Providing Protection

At The Federalist, Melissa Danford writes about her fears for her husband and sons.

My husband is in the military, so I am no stranger to a culture of double standards, but until now we thought it was more isolated. In the military it is common knowledge, whether senior leaders will acknowledge it or not, that a mere accusation of sexual harassment or assault, proven or not, is enough to end a man’s career....

All indications now are that too many in our society have abandoned the idea that all people, men and women, are innocent until proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt through due process. Instead people want a guilty until proven innocent standard for men accused of sexual assault. People think mere accusations, made without evidence and decades after the fact, should result in intrusive and embarrassing investigations simply because a woman made them.... Likewise, many seem to think that men and women should be judged by different standards. This is the opposite of equality before the law. Without equality before the law, how can we say the law rules and not men (or women)? As we make this turn toward “believe women” regardless of a trial or presence of proof, our society will only get worse.

Many also seem willing to abandon all statutes of limitation and questions of jurisdiction.

She mentions the military's zero tolerance of accusations of sexual misconduct, but that is probably not the proximate precursor to what we are seeing right now. I would argue that the Title IX kangaroo courts the Obama administration set up at universities served as a model and training ground for this. They normalized extrajudicial handling of such accusations with none of the normal protections or standards of evidence.