Someone makes a claim, another person loses their job. It may be true, or not. No recourse. Start the spiral of poverty, destitution, and homelessness. And they had better hope they get off that spiral before too long.
> However, being shunned by most of society does not require a court case.
It IS a problem when being "shunned by society" entails in living under a bridge or in a tent city.
In the US, you'd have to prove that they are lying which is obviously impossible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_defamation_law
It's hard to think of a way to have a situation where both of: Women are safe from harassment in private and Men are safe from the possibility of being destroyed by three women who don't like them
Are true
It doesn't sound like you understand US law very well.
Proving that someone is lying is not impossible.
Holding an entity liable for defamation is also not impossible accordingly. See: the recent Virginia case, which Rolling Stone magazine lost by jury verdict. [1]
You can sue someone in the US for defamation at any time you like. During the process, you can show the lack of evidence on the other side, and you can show the evidence to support your case. In a culture that strongly favors free speech, there should be a high burden to criminalization of opinion.
If someone claims you sexually assaulted them on June 24th at 8pm, at Some Restaurant - and you can demonstrate you were never there, you're very likely to win that in court. In the US, the consequences of losing such a defamation case, are typically very punishing, which helps to limit any kind of actual free-for-all of false accusations.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/05/business/media/rolling-st...
In most cases, at least when considering the higher-profile ones of the last few weeks, stories have been about multiple occurrences. The reporting typically identifies a pattern of behavior from multiple sources who were confirmed to have told friends, family, or colleagues at the time of the incident.
If a single, unverifiable account was thought to be sufficient, I'd be with you. But when you have multiple occurrences and patterns, you can argue that it's clear that the person is creating a toxic work environment and can be dealt with more swiftly than the legal process.
My understanding (based, I admit, on a brief reading of the BBC's report, so maybe there's lots more I haven't seen) of the MPR/Garrison Keillor case seems like an example of that.