calumniate

Adams read in the newspapers that Jefferson had compiled “a Magazine of slips of newspapers, and pamphlets, vilifying, calumniating and defaming you.”

One person's cordiality is calumniated by dirty minds as sexual predation.

He went out more like Nixon, his accomplishments tainted by allegations of criminality, his circle of trust constricted by banishments, betrayals and arrests until it included few besides his temperamental wife and calumniating eldest son.

“But I say to you: Love your enemies: Do good to them that hate you: And pray for them that persecute and calumniate you,” Jesus says in that Gospel verse.

I’m putting this politely: They have been calumniated and abused for centuries.