‘Being found not guilty in a court of law changed nothing:’ How losing reputation can be a life sentence.

Siham spent three years caring for her dying mother, who had early-onset Alzheimer’s. Then, in 2017, she was falsely accused of stealing from her mother by the WA Public Trustee.

This article contains references to suicide.

It was not the court of law, but the court of public opinion that destroyed Siham Benz in the lead up to her 2019 trial.

Siham, 36, was falsely accused of stealing money from her dying mother by the WA Public Trustee. She spent three years caring for her late mother who had early-onset Alzheimer’s and the two had a mutually beneficial agreement regarding her mother’s finances.

However, assumptions made by the Public Trustee on the basis of financial transactions led to Siham’s arrest in 2017. Even though she knew she hadn’t committed the theft, she took the accusation “like a sledgehammer to the forehead.”

“When you’re on every newsstand in every cafe in the city…there was this electricity beneath the surface that made me feel so uncomfortable that I actually quit my job,” she said.

Siham with her mother Amina.

Siham had a day job in finance and she was also the successful founder of a charity for homeless people. The charity had taken off globally and Siham was riding the wave of that momentum when she was charged with theft. As she walked out of the police station, she received a phone call that signalled this event was going to change the course of her life. The call was from a reporter at a West Australian newspaper.

“The feeling that came over me, I cannot explain. It was devastation, I felt a sense of doom," she said. "They’d linked my charity to my charge in a single statement, so I knew exactly what was coming. The news headline was out that same day."

Clinical psychologist Tamara Cavenett has worked with clients who have suffered damage to their reputation. This includes both people who have committed and those who are alleged to have committed acts that may be criminal, or seen as morally reprehensible in the eyes of society or a particular community.

Cavenett compares the initial effect of reputation loss to acute trauma. She distinguishes it from more commonly discussed types of trauma such as physical or childhood trauma, which are often more private and/or enduring.

“Reputational damage is so public and it can really affect the way you live your life…it’s often very swift. It comes out of the blue and completely changes the track your life was on,” Cavenett said.

For Siham, the damage to her reputation affected every aspect of her personal and professional life. In addition to her charity engagements and partnerships falling through, she also had to financially depend on her husband for the first time.

Siham said she had to financially rely on her husband in the wake of the media exposure.

But it was the fall from grace that Siham struggled with most. She went from “being the hero to being the villain” within a short span of time. Having received extensive praise from worldwide news outlets for her charity work, she previously derived her self-worth from this external validation.

When the tide turned against her, Siham describes reading the negative ‘comments sections’ of national and international publications as gut-wrenching. At one point, she had suicidal ideation as a way to “make the pain stop, to get away from the humiliation.”

Cavenett says the impact of reputational damage on individuals will depend on a number of factors, including how much they have invested in their own reputation.

“While people differ as to how much they care about what other people think, what I would say is consistent is that we all care [about how others perceive us]” she said.

Siham moved to Australia from South Africa when she was 18 years old. The collectivist and community-driven nature of her African culture meant that pride and status played a big role in her life.

Siham with her brother and mother at home in South Africa as a child.

“It was almost this underpinning feeling in my culture that you have to spend your life relentlessly pursuing your status…There’s a pitfall to that of course, there’s a price to pay and that price is emotional,” she said.

Cavenett, who is also the president of the Australian Psychological Society (APS), explained that losing reputation can have a flow-on effect. There is the primary loss of reputation, but that can create secondary losses such as the loss of work, community and self-esteem, all of which may trigger feelings of grief.

“It's almost a grief and loss from the way you thought you were seen to the way you're seen now, and coming to terms with the fact that it may not be necessarily recoverable,” she said.

“People can grieve the persona they originally had and it can be quite a long process for them to be okay with who they are.”

Siham underwent extensive therapy to come to terms with her new life. Even though she was vindicated, she said the damage to her reputation had already been done by the time the trial took place. She’s had to wind down her charity and a Google search of her name still brings up her former connection with the alleged theft.

“This will follow me for the rest of my life, whether I want it or not…But the blessing that came out of it was that I was able to discover who I really was, without being affected by the impact of external opinions” she said.

“Coming out of it and being found not guilty in a court of law changed nothing. [But] I now no longer live from a place of caring what people think about my reputation, I no longer take that into consideration.”

Hear more of Siham's story on the Reputation Rebuild episode of Insight from 8.30pm Tuesday May 3 on SBS On Demand.

Readers seeking crisis support can contact Lifeline on 13 11 14, the Suicide Call Back Service on 1300 659 467 and Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800 (for young people aged up to 25). More information and support with mental health is available at Beyond Blue.org.au and on 1300 22 4636.  

Embrace Multicultural Mental Health supports people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.