Ask Demetria: My GF Lied About Being Raped

If you read Ask. FM, you know that the majority of questions — 85 percent unscientifically— are from women. But the guys do show up occasionally, and when they do? Doozies. And often they have to get lawyers.

This series of questions came thru while I was vacationing with friends in Montreal in May.  I swore I was going to stay off Ask. FM and enjoy Canada, but this story was riveting, and tragic. Lying abut rape is, of course, reprehensible for many obvious reasons. But a false accusation can affect more than than accused.

Dear Demetria:

What’s Good, Belle? Me and my girl have been a follower of yours for sometime now. Never in my wildest dream would I think I would need to holler at you too. But I am.

Monday we went to a cookout. I made a run to the store for some Dutches and pineapple juice. I got back to the house and I notice my girl was no where to be found. I asked around and someone said she went to the bathroom. On my way there, a guy was coming out a bedroom. Seconds later, so was my girl!

I'm going off on her. She breaks down and says the guy was trying to rape her. I go outside to find him and I end up beating the [n-word] almost unconscious.

We hop in the car for home. I've been getting calls from friends saying that the police are looking for me. I've never been in trouble with the law. I told my girl that I'm turning myself in in the morning and I need her to help explain what really happened.

She breaks down again and ‪tells me she can't do that or she will get in trouble too. She told me she lied because she knew it looked bad her coming out of the room, and all they were doing was talking.

Belle, I fucked up and it’s bad I just may have messed up my life behind a lying no good [redacted]. I asked my day1 about dude status. He said I broke dude collar bone and 3 ribs. Belle please speak life into me cause I'm scared and don't know what I should do next. I thought I was defending and protecting my girl. Turns out she a lying cheating [redacted].

Read the whole thing.

‪No sh--. This is major and you need a lawyer before you go/ talk to the police. And I know you’re pissed, but you need to be decent enough to homegirl that she will tell the real story.

‪No one goes to a bedroom to talk at a party. You know this. I know this. But that's beside the point.

Lawyer. Now. If you're in NYC, email me. I know a great criminal defense one.

I looked on yellow page.com and found someone. He wants $2,500 up front. I'm going to borrow and take some stuff to the pawn shop. I haven't shed eye water since I was a teen. I feel so hurt and fucked up over this. Why couldn't she just be honest?

I'm on my way to the police station. The lawyer says I'm looking at a battery charge that can carry a 18 month up to a 5 years sentence. I have small children 8 and 5. I can't be away from my boys that long. My parents and my boys’ mother are willing to help me with legal fees.

Thank you for your input and being a listening ear. I thought I was doing the right thing. In your opinion was I wrong to handle it the way I did. Ain't men suppose to defend his woman's honor? Being that it will be a while before I get the chance to write I just want to again say thank you

There's what's culturally acceptable and what's legal. Culturally? Yeah. Legally? You were supposed to call the cops. A decent lawyer can get you probation if you don't have a previous record. If your ex, I assume, says she lied, you have a much better shot either way.

‪Take care if yourself, man. And keep us posted.

His last question was 7 months ago. He went to turn himself in and I never heard from him again.

Ask Demetria: My Family Is Divided Over a Rape Accusation

Occasionally, readers have queries that don’t fit conveniently into the ask.FM box. My general rule, is that if it’s too long to fit, it’s a question that requires coaching (or maybe therapy) instead of a quick answer. (If you have a question that falls into the in-need-of-coaching category, hit me up: coachedbybelle at gmail dot com. PLEASE NOTE: there is a fee.)

This one, I made an exception for. A man wrote in to say that his female cousin recently claimed that he father raped her 9 years ago. The family is deeply divided over the issue and certain factions have stopped speaking to each other for more than 8 months.

I provided an in depth answer to him privately, and it was to get a therapist involved ASAP. (You’ll understand after you read his story.) Because this is a deeply personal story, I did ask if it was okay to share it since he contacted me privately. He asked that I would:

"I use to think the movie Precious was overly dramatic and distant until my cousin became my real life "Precious". I hope this story will inspire others to ban together as family should and be courageous in a fight against family curses."

Without further hesitation:

My family has been left divided over a rape claim. My cousin, 23, claimed her father raped her when she was 14. She has decided to press charges against her father. My cousin told investigators she tried to fight off her father when the rape took place. She has been tested for HIV twice a year since she was 16 and by God's grace tests negative.

Her mother, my aunt, did not take her seriously and immediately dismissed her claim. In fact, she laughed.  Half of my family, including me, support my cousin, while others like my grandmother and her own mother do not. This has left us divided and some of us have not spoken in over eight months.

Here is some back story to this entire situation. My cousin’s father has 10 kids with 5 different women, including my aunt. He is currently married to one of this women women, and yes, you guessed it, it's not my aunt. Yet, my aunt insists that he will divorce this woman and eventually put a ring on her finger.

Here is the shocker...

Two years ago my aunt discovered she was HIV positive. This was 8 years into her now rekindled relationship with my cousin’s (still married) father. He claims he is negative, but refuses to get tested.

Despite all of these details, certain family members choose to negate his history and reject my cousin’s claims. Furthermore, her mother feels that her daughter’s negative status is proof that her father is an innocent man.

I have decided to hold a family “Iyanla, Fix Our Life” type of meeting/intervention, but my significant other thinks it's a bad idea. Is it?

What do you think?

Bill Cosby's Accusers: You Really Think 15 Women Are Lying?

I need an explanation.

I, probably like you if you've come here to read this, have been following the growing allegations of rape against Bill Cosby. Fifteen women have accused him of  rape-- six publicly-- and networks and content distributors are sprinting to distance themselves from him.

Time and Vulture have compiled comprehensive timelines of the rape allegations against him-- beginning in the 1960s--  and it's as damning as the Village Voice expose on R. Kelly. It's bad. Real bad. Joe Jackson.

Despite the number of women-- FIFTEEN--  who have made allegations over the years, despite the similarity of their stories over decades, there are many who just can't fathom that Cosby has committed these crimes. The go-to argument seems to be, "but why now?" They wonder why, if these women were drugged and raped, why they waited a year, or years, or a decade or longer to come forward.

To which I ask, why not now?

Given Cosby's celebrity and iconic status (before The Cosby Show, he had the distinct honor  of being the first Black man to have a lead role in a primetime series) and wealth and lawyers, and the way the stories of FIFTEEN* women with similar stories are being disbelieved  now, and the way these women are being dragged as groupies or "party girls" (as if girls who "party" can't be raped), I don't get how anyone could not understand why these women would remain silent.

Rodney King got beat ON VIDEO which we all saw and the cops who did it still went free. (The LA riots, remember?) These women-- young women when these crimes occurred-- don't have video. They have stories. About  one of the biggest names in show business, who still, in 2014, facing allegations that he has raped 15 women, is spoken to by journalists with deference and respect and soft-ball questions.

It's a respect not given to Joan Tarshis, one of his accusers, who showed up for a CNN interview and was publicly questioned by anchor Don Lemon as to why  she didn't bite Mr. Cosby's penis in self-defense.  Really? No one asked Lemon why he didn't bite or clench when he said he was molested as a boy.

You can't understand why a woman, why many women would hesitate to put themselves in the position to be a national spectacle and have their entire sexual history dragged across headlines? In the 80s when Cosby was in his professional prime and untarnished by the respectability politics rantings that  garnered him so many side-eyes before all this?  Add to that, we are talking about women were allegedly drugged, then assaulted with fleeting memories of  what occurred and they are confused and hurt and embarrassed and humiliated.

"I didn't go to the police because i was 19 years old," Tarshis explained  in that horrible CNN interview with Lemon. "I was scared and I thought nobody would believe me. I'm a 19 year old girl and he was Mr. America."

I get it. But what I don't get is the people who do mental contortions  to defend Cosby from fifteen accusers. It's beyond basic logic. As Ta-Nehisi Coates summed it up  (so brilliantly) over on The Atlantic:

"A defense of Cosby requires that one believe that several women have decided to publicly accuse one of the most powerful men in recent Hollywood history of a crime they have no hope of seeing prosecuted, and for which they are seeking no damages."

And further:

"The heart of the matter is this: A defender of Bill Cosby must, effectively, conjure a vast conspiracy, created to bring down one man, seemingly just out of spite. And people will do this work of conjuration, because it is hard to accept that people we love in one arena can commit great evil in another. It is hard to believe that Bill Cosby is a serial rapist because the belief doesn't just indict Cosby, it indicts us. It damns us for drawing intimate conclusions about people based on pudding-pop commercials and popular TV shows. It destroys our ability to lean on icons for our morality. And it forces us back into a world where seemingly good men do unspeakably evil things, and this is just the chaos of human history."

Welp.

*I emphasize the number because it's unfathomable to me that fifteen people could accuse the same man of similar crimes of rape and be disbelieved.  If we were talking abut FIFTEEN people identifying the same person who robbed a bank, it would be a foregone  conclusion, not an ongoing discussion about whether  the accused, did in fact, rob said bank.