NightlyPoe said:
sundin13 said:
And of course, as you said "the counterargument is valid as well". By plainly and visibly decrying to the country that if you accuse a powerful man of sexual assault, you will have every detail of your life picked apart, your family threatened, you will be shamed, doubted and accused of all manner of horrible deeds, you are telling victims to keep silent. By telling them that unless you have a written and notarized confession, you will not be believed and nothing will be done, you are telling them to keep silent. |
This has been a narrative, but the truth is that Ford was treated with kid gloves. The holes in her story were not probed. Few of the contradictions in how this was brought about were questioned. Even Kavanaugh bent over backwards not to call her a liar, but merely mistaken that it was him. I don't know why they bothered bringing in the prosecutor to ask questions she was so ineffectual.
It's a real problem because I don't know if a story is real or not until someone actually starts poking at it. Anyone can say anything, the actual credibility comes when someone questions you. If she'd stood up to a strong defense, perhaps I would be more inclined to believe her, but no one did anyone a service, least of all a quest for truth, by letting her story go completely unchallenged.
And, in the end, she'll go home and be praised as a hero and role model for the rest of her life in her little slice of the world.
| Unfortunately hard proof is virtually impossible in old cases. Unless you still have the semen inside of your body or on your clothing, it is difficult to really prove anything and even then, I'd say that most sexual assault cases come down to consent. |
You're right, that's unfortunate. But the pendulum swinging the other way is just as scary. Ask the Duke lacrosse team, or the folks at Virginia Tech, or the guy accused by that mattress wacko, or any number of young men that were denied due process so basic that courts had to step in after an Obama era Dear Colleague letter.
It's messy, but we're in The Crucible/McCarthyism territory if all it takes is an accusation to blacklist someone. That's even more messy in the end.
The best way to handle sexual assault is to drill it into young boys' heads to treat ladies like ladies and not a trio of pleasure relief valves in any case and to tell girls to report it.
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While I agree that Republicans generally treated Ford well to her face, I think it is hard to imagine that this wasn't a traumatic experience. From Trump's comments about how if this was true, she would have come out years ago (I'm sure that rings well with all the women who never came forward after being raped), to the death threats and wild accusations hurled at her and her family, this hasn't been a pleasant ride.
And like I said, we don't have to work in extremes here. The only options are not ignoring old accusations and sending someone to jail for life over them. I think there is a middle ground and I think it is worth discussing where exactly that middle ground is, but we are not there right now.
Rêveur said:
I'd like to say that your post has been really enlightening on the other side's point of view. I have to admit that such an argument is not one I would have seen coming.
Your argument is pretty much that in purely legal terms, the law doesn't afford him the presumption of innocence because he isn't being tried for something. I would say that many people talking about the presumption of innocence are not talking about it in a purely legal sense but in a philosphical sense as well. If there is no evidence to go either way, do you condemn or do you consider the accused to be innocent? And that is the entire argument.
What I've gathered from your posts is that since he is not being tried for something but is just "up for a promotion" as you say, the presumption of innocence argument is moot. And thus it falls on him to prove his innocence lest it be found out later that he is in fact guilty. Essentially saying that because there is a possibility of him being guilty, we should err on the side of caution and just drop him. I wonder if you've taken the time to actually think of the consequences of implementing such a principle. You're basically saying that unless the accused is on trial in a court of law, in any other circumstance, it's up to the accused to prove his innocence because as long as there exists the possibility of the accusation being true, we should never take the risk.
The presumption of innocence is not just a right in legal terms, but also a principle by which to live and a human right. It is scary to see that people don't see a use for it outside of purely legal situations.
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I don't believe that is an accurate representation of my argument, mostly because I am not stating that he should have to prove his innocence, but instead stating that the arguments for and against should be weighted against each other. This is different than a court system because it places the burden on both individuals instead of on one. As I've stated in other posts, I think this is important because under either "presumption" (presumption of innocence or presumption of guilt), someone is wronged, be it the victim of assault or the victim of a false accusation (and you could argue that "Presumption of innocence" also applies to presuming the accuser is not perjuring themselves).
Because of that, what should be done in my opinion is that both arguments and both possibilities should be weighed and a determination should be made from that point based on the context in which we are speaking about someone.
