This is the first in a series of posts about Jodi Picoult’s use of false rape allegations as a plot device. There will be three more, and they will be posted daily. You will find the second here tomorrow, the third here the day after and the fourth here the day after that. In this post, I introduce the topic, Jodi Picoult, the books I’m talking about and a few of the issues.
The post title might seem like a bit of an oxymoron. After all, one may ask: isn’t the point of fiction that it’s not true?
Actually, I’d argue the opposite. I’d argue that one of the purposes of literature is to tell the truth about life, without necessarily telling the reality of life.
Where this duty really comes into play is where an author uses assumptions and stereotypes as if they are real.
Much fiction does this, and sometimes it is reasonably unobjectionable as a plot device or tool.
Where I really start to get angry is when someone does something like what Jodi Picoult has done in at least two of her books (and I’ve only read four!) and premises the entire plot on a false rape allegation.
For those of you unaware of Jodi Picoult: she’s a reasonably well-known author who writes books which focus on thorny ethical issues. The first time I picked up one of her books, I did so based on a general recommendation that this might be the kind of thing I’m interested in, and that’s definitely true. She often writes about the intersection of ethics and the law (two of the four books I’ve read centre around criminal trials, and the other two books involve a consideration of the law in a different way). I think she writes reasonably well, which is always a bonus as far as I’m concerned (she’s not the best writer I’ve ever read, but she’s compelling in that you want to know what happens). Her characterisation is pretty believable and her books consider the story from several different angles, so you end up with a good number of characters being reasonably well-rounded.
All of these aspects of Picoult’s books are positives for me, and while she’s not my favourite author, she’s one that I’m quite happy to come across in a second-hand bookshop.
Well, maybe make that: I was.
As I mentioned, two of her books (The Tenth Circle and Salem Falls) have plots premised on false rape allegations.
Which she uses as plot devices.
It’s not quite as unforgiveable as the movies which use rape in the ways described by Sady, but it leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth all the same.
The obvious problem with it is that it suggests that false rape allegations are common. Now, Picoult may well have written a book (or several) which includes a real rape allegation – but I haven’t read it (or them), and for some reason, I doubt it would be so central to the plot as the false allegations in these two books. This implies that false rape allegations are more common than real rape allegations – or, at the very least, it implies that false rape allegations are common and are a real problem.
The second main problem I have with it is the treatment of the characters involved in the rape allegations: in both books, the allegations are made by teenage girls, and in both books, the girls are immediately believed, sympathised with, not victim-blamed in the slightest – and action is taken as quickly as possible.
That’s great for those characters – I’m glad they’re treated well – but hey, they’re not real anyway.
My problem is: it’s not at all like real life.
An argument that could be raised in Picoult’s defence is that she deals with ethico-legal issues, and that because everyone condemns the act of rape but it’s so difficult to prove one way or another, it’s an area ripe with ethico-legal issues. Especially when you throw in teenagers.
But here’s the thing: there are real-life ethical problems which surround the occurrence and reporting of rape and the legal process which surrounds it.
People who hypothesise ethical and ethico-legal situations often use the rare and downright unlikely in order to attempt to illustrate where the boundary is. Generally, I’ve got nothing against this, and I think that Picoult did it reasonably well in the other two books of hers that I’ve read: Plain Truth and My Sister’s Keeper.
However, I think there’s a difference between writing about a situation which is obviously rare or unlikely (for example, in My Sister’s Keeper, the main character’s older sister had leukaemia, and the main character was conceived on the basis that her cord blood could be used to help her sister – the central ethico-legal issue was how much should parents be allowed to impose on one child’s life in order to save another?) and writing about a situation which we know from statistics is rare or unlikely, but which many people believe to be commonplace. I think that false rape allegations fall into the latter category.
As I’ve said in the note up the top, this is the first in a series of four posts which explores these issues. They’re all written and scheduled to go up over the next three days (I did in fact consider writing a single mega-post, but wasn’t sure of my audience’s attention spans ;) ), although if anyone raises anything in comments that I haven’t considered, I will alter as appropriate.
The second post and the third one outline the two books I’m talking about and the messages which I think come out of those books, since I think it’s worth taking this discussion out of the abstract a bit. The fourth post is an attempt to draw everything into some kind of conclusion.
Wallaby 
[…] The duty of fiction writers to tell the truth: Part I […]
Great post, Jo. I agree on the fundamental difference between ethico-legal hypotheses on genuinely rare situations and ethico-legal hypotheses on rare situations that are the basis of common urban myths.
Thanks! And you’ve just made me realise how I can make the final post more like a conclusion and less like a babble… :) So thanks for that, too.
Looks interesting – I await your next posts eagerly!
Thanks!
To be honest, the daily scheduling seems a bit artificial, but it does give me time to revise the final one based on comments (and I suspect that will happen a couple more times before Thursday). But I think artificially scheduled daily posts are probably better than one big 6000 word post ;)
“…or, at the very least, it implies that false rape allegations are common and are a real problem.”
I would agree that false rape allegations are not common. However I couldn’t agree that when they occur they are not a real problem. Because of the difficulty you mentioned in proving rape, a false allegation harms the credibility of reportings of actual rape. A false allegation is a real problem for both the accused and victims of rape because it reduces the chances that they will be believed.
You mentioned you had a problem with the accusers being instantly believed in the books. This is symptomatic of a larger problem. Let me try and explain. Experts, or people who have experience in a field often notice things being wrong in fiction that the general populace doesn’t. It is for this reason that science nerds pick apart science fiction films – they can see a million things wrong that nobody else seems to get and it drives them crazy.
It would seem that Picoult is not an expert on the reporting of rape. I think most people would not notice the problems you have, and this is the problem. There is a perception in the community that rape victims are automatically believed. People assume that there are a large number of rape cases that are quietly prosecuted that nobody ever hears about; they assume that only the controversial ones make the news. A good writer will do research to make sure their portrayals are sufficiently accurate and believable to keep the reader in the story. Sometimes though, things slip through the cracks, that this has slipped through the cracks for Picoult is symptomatic of a larger problem.
Have you considered writing to Picoult? If she is made aware of the issue that would help her future portrayals. Writers are always looking to improve, she might be appreciative.
Hi kandela, thanks for dropping by.
The reason I say that I don’t think false rape allegations are a real problem is because they are so rare. I meant “real problem” as in endemic and systemic, rather than as opposed to totally inconceivable (because I concede they do happen sometimes, but very, very occasionally).
I agree that in general, it’s interesting to think about unusual cases and the ethico-legal issues surrounding them. That’s where a lot of the really interesting issues in law lie. However, false rape allegations are a special case because a lot of people believe they are very frequent [usually, you use an unusual hypothetical because nobody thinks it ever happens so nobody thinks about the consequences if it would happen – kind of the opposite of false rape allegations] – so to use false rape allegations in this way is irresponsible, because it will reinforce belief for people who think that false allegations are common. That’s kind of my point.
Further, Picoult doesn’t write about false rape allegations being a problem for the reason you raise (ie maybe it means that the next person is less likely to be believed). She writes about false rape allegations as a problem in a much broader sense.
Finally on that point: complainants of rape are so often not believed anyway that I actually don’t think that the potential “real complainants will be believed even less” problem with false rape allegations really adds much to that problem anyway.
(Oh, and yeah: nobody ever complains that people who, eg, falsely report theft or muggings are a problem because it means that the real victims of theft or muggings won’t be believed next time. And the false report rates are probably about the same. Just saying.)
Thank you for the suggestion, but I won’t write to Picoult; I’m not so convinced that she would take random criticism from a random stranger as anything but random.
As for her not being an expert: well, as you suggest, that’s what research is for. Maybe that sounds harsh, but one of the reasons I’m coming down so hard on her is because I quite like her books otherwise. I’m a lawyer, albeit not an American one, and the way she writes about the legal system and ethico-legal problems is pretty damn good, especially given she doesn’t have a law degree. I raise that “lack” only to make the point that she’s clearly very good at doing research – generally! As you say, some things can slip through the cracks, but given that the false rape allegations (two of them!) are absolutely central to the plot in Salem Falls in particular, well, let’s just say that I don’t think it’s too much to ask that you do some decent research into your main theme.
“Oh, and yeah: nobody ever complains that people who, eg, falsely report theft or muggings are a problem because it means that the real victims of theft or muggings won’t be believed next time. And the false report rates are probably about the same. Just saying.”
Ah, but there is a practical difference here. False allegations of muggings and thefts lack the trail of evidence that are indicative of these crimes. You’d have to go to quite a bit of trouble to fake the evidence, especially if you wanted to frame somebody. And the stigma attached to an accused rapist sticks more than it does to an accused mugger or thief.
Because there has to be a trail of evidence in muggings or thefts, if someone has charges dropped or is found not guilty we believe the ruling must be correct, that they didn’t do it. However the trail of evidence is not easily identifiable in a rape case, we don’t necessarily believe that those found not guilty are innocent. The believability of the accuser is key to getting a rape conviction (it is not nearly as important in other crimes), thus the damage of a false accusation is far worse when it does occur. Being able to believe a rape victim is crucial, anything that harms the credibility of these victims is damaging.
Otherwise I take your point.
I realised after I logged off for the night that the point I need to be responding to is the one you’ve encapsulated here:
“Being able to believe a rape victim is crucial, anything that harms the credibility of these victims is damaging.”
Let’s say that person A makes a complaint of rape and person B makes a complaint of rape (against two different people).
Person A and person B are not connected at all except that they have both made complaints of rape.
Person A’s complaint is later found to be false.
There is no logical reason to think that that has any relevance whatsoever to whether or not person B’s complaint is false.
In other words, I see no logical connection between the credibility of person A and person B.
So I see no logical reason why any people making false allegations of rape should make any other people making allegations of rape less likely to be believed.
Except, of course, for the reason that it might increase someone’s likelihood to think “all women are lying BITCHEZ!!!!11!!” But again: hardly logical.
(I think that’s what was behind my comment that, well, any increase of disbelief of complainants of rape is not going to make much difference, given the enormous amount of disbelief already floating around. That disbelief is premised on the ideas that all women are lying bitches and also that it is easy to make complaints of rape, neither of which are true statements. The argument that one rape complainant’s credibility affects the credibility of others is also premised on both of those ideas, or, at least, an acknowledgement that the general disbelief is based on both of those ideas. So: let’s fight the false perceptions and leave the false allegations to be taken care of by the fair(er) legal/justice system that would hopefully result?)
[…] in a series of posts about Jodi Picoult’s use of false rape allegations as a plot device. The first is here, you will find the third here when it goes up tomorrow and the fourth here the day after. In this […]
So, let’s say in case A and B that both are based on one person’s word against the other’s. As best is my understanding this is often the case in rape. If this were a burglary accusation it would probably be thrown out of court because there was no other evidence. In rape cases we accept that there is likely to be little other evidence, and instead judge the witnesses stories.
“Except, of course, for the reason that it might increase someone’s likelihood to think “all women are lying BITCHEZ!!!!11!!” But again: hardly logical.”
I suppose this is what I’m getting at but the thing is jury’s don’t have to think that all women are liars when it comes to rape (and I certainly don’t). Just that this one person might be lying. It is common to hear the expression, “It is better that 10 guilty men go free, than one innocent man be imprisoned.” Keep in mind that a juror in such a trial probably has no other experience with rape cases. So, in all likely hood they don’t really know how to judge the credibility of the testimonies they hear. So, all it’s going to take is for enough jurors to think that the ratio of false accusations is greater than 1 in 10.
Now, I would be very surprised if the ratio was anywhere near one in ten, but given that a false charge is more likely to make the news, the average person likely to be on a jury might think the ratio higher. Actually it’s worse than that, the juror just has to think that greater than one in ten cases that get to trial might be based on a false accusation.
I would guess that the majority of false accusations are made against celebrities. Because celebrities are powerful people who have a reputation to lose, a false accuser would stand to have more to gain monetarily. Either from selling their story or from an out of court settlement of some kind. So that stands to reason. Now, we are much much more likely to hear about rape accusations against a celebrity. And so these cases have a disproportionate role in shaping public perceptions. In particular they falsely boost the number of false accusations that the public think are made. This is why I say false accusations are a real problem, not because they occur often but because of the likely demographic and because of the role that demographic plays in shaping public perceptions. When you add that effect to benefit of the doubt then there is a real danger that false accusers are helping get rapists off.
I do take your point (and I realise you’re in basic agreement, and my apologies if my comments are coming across as overly forceful for the forum – I have a habit of arguing more forcefully than I need to, and that’s essentially why I became a lawyer ;) ), but I still think that everything you say is part of a larger problem: to wit, our society is generally disinclined to believe women, and when we find a single woman who has lied about being raped, that one woman tends to get held up as proof that all women lie.
About false rape allegations against famous people in particular: hmmm. I honestly can’t think of too many proven false rape allegations that have been made much of in the media in recent years. There have been things like the Duke case, where charges were withdrawn (but my understanding is that the allegations weren’t proven to be false, and that the complainant maintained her complaint, but the charges were dropped on the basis of not enough evidence).
In fact, as we’re seeing in Australia at the moment with a football team (I’m not sure if you’re in Australia or read Australian news sources or blogs, but if not: this is just the most recent of a number of gang rape allegations against football teams over the last few years, and you can read more about it here, for example), a woman who makes an allegation against a famous person is probably even more likely to suffer the comeback of “well she must have wanted it, who wouldn’t want to sleep with him” or something of the sort. Sure, the person against whom the allegation is made has a lot to lose – but so does whoever makes the allegation (even if it’s true).
Re something like theft or muggings: that’s why I used those examples. If you rocked up to a police station saying that your wallet had been stolen, and maybe that you’d had a gun or a knife pointed at you, or you’d been pushed over (ie minor or no injuries), and assuming you are not part of a group which is generally disbelieved by police (eg many ethnic minorities, although it might depend where you are and how you are dressed and what your accent is like etc etc), the police would be highly likely to believe that you had been robbed and/or mugged. Now, it may well be that they would never press charges, because the difficulty in a case like that is that the identity of the offender is often unknown. Nevertheless, even if they did manage to find the offender in some way, any question of whether or not they would press charges or whether a conviction would be achieved would NOT rely on your credibility about whether or not you were robbed. It’s likely that nobody would question that. Any attack on your credibility would be based on how reliable you were as a witness of identity.
It is significantly different with rape. A rape complainant’s very assessment of her (or his) experience is questioned. Why are we so eager to disbelieve people when they say “I didn’t consent”?
By the way, re your comment below: I’m glad to know I’m not the only one who gets so concerned about proof-reading-type errors ;) Would you like me to fix the apostrophe for you?
I’d like to add that I’m in agreement with the premise of your original post. Fiction plays an important role in shaping public perception. Realistic portrayals can only help. Unrealistic portrayals can only enhance the misconceptions presently out there.
Er, there should have been an apostrophe in “other’s” . 2nd line of ” 19 May 2009 at 6:58 pm” post.
No problem with the hard debating, I tend to do likewise. In fact, I use it as a tool to learn and refine my opinions. Often I feel that the only way to judge the validity of an argument or belief is by pushing it past its breaking point. It’s too easy to read something and say ‘I don’t agree.’ but if you argue it out you learn why you don’t agree, and sometimes when you get right down to it you find that the reason isn’t well grounded. In that case you can change your opinion, but otherwise you still end up with a better understanding of the issues involved.
Yeah, if you could fix my grammatical error that would be good. I’m normally very pedantic about these things anyway, but in this case it actually changes the meaning of the sentence.
I’m an Australian living in the UK, so yeah I’ve heard a bit about it. Whilst I am appalled, what is most appalling is that I’m not surprised.
“It is significantly different with rape. A rape complainant’s very assessment of her (or his) experience is questioned. Why are we so eager to disbelieve people when they say “I didn’t consent”?”
The only explanation I can offer is that on-one would ever consent to be mugged. There is just no reason why you would want to have your stuff taken and be beaten up. Now while rape is by definition undesirable, there are reasons you might want to have sex. Intercourse isn’t by its very nature an undesirable activity. Certainly there are reasons why someone wouldn’t give consent, and it *obviously* is undesirable in those circumstances. Yet, studies show that it is common for people to regret sex. So having given consent someone might still feel bad about it. There is still (in 2009) a perception that any woman who has casual sex is a slut. Some people seem to believe that when found out a girl would rather cry rape than accept that label, especially if she regrets the sex anyway.
That’s one reason. Another is that amongst men there is a paranoia that they could be falsely accused. They tend to imagine themselves in the male role (a result of the predominance of the male view in the media perhaps) and yet can’t imagine themselves forcing themselves on someone, so their default thinking is to side with the accused.
Clearly these aren’t good reasons to, by default, disbelieve a rape victim. To overcome them public perception and attitudes need to change. I think we are both agreed on that point.
“To overcome them public perception and attitudes need to change. I think we are both agreed on that point.”
Yep!
And I fixed the typo :)
[…] in a series of posts about Jodi Picoult’s use of false rape allegations as a plot device. The first is here, the second is here and you will find the fourth here when it goes up tomorrow. In this post, I […]
“The obvious problem with it is that it suggests that false rape allegations are common.”
Sorry to dispel this myth, and sorry that it doesn’t fit the feminist victim metanarrative, but you don’t know this. The fact is, every serious unbiased study (i.e., not conducted by someone with a financial interest in the rape industry) shows that false rape claims (not even including “unfounded,” of which many most assuredly were not actual rapes) are a significant problem, ranging up to and over 50%. You would do well to spend several hours reading the objectively verifiable information contained in my website, http://falserapesociety.blogspot.com/, before dismissing as a myth the experience of countless men and boys falsely accused every year in America. By any measure, denigrating the experience of the wrongly accused by dismissing their victimization as a “myth” or as unworthy of our discussion, much less our protection, is not merely dishonest but morally grotesque.
Actually, Pierce, you are the one that hasn’t done your research. Marcella discusses this very well in the post of hers that I linked to above. You are well-and-truly overstating your argument about the studies, by the way. Some studies show almost 50% of complaints don’t go through to convictions, but that doesn’t mean the complaints were false. Lack of conviction does not mean that no rape occurred, it simply means no conviction. (And yes, I know about the presumption of innocence. It’s a presumption, not fact; is entirely appropriate in a criminal court where it belongs; and otherwise is fairly irrelevant.)
I will not come to your website (nice attempt to shill, by the way!) because I choose to engage with sources which have some ability to tell truth from fiction.
I have allowed your comment through on the basis that I don’t see any point in shutting you down, but although I don’t have a formal comments policy, I should warn you that I don’t engage with trolls any further than to let them know that I consider them to be a troll.
This reply to your comment to is that notification.
[…] in a series of posts about Jodi Picoult’s use of false rape allegations as a plot device. The first is here, the second is here and the third is here. In this post, I attempt to draw the discussion to some […]