How did you deal with an embarrassing false accusation and what lessons did you learn from the experience?

Question

How did you deal with an embarrassing accusation and what lessons did you learn from the experience?

Answer 1

I'll share a personal story, although I wasn't the victim of the false accusation. I still lived in Nigeria with my parents when it happened. I was 10 years old.

One afternoon, I had accompanied our neighbour’s daughter, her brother, and their house help, on an errand to a nearby sawmill, to get wood dust. She was my age mate, the brother was about 8, and the house help must have been about 19 years old.

One of the four men working at the mill told us we could have all the wood dust we wanted, but forbade us from touching their planks. As soon as he turned his back, the house girl began to stealthily stuff planks into her sack.
The men soon noticed and came charging angrily towards us. One of them grabbed her sack, and began to unload the planks she had stolen, as the others told us off hotly. Then the strangest thing my ten-year old eyes had ever seen happened.

The house help had transformed, from the sweet, friendly person who led us to the mill, to a stranger; a yelping, shockingly convincing stranger actress, flailing distressfully, as she screamed in Yoruba, towards the street; "Help me! Help me! These sick men are fondling my breasts!"

It was surreal. I remember reeling back in shock, as my little brain tried to grasp the drama unfolding before my eyes. I was ten but I could understand that we were the ones in the wrong. So why was she tearfully accusing the kind men of wrongdoing? And why were they suddenly overcome with dread, and acting like the accusations were true, instead of vehemently scolding her? Instead, they stepped back and pleaded for her to stop screaming, asking us to take all the wood we wanted and leave.

For a few years after, that experience haunted and confused me. Why was such an accusation so powerful and effective on those men? Why did they refuse to confront their accuser, and allowed her to get away scot-free?

The more I thought about the event, and as I grew older, two thing became clear to me; that was not the first time that the house help had used that trick to get something she wanted. And she is not the only woman in the world, who had realised how false accusations of sexual assault can be used as a powerful weapon against men.