It’s hard for those who have never been wrongly accused of something serious to understand what it’s like.

Imagine that happens to you.

Unless the accusation pertains to a specific time and place, and you have a convincing alibi, you may well find yourself in the impossible position of proving a negative.

Imagine further that the accuser alleges the incident occurred long ago.

Imagine perhaps also that since the alleged incident, the accuser has said little or nothing about it – least of all to you – and instead has in effect waited until the accusation can do maximum damage.

To you. To your life. To your wife or husband. To other family members. Or to friends or colleagues.

How can the accuser’s waiting hurt the accused? Because with the passage of time, witnesses and evidence become unavailable, and memories fade. This makes it harder for the accused, including the innocent, to defend themselves.

What can make this bad situation worse for the accused is the incentive that possibly profiting from the accusation can create for the accuser. Yes, you know that can happen.

All of this can be particularly dangerous for little players among the accused who — unlike big players — may well be less able to afford to hire professionals to help defend them.

And please remember — the accused — no matter who they are — deserve the presumption of innocence.

Given the current sexual-assault accusation against, and denial by, former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democrats’ likely 2020 presidential nominee, it would have benefited high-level Biden supporters in politics and in the press to have previously articulated these points consistently.

But instead, many of them articulate such points only when one of their own is accused.

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., now rightly says truth matters yet so does due process.

Where was that assertion from high-level Biden supporters in politics and in the press in 2019 when the accused wasn’t one of their own but instead was then-U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh?

Then they largely indulged the “stuff and nonsense” of the Queen of Hearts in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll: “Sentence first – verdict afterward.”

Here’s just one example: “Not only do women … need to be heard but they need to be believed,” said U.S. Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, at the time of the Kavanaugh hearings. “I just want to say to the men of this country, ‘Just shut up and step up. Do the right thing for a change.'”

Really? Whenever women accuse men of sexual assault, one needs to believe the accusers, and the accused must “shut up”? If – if – that’s how it works, what happens when men are targets of sexual assault? By men? By women? Yes, you know that happens too. Whom do we need to believe and who needs to “shut up” then?

Anyway, high-level Biden supporters in politics and in the press in 2019 needed only an accusation to find Kavanaugh guilty.

By their Queen of Hearts standard, which should apply to no one, Biden’s accuser would “need to be believed” too. Yet they apply that standard only to their political opponents.

This is as horrifying as being wrongly accused and in the impossible position of proving a negative, especially — but not only — long after the alleged incident.

Their efforts to distinguish the Biden and Kavanaugh situations are double talk invoking double standards.

Does that mean sexual assault isn’t something to take seriously? Of course not. Anyone asserting that’s a point of this column is either not being smart or not being candid.

It’s hard for those who have never been the target of sexual assault – as this columnist has — to understand what it’s like.

What’s easy to understand is this: Those invoking double standards to use such allegations selectively as political weapons are playing shameless politics.

Meanwhile, Biden supporters in the press are invoking another double standard by covering the accusations against Biden way less than those against Kavanaugh.

Are you surprised?

Randy Elf joins those from across the political spectrum who oppose double standards.