NYT admits it was a false rape accusation in the 23rd paragraph
anncoulter.substack.com
NYT admits it was a false rape accusation in the 23rd paragraph
Lawrenceville student commits suicide after school allows a false RAPE charge to spread.
From today’s New York Times:
The shocking story begins with 22 paragraphs of irrelevant nonsense, such as:
«The school committed to taking a series of corrective actions including endowing a new dean’s position that will be focused on mental health issues, with a goal of becoming a model for anti-bullying and student mental health. …
… the culture of a private institution where room and board tops $76,000 a year….
Richard Lieberman, the lead suicide prevention expert for the public school system in Los Angeles …
The investigation included interviews with 45 students, faculty members and others …
Lawrenceville’s statement said that its settlement with the Reids was aimed at “honoring Jack …
The coronavirus pandemic exacerbated an already worrying mental health emergency among teenagers…
Christine Yu Moutier, chief medical officer for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, said the causes of suicide were always complex …
Lawrenceville enrolls about 830 students on a spacious campus in western New Jersey …
Only deep into the story do we FINALLY get to the reason the student committed suicide:
But in the spring of 2021, a persistent and untrue rumor that Jack was a rapist spread widely throughout the student body and led to cruel comments from some students, according to his parents.
In September 2021, when he returned to school as a junior, he was nonetheless elected president of Dickinson House, one of the residential houses where the school’s boarding students live. That appears to have increased animosity among some of his classmates and caused the rumor to spread further, his parents said.
A few days after the election, the unfounded rape accusation was posted anonymously to a nationwide, student-run app popular with boarding-school students, Jack’s parents said.
The bullying spread quickly online, his parents said, and at Christmastime, during a secret Santa gift exchange among Lawrenceville classmates, Jack received a rape whistle and a book about how to make friends.
Mr. Reid recalled that his son was hurt deeply, and that when Jack came home for Christmas he seemed withdrawn. “Dad, will this ever go away?” he said his son asked him, “Will it ever get off the website?”
Mr. Reid noted that the in-person bullying at school combined with the power of the internet posting compounded the rumor’s impact.
“We think bullying, with the 1,000 times echo chamber of the internet and everybody knowing, is much more devastating to kids and, in Jack’s case, produced a very impulsive act,” he said. “He had to escape the pain from the humiliation he was feeling.”
Early on, with support from his parents, Jack approached school officials and asked them to intervene, leading to a school-led investigation surrounding the bullying and the sexual assault allegation.
The school inquiry found that the claim was bogus, and a classmate involved in spreading the rumors, who was later expelled for an unrelated violation of school rules, was formally disciplined for bullying Jack, according to the school’s statement.
But Lawrenceville never told Jack or his family — or anyone else — that the investigation had concluded that the rumors involving a sexual assault were utterly false.
“There were steps that the school should in hindsight have taken but did not, including the fact that the school did not make a public or private statement that it investigated and found rumors about Jack that were untrue,” Lawrenceville said in the statement.
Would a false accusation of cheating, stealing or fighting be allowed to continue, without correction by the school, as long as this false accusation of rape?
As we learned from the false rape accusations against Duke lacrosse players and University of Virginia fraternity members, in academia, even false charges of rape deserve respect.
Times’ features all seem to have this one’s prolix, obfuscatory style these days. The pieces seem more concerned with conditioning the readers’ attitudes and reinforcing their priors than in reporting information.
One naturally wonders, in these evil, dark times we now live in, if the school would have been quite so reticent about disclosing the favorable results of their investigation to Jack and his family if he had been someone other than a White and (presumably) heterosexual male. It's so easy to visualize a Leftist faculty filled with 'diversity' hires whose natural inclination is to keep looking for any scrap of evidence that they can use to nail Jack to the wall, but, finding none, lose interest in the matter entirely because it doesn't serve to further their ideological agenda. The notion of keeping Jack and his family apprised of the results of their investigation doesn't appear to have been a front burner item for them in any way, given that the feelings of a White family or a White male don't rise to any level of particular concern to them...White people, and White men in particular, being unredeemable symbols of Evil to so many on the Left.
For an honorable and decent man, the allegation of the crime of rape is one of the very most devastating cudgels that can be used against him, as the current social climate instantly judges him guilty regardless of any evidence or lack thereof. Such allegations are all too often gleefully dispensed on a whim by anyone for any reason, and using such a weapon in the already stress-laden environment of a University can easily drive a good and honest man over the edge to madness or worse.
It is my belief that this open warfare against men contributes in no small measure to the 'incel' phenomenon as well as declining marriage rates and escalating divorce rates. It may also contribute to the social contagion of 'trans' youth, where some percentage of males may view this as an 'escape' from an unwinnable life; a declaration of being 'trans' instantly transforms them from being a pariah exclusively as a result of their sex and skin color into an adored member of the shrill and proud victim army, who can do no wrong and is awarded endless unearned privileges.
May God Bless Jack's immortal soul in Heaven and may his devastated family one day be able to find some small measure of peace in this sick, sick world.