Tag Archives: false accusations of rape

law, true crime

Repost: Yet another innocent man goes to prison over false rape charges… 

Here’s a repost from July 2014 about a man who was falsely accused of rape. I am reposting it to go with today’s fresh content.

This is actually an old case.  Someone posted about it on Facebook today and I had to read up on it to see if it was true.  I found the case referenced in several brief articles until I found a much longer one that related the tale of Cassandra Ann Kennedy and her decision to falsely accuse her father of raping her back in 2001.  At the time she made the accusation, Cassandra was 11 years old.  She was upset with her father because he had divorced her mother.  She was tired of having to go to his house for visitations, where she and her sister would have to sleep on a mattress on his floor.  She was tired of his partying, drinking, and pot smoking.  And then, apparently, he stopped showing up altogether.  Cassandra thought he didn’t love her, and she wanted revenge.

Cassandra had a friend whose stepfather was sent to prison for a child sex crime.  She got the idea to accuse her father when she saw her friend’s stepfather get sent away.  Since Cassandra started having sexual experiences in the second grade, she knew about sex and what she could say to make her father look guilty.  She also had some trauma to her genital region that looked convincing.  Obviously, someone was abusing Cassandra when she was a little girl.  It wasn’t her father, though.

Based on Cassandra’s convincing testimony and her wrath toward her dad, Thomas Kennedy spent nine years in prison and was released in 2012.  He was originally sentenced to 15 years and would have been released in 2016, had Cassandra not had an attack of her conscience.  She went to detectives and told them she lied about her father.  He’d never raped her or touched her inappropriately.  In fact, she even had some fond memories of him from when she was very young.

Cassandra Kennedy was not punished for falsely accusing her father of rape, because authorities feared that punishing her would discourage legitimate rape victims from coming forward.  I suppose I can understand that fear, given how shameful sex crimes are for victims.  However, I can’t help but remember that an innocent man, who may not have been the world’s greatest dad, spent nine years that he will never get back in a prison cell.  I am assuming that since he was innocent, he won’t have to register as a sex offender… but now he has to resume his life after having spent nine years incarcerated.  How difficult was it for him in those months after he was released in 2012?

Some months ago, I wrote a blog post about a young man who was falsely accused of rape.  Johnathon Montgomery had the misfortune of once living in the same neighborhood as Elizabeth Paige Coast, a girl whose mother caught her looking at pornography.  Elizabeth’s mother assumed that her daughter must have been abused, since she was looking at porn, and she demanded to know who had touched her.  In a panic, Elizabeth named Johnathon, who had since moved to Florida.  She didn’t think the police would find him.  They did, and he went to prison for four years for a crime he didn’t commit.  At least in this case, Coast had to pay a large fine and spend 60 days in jail.  It seems like a small price to pay for the four years Mr. Montgomery lost, though.

I certainly understand the need for people to come forward to speak up when they have been sexually assaulted.  I would never deny anyone the right to justice when a crime has been committed.  I even understand prosecutors being reluctant to charge false accusers because they don’t want to discourage genuine victims from seeking help.  At the same time, I can’t help but think of how totally unfair it is that Thomas Kennedy and Johnathan Montgomery went to prison for years because someone lied.

I posted about this case on Facebook and a friend who is very much a feminist was dismayed that someone had left this comment with the story…

It’s amazing that no one who actually is guilty of wrongdoing in this case, will pay any price. Not the accuser, police, doctor, teacher, prosecutor, no one.

All of those people were willing to throw away a man’s life based on nothing more than the say-so of a troubled 11-year old girl, because we’ve been told by feminists that “women don’t lie about being raped” and that men are animals. Well, women DO lie about being raped, and only a small fraction of men are anything but decent.

My friend described it as a “MRA” comment– that is, “men’s rights”.  She is against men fighting for rights because she thinks they already have too much control and don’t need to fight for their rights.  Frankly, I disagree.  While I completely understand that women have historically gotten the short end of the stick and still face sexism today, I also think that men also get treated unfairly based on their gender.  I think both males and females are entitled to fairness, and we do have some laws right now that favor females over males.

If you’re really for fairness, you can’t be for giving women special treatment because of the equipment they happened to be born with.  I think the above comment is perfectly reasonable.  What surprises me is that it was the only one posted.  Had the genders been switched in this case, I bet the comments section would have been full.  Do people really not care that an innocent man spent nine years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit?  Do people really not understand that if something like that could happen to Thomas Kennedy or Johnathon Montgomery, it could happen to them or one of their loved ones?

I understand that Cassandra Kennedy and Elizabeth Coast were both troubled girls when they made their false allegations.  It’s obvious that they both needed help when they were at their most vulnerable.  But that help should have come in the form of counseling, not incarcerating innocent men.  Making false rape accusations does more than ruin the lives of innocent people; it also does a huge disservice to legitimate victims of sex crimes who may one day face doubt when they come forward.  Situations like the ones I’ve written about today give people like Todd Akin ammunition when they spread their misogynistic agendas.

Honestly, if I had a son, I would be very vigilant about teaching him to be careful around women.  There are a lot of great women with big hearts out there.  But there are also a lot of shady, immoral, liars out there, too, and our society seems reluctant to hold them accountable when they take advantage of female friendly laws.  Justice should be blind.

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law, true crime

Repost: A man’s life was almost ruined…

Here’s a repost from December 2013 about a man who went to prison for four years after he was falsely accused of rape. I am reposting it because of today’s fresh content.

because a teenager was looking at sexually explicit material online and got caught by her mother.  The teenager explained her behavior by making up a story about being sexually assaulted when she was a kid.  She falsely claimed that Johnathon Montgomery had molested her when she was ten years old and he was fourteen.  She said she had named Montgomery because he had moved away from their area and she figured the cops would never find him.  But they did find him in Florida and he was arrested, even though he insisted that he hadn’t touched the girl.  Apparently, she made up the story because her mother wanted to know why she was looking at porn and wondered if she had been abused.

In 2008, the young woman, Elizabeth Paige Coast, was 17 years old.  In court, she testified that Montgomery had defiled her in several different ways and apparently, her testimony was so graphic that she was able to convince a jury and a prosecutor of his guilt.  As a result of her testimony, Montgomery was sentenced to seven and a half years behind bars.  In October 2012, Coast, then working as a civilian at the police department, told a police officer friend that she had made up the story.  At that point, Montgomery had spent four years in prison and expected to spend a few more behind bars.  Just now, in December 2013, this man has finally been declared completely innocent.

I don’t know about you, but I think this is a pretty sickening situation.  I am very glad Montgomery was eventually found innocent, but what about those years he spent in prison, wrongly accused of a crime?  

I just read about this case today.  I don’t live in Virginia anymore and had gotten out of the habit of religiously following stuff going on there.  And that makes me think that Johnathon Montgomery was just languishing behind bars before that woman finally came clean and revealed the truth.  I have to wonder, how in the world could she live with herself for those four years, knowing that an innocent man was sitting in a prison cell based on her lies?  And all because she was too ashamed to tell her mother the truth about why she was looking at sexually explicit stuff on the Internet.

Montgomery will never get those years back.  I am sure he’s happy to be out of prison.  I can’t even imagine what he endured in there… and how he managed to adapt after he was wrongly accused of being a sex offender.  Hell, if that woman hadn’t finally told the truth, even if he had gotten out of prison, he would have had to live the life of a sex offender, even though he’s totally innocent.

God only knows how this affected his family.  How much time, money, and resources were exhausted to prove Montgomery’s innocence?  And now that he’s out of the joint, he’s going to have to make a living.  But at least he doesn’t have to do it as a registered sex offender.

I see that in May of 2013, Coast confessed to committing perjury for making those false statements and had to spend 60 days in jail.  She was also fined $90,000.  It seems like a very small price to pay for what she did to Johnathon Montgomery.  I’m glad the guilt got to her at last and she did the right thing.  But a man’s life was almost ruined, thanks to her lies.  She is fortunate that Montgomery appears to be a forgiving sort.  I wouldn’t blame him if he sued the shit out of her.  Perhaps a testament to Montgomery’s good nature is that he has apparently said that he doesn’t think Coast should have to go to prison for what she did.

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sex, sexism, slut shamers

For the love of God, stop with the slut shaming!

Ugh… but kudos to this lady for coming up with a fine response.

A couple of days ago, the above post showed up in the Duggar Family News group on Facebook. I always groan when I see these kinds of posts about purity, even though I never heard those kinds of messages myself when I was growing up. I was fortunate enough to have parents who didn’t raise me in a very strict religion. As it turned out, I abstained anyway. I didn’t have sex for the first time until two weeks after my wedding. My reasons for abstaining, though, had very little to do with religion or wanting to please my future husband by being fresh and pure. In my case, it mostly came down to practicality.

I’ve mentioned more than once in this blog that I’m not particularly likable. A lot of the men who do like me, seem to like me for reasons that don’t have to do with sex. I have had male friends tell me they like me for my frank sense of humor. A couple of guys have told me they think I’m witty or smart. Only a few have said they think I’m pretty. Consequently, I didn’t date much at all. The one guy I did date in high school was just as nervous about sex as I was, and in fact, later confessed to me that he was more into guys.

For most of my 20s, I focused on working and going to school. I didn’t have a love life. Maybe I could have had one, had I made an effort, but I just never seemed to be attracted to the guys who found me attractive, and vice versa. Then, when I was 27 years old, I met Bill in a chat room. By the time we met in person, he already liked my personality… What can I say? Every old sock has an old shoe out there somewhere, right?

At the time Bill and I were dating, he was still a Latter-day Saint. Premarital sex is a “no no” for Mormons. Although I had zero intention of ever being LDS, and Bill was falling away from the faith, Bill decided he preferred to wait until after our wedding to consummate the marriage. I was fine with it, since I had already waited so long, anyway. And then, on our wedding day, I started my period, so we decided to wait until that was over before having sex for the first time. I was 30 years old.

The last thing anyone could ever call me is a “slut”… although Ex supposedly told her kids that Bill and I had an affair (and we didn’t– she was projecting). The couple of times anyone has ever insinuated that I’m slutty, I’ve been very offended by it. First off, it’s factually inaccurate. And secondly, it’s just not cool to shame people for having sex. Sex is a part of life. Sex is the conduit to life.

That being said… my personal belief is that people should have less unprotected sex, especially with people with whom they don’t wish to make a baby. But that’s just my personal view. I don’t think it should be a law. I don’t think young girls should be taught object lessons involving flowers, chewing gum, or licked cupcakes. Sex isn’t dirty, and having sex shouldn’t cause someone to feel damaged or soiled. The reason I feel the way I do is not because I think that people who have sex are weak or “slutty”. It’s because I think that sex can really complicate life in a lot of ways. Also, I do worry that abortion may soon be outlawed in the United States. And because of that, sex could become even riskier than it is now.

I don’t think most people actually use abortion as birth control, especially given how difficult abortion is to access in many areas. Even if they did, that would be their business, as far as I’m concerned. However, as I tried to explain to a militantly pro-life man yesterday, sometimes pregnancy is dangerous. Some women get very sick when they’re pregnant, and they might not know they’re going to get sick until their first time. Pregnant women are at a higher risk of suicide and homicide. Moreover, quite frankly, sex is powerful. I think that women should wield that power wisely. If fewer women were willing to have sex with men, maybe men might not feel so free in trying to dictate to women that they must stay pregnant when they don’t want to be. Frankly, I think most of the extremely pro-life men I’ve seen posting online should be denied sex. Quite a few of them have very misogynistic views.

This about sums it up.

The most obnoxious pro-life guy I ran into this week is a Facebook friend of a man I knew in college. I don’t know anything about this dude, but my college friend posted the familiar meme summing up why he supports abortion rights. I’m sure you’ve seen it, too. And the pro-life guy, name of Russ, took issue with it and has been airing his pro-life views ever since.

This is pretty good.

Russ has been stubbornly posting very condescending and offensive comments to the women who have challenged his views. I’ve commented to him twice, after noticing that he has some very scary Handmaid’s Tale leanings and seems to think that women who engage in “slutty behavior” that results in pregnancy should be forced to “lie in the bed they made”. Sigh… pregnancy should never be punishment, especially since we can’t and don’t ensure that pregnant women get proper prenatal care. Babies should be wanted, cared for, and loved. Forcing women to give birth because you think they should “sleep in the bed they made” is just stupid, and it could lead to some tragic outcomes that will affect those precious babies the pro-lifers claim to care so much about.

For all of Russ’s “white knight” bullshit commentary about how men should be forced to do the honorable thing and “stick with” the women they impregnate (hello, Josh Duggar), and how rapists should have their balls cut off (hello, guys who get falsely accused of rape and are later vindicated– it HAS happened), he doesn’t consider the scenarios in which abortion really is the best course of action. After I post this fresh article, I will repost my blog entries about two stories involving false accusations of rape, since the news articles about them are behind paywalls. Under Russ’s plan, those men who were falsely accused of rape should have been castrated.

Russ did tell us the story about how he used to be indifferent about abortion, but changed his mind when his daughter was born premature. Seeing her struggle to live gave him an epiphany. Suddenly, because of his daughter’s story– a girl who was presumably born to parents who really wanted her and were prepared to raise her– he thinks all other women should be made to give birth. And if you offer logical comments to him, he comes back with rudeness, condescension, and a complete lack of empathy. He slut shames. So I left the below comment for him.

Of course it did little good to write this, but I couldn’t help myself.

Russ says he thinks sex strikes are good ideas. On that, I would agree. I think women should be much less willing to give men access to their bodies. But I don’t feel that way because I think having sex is dirty or slutty or immoral. I feel that way because I know men are driven to have sex, and it would be painful for them not to have access to women who are willing to satisfy their urges. A lot of men are entirely too free with their opinions regarding what women should be doing with their bodies. So personally, I think that more women should stop letting them have what they seek so easily.

I’m also glad I didn’t have sex before marriage. I have never been in a situation in which I had to consider having an abortion, and I am getting really close to menopause. Since I’ve never had sex with anyone but Bill, and Bill rendered himself sterile for his ex wife, that means I’ve never been pregnant, either. However, I wouldn’t change what I did, even though I always wanted to have children.

Not having sex before marriage was very practical for me, and it spared me a lot of pain and angst. But… that’s just me. I wouldn’t want to make a law about it, nor do I think people should be shamed for being sexual. It’s part of life. And everybody is on a different path.

I know not everyone feels the way I do. Not everyone feels the way Russ feels… thank GOD. Although I’m sure he loves his daughter very much, I think his attitude about women is very scary. He seems to think that those of us who experience pregnancy, childbirth, and everything that goes with that, need his “help” in determining what is right or wrong for us. Russ is wrong.

Unfortunately, I don’t think this issue is really so much about outlawing abortion as it is about controlling women and suppressing votes so the backassward Republican Party can stay in power. Because if women wind up in trouble with the law for having an abortion or miscarriage, that will mean a lot more felons in our midst… and as we all know, felons aren’t allowed to vote. Think about it. And please, for the love of God, stop slut shaming. It’s so damaging, and just plain wrong.

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