I attended a very interesting and informative Robert Taft Club meeting about the Duke lacrosse scandal Monday night. I wanted to write about it but wasn’t sure what point to make. (For the record, I am not a member, though I signed up for the e-mails.)

On a half-hour delay on the subway this morning, it dawned on me: Several panelists went after the media for painting the “victim” in sympathetic terms before more facts started coming out. They alleged that left-wing anti-rich white male sentiment was to blame. It probably played a role.

But then I thought of another case of false accusation, when in the mid-’90s Susan Smith claimed a black man had kidnapped her children. She cried in TV interviews while recounting the “incident.” Police later charged Smith with murder, and the jury found her guilty.

In both cases, race and class might have had some impact. It’s very possible that the average journalist is likely to believe both that (A) a black man could kidnap kids in a carjacking and (B) rich white lacrosse players might feel entitled to rape a poor black stripper. (Statistically, though, the latter situation is rare.)

I think a very different common thread runs between the two stories, however. The simple fact is that it’s difficult — even callous — to challenge a woman when she claims her sexuality and/or children have been taken from her. When a crying woman says “I was raped” or “my children were kidnapped,” followed by “the person looked like this,” who has the natural inkling to say “prove it”?

And let’s not forget that in both cases, the truth came out. Police quickly caught on that Susan Smith lied; even if prosecutor Nifong hasn’t dropped all charges against the lacrosse players, everyone in America knows there’s no evidence they committed any crime that night.

These are both cases of a very natural reaction, that of believing a visibly injured woman and then closely investigating the claim to catch the perpetrator. Various aspects of the Duke case disgust me, from the professors’ presumption of guilt to the prosecutor’s misconduct, but I don’t think the media was out of line to believe a rape had really occurred.

Robert VerBruggen blogs at http://www.therationale.com.