What could anyone gain from putting their life and that of their family in jeopardy on a false accusation? Ford is going to be watching her back possibly the rest of her life. The world is full of crazies who hold grudges, unfortunately.
I’m not saying Ford is a liar. I believe something happened to her. I’m just not as certain of who assaulted her as she is. She can’t remember anything else about that night. A party that happened at a house she can’t remember, attended by people who say they don’t remember being there, ending with a ride home she can’t remember. That’s what she’s given investigators to work with.
I’m no psychologist, but I’ve been researching a lot lately about memories and how the human mind works, and given the fuzzy details of the rest of Ford’s story, there’s no reason to believe she got the perpetrator right. People construct all kinds of memories they don’t actually have, especially when they’re traumatized. As soon as you realize that human memories aren’t like files in a computer, that we reconstruct and reimagine them as needed, and that plenty of innocent people have gone to jail over false recollections, you begin to appreciate real evidence over emotion.
I hate what we’re going through right now as a country and I don’t want Ford to suffer, but we already live in a world where people are being fired because their politics are wrong or they made a stupid joke on Twitter a decade ago. I don’t want to live in a world where an accusation without evidence is enough to undo a 30+ year career.