Woman Accused 9-Year-Old of 'Sexual Assault,' Then the Surveillance Video Comes Out
Editor’s Note: This was a popular story with our readers when it originally ran; we’re re-posting it here in case you missed it.
A woman allegedly named Teresa Klein is gaining some viral infamy after she accused a 9-year-old African-American child of sexual assault when he brushed up against her, according to the New York Post.
The video went viral after a Facebook user named Jason Stovetop Littlejohn posted a video Thursday showing the confrontation.
“Meet Cornerstore Caroline,” he wrote. “White Woman calls police on a kid, saying he sexually assaulted her.
“As I walked up I noticed the argument, apparently the kid brushed up against her and she said he touched her and decided to call police on a nine year old child. As you can see the kid is crying and the mom is upset.”
Here’s the video, which has been viewed over 5.2 million times. We warn you that there’s some salty language in here and viewer discretion is (as always) advised.
“I want the cops here right now!” the woman, who was tentatively identified as Klein, can be heard shouting. “The son grabbed my a– and she decided to yell at me.”
As the woman continues to yell into the phone, a crowd that’s gathered sends her a message she would have been wise to heed: “Go home.”
“Are you seriously calling the police?” another passerby said. “Go away. What is your problem? I’m calling you out.”
The woman seemed to get the optics of the situation. “White lady calls the cops on black lady, I get it,” she said.
As it turns out, it didn’t take long for the surveillance video, obtained by WPIX-TV’s Andrew Ramos, to come out. Quelle surprise, the woman was lying:
NEW: Surveillance footage proves white woman who called 911 on a young black child claiming he groped her – was wrong @PIX11News #CornerstoreCaroline Full story at 5 pic.twitter.com/agTK0MpgUG
— Andrew Ramos (@AndrewRamosTV) October 12, 2018
As you can see, the child only brushes up against her with his backpack — and accidentally, at that. This is what sent her into a towering rage.
Most of the opprobrium for Klein — richly deserved, one would admit — centered on the fact that it was a white woman calling the police on a black child. It’s not a good look, mind you, but Ramos also reported that the bodega owner said the woman was known to be “unwell.”
I’m not a mental health professional or anything, and I’ll totally admit to the fact that I’ve expressed more than a fair amount of umbrage over the past few days at media personalities and celebrity tweeters who seem to have gotten their medical degrees from Facebook University calling Kanye West out for being mentally ill based on his Oval Office visit.
However, from my short video introduction to this fine individual, I have to say that “unwell” seems to be a charitable way to describe her. I’d also posit that unwell-ness seems a much more likely culprit for this bizarre outburst — and subsequent false accusation — than racism was. Not that racism and mental illness are mutually exclusive, but I’d at least consider this angle before you post your 5,000-word think-piece on Medium titled “Bigotry in the bodega: Viral infamy and white supremacist power structures.”
Oh, there’s also the fact that, when Ramos went to interview Klein, she called the cops on him and another reporter, too.
UPDATE: Spoke to the woman who called police on a child. Her name is Theresa (the internet has dubbed her #cornerstorecaroline )
She called the cops on me and another reporter. @PIX11News pic.twitter.com/ugmnUX3cqf
— Andrew Ramos (@AndrewRamosTV) October 12, 2018
There’s a more important issue at hand here — I thought we were supposed to believe all women. A woman’s testimony is is evidence enough, right? Well, as it turns out, not so much.
In this case, there was physical evidence of what happened. But what if the surveillance cameras had been out? We’re not supposed to bring up her apparent history of being “unwell,” whatever that may be. If a woman is willing to report the assault to the police, she’s supposed to be believed — and a 9-year-old child would have had his life turned upside-down. If there was no corroboration, so what? Corroboration isn’t needed these days.
This is the kind of nightmare situation you would get if you throw away the conventional rules of due process because they don’t fit in with the #MeToo moment. Yes, this case is certainly an extreme example, but the extreme examples are exactly how you realize just how flawed an argument can be.
If you throw away due process and give the mere word of an individual as much weight as physical evidence simply because they happen to be a member of the distaff gender, you’re setting yourself up for a generation of men put behind bars on spurious allegations. Oh, and if you want to talk about how racism factors into this, perhaps the left ought to look at studies which posit which race would likely be most disproportionately affected by that sort of sea change in dealing with sexual assault allegations. (Spoiler alert: not Asians.)
Apparently, the one thing we can discern for certain about the woman in this incident is she’s a big fan of calling the cops for no reason. As you also may be aware of, law enforcement doesn’t share her unmixed delight for placing frivolous emergency calls. Whether this situation ends in charges is anyone’s guess at this point, but one hopes this woman doesn’t make the mistake of phoning up the police if and when the authorities come to arrest her. We should at least be thankful that there was video, however. If not, there might have been a black 9-year-old child worrying — wrongly — about his future.
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