What The Hell America!

The courtroom becomes a stage for the oldest stories we tell about women and truth.

With the federal sex-trafficking trial of Sean “Diddy” Combs now underway, the prosecution’s star witness has taken the stand. Casandra Elizabeth Ventura, known by the stage name Cassie, has described years of alleged physical and sexual abuse at the hands of the music mogul. Her testimony, along with that of at least one other woman, lies at the heart of the government’s theory that Combs and his associates engaged in a decades-long criminal enterprise. According to the government, this enterprise included arson, bribery and obstruction of justice—but the accusations of sexual violence and the pattern of control underlying them are central to the prosecution’s case.

Combs has denied the charges, insisting that the sex acts were consensual. The women’s credibility is therefore critical to the trial’s outcome. As Combs’ lawyer already previewed, his team will endeavor to convince the jury that the accusers are lying when they say they were coerced.

Combs and his lifestyle are far from ordinary, as are the alleged “freak-offs” that invariably generate headlines. But at bottom, his prosecution is typical of most sex crime prosecutions, which hinge on a credibility contest over consent.

When jurors—like the rest of us—decide what to believe, our judgments are often skewed by longstanding biases against women who allege sexual violence. In my book, Credible: Why We Doubt Accusers and Protect Abusers, I show how our culture casts accusers as unreliable sources of information. Certain stock representations of lying women are commonplace, predisposing us to disbelieve. Whether expressly invoked or not, these caricatures may well inflect the jurors’ credibility determinations.

Consider, for instance, the “gold digger,” who desires fortune above all; if need be, she will even concoct an allegation of abuse.

The “gold digger” trope has already made an appearance at Combs’ trial. His lawyer said this in the opening statement: “So when you hear from the witnesses who testify here who will tell you they were victimized, and you ask yourself, ‘What is their motive?’ For many of them, the answer is simple: money.” Referring to Cassie’s civil suit seeking damages against Combs as a “money grab,” the defense lawyer then put this question to the jury: “How many millions of reasons does this witness swearing to tell the truth, and nothing but the truth, have to lie?”

Sex crimes prosecutors routinely contend with the gold digger stereotype. At Bill Cosby’s retrial on sexual assault charges after his first trial ended in a hung jury, Cosby’s lawyer remarked of the accuser, “What does she want from Bill Cosby? Money, money, and lots more money.”

Defense attorneys deploy this stereotype precisely because it resonates with how laypeople tend to dismiss accusers: One study of how Twitter users responded to sexual assault accusations against high-profile men found that users frequently selected the hashtag “#golddigger” to digest their reactions.

Apart from the gold digger, my book describes several other caricatures of accusers that distort our judgments about whether to believe. The “woman scorned” seeks revenge on the man who rejected her. The “regretful woman” rues consensual sex. The “political tool” is willing to be used to advance a partisan agenda or an agenda of her own—including, in recent years, the #MeToo movement. The “attention seeker” craves the spotlight. Rather than intentionally deceiving anyone, the “mistaken woman” is confusing what really happened.

While many people would disavow belief in these caricatures, they nevertheless remain in widespread circulation throughout our culture. Even today, in the aftermath of #MeToo, we may absorb the message that women can’t be trusted when they recount sexual violation. This orientation often leads us to misjudge those who allege abuse, resulting in what I call the “credibility discount.”

Cassie has endured a grueling cross-examination. Combs’ legal team did their best to portray her as a woman who made, as they put it, “voluntary, adult choices.” In the defense’s telling, Cassie is lying when she says that what might look like consent was, in fact, the result of the control and coercion. We can expect much the same when the anonymous Jane testifies in the weeks ahead.

In the end, it will fall to the jurors to weigh these competing narratives, and to use their common sense—however flawed—to assess age-old attacks on the accusers’ credibility. This makes the Combs trial sadly unexceptional.