Having recently defended Richard Dawkins and the atheist movement against misrepresentations and smears, I now find myself the target of similar misrepresentations and smears.

Having seen at first hand how outrageously inaccurate their smears about me are, I now retrospectively doubt many things that certain people have said to me, or written about, in recent years.

I had considered not giving these latest smears the oxygen of further publicity, but on balance it is useful to demonstrate the tactics that some people can use to unjustly harm people.

I have noticed five types of personal smears against me in recent weeks.

Firstly, I have been inaccurately associated with opponents of my ethical values, against whom I have actively campaigned all of my adult life. For example, Ophelia Benson has written that I am (and the atheist movement might be) “acting like a mirror image of the fucking Vatican,” because I said that sex crimes should be reported to the police and not to bloggers.

Actually, wanting to see rapes reported to the police is not a mirror-image of the Vatican. It is the precise opposite of the Vatican. I believe any organisation that receives a complaint about a sex crime related to their activities (including the Randi Foundation) should report it to the police, rather than deal with it internally. Also, I agree with rape crisis professionals such as RAINN who say both that reporting by victims is a very personal decision that must be right for the individual, and also that their goal is have every rape reported to police, just as every murder is.

Secondly, what I wrote has been paraphrased into something else, that can then be opposed as if it was my view. For example, Adam Lee has written that my comments about reporting sex crimes to the police and not to bloggers “can only reasonably be read as a claim that… if the police decline to prosecute or don’t get a conviction, too bad for you, you should never bring it up again.”

Actually, I believe victims of sex crimes should discuss their experience in as much detail as they wish with rape crisis professionals, doctors, lawyers, family, trusted friends, persons with responsibility for the circumstances involved, and whoever else can help them deal with the unique trauma they have experienced. I also believe we need better education and responsible media reporting to make the public aware of the nature of sex crimes and how to combat them, including how to improve the police service to make reporting less traumatic.

Thirdly, there are outright factual falsehoods. For example, Stephanie Zvan has written about certain allegations that “Nugent attempted to use his influence directly to get PZ to stop talking about them”. That’s simply not true. It would take a bizarre interpretation of my email to PZ to imply that it had any specific focus on that issue, and I have had no other contact with PZ since then. I had no notion about the Oppenheimer article until I saw it published.

Fourthly, there is vitriolic personal abuse that is disproportionate to any legitimate disagreements. For example, a regular commenter on Ophelia’s blog has described me as “a horrible slimy little man… oozing misogyny from every pore.” This type of abuse seems to come from a parallel world with more connection to hate speech than reality.

Fifthly, Ophelia and Adam and others have repeatedly suggested that I am trying to silence people. Actually, none of what I write is silencing anybody, just as nothing Ophelia and others write is silencing me. There are many places where you can say what you want, even if it is illegal or hurtful, without hindrance from me. We are all expressing our opinions. We can do that without smearing people.

I’ll grant that anybody can misinterpret anything the first time that they read it, but some people have continued misrepresenting me even after any misunderstandings have been clarified. This is the same pattern as used on Richard and others. It is now escalating beyond smears into what could be read as dark satire. It is the opposite of reason and openness, it is the opposite of empathy and compassion, and it is the opposite of fairness and justice. Whatever its motivation, it is unhelpful and unethical.

Combating sex crimes while protecting everyone’s rights

For context, before I examine the tactics that Ophelia, Adam and others are using to misrepresent and smear me, here are my opinions about combating sex crimes. Please bear these in mind as you read how my views are being misrepresented.

Combating sex crimes while protecting the rights of both victims and alleged criminals is a sensitive and difficult balance. Sexual assault and rape are serious crimes, which all reasonable people abhor, and it is precisely because they are so serious and abhorrent that society should address them in a way that is just for everybody.

Nobody should try to objectively trivialise the subjective emotional suffering that a sexual abuse or rape victim undergoes, which is unique to each victim. Sexual abusers and rapists violate the bodily integrity of their victims, and violate the personal consent of their victims, by imposing their own desires onto innocent children, women and men.

The victim’s suffering can be equally traumatic regardless of whether the abuser or rapist is a family member, friend, acquaintance or stranger, and regardless of whether the abuser or rapist used physical force, or threat of physical force, or non-violent psychological coercion. If you live in a stable democracy, the people best placed to support and advise victims are the rape crisis centres that exist in many towns and cities.

In every area of crime, we need laws that respect the rights of both victims of crimes, and people accused of crimes, that will maximise the number of guilty people who are convicted and the number of innocent people who are cleared. Having these protections in place does not imply that any specific allegation of a sex crime is false. Indeed, most allegations are true. But the legal system must protect the rights of everybody involved in every specific case.

I have campaigned over the years against crimes of varying degrees, from petty neighbourhood crimes to terrorism in Northern Ireland. I have also campaigned to successfully reverse miscarriages of justice, where innocent people had been jailed for crimes that they did not commit. In combating any type of crime, it can be difficult to find the best balance between vindicating victims, bringing criminals to justice, protecting innocent defendants, and improving the quality of life and justice in society.

Finding the best balance is particularly difficult in cases of sexual abuse and rape. Many victims are reluctant to report such crimes to the police, because they fear the emotional consequences and further trauma of a court case. This fear can be exacerbated if the victim fears that the court is unlikely to convict the perpetrator, either because of difficulty in proving the crime or because the perpetrator is seen as a respected or powerful member of society.

We had similar problems finding the best balance in combatting terrorism in Northern Ireland. Many victims were reluctant to report intimidation, protection rackets, punishment beatings and murder to the police, because they mistrusted the police or feared retaliation from terrorists. State responses such as internment of terrorists, and over-enthusiastic prosecutors, resulted in the internment and jailing of innocent people, causing more injustice and further mistrust of the state.

To combat sex crimes and maximise the provision of justice, we need better resources for victim support, better public education about the nature of sex crimes, and better laws and legal training to vindicate the rights of everybody involved. As with any area of crime, we need as many crimes as possible to be reported to the police, so that as many criminals as possible are brought to justice and as many innocent people as possible are cleared.

A mirror image of the fucking Vatican?

Ophelia Benson has described as ‘exceptionally outrageous’ a section from a recent post of mine, which caused her to write:

I hate “the atheist movement.” If this is what it is, I hate it and want nothing to do with it. If it’s going to act like a mirror image of the fucking Vatican, I want nothing to do with it.

First the context: Adam Lee, as part of a longer comment that you can read in full here, had written the following personal smear about Richard Dawkins:

Why would he believe the anonymous woman in the New Statesman article and not [named person], despite the very close similarity of the cases? Obvious inference: [named person]’s allegations are against someone he personally knows, so he has a reason to want them to be false.

Note that Adam was not speculating about the alleged crime itself. He was speculating about why he believed Richard had written some tweets. I then responded to Adam:

You then engage in detailed speculation about why you believe Richard was trying to convey a message that a specific person (who you name, and I won’t) should be considered an untrustworthy witness in a specific allegation of rape (which you give details of, and I won’t) against another specific person (who you name, and I won’t). Adam, you may or may not be correct or mistaken about any of this, but you are relying on speculation of what somebody else is thinking, constructed in your own imagination, to justify publishing a negative characterisation of Richard in a reputable newspaper. That is bad enough with regard to your speculation about what Richard is thinking, but it is even worse with regard to speculation about the alleged rape that you allude to. Speculation about that alleged rape is happening on various websites at the moment, and I decline to participate in it. The intimate details of traumatic moments in the lives of real people are being treated as fodder for amateur detective work about what real people did or didn’t do and why they did or didn’t do so. This is a large part of the reason why I believe that allegations of rape should be reported to the police, not to bloggers. It is not only because of the justice of presuming people innocent of serious crimes until proven guilty, but also to help protect victims of rape from being permanently defined online by salacious speculation about what they have been through.

This is what Ophelia described as “acting like a mirror image of the fucking Vatican”.

In reality, it is the precise opposite of the Vatican. The Vatican doesn’t want sex crimes reported to the police, and I do want sex crimes reported to the police.

Ophelia on the Vatican reporting sex crimes to the police

Ophelia is aware of this. She wrote about it in April.

The Tablet had reported that

Victims have long denounced how bishops systematically covered up abuse by shuffling pedophile priests around while keeping prosecutors in the dark. Only in 2010 did the Vatican instruct bishops to report abuse to police — but only where required by law.

Ophelia responded:

Well of course only where required by law. You don’t expect them to do the right thing even when not forced to do you?! Don’t be silly. They’re human. They’re not going to rat out a friend and colleague just because some snotty little kid whines about being fucked up the ass.

The Tablet also reported that

The president of the Italian bishops’ conference has defended a decision to exempt bishops from having to report claims of abuse by clergy to the police, because he said Italian law does not require it and victims may not want them to.

Ophelia mocked the idea of not reporting these crimes to the police because the victims may not want them to:

Also besides, the whole reason they have this policy is to protect the victims. No really. The cardinal said so. The Tablet reports, you decide.

The Tablet continued:

Bagnasco said some victims may not want to press charges. “What is important is to respect the will of the victims and their relatives, who may not want to report the abuse, for personal reasons,” he said.

And Ophelia responded:

And that’s what they’ve been concerned about all this time. Of course it is.

So Ophelia knows that the Vatican does not want to report sex crimes to the police. Ophelia believes reporting these crimes to the police is the right thing to do, and she dismisses the Vatican’s argument that they should not report the abuse because the victims may not want them to.

Adam on the Vatican reporting sex crimes to the police

Adam Lee has also endorsed the idea of a law which would make it a crime for anyone, church officials included, to fail to report allegations of sex abuse against minors to the civil authorities.

In January 2011, Adam wrote a post criticising the Vatican for objecting to a policy that made it mandatory for priests to report suspected child molesters to civil authorities.

The Vatican’s ambassador to Ireland had written that “In particular, the situation of ‘mandatory reporting’ gives rise to serious reservations of both a moral and a canonical nature”.

Adam wrote

The Vatican clearly considered this a far more important matter than the question of whether that priest should be tried in a criminal court. Since that outcome would be “highly embarrassing” to the bishops (and that potential embarrassment, of course, outweighs ensuring that child molesters are tried and punished by the law), the letter was implicitly urging them not to adopt this policy. First off, let me note that this statement confirms my argument above: the Vatican, by its own admission, was more concerned about the effect of this policy on internal church proceedings than it was about its effect on the police’s ability to arrest and punish child molesters.

In July 2011, Adam followed up on that post. He wrote:

As a result, the mandatory-reporting policy, although it technically remained in force, was shelved by the bishops and never enforced. What happened next is no surprise: predator priests continued to abuse children, and the church continued to do nothing.

Adam quoted Ireland’s deputy prime minister as saying; “There’s one law in this country. Everybody is going to have to learn to comply with it. The Vatican will have to comply with the laws of this country,” and Adam added:

This is great stuff. Even better was the announcement that the government plans to introduce a law which would make it a crime for anyone, church officials included, to fail to report allegations of sex abuse to the civil authorities.

So, let’s be clear. Wanting to see rapes reported to the police is not a mirror-image of the Vatican. It is the direct opposite of the Vatican.

What do rape crisis groups advise about reporting?

In some countries, it is mandatory to report to authorities if you suspect sexual abuse of a child or a vulnerable adult, such as an elderly or disabled person.

But most adult victims are not legally obligated to report, although in theory the police can sometimes pursue a case without the victim’s cooperation.

I believe that an adult victim of any sex crime should decide whether or not to report it to the police. I believe that it is a personal decision that only they can make based on their own circumstances.

But the fact that, when victims are unable to take that decision for themselves, there is a mandatory duty for others to report suspicions of abuse against them, shows a consensus that it is desirable that rapes should be reported to the police.

This is reflected in the way that rape crisis groups try to balance all of the factors involved. While they stress that whether to report is a victim’s personal decision, they can also sensitively encourage victims to report.

RAINN, the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network is America’s largest anti-sexual assault organization. It says:

We hope you will decide to report your attack to the police. While there’s no way to change what happened to you, you can seek justice while helping to stop it from happening to someone else. Reporting to the police is the key to preventing sexual assault: every time we lock up a rapist, we’re preventing him or her from committing another attack. It’s the most effective tool that exists to prevent future rapes. In the end, though, whether or not to report is your decision to make… Many victims say that reporting is the last thing they want to do right after being attacked. That’s perfectly understandable — reporting can seem invasive, time consuming and difficult. Still, there are many good reasons to report, and some victims say that reporting helped their recovery and helped them regain a feeling of control. Our goal is have every rape reported to police, just as every murder is reported and investigated. It’s the best way to get rapists off the streets and make sure they can’t find new victims…. Reporting is a very personal decision, and you should make the decision that’s right for you. While we encourage you to report, if you decide not to, for whatever reason, that’s perfectly understandable and there’s no reason to feel bad about your decision.

After Silence is an online support group, message board, and chat room for rape, sexual assault, and sexual abuse survivors. It says:

Survivors of rape may have a hard time deciding whether or not to report their sexual assault to the police. Rape prevention and counseling experts strongly advise victims to report the rape to the authorities so that their assailants can be brought to justice. While there is no way to undo the rape, reporting it to the police will help to stop the perpetrator from harming other victims in the future. Additionally, rape victims can feel a sense of closure when the rapist is brought to justice and convicted accordingly. Rape victims are not required to report their experience to the police. Although it is unlikely that the district attorney will pursue the case without the consent and cooperation of the survivor, the district attorney does have the right to pursue the rapist even if the survivor chooses not to participate. If a third party is witness to the crime, however, they are required to report it to the police… While reporting rapes is always preferable to not reporting, if you decide not to report it to the police, do seek out professional counseling to help you through the emotional turmoil that the rape can have on you.

The UK Rape Crisis Centre outlines some advantages and disadvantages of reporting rape to the police.

Some advantages of reporting

It is an opportunity for you to present your side regarding the rape / incident.

It is the only chance you have of getting your attacker punished.

If your attacker is known to you or has power over you; it may be a way of stopping a future situation in which you are likely to be raped again by him.

Some disadvantages

Reporting does not necessarily mean the rapist will be convicted neither does a conviction necessarily result in a prison sentence.

You will set in motion a process over which you have little or no control and which is difficult, although not impossible, to stop.

Protecting anonymity while reporting to the police

There is one cultural difference that may help to explain some of our different opinions about reporting sex crimes to the police.

While I am unfamiliar with the detail, and would welcome further information, it seems that in the United States you are able to publish a rape victim’s name even if they don’t want it published.

In State of Florida v. Globe Communications Corp., 648 So.2d 110 (Fla. 1994), the Florida Supreme Court held that a Florida criminal statute that prohibited the media from identifying the names of sexual assault victims violated the First Amendment. In that case, Globe Communications Corp. twice published the name and identifying information of a sexual assault victim, violating the Florida statute. The paper had lawfully learned the victim’s name through investigation. The Florida Supreme Court relied on the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Florida Star v. B.J.F., finding that the Florida statute barring any media publication of a rape victim’s name was unconstitutional because it was ‘over-broad’; that is, it punished the media even if, for example, the name of the victim was already known in the community. It also found that the statute was “under-inclusive” in that it punished only media publication and not acts by a private person.

In Ireland publishing the name of a rape victim, even after a trial, is not permitted. They must give their permission to publish and that does not happen very often. The media always states that the victim has given her permission.

In some cases you cannot even name a convicted rapist in the media if it reveals the identity of the victim, particularly in cases of incest. And publishing the name of an accused person before a trial would undermine a case.

America seems to have a culture that gives more emphasis to freedom of speech over the protection of people’s reputation than is the case in Ireland and the UK.

Not reporting does not mean keeping it secret

Ophelia and others have several times suggested that, by saying that sex crimes should be reported to the police and not to bloggers, that this means I am saying that victims should either report sex crimes to the police or else keep them secret.

A recent example was by Adam Lee who wrote:

There’s also Michael Nugent, chairperson of Atheist Ireland, who wrote several lengthy posts criticizing my Guardian article. Most of Nugent’s criticisms consist of endless hyperskeptical hair-splitting;

Actually, it was substantive questions, asking Adam to support arguments that he made in an article published in a reputable mainstream newspaper. I asked them because Adam specifically asked critics to give details of his inaccuracies and misrepresentations. And Adam still hasn’t fully answered them. I’ll get back to that in a future post, but let’s stay on topic here.

…but when I brought up the point about how Dawkins was clearly speculating about the [named person] case, this is what he said: “You then engage in detailed speculation about why you believe Richard was trying to convey a message that a specific person (who you name, and I won’t) should be considered an untrustworthy witness in a specific allegation of rape (which you give details of, and I won’t) against another specific person (who you name, and I won’t).” Nugent calls this “salacious speculation”…

Actually, I didn’t say that what Adam was engaging in there was salacious. I said that people speculating on the detail of what happened or didn’t happen between the two people involved was salacious speculation. What I was addressing here was Adam speculating on what was going on in Richard’s mind when he wrote a tweet. That’s not salacious, it’s just subjective and uncharitable.

… and says that he avoids repeating it to “help protect victims”.

Again, Adam is paraphrasing what I wrote here. What I actually wrote was:

Speculation about that alleged rape is happening on various websites at the moment, and I decline to participate in it. The intimate details of traumatic moments in the lives of real people are being treated as fodder for amateur detective work about what real people did or didn’t do and why they did or didn’t do so. This is a large part of the reason why I believe that allegations of rape should be reported to the police, not to bloggers. It is not only because of the justice of presuming people innocent of serious crimes until proven guilty, but also to help protect victims of rape from being permanently defined online by salacious speculation about what they have been through.

So my concern is twofold: both the subversion of the justice of presuming people innocent of serious crimes until proven guilty, and also to help protect victims of rape from being permanently defined online by salacious speculation about what they have been through.

Both of these harms have resulted from this allegation being published on a blog, independently of whether or not it was reported to the police.

Adam continued:

This would seem like a laudable concern for the privacy of rape victims…

Here, Adam is smearing my concern for the privacy of rape victims by describing it as “what would seem like a laudable concern.”

Let’s pause here for a moment and reflect on that.

We are now so desensitised to personal smears that Adam is happy to casually imply that I am not concerned about rape victims.

… if you didn’t know that [named person] intentionally came forward to tell her story. She wanted to go public to warn other women…

It is true that the person in this case wanted her story to be told, but she did not want to be identified as the person telling the story. She wanted to tell her story anonymously, precisely because she feared the consequences of being identified as the person telling the story.

Nevertheless, her name inevitably made its way into the public domain. That was bound to happen, given the nature of the Internet, the way that the blogger involved presented the story, and the shared interests and activities of many of the people involved.

…precisely because she says she had brought this up privately with Randi’s foundation and they declined to act.

As I have said, I will not speculate on what happened on the night in question. But I will say this about the James Randi Foundation. I believe any organisation that receives a complaint about a sex crime related to their activities should report it to the police or another appropriate authority.

We saw what happened in the Socialist Workers Party in Britain, when a woman making a rape allegation ended up being asked by an internal disputes committee about her drinking habits and previous sexual history.

Senior officials then asked an AGM to trust their judgment in mildly rebuking the man against whom the complaints were made. They added that they didn’t pass on the complaint to the police as they had no faith in the bourgeois court system to deliver justice.

Skeptical foundations are no more qualified than the Vatican or the Socialist Workers Party or bloggers to investigate or make judgments on allegations of sex crimes, particularly in cases where there are so many conflicts of interest involved.

Adam then concluded that:

In that context, Nugent’s assertion that “allegations of rape should be reported to the police, not to bloggers” can only reasonably be read as a claim that rape victims should keep quiet and not speak to the media. If someone rapes you, you should go to the police and otherwise tell no one; and if the police decline to prosecute or don’t get a conviction, too bad for you, you should never bring it up again.**

This grand conclusion builds on the earlier misrepresentations to provide a paraphrase of what I have written. Adam’s paraphrase is not only a grand concluding misrepresentation of my views, but it does not even follow from his earlier misrepresentations.

I believe victims of sex crimes should discuss their experience in as much detail as they wish with rape crisis professionals, doctors, lawyers, family, trusted friends, persons with responsibility for the circumstances involved, and whoever else can help them deal with the unique trauma they have experienced. I also believe we need better education and responsible media reporting to make the public aware of the nature of sex crimes and how to combat them, including how to improve the police service to make reporting less traumatic.

Adam ended his conclusion with an asterisk, which linked to the this footnote:

** If this is not Nugent’s position, I’ll be glad to issue a correction. But in that case, I’d expect him to state that he thinks [named person] did the right thing by coming forward. So far, he’s ducked multiple opportunities to say so.

This is the classic LBJ tactic, based on the legend that Lyndon B Johnson spread a rumour that an election rival fucked pigs. When challenged that he knew it wasn’t true, LBJ supposedly replied, ‘Of course it’s not true, but I want to make him deny it.’

I look forward to Adam’s correction, and I hope that it is not sandwiched between further misrepresentations and smears.

But the fact that his paraphrase is not my position does not lead to the further conclusion that he expects. If by ‘coming forward’ he means enabling a particular blogger to write about this in the way that he did, then I have repeatedly made clear that I believe that was not doing the right thing. And you cannot extrapolate, from that, the smears that Adam has repeatedly targeted me with.

Summary

Having seen at first hand how outrageously inaccurate their smears about me are, I now retrospectively doubt many things that certain people have said to me, or written about, in recent years.

I have noticed five types of personal smears against me in recent weeks.

Firstly, I have been inaccurately associated with opponents of my ethical values, against whom I have actively campaigned all of my adult life.

Secondly, what I wrote has been paraphrased into something else, that can then be opposed as if it was my view.

Thirdly, there are outright factual falsehoods.

Fourthly, there is vitriolic personal abuse that is disproportionate to any legitimate disagreements.

Fifthly, some people have repeatedly suggested that I am trying to silence people.

I’ll grant that anybody can misinterpret anything the first time that they read it, but some people have continued misrepresenting me even after any misunderstandings have been clarified. This is the same pattern as used on Richard and others.

It is now escalating beyond smears into what could be read as dark satire. It is the opposite of reason and openness, it is the opposite of empathy and compassion, and it is the opposite of fairness and justice. Whatever its motivation, it is unhelpful and unethical.