"The View" co-host Abby Huntsman agreed with Donald Trump Jr., who suggested men were more likely to be falsely accused of sexual assault than women were actual victims -- and her colleagues turned on the conservative commentator.
The president's son said he was more worried about his son being accused of sexual misconduct than for his daughter to be victimized, and Huntsman said that was a reasonable concern.
"Isn't that the point, in a not tactful way, he was trying to make?" Huntsman said. "I think what a lot of people are concerned about today is you could be accused when you have been raised the right way, when you did nothing in that situation. We have countless of examples where that has happened."
Co-host Joy Behar immediately challenged her claim.
"Really?" Behar said. "Like who?"
Huntsman identified three Duke lacrosse players falsely accused by a stripper of rape in 2006, which Behar conceded was one example, and her younger co-host offered an anecdotal example from around the same time period.
"I grew up, and I knew stories of that happening," Huntsman said. "I had a crazy friend in high school, and she would rally the girls around a guy she was dating and we all hated him, and she was the one that needed serious help. It opens up the conversation to say, evidence matters."
Huntsman agreed women should be heard, but her colleagues pounced on her standard of proof as unrealistically high.
"There is not always forensic evidence in these cases," Behar said.
Co-host Sunny Hostin, a former sex crimes prosecutor, said forensic evidence isn't always available in a sexual assault case -- and she blasted Trump Jr. for suggesting Brett Kavanaugh had been falsely accused.
"When you look at stats, and I think it's important for people to educate themselves," Hostin said. "Rape is the least reported crime in the country, and on top of that, less than 2 percent -- it's about 2 percent of those allegations are false. So when you look at it statistically, it's very rare for a false accusation to have been made."
Huntsman pressed on, arguing that Christine Blasey Ford had not been able to produce physical evidence that Kavanaugh tried to rape her in high school -- and host Whoopi Goldberg joined in.
"You're not going to have it, you're not going to have hard evidence," Goldberg said. "This is a conversation we have been having for months."
She said women must be willing to come forward with their claims, because that's often the only evidence they've got.
"Women have to come forward, and designate three people you can go to," Goldberg said. "If anything ever happens, have three people you can tell. You have to have something where you can bring somebody along with you and say, 'I told her and she is -- this is my corroborating witness, this did not come out of the blue.'"
