Washington DV Press

Since last year, we have been following another interesting false rape charge in a area of Maine which has an exorbitant amount of rape charges per its population size (60,000) They are averaging 4 rape charges per month.

According to victims of prosecutions in Maine’s Bar Harbor region, what is taking place is a modern day Witch Hunt. Court documents suggest that numerous men are currently facing charges of sexual misconduct in a small county of little more than 50,000 people.At the center of these prosecutions is a 44 year old Assistant District Attorney Mary N. Kellett, who has a reputation for prosecuting men on questionable evidence and questionable probable cause.  As in the Salem Witch Trials, these prosecutions are often based solely on accusations with no physical or corroborating evidence.

Accusations against men in the county are widely publicized along with their pictures, identities, and details of their private lives.  Members of this small community, who make up the jury pool, are presented with the notion that when a prosecutor files numerous charges of sexual abuse that there exist a solid, or at lease a reasonable, basis in evidence to justify the arrest, detention, and a public prosecution of these men.

But the evidence presented in courts very often shows that any accusation made regardless of the evidence was used to prosecute the accused men.  Some local attorneys have asserted that county prosecutor Mary Kellett ignores evidence and the search for truth, but instead focuses on getting men convicted for the allegations made by women.  Kellett has made statements that she does not believe women lie about rape.  And even when some trials illustrate that the accuser engaged in consensual sexual activity, Kellett herself later characterizes the activities as punishment, done out of anger, and rationalizes why they were not consensual.

These beliefs are shared by the most extreme feminists who for years have asserted that all sex between men and women is rape, and that women just don’t realize that they are being raped even by their partners.  In Hancock County Maine, this extreme feminist philosophy is being put to practice by the District Attorney’s office.  The prosecutor treats female accusations as evidence and absolute truth.  A team of sex offense responders at the DA’s office immediately embrace female’s accusations and coach them through the process.  In the name of public safety, men are immediately stripped of numerous Constitutional rights and effectively forced to disprove the accusations against them in a public criminal trial.

The public’s notions that prosecutors are faithful guardians of civil rights and conservative discretion prove to be false in Hancock County.  In practice, the prosecutor’s credibility is publicly re-enforced solely through wide publicity of rare convictions.  The line between justifiable and unjustifiable prosecutions of men is blurred by selective media coverage.

Little if any publicity is given to the bulk of the cases involving men who were criminally charged and prosecuted with little evidence beyond accusations, sometimes made by their girlfriends, wives, troubled step children, or occasional sex partners.  These men may remain in jail for months, lose everything they have, sometimes can’t see their children, and never repair their reputations or the damage done to their lives.  No articles are written about how these men manage to put their lives back together, get employment after being falsely arrested and prosecuted for rape, or how vulnerable they become to future false allegations by other abusive females in their lives.

The prosecutors like Mary Kellett act with full immunity for their actions against men.

And it’s not just for alleged sex crimes for which men are systematically punished by the District Attorneys office in Hancock County.  Men in the community have been criminally charged for such alleged crimes as splashing water on their wives, spitting, for “terrorism” due to offensive song lyrics, visual aggression, and for what often can be viewed as any action against a female.  But at least those “crimes” don’t carry the stigma and a 30 year prison sentence which comes with each class “A” gross sexual assault charge, which is a frequent charge against men in Hancock County, and one of the easiest and most profitable for a prosecutor to undertake.

Dr. Demosthenes Lorandos, who is a psychologist and an attorney, states that “the crime of Rape has been known as the easiest criminal allegation to make by an alleged victim, and  the hardest to disprove by the defendant.”  And that “a series of bias laws has made it easier to obtain convictions”.

Not surprising that most of the innocent men who are exonerated by the Innocence Project through DNA evidence, sometimes after decades in prison, were falsely accused and convicted of rape.  Some studies have placed the rate of false sexual assault reports at 50% or more.  That rate jumps to almost 80% when accusations are made during divorce or child custody disputes with girlfriends or wives.

And yet in Maine, media coverage remain eerily silent about local false allegations and prosecutions of innocent men whose lives and reputations are destroyed as a result.  The female accusers are never named and continue to live in obscurity even after their accusations prove false.  Instead, the local reports graphically focus on covering the accusations against men, and at times even imply that the acquitted men have cheated justice.

One Bangor television station aired an interview with a local rape crisis center official who stated that even if a woman falsely accuses a man of rape, it is most important for law enforcement to believe the woman, act on her report, and do exactly what she wants them to do.  This implies that arresting, charging, and publicly prosecuting innocent men is less harmful than for authorities to question the words and motives of a woman making the accusations.  This appears to be the policy adopted in the Bar Harbor region of Maine.

Crime statistics for the region have consistently shown a low rape rate, yet not long after becoming a prosecutor, Assistant District Attorney Mary Kellett offered her own statistic of the Bar Harbor region.  Speaking to a local newspaper she stated that it could be difficult to find jurors in the area for sex cases because many people have been victims of sex offenses or have been accused of committing them.

An anonymous victim of prosecution by Mary Kellett stated: “I will never have any faith in the justice system. They aren’t interested in the truth. It’s a game for them. Some day this will go down as witch hunts.” “My family just wants to put this behind them. But it will never be over. I’m still receiving hate mail because of my support [for the accused]. [The prosecutor] used every unfair, low trick in the book to get a conviction and when a jury of 12 called him not guilty they then say ‘just because he wasn’t found guilty doesn’t mean he’s innocent’. I lock my doors and windows and turn the dogs out at night.”

One case which has received some attention is that of Vladek Filler, a husband who was accused of sexual assault by his wife during their bitter split up and custody battle. Filler, a self employed honors graduate from Babson College, decided to leave his wife after 16 years and get custody of his two sons.  Child Protective Services and Court investigations granted Filler temporary custody of his children.  His wife was found to be a threat and had her supervised visits with them suspended.

Prior to being arrested and charged for his wife’s accusations, Filler sought help from a local domestic violence organization which turned him away and chose to give assistance to his abusive wife instead.  Filler sought a protection order from court and his wife decided to drop the “nuclear bomb” of divorce and custody battles.  She accused Filler of abuse, child molestations, and spousal rape.  She demanded immediate custody of their children. A video about the events appeared on YouTube.

Despite absence of any corroborating evidence other than his wife’s accusation, the children were taken away, and prosecutor Mary Kellett had Filler arrested, charged, and eventually convicted.  What emerged after his January 2009 trial were revealing details of how prosecutions of men are conducted by prosecutor Mary Kellett and the Hancock County DA’s office.

Filler was apparently not allowed to present any evidence at all of the bitter custody battle, his wife’s troubled past, or her false claims of abuse in another custody battle with another man. nKellett, in turn told the jury “there was no evidence that the sexual assaults did not occur”, and placed the burden on Filler to prove his innocence.  Kellett suggested that if forensic and physical examinations were conducted they would impede justice in this case and that statistically Filler was more likely to sexually assault his wife than a stranger.  Aware that Filler was prevented from presenting evidence, Kellett repeatedly told to the jury that a child custody dispute did not even exist and therefore could not be a motive for false accusations by his wife.

When considering the disturbing details of the Filler case, one can’t help but to wonder how something like this could happen in our justice system. What is taking place in Hancock County Maine is extremism based on a myth that men are inherently bad, and are a threat to helpless and innocent women; that the State needs to punish and control men to maintain order within relationships and families.  This is not much different from how Puritans viewed women accused of witchcraft in their community.  The way men are being characterized in Maine has caused the public to be fearful and suspicious of men. Maine’s Attorney General Janet Mills, a former co-founder of the Maine Women’s Lobby, recently stated that her number one priority is domestic violence, and that “We need to send the message to boys and young men in Maine”. Such views from Maine’s top law enforcement official are made despite numerous credible studies suggesting that women are just as responsible, if not more, for domestic violence and child abuse.

Such gender biased rhetoric demonizes boys, men, and fathers and leads to the numerous falsely accused men to face years in prison and the perpetual skewing of domestic violence statistics.

So powerful is the myth against men, that despite difficult fiscal and economic times, the flow of funding to the domestic violence industry continues to be strong, as does the prosecution of men. The message of the rhetoric being sent to the girls in Maine is “blame the boys for everything and the State will do the rest”, so maybe the message to the boys in Maine should now be “God help you”.