RAISE PENALTIES FOR UNTRUE DEFAMATORY ACCUSATIONS.

Byline: JOE GELMAN

EVERY once in awhile, our society seems to get caught up in what psychologists might describe as bouts of irrational finger pointing, bordering on mass hysteria.

A good example of such a bout was in the earlier stages of the McMartin Pre-School child molestation case, right here in Southern California during the 1980s, when a majority of Southlanders automatically assumed the worst about the defendants involved in that case, even before any evidence had been heard.

Wild rumors of satanic rituals, animal sacrifices and international child pornography rings being run out of the tiny preschool became conventional wisdom as a sensationalism-driven media enthusiastically elaborated on what later turned out to be every false detail, wiping up emotions that ultimately evolved into Southern California's very own version of the Salem witch hunt.

Defendants were jailed for years throughout the duration of the legal proceedings, while politicians, prosecutors, television reporters and child psychologists indulged in a shameless, self-promoting feeding frenzy, hoping to make a career off of the high-profile case.

But when everything was said and done after years of legal maneuvering, not a single conviction was achieved and the fantastic stories proved to be fantasy.

The defendants in that case were eventually all released from jail, but their lives had been ruined. They were ruined. They were broken human beings, financially and spiritually. The damage had been done and there was no place for them to go to get their good names back. To this very day, many people are still absolutely convinced of the McMartin family's guilt, even though the evidence against them has been utterly discredited.

I also remember a few short years ago in a lesser publicized case when one of our highest-ranking city officials, former L.A. City Clerk Elias Martinez, was accused of sexual harassment by a number of female employees. Martinez had an exemplary record as a city employee, spanning over a period of decades. He had never been accused of improper behavior before.

In what was then the post-Anita Hill environment, Martinez was promptly fired from his 30-year job and publicly humiliated, even before a proper investigation had been concluded.

His name was dragged through the mud for everyone to see, by people like City Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg, who seemed to take joy in publicly grandstanding on the issue at the expense of Martinez's honor and good name. His wife and children were cruelly forced to endure the unbearable public humiliation of their loved one for months on end.

Martinez insisted on his innocence from Day One. He appealed his firing, and an outside investigator, with impeccable women's rights credentials, was hired by the personnel department to probe the matter. After an exhausting, lengthy and expensive investigation, she concluded that no sexual harassment took place and that the accusations had absolutely no basis in reality.

Martinez finally was allowed to return to his job, but not without being subjected to further public humiliation by the defenders of ``tolerance.''

Even after the in-depth investigation explicitly concluded that Martinez should be completely exonerated, City Council members Ruth Galanter, Rita Walters, Mark Ridley Thomas, Laura Chick and Goldberg did everything in their power to prevent Martinez from returning to his job. They argued that it would ``send the wrong message'' and ``discourage women from stepping forward'' if Martinez was cleared, facts or no facts, guilty or not. Fortunately, a majority of council members disagreed. Now he is retired. In July 1995, he received a settlement from the city in his claim that he was wrongfully targeted for firing.

I always try to remember the McMartin and Martinez cases as I evaluate other dramas playing themselves out almost every day on the local and national scene.

Last summer, Richard Jewell, a security guard at the Olympic Games in Atlanta, was publicly named as a suspect by the FBI in the Olympic Park bombing. Jewell was later dropped as a suspect, for lack of evidence, but not before his name was dragged through the mud in front of the entire country by a highly competitive and uncritical media, seeking to one-up each other.

Just a few weeks ago, two Dallas Cowboys football players were falsely accused of raping a woman who later admitted she had made the story up, but not before every person in the country was aware of exactly who these two supposed ``rapists'' were. The woman had apparently ``confided'' in a local TV reporter friend, who proceeded to break the story, which was immediately picked up nationally.

Over the past few years, congressional Democrats have submitted literally hundreds of ethics complaints against Speaker Newt Gingrich to the ethics committee, in the hope that something eventually will stick. With the exception of a single complaint, all of the hundreds of other complaints were thrown out for total lack of merit, after much energy and resources were expended.

Is no one ever held accountable for filing hundreds of false complaints against an individual? That Newt Gingrich was snagged on a minor tax violation and then accidentally provided the ethics committee with mistaken information in my view is far less of a breach of ethics than Congressman David Bonier submitting hundreds of false ethics complaints against the speaker, not to mention exploiting illegally acquired private taped phone conversations, which is a felony.

Does anyone remember that ``thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor'' is still one of the Ten Commandments? I'm not very qualified to engage in Bible-thumping, but it seems to me that the time has come to increase the penalty for engaging in purposeful, slanderous gossip and calculated defamation of character, especially when an individual's life or career is on the line.

Should a person who has been accused of crime have his or her name made public while the accuser is entitled to remain anonymous? Shouldn't the names of both parties be withheld until a determination of guilt or innocence had been made? At the very least, the accused should be entitled to remain anonymous until he or she has been officially charged with the crime.

When an accusing party can rest assured that their name will remain anonymous, or that there will be no consequences for engaging in wrongful accusations, does that not encourage individuals to bear false witness against others, whom they might hold a grudge against for one reason or anther? Would it not encourage less scrupulous individuals to bear false witness in order to blackmail or seek financial gain in the way of a settlement?

It is my belief that if an individual's name has been publicly tarnished as a result of false criminal accusations to the point where that individual's freedom or career has been jeopardized, then the falsely accusing party should be held criminally accountable in the severest possible manner.

This will not discourage witnesses from stepping forward, it will discourage false witness with an agenda from stepping forward, which is exactly what we should all want.

And this should not be a partisan issue. The president of the United States has been accused of many interesting things, as we all know. If the president's individual accusers are found to be wrongly and purposefully implicating the president of engaging in criminal behavior, then they should understand that they can be held criminally accountable for their actions, if they are proven wrong. That should discourage frivolous accusations against the chief executive, which is a current concern of the Supreme Court, or against anyone else for that matter.

Obviously, public officials can be called every name in the book, and the free press should not be muzzled, but reckless public accusation of criminal behavior is a matter of the utmost seriousness, and we have reached a point in this country, particularly in the political process, where a tougher line against cavalier, David Bonier-like finger pointing should be drawn.