August 7, 1994: The letter below from Lynn Wills of Heyworth, Illinois, appeared in The Pentagraph, page A7 under the heading GROWN WOMEN ARE OUT THERE TELLING LIES, WRECKING LIVES; it is reprinted here from the NewsBank edition.
Cheers to Lucia Getsi’s letter of July 19 about the need for punishment to children and teens who wreck an adult’s life by falsely accusing them of sexual abuse. However, this is not just children out there wrecking lives, but grown women, too.
Thanks to The Pantagraph for the early-June Perspective in an effort to clear my husband’s name (Kenneth Wills), who was falsely accused of five Class X felonies.
The saga continues: My husband’s false accuser was not even charged with the misdemeanor of filing five false police reports. My husband and his attorney had to file a petition and appear in court to ask permission that these false reports be removed from his record (expungement process).
The judge asked him if he had ever been convicted of another crime before and asked, “Are you sure?” three times. If he had been, the judge would have refused to remove these records from his file!
Why does it matter if my husband had a prior record? The prior record wouldn’t have anything to do with the false accusations. Why did he have to ask for permission? Why wasn’t it automatically removed?
Meanwhile there is no recourse for recovering the thousands of dollars spent to defend my husband.
Since my husband’s case, I have heard of four men falsely accused of rape by women just “mad at them.” It is my assumption that these women just walk in and say “Just kidding” and walk out the door free and clear.
It would be a shame if society went back to never believing a rape report; however, why don’t these vindictive, lying women have to be charged criminally, spend the night in jail and ordered to pay full restitution to the person they falsely accused. Perhaps then, a woman would think twice about telling a big lie.
Lynn Wills
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