a substantial number.

Innocent people, people who know they’re innocent, are likely to fight very very hard against a system that treats them as guilty. Especially in a case such as mine, when they have reason to feel proud of their role as a foster carer, a teacher or whatever. If there is some way I can connect with other innocent workers who are being destroyed by a systematic approach of ‘erring on the side of caution’, in a screening system with increasingly wide application in the workforce, we may be able to persuade authorities of the justice of our cause.

Interestingly, I’ve been partly inspired in this more active approach by one of the most currently prominent Trump scandals. Michael Avenatti, the lawyer for pornstar Stormy Daniels, is preparing for a major fight to permit his client to tell the truth. He’s facing the full weight of a political machine that is determined to suppress this truth, and it’s his commitment to having his client tell her story and to be judged, not only by the canaille, to speak pejoratively, but by the discerning public, that encourages me. I’ve told my story to a very few ‘strangers’, including a couple of lawyers and a panel of two employees of DCSI’s screening unit, who are clearly not the decision-makers in my case. The principal decision-makers appear to be higher-ups who are more interested in the thinnest of documents with ‘nolle prosequi’ at their head. I would dearly love to have my story, undramatic though it might be, presented on 60 Minutes for all to judge, and my accuser, if he’s still accusing, can have his say in the court of public opinion too. I would have far more faith in that court, in which at least people get to be heard by their judges, than by this secret process, ideologically driven to ‘err on the side of caution’, which means basically erring on the side of the accuser. But it’s Avenatti’s aggressive fighting spirit that impresses me. I feel that spirit within me, but of course I don’t have much of an audience to bolster me, or any forum in which to fight. Clearly I face an uphill battle to be heard by even a nano-fraction of the public, but again I’m heartened that Avenatti has gotten at least six other women, victims of Trump (Daniels isn’t quite a victim in that she seems to have willingly had a sexual relationship with the Trump, pretty vomit-inducing in itself), to add support to his lying, bullying nature. A class action of some sort might help my case, just to highlight the fact that there are false allegations out there, some of them quite egregious in their nature and their impact.

I have no real way, though, of reaching out to others in my circumstances, and as a hapless loner, I doubt if I have the wherewithal – though I think I could act effectively as a spokesperson once a group was formed. Of course, given the moral panic about child sexual abuse and given the Me Too movement, it’s not an easy time for pleading innocence and victimhood as an ’empowered male’, but we should be pushing to at least get our stories (or non-story in my case – or a story about my accuser) heard, something which was never vouchsafed me during my court process.