Late last week a mother received a frightening phone call from her son, who had been falsely accused of rape two years earlier. The phone call came at 3:30 in the morning, her son was crying.

"I'm sorry mom, I just can't do this anymore…" he said.

The mother, who must remain anonymous to protect her son and to stay within the terms of the settlement they reached with the school now nearly two years ago, submitted her description to the "Save Our Sons" website, which is dedicated to helping families cope with false accusations of campus sexual assault.

"I'm learning with our son that life doesn't just go on after an allegation of rape on campus," the mother wrote. "Even after clearing his name, even years later, the pain returns, staggeringly fresh."

Her son was expelled after he was accused of rape, even though no sex had even occurred. His evidence and witnesses were kept out of his school's investigation, the school ignored its own written policies, and the accuser and her witnesses were able to provide demonstrably false testimony without being questioned. In the end, the school settled with the accused and his family, but even clearing his name wasn't enough to end the pain.

"I'm learning that the healing process isn't a straight path for survivors of trauma. I'm learning that it offends some to even equate our experience with trauma. I'm learning that the message is clear to the American people, that on campus the innocent do not matter, that their lives aren't as important, that we should be happy and celebrate clearing his name. I'm learning it doesn't work that way," she wrote. "The damage to him, our family, his reputation, has been done. Moving on is not as easy as it seems."

She described being viewed as "the rapist's mom" when she would go to the school to help her son.

He was accused during his first week of freshman year, and expelled before the end of the semester. Despite the school's subsequent clearing of his name, the accused was so distraught from the experience that he could not return to school until another year had passed. He became chronically ill, lost 25 pounds, and could only handle a few classes a semester. Now, two years after the accusation and what should be his junior year, he is just finishing up enough credits to qualify as a sophomore.

False accusations don't just roll off the backs of their targets because they're supposed to be emotionless men. False accusations hurt, and schools, senators, activists — even the president and vice president of the U.S. — are promoting policies that make it easier to ruin the life of an innocent student.

"I want to beg Senators [Claire] McCaskill and [Kirsten] Gillibrand to see the destruction of an innocent life, to feel his pain, to see his trauma, to know what it's like to pick up your child who is in a crumble on the campus lawn, to ask them why his life doesn't matter," she wrote, "but the silencing continues, and the war wages on."

Though her son is back in school, he avoids the campus as much as possible. He goes to class but nothing else. He became severely depressed after the ordeal, and suffered another bout during this past semester. He sees a psychologist but is told the best healer is time. While waiting for time to heal his wounds, he's too afraid to date.

His mother hopes that one day "the tide will turn toward a reasonable fusion of compassion and common sense," and that laws and policies will be changed to incorporate necessary due process and fairness.

"And one day when my son's invisible wounds are healed, he will have been stronger for the journey," she wrote.