The experience of a false accusation can be devastating to young men, especially if they are up against a legal or academic system that views an allegation as proof of guilt.  False allegations can result in everything from expulsion from school, to job loss and legal nightmares– and overwhelming feelings of shame and anger.  Moreover, young men and their families may face loneliness or social isolation due to the real or imagined circumstances that their social circle harbors a misguided premise that believing all women is always helpful…One of the worst parts of a false accusation is that it can upend a young man’s life at the exact point when college and work were supposed to be his focus; and losing focus in these areas at such a critical point in life can have long term consequences on the young man’s mental, social, and economic health if he is unable to regain his focus.

For Young Men: Some days, you may feel profound anger or shame; other days you may feel numb or depleted; and other days you may feel surprisingly normal.  For example, anger is often a natural emotion when we feel our boundaries have been violated or an injustice has occurred, so in the case of a false accusation, you might channel your anger into the action of doing any support work for your own legal or Title IX case if it’s still active; or volunteering for groups that advocate to support victims of false allegations regardless of whether your case is closed.  Intense physical exercise can also be helpful.

Seeing a therapist: I know it is extremely difficult to find an understanding mental health professional in this particular situation. Some victims of false allegations have told me they had to visit up to 15 different therapists to find the right person. Feel free to ask the therapist to share their stance with you on the “believe all women” position that many therapists (and many people in general) seem to embrace. Explain that you are only asking because you feel it is important for you to have a therapist whose belief system does not stipulate that all women must be believed, because this implies that men (including you) must be disbelieved.

For Parents: Parents have a very difficult balance when trying to be supportive without becoming enabling or actually prolonging a young man’s return to a path of strength and independence. While it is essential to be supportive, parents must not become co-dependent or enablers. Parents may want to go to their own therapy as well if they need help learning how to set healthy boundaries and positive expectations for their son.

drchloe.com-Dr. Chloe Carmichael, PhD

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In the war against campus sexual assault, why are we not talking about drinking? College presidents have long considered alcohol to be one of the biggest problems they face on campus. Alcohol is also involved in a great number of campus sexual assault cases. We find ourselves in a landscape where the key talking points address everything but alcohol. How we raise young boys. How accusers are treated in the media, courts, and interrogation rooms…In October 2013, when Slate contributor Emily Yoffe wrote an essay suggesting that women would lower their chances of being sexually assaulted if they drank less, the blowback was massive. A month later, Southern Methodist University student Kirby Wiley received a similar lashing when she wrote an op-ed for the college paper saying that women put themselves at risk by drinking too much.  Epidemiologist Richard Grucza has tied the rise of women drinking with the rise of women in college—across Western democracies, the more affluent and educated a female, the more likely she is to drink. And yet. High-profile assault cases keep unfolding in the media, many of them under a foggy haze of booze.

…A blackout can mean the total erasure of an entire chunk of time from a person’s memory, an occurrence known as an en bloc blackout. Or they might just forget bits and pieces, in a fragmentary blackout, or a brownout, as some call it. These are more common. Even during a blackout, a drinker’s short-term memory is generally fine. She can carry on a conversation, though, like a human goldfish, she may quickly forget things and repeat herself. It’s episodic memory where alcohol gums up the works. These are the memories of events—what happened, but also where, when, and with whom. Alcohol impairs the encoding of these contextual memories, which happens in the hippocampus. “Your brain is sending information to the hippocampus, and it falls into a void, the hippocampus doesn’t tie it together, or it skips a little bit.”

How quickly one’s blood alcohol content rises is the biggest risk factor for a blackout. That means things that make you drunker faster—drinking liquor or drinking on an empty stomach—make you more likely to black out. You’re also more likely to black out if you’re a woman.

theatlantic-Antamony of Blackout    texasmonthly-The Alcohol Blackout 

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