Silence. I have just told Mr. N I’m not sure about having an abortion.
“What?” he finally asks. His tone is measured. No panic. Yet.
“I’m not sure anymore…”
He is going to flip.
“Look, do what you want, just don’t expect me to be part of it,” he says.
“Whatever happened to you’ll support me whatever decision I make?” I ask.
“I lied,” he responds. Then he hangs up.
What the hell am I going to do? The bastard! I try his number a few times. He doesn’t pick up. I pace for several minutes, trying to figure out a plan.
Each pace gets me angrier and angrier. Why do men act like a woman makes a baby on her own? He was just as culpable as me in not using protection.
He doesn’t get to just walk away. Soon I’m seething. He is messing with the wrong freaking girl. He will regret the day he met me.
I sit down. I’m suddenly calm. I pick up my mobile phone, an evil smile on my face. When you are in a situation like this you have to make a claim so outrageous that people will assume it cannot be a lie and so accept it as truth. I call my boss.
“Mr. Njoroge raped me,” I say hysterically.
Next, strongly assert the lie. This is a classic manipulative technique.
“I was so ashamed that I didn’t want to say anything,” I say. “I felt like people would blame me. So I said nothing…” My voice trails off.
“This is a very serious accusation. Rape?” he asks.
“Yes. In his car. He gave me a lift. Several people at work saw him give me a ride,” I say.
“Oh my word. This is incredible,” he states. “Have you reported it?”
“I didn’t want to go to the police. But I’ve discovered that I’m carrying his child. I don’t know what to do,” I say sounding desperate.
“This is outrageous,” my boss says. “He is such a respectable looking man.”
Time for the coup de grâce.
“I called him and he threatened to kill me if I keep the baby.”
The Big Lie. Adolf Hitler is often credited for coining the expression but I’m unsure he had an original thought in his body. Either way when he dictated his 1925 book ‘Mein Kampf’, he spoke about the use of a lie so colossal that no one would believe that someone would have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.
“What?????” my boss asks incredulously. “The bastard! He won’t get away with this!!!!”
The Big Lie is perfect because whatever the accused says is irrelevant. Vigorous denial is reframed as proof of guilt. And silence is considered admission.
It’s shocking really, how easy this is. A confident assertive manner can persuade people that black is white and that the unlikely or improbable is true. The reason the Big Lie works so well is that we assume people tell similar lies to us.
If you see a sign on a bench that says ‘wet paint’ you will touch it to make sure. But if someone tells you a cabinet secretary was seen having sexual relations on the same bench you will take their word for it. Why
The bigger the lie the easier it is for it to believed. And the more it is repeated, the more it becomes fact. By the time this story is told to four other people it would’ve gotten a life of its own. People will add their own things to the story. It will probably go something like this:
Mr. Njoroge raped Samantha. He punched her repeatedly. He made her do some terrible things to him. Freaky things. He held a knife to her throat. And on and on it will go. By the end of the week he will be on the phone begging me to end it.