HOW FEMINIST LAW CONVICTED BRIAN BANKS AND REWARDED HIS ACCUSER WITH OVER $1 MILLION By Hugh Murray

Years ago I wrote about the Scottsboro cases of the 1930s in which two white women accused nine young Black men of rape.  They lied.  But prejudice was strong in that era, and the youths were convicted, and at first, eight sentenced to death.  Communists came to the rescue, providing both a top-notch legal defense inside the courtroom, and international agitation outside.  It was the first time since the American Civil War that American racism was put on trial throughout much of the world.

Liberals and Communists and the literary crowds applauded the play on Broadway, "They Shall Not Die," the poems and plays on the case by Langston Hughes, and the poems describing the prejudice in The Daily Worker.

With the Cold War, the literature on the issue had to change.  In the novel by Don Mankiewicz, and subsequent film starring Glenn Ford, "Trial," an Hispanic in California, rather than Blacks in Alabama, is the center of the struggle.  But in this Cold-War version, the boy is still innocent, but the Communists leading his defense are really out to have him convicted and execute so he will be a martyr to the red cause.

Another Cold War novel and film on the subject is Harper Lee’s "To Kill a Mockingbird,” which starred Gregory Peck.  In this version, the Black man is innocent, but there are not Communists to intervene.  The good liberal attorney is able to expose much of the local racial prejudice, but not enough to sway the jury.

In the 1960s a newer, more militant feminism emerged.  One Leftist, who had once sat in lectures by Herbert Aptheker, the Communist historian, wrote her womanifesto in the 1970s, Against Our Will.  In it, Susan Brownmiller asserts that the Left had taken the wrong tact on the Scottsboro case.  They should have considered it more from the women’s point of view.  The attitude that women do not make false charges was to infect some of the later writing on the Scottsboro case, and I had letters in major academic journals complaining that trendy historians had caved to the feminists.  Moreover, had the feminist-inspired “rape shield” laws been in effect in Alabama in the 1930s, the defense lawyers would never have been able to expose the lies of the gals.  (I say the boys were innocent because I interviewed one of the judges who presided at one of the trials.  He had spoken in private to a doctor who examined the young women.  They were giggling and laughing.  He told them directly, “Those boys didn’t rape you, did they?”  And they laughed again.  The judge urged him to tell this under oath on the witness stand.  The doctor said he would lie, for to tell the true with such intense emotions in the area, he would lose his practice.  The judge eventually overruled the jury’s guilty verdict and ordered a new trial.  That judge was not re-elected.)

By the 1980s false charges of rape could become page-1 stories for nearly a year.  The Tawana Brawley case of alleging rape by a white policeman should have been exposed as fraud rather quickly.  But since she was a young Black woman, and Rev. Al Sharpton and other “civil rights” activists joined her cause, the daily news lesson was simple – the evil white man of power who rapes the poor, defenseless, Black girls.  (Sorry, women.  Feminist language did away with ladies and almost eliminated girls.  Woman became the word.)

The trend was unmistakable.  By the time of the Clarence Thomas hearings, the Left went all out to destroy his reputation.  On National Public Radio, far-Leftist “reporter” Nina Totenberg assured her listeners that “women do not make up stories,” so clearly Anita Hill was telling the truth about Thomas harassing her.  Happily, most of the Senate ignored the authority of Ms. Totenberg, and Thomas still sits on the United States Supreme Court.

Yet then notion that the women are always right and truthful in making charges, and the men, especially white men, but also Black men, are fiends determined to rape, is almost a tenet of today’s feminism.  Even the definition of rape was broadened so it might not have been rape at all a few decades ago.  Today, wives can be raped by their husbands.  “Date rape” can be nothing more than consensual intercourse at night, but anger roused when he fails to call her the following day.  So her Women’s Studies counselor urges her to file a rape charge.  The entire Zeitgeist makes it much easier for her to charge him with rape.  Even if she goes to his hotel room at 2am – as did the gal who then charged prize fighter Mike Tyson with rape.  That charge led him into prison and a changed life.  For once I agreed with Rev. Farrakhan who stood up for Tyson and against the gal who was happily fondled on film by the prizefighter earlier that day by him – and then she went to his room at 2 am.  Rape?  And his reputation was then destroyed.

In the 21^st century the media and academia worked to convict Duke U. lacrosse players, accused of rape by a stripper.  Immediately the academedia complex went to work to convict the middle-class white men.  The university leaders condemned the racism on campus.  Even the sport season was cancelled, as lacrosse suddenly had a seedy reputation.  TV news telecast rich, playboy, whites, abusing a poor, struggling Black woman.  Then the case collapsed.  Were there any apologies for ruining the reputation of the players?  And when the same woman was involved in a murder charge, how much media play did that get? 

And now the case of high school football player Brian Banks.  He is suddenly charged with rape and kidnapping by a gal with whom he had consensual sex.  What is he to do?  In my era, they would have looked at the reputations of both the boy and girl (sorry, man and woman).  But in the new feminist era, “women do not make up stories.”  Though he tells his attorney, he is innocent, the lawyer understands that that may mean little in the world of Totenberg’s mantra.  So the lawyer gets him to plea bargain so he will not rot in jail for 41 years.  Banks finally gets out, his accuser Wanetta Gibson, contacts him and wants to forget the whole affair.  He is naturally suspicious of meeting her, and records the encounter.  She confesses, there was no rape; there was not kidnapping.  It was recorded.  A lawyer now wants Banks declared innocent and his record cleared.

However, Ms. Gibson will not repeat her confession!  Why?  Her mother sued the school district as a result of the “rape and kidnapping,” and the family made some $1,500,000.00 because of the lie.  She was paid over a million dollars to lie.  That is what the new feminism is all about.  Lies, putting men in their place (prison), getting feminist judges in divorces to give the children to the wives, along with exorbitant child support, and many of the belongings.  It is only in such an atmosphere that a lying teen could get over a million dollars and ruin so many chances for the boy with whom she had consensual sex.

It is time to abolish feminist law.  It is as unjust as sharia law.  Women, like men, can lie, cheat, even kill.  When charges are made, both accuser and accused must be questioned without “shields,” and probes made as to which is telling the truth.  In the era of equality, one should be treated equally.  Both may tell the truth, and both may lie.

I hope the Long Beach school district immediately files suit against the Gibson family to recover tax-payers money that simply encouraged a lying feminist.  In future, judges should ponder before granting such large sums.

Rape is a serious charge.  But because it is “serious,” that does not make it true.  Women can lie just as men do.  The charge should be investigated before there are verdicts of guilty and huge payouts.

Simply, feminist law is unjust law.  It must be repealed.