In the #MeToo Era, the Accusation Is the Punishment

The Hounding of Manny Ferreira Should Concern Us All

The 2018 book How to Destroy a Man Now (DAMN) by Angela Confidential highlighted the interdependent relationship that has developed between female accusers, media sources, and authority figures to weaponize sexual assault allegations against men. Some people were shocked that an author would instruct women in the art of male reputation assassination, but How to Destroy a Man Now was merely reporting what was already widely known and commonly practiced.

The book showed exactly  how the media and various authorities—including employers, HR personnel, social workers, police, and judges--now too often work in tandem to publicize, spread, amplify, and validate female accusations—and in many cases enforce penalties. The phenomenon represents an unprecedented transformation of major institutions as a result of feminist influence. It means that impartiality in reporting or decision-making about sexual assault allegations has been profoundly compromised.

No proof is required for allegations to destroy a man’s life: the accused may (and often does) lose his job, be expelled from his school, have his business boycotted, or find himself investigated and charged with a crime solely on the basis of a woman’s word. At a bare minimum, he will experience public humiliation and its after-effects. As Confidential explains, “With a smeared reputation or record of alleged misconduct, no one will want to be associated with him, no one will want to employ him, no one will want to help him, and no one will even believe him. Further, the subsequent long-term stress frequently results in loss of physical and mental health.”

An exact illustration of this now-common scenario occurred over an eight month period in the Canadian city of Hamilton, Ontario. There is nothing remarkable about the story. It was an ordinary smear campaign of a restaurant owner and chef named Manny Ferreira. Once a successful young businessman with a bright future, Ferreira is now a disgraced has-been who will struggle to work anywhere in Canada.

Ferreira’s downfall started with rumors on Facebook: women complaining to one another and sharing their stories about the well-known local entrepreneur, co-owner of a taco restaurant with a bar downstairs. None of the women complaining about Ferreira had ever reported him to the police. None of their claims had ever been tested in court or investigated. They were rumors alone, and they were given the gloss of respectability when they were reported in a lengthy article in a local newspaper, the Hamilton Spectator, by Susan Clairmont, a crime writer with an interest in social justice.

It’s not clear whether Clairmont found the social media comments by happenstance or whether one of the accusers contacted her. Perhaps she already knew one or more of Ferreira’s accusers. In any case, Clairmont’s article, a sensationalized series of interviews with eight accusers stretching to a massive 6,000 words in length, was published on February 17, 2021 as “Sexual misconduct allegations surface against Hamilton restaurant owner.”

In fact, the allegations did not merely surface in the manner of a natural occurrence. They were sought out and shaped by Clairmont to make a compelling exposé. Many of the allegations were relatively trivial: butt slapping, inappropriate touching, sexual joking, requests for sex, drunken sex. They were alleged to have occurred in a night-life scene already rife with sexual activity and sexual innuendo initiated by both women and men. But Ferreira’s actions, and only his, were highlighted as potentially criminal, evidence of a volatile and dangerous man whose time for metaphorical pillorying had come.

As has now become standard practice in our #MeToo culture, the article transformed the mostly female interviewees from mere gossips, women bad-mouthing a man they had once worked for or partied with, to self-sacrificing heroines who spoke out so that the suffering of others could be prevented. This angle—their courage and their suffering—was extensively highlighted by Clairmont. “I can’t overstate how difficult the process was for all those involved,” she wrote, though it’s not clear how she could know it. “They struggled with their decisions. They feared retaliation and the shame and blame that they might face for speaking out. But they wanted to be heard. And they wanted to prevent anyone else from being affected.”

It is never made clear by Clairmont what “retaliation” any of the complainants might have feared, or what shame and blame could possibly come to those who spoke on condition of anonymity, as many of them did. Was the process really so “difficult” when all the blame in their stories clearly rested on Ferreira’s shoulders and when nothing bad was ever said or even suggested about the accusers’ actions?

The article deliberately refrained from emphasizing that all of the stories told about Ferreira were simply that: stories, with no corroboration or evidence. One woman who was ejected from Ferreira’s restaurant for abusive language claimed that a drug was slipped into her drink, though she never went to the police about it. One male accuser who disapproved of Ferreira’s cocaine use accused Ferreira of giving away a lot of alcohol and food to beautiful women in order to get them into bed, but admits he himself accepted free cocaine from his host on at least two occasions. 

With its many salacious and belittling tales, the first article had a predictable effect, which was to inspire other complainants to come forward with their stories, adding to the seeming credibility of the accusations against Ferreira, the sense of a rising tide of too-long-deferred but now fast approaching retribution.

In short order, a second article was published a week later repeating the original allegations and adding to them, and promising more, and also, not incidentally, promoting the #MeToo culture of defamation as an important public service. We are told in this second article about the exhilaration of “victims” at last able to speak out about their experiences. “Many of those contacting The Spec with stories about Ferreira say that for the first time, they feel they will be believed,” Clairmont wrote. The implication was that we should believe them, though we were not told why. “They say they now believe they are not the only victims and it wasn’t their fault. They say they want to lend their voices to a call for justice.”

Note the highly scripted, repetitive quality of these statements, the familiar born-again exultation, the washing free of the taint of guilt and unbelief. Clairmont made clear that her articles were much more than an investigation into Ferreira alone; they were part of a significant social movement, a mass revolt of women against allegedly abusive man, a glorious reckoning and affirmation of female victimhood. “This is the start,” Clairmont wrote, “of an important, courageous, uncomfortable and long overdue conversation. And it is getting louder every day.”

It’s not clear who exactly was “uncomfortable” with this “important, courageous, long overdue” revelation, or even in what sense it was a conversation, given that the subject, Manny Ferreira, and all who might object to his portrayal, who might have other stories about him or about the accusers, were completely omitted from the reporting, which never critically investigated the plausibility of the accusers’ accounts.

The next stage in the now-familiar process was the involvement of authorities with the power to punish Ferreira, in this case the police. The police service was invited to respond not to the accusations themselves so much as the now-public story of the accusations. At this point in the unfolding of events, police and other authorities know that if they don’t act as expected, they may become accused in turn, held up for criticism for failing to take the allegations against Ferreira seriously enough. So the Hamilton police, perhaps responding to a prompt from Clairmont, issued a news release citing the articles and encouraging so-called “survivors” to report to their Sexual Assault Unit.

In time, Clairmont was able to inform readers that the police had opened a criminal investigation into Ferreira. The investigation became part of Clairmont’s story, with various updates and related announcements, each an opportunity to repeat the original allegations and to show how they had increased in scope, and how they were generating anger in the community. By March 3, 2021, Clairmont could tell readers that Ferreira was “exiting the [restaurant] business.”

On April 15, 2021, Clairmont confirmed that Ferreira’s two establishments had been closed. There had been problems with health inspections, but mainly Ferreira’s troubles were of Clairmont’s design: “Public outrage over the allegations,” it turned out, had been “swift and furious.” Knowledge that the restaurant owner was under criminal investigation had made Ferreira persona non grata. A financial backer had pulled out of his ventures. A boycott against him was advocated on social media. Someone spray painted the word Rapist across the restaurant’s front door. What had begun with some bitching on Facebook had accomplished a great deal in a few short months.

At this point, the story went dormant over the summer. Then, on October 5, 2021, what was likely the last article on the subject was published: it announced that the police had quietly closed their investigation into Ferreira after declining to lay charges. In this final article, Clairmont put a positive spin on the outcome, telling us that there are different forms of justice, and that Ferreira’s “victims” can take comfort in knowing that they bravely publicized their experiences and raised awareness of the “toxic culture” in Ferreira’s establishments.

Once again applauding Ferreira’s accusers and herself for writing the articles, the journalist expressed satisfaction that her investigation had “forced a reckoning” and “created a strong, brave network of women—and a few men—who banded together on social media.” She quoted a woman from the original exposé saying “Not the outcome we hoped for obviously, but at least our stories are out there.”

The article explicitly affirmed and predicted that many more such social media campaigns against men will take place because women feel the justice system has failed them. We are told that “Increasingly, survivors of sexual assault are creating social media communities where they can tell their stories” and “Once a survivor speaks out on social media, it can build momentum.” Indeed it can and it did.

From Ferreira’s perspective, justice undoubtedly looks rather elusive. For eight months, his name appeared prominently in the Hamilton Spectator: the accusations against him were spoken of as if they were true; his accusers were repeatedly referred to as victims and survivors, their unproven allegations recounted in vivid detail. Ferreira’s infamy will not soon fade.

His accusers, riding high on a wave of righteousness, will make sure that the stench of his smearing lingers for as long as possible. This is what Clairmont enthusiastically calls “recognition” and “impetus for change.” Other male restaurant and bar-owners will certainly appreciate how easily they could find themselves in Ferreira’s shoes, and will be quick to join in the denunciation of him in a bid to avoid his fate. The author mentions that some have already done so, expressing their solidarity with Ferreira’s accusers and talking about the need for anti-harassment training.

In the end, Ferreira was not charged with any crime, but unlike other people merely investigated by police, he is not entitled to the presumption of innocence. The presumption of innocence does not pertain in the feminist court of public opinion, where Ferreira has already been found guilty and sentenced to infamy. Though the police did not find the evidence against him compelling enough to bring charges, a large number of readers—who knows how many hundreds or thousands—almost certainly assumed that it was. And for years to come, anyone typing Ferreira’s name into a search engine will encounter the accusations afresh.

Ferreira’s case is utterly ordinary.

In the Ferreira case, we see how both media reporting and policing have been transformed by a feminist agenda, adopting a mutually reinforcing relationship with social media accusers who create the stories that journalists “investigate” and police pursue. Both journalism and policing, in other words, now exist as an extension of accusers, the journalists to disseminate accusers’ stories and the police to provide legitimation and endorsement, calling on “victims” to come forward, promising they will be believed. The transformation has occurred as women have flooded in to both journalism and policing.

One wonders if it ever bothers Susan Clairmont, crime and social justice reporter, that the stories she publicized—and the subsequent police investigation that she set going—ultimately accomplished nothing other than the ruination of a man whom the police decided it wasn’t worthwhile to charge.  I doubt the material repercussions for Ferreira concern her; in her reckoning, they are part of an “important” “conversation,” one that has had only positive effects on her life and career.

Her articles stand as a testimony to the power of unsubstantiated claims to destroy men’s lives and the satisfaction accusers can gain in taking their deferred, often-anonymous revenge.