In an article in the Huffington Post, Anna Joseph and Kerry Richards accuse me of not showing compassion toward a 31-year-old woman who deliberately, willfully and mendaciously accused me of raping her on more than six occasions nearly fifteen years ago. I have deep compassion for victims of rape and trafficking, and I understand the reasons why Joseph and Richards are concerned about the revictimization of actual victims. But Joseph and Richards have it backwards in this case. The 31-year-old perjurer is not my "victim." I am her victim. There is no excuse or justification for a mature woman victimizing an entirely innocent person by falsely accusing him of crimes others may have committed against her.
Fortunately, the charges against me are not only totally made up but are provably untrue.
Jane Doe #3 accused me of having had sex with her on a private Caribbean island where I spent one day in the company of my wife, my young daughter, a prominent professor at the Harvard Business School and his wife and family. I was never away from my family. We even slept in the same cabin. We saw no young girls on the island and I certainly had no sexual encounters with Jane Doe #3 or any other under-age person.
According to media accounts, she has also claimed that Stephen Hawking and I were on the island together during a sex orgy. I have never met Professor Hawking.
She has also claimed that I had sex with her at a ranch in New Mexico. I was at that ranch for a total of one hour with my wife, my young daughter and the two friends who drove us there from their home several miles away, where we were staying. The house was still being built and no one was living in it at the time. We looked around as a group and left. I had no sexual encounter with any under-age person.
She has also accused me of having sex with her on private aircraft. Yet the flight manifests will show that I was never on a private plane with her or any other under-age women. Again I had no sexual encounter with any under-age person on any airplane, ranch, island or anywhere else--ever!
Joseph and Richards complain about my aggressive response to her false accusations, arguing that "neither Dershowitz's liberty nor his property are at stake." This trivializes the seriousness of being falsely accused of a heinous crime such as child rape. My reputation is so important to me that I have in fact put my liberty and property at risk by denying the allegations under oath, thus subjecting me to a perjury prosecution if I were not telling the truth, and by castigating the lawyers who filed these false charges, thus subjecting me to a defamation lawsuit by them.
Joseph and Richards would like me to "focus on the plaintiff's courage." But it takes no courage to file a maliciously false charge and hide behind the litigation privilege. This is a mature woman with a long history of lies, including recent ones. She has claimed to have dinner with former President Bill Clinton and two underage females on Jeffrey Epstein's island. She has also claimed to have met former Vice President Gore and Mrs. Gore on the same island. Yet I am advised that secret Service records will conclusively prove that none of them ever stepped foot on Epstein's private island. Moreover, according to recent press reports, just before she falsely claims she had sex with me, she falsely claimed to have been raped by two friends with whom she had a consensual threesome in a car. After a thorough investigation of her claims, the State Attorney refused to prosecute because of the alleged victim's "lack of credibility." Shortly thereafter, she was fired from her job at a restaurant for stealing money from her employer. As to her past history of alleged abuse by others, I have no idea whether anything she has said is true or false, and to the extent it may be true, I feel sorry for her and I condemn anyone who may have exploited her. I only know that what she has said about me is categorically false and totally made up and that nothing that may have happened to her at the hands of others in the past would justify her current perjury about me.
Joseph and Richards also accuse me of being sexist for not showing compassion to a woman who is seeking to ruin my life, my career and my reputation by making up a completely false story about me. Let me assure them that there is nothing sexist about me attacking this perjurer. I have been equally aggressive in attacking the two male lawyers who filed the false pleading against me.
Of course I have compassion for rape victims. That's why I, and everyone else who shares that compassion, should show no compassion for a woman, like Jane Doe #3, who has made up a false story of being raped by a man she has never even met, in order to line her pockets with cash.
I am not asking for compassion, only fairness and an opportunity to prove my total innocence. No "political correctness" will stop me from doing everything reasonable within my power to prove she is lying about me. Would any of you do less if you were falsely accused of so heinous a crime?