On sexual crimes and false accusations

Exactly. There is still a culture of blaming rape victims. The knee-jerk reaction of many is to imply that they aren’t telling the truth or that if they are they were somehow responsible for it. False reports of rape are extremely rare by comparison, same as false reports of other crimes.

As usual, my best examples are in a higher education context

A shame the Atlantic put up a paywall, I stopped checking the site but they used to be my favourite source of news and opinion

Happened to my cousin in the UK , anyway to cut a long story short his boss said his job was saved for him even while on remand, and would depend on the verdict. He was found not guilty of raping his girlfriend. He kept his job but lost his house. Turns out the lady had done exactly the same thing with her previous boyfriend, that was not allowed as evidence at trial. Anyway Innocent, kept his job lost his house, she was fine.

Why is everybody assuming that he didn’t cross over the line?
He had many chances to clear his name but couldn’t. It sucks he made some bad decisions, we all do, but he should have moved on. I’d also like to understand how young his students were.

He could have cleared his name by having an independent investigation into the allegations against him. If they had then cleared him of any misconduct his name would have been cleared. People who then refused to run his performances would then have been ignoring due process.

But we don’t know that. There was no trial. There was one internal investigation that we know of, and there’s more than one way to interpret what little we know of its conclusion.

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At one level, that’s a fair complaint.

On the other hand, (1) in an open court system, the accused (of any kind of crime) is not normally granted anonymity, and why should this be different for one category of crimes? (2) Consider the societal dynamics: if the accused is in a position of power and has been assaulting people for decades and getting away with it because people were afraid to speak out, but suddenly word gets out that someone is speaking out, others are more likely to follow. Anyone who accused Harvey Weinstein decades ago would have felt isolated and probably thought a settlement with an NDA was the best they could get. (There was at least one who settled like that, probably more, not sure.) Once the accusations went viral, it was dozens against one. Bill Cosby also comes to mind. Oh and a certain politician, but let’s not take this thread in that direction… :speak_no_evil:

Of course this is still not fair to anyone falsely accused, but there’s no perfect solution other than just getting people to stop committing crimes. In theory the innocent party should sue for defamation, but that usually doesn’t generate as much attention.

Then there’s this:

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It was an independent investigation, so presumably not internal.

Sorry, independent investigation then. But still we can’t take “nothing further to pursue” or whatever it was to mean the same thing as “cleared of all charges”. Apparently there weren’t even charges in the criminal sense.

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Which comes back to my original point which was why bother ordering an investigation in the first place? If people are just going to interpret the results as they wish then it’s a waste of time and money.

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Well, the short answer is, ask someone who works in HR or OHS (in a western country).

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blah, blah, blah. It’s a double standard.

Right, right, so make all trials secret, closed-door, unreportable, unpublishable. Not quite Ingsoc, but close.
:see_no_evil: :hear_no_evil: :speak_no_evil:

that’s the point. There is no single standard fair to everyone.

Well, they know the results, and I guess people in the industry do too.

Then it’s not justice.

Anonymous accusers is a good start on Ingsoc.

So true. Matt Dowd, who was some kind of senior “analyst” for one of the major networks… too lazy to find which network and whether he still is employed there, said this during the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings:
“Enough with the “he said, she said” storyline. If this is he said, she said, then let’s believe the she in these scenarios. She has nothing to gain, and everything to lose. For 250 years we have believed the he in these scenarios. Enough is enough.”
https://twitter.com/matthewjdowd/status/1041785678785339392?lang=en

Then there was the obama Dept of Ed Title IX revisions allowing colleges “to use the lenient “preponderance of the evidence” standard (“50% plus a feather”) in disciplinary hearings and discouraged live hearings and cross-examination.”

The Trump administration reversed those changes.

Then there was the notorious Duke lacrosse case: Duke lacrosse case - Wikipedia

These are 3 things that immediately came to mind with your post.

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true. There is no ubiquitous justice.

Their paywall is really easy to circumvent.

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