(1) Because the accusation is true, and the accuser is willing to go through the pain of making an accusation in order to get her assaulter punished;
(2) Because she believes the accusation is true even though it isn’t, and she’s willing to go through the pain;
(3) Because she’s malicious, and she’s willing to go through the pain to get the guy punished, taking some risk if her malicious act is exposed.
I guess I’m saying that the universe of people who were truly sexually assaulted is several orders of magnitude bigger than the universe of people who are willing to deliberately falsely accuse. Even though most people who were assaulted don’t accuse, that still leaves an order of magnitude or more more truly assaulted accusers than false accusers. I don’t know how to account for the people who believe their false accusations, though.
Well, we could get into a discussion of prior probabilities and such, but I think what everyone is saying is that even though we believe most victims are telling the truth, we’d be ethically bound to put aside our belief if we were ever a judge or juror for a specific case.
Prior beliefs are important. Take the Oregon case that CF mentioned. Upthread, CF said she highly doubted that most women, sober or drunk, would voluntarily agree to have sex with three men in a bathroom. Trust me, I completely agree with this.
I assume the DA was neutral. The investigation showed that there’s at least some evidence that it was consensual: for example, they have testimony from the victim’s friends that she wasn’t very intoxicated, that she was “friendly and flirtatious” with the accused before and after the alleged assaults, and that she voluntarily continued to stay with the accused after the first assault. I think she claims they forced her back to the bathroom and she was very drunk, but her friends are contradicting her story along with lots of witnesses. Apparently, it’s also undisputed that she had consensual sex with one of the accused the next morning as well as with yet a 4th boy a few hours later. Her father apparently found out about what happened and was the one to report it to the police, and she didn’t want the guys to receive more than a “wrist slap” for what they did to her. So if you ask me, it’s possible the guys were innocent even though my strong prior belief would be that a woman would have to be forced to have sex with three men in a bathroom.
And this is a case where one of the accused also had a prior accusation. The accused were suspended from the basketball team and are leaving the Univ. of Oregon, and the university is being sued for the way it handled the case. But if I read the DA’s report I have no idea (knowing the results of the DA’s investigation) if this was the correct result or not in this specific instance.
Part of my workload as faculty is to work the front lines (initial sifting of evidence and such) on the academic dishonesty part of student misbehavior—that’s bad enough, the criminal activity side quite honestly scares me (and I’m glad I’m not involved with working that side).
Seriously, sometimes I fantasize about blowing the whole system up and starting over with robots.
al2simon, what I don’t see in that report, in the statements from the accused Oregon guys, is where they tell me they got affirmative consent. Being flirtatious is not consent.
CF - Does the state of Oregon have an affirmative consent standard in its criminal code or does the University have one in its code of conduct? I have no idea, but frankly I don’t think it’s much of an issue. If the guys are rapists then we can safely assume they’re liars as well and are saying that she affirmatively consented in word or deed. The issue is which side is more credible, and the DAs report leads me to think that it’s wouldn’t be as easy to decide as I thought when I read the headline. Note that the guys did say (and I think she agrees) that they stopped the gang **** when she was thirsty and when she started crying, which I guess is what passes for chivalry nowadays.
ADDED in response to the post below: CF, I think we can safely assume they are claiming that she consented in a way that would satisfy the state’s and the university’s requirements. Neither the DA nor I think it’s important enough to merit mention in the report since it’s still just their word against hers.
But that’s the point. They DIDN’T say she affirmatively consented. They could have, but they didn’t. They described what they did, and it didn’t include getting consent from her.
Brown faced the same accusations in the William McCormick case (where he was given a plane ticket and a clean record if he left campus immediately)—the father of the accuser was a powerful donor to the school and it also came out through emails that the father offered to become a mentor to the RA of both students.
"Richard Dresdale’s influence over Brown stems from his significant donations to the University. He has a medical school scholarship named after him. He and three other donors were lauded for their “extraordinary generosity” in building the Brown Rugby field. He is one of only 54 members of the Brown Annual Fund Leadership Council. He is on the board of directors for the Brown University Sports Foundation. He is a past recipient of the H. Anthony Ittleson ‘60 Cup, which is given to extraordinary donors to the Brown Annual Fund. By contrast, McCormick was attending Brown on full financial aid.
From the beginning, Dresdale tried to use his wealth and influence to force McCormick out of the University. On Sept. 6, the day after Beth Dresdale accused McCormick of stalking her, Richard Dresdale emailed former Associate Vice President Ronald Dalgliesh ’91. Dalgliesh indicated that the issue was going to be resolved with the help of Shane Reil, Beth’s Residential Counselor. On Sept. 7 Beth Dresdale writes a sexual harassment complaint. On Sept. 9, Richard Dresdale went to Providence to take Shane Reil out to dinner at fellow alum and also wealthy private equity manager Habib Gorgi’s ’78 home and watch a football game with Beth Dresdale. On Sept. 11, Shane Reil wrote Richard Dresdale an email saying that Beth Dresdale had mentioned her father would “help straighten out a path for [his] future,” that he was thankful Dresdale was “making [him]self available to [him] as a mentor” and that he and Beth were “becoming very close.” Two days later, Reil filed the rape charge — retroactively changing the original sexual assault complaint — against McCormick and allegedly included vicious character attacks against him.
Dresdale’s influence didn’t stop with Shane Reil. He also asserted his authority over President Ruth Simmons. Not only was Dresdale one of the biggest donors to Simmons’s university, but they were also business partners. Dresdale’s Fenway Partners worked closely with Goldman Sachs (where Ruth Simmons was on the board of directors at the time), and they were involved with the takeover of Simmons (no relation) Mattresses – according to a report by PR Newswire. On Oct. 3, Dresdale emailed Simmons saying, “Ruth … I am working to resolve the matter with the student who attacked Beth — the goal is to have him withdraw from Brown and not have a University hearing. This will enable Beth and the other students to avoid having to come in contact with the student and face questioning from his advocate [Burch].” Consequently, there never was a student hearing."
I don’t think we can safely assume that. The DA probably believes that because she seems to have had sex with the guy in the morning, and because she didn’t scream no, no, he could never get a conviction, and therefore he shouldn’t prosecute. That’s a reasonable assessment. He doesn’t need the guys to get affirmative consent.
CF - You may very well be right about what they are claiming. I have no idea. All I saw was a newspaper article that someone linked to upthread and the DA’s report that was linked to in a previous, related thread. Personally, I wouldn’t expect to find that level of detail in what I read, so I draw no inference that they didn’t claim there was affirmative consent. Did you read their testimony or statements to the panel or the police or a newspaper article that addressed this aspect? (No need to waste time digging up a link, happy to take your word for it.)
I just read the DA’s report. Dotson’s clear defense (on page 17) is that she didn’t say no. He doesn’t show any inkling that he knew he was supposed to get explicit consent, let alone that he got it.
Sure it does. If you know you’re going to get slapped with a multi-million dollar lawsuit or worse if you make a mistake you are going to make pretty darn sure you don’t hold someone accountable for something that you aren’t pretty darn sure about and one one thousandth of a percent isn’t “pretty darn sure.” . It’s just the inverse of when people say they “don’t want” to deal with the police because they are under scrutiny…we’ll they are under scrutiny to make sure the prosecutor is “pretty darn sure” there a criminal case.
This stuff isn’t easy. You don’t accuse people of things willy nilly and you don’t go changing people’s lives without some scrutiny and some certainty.
If the women are claiming there are inconsistencies in adjudication and the men are claiming there are inconsistencies in adjudication then it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the system isn’t working.
I posted in reply to dstark post 630 but it seems to have disappeared. I won’t rewrite the whole thing but just in reference to Brown being influenced by money/donors etc, read up about the William McCormick case. The accuser’s father was a very powerful and influential donor. These 2 articles have good background:
The second section titled “Richard Dresdale plays dirty” lays out some of his connections and alleged manipulation of at least one witness. Later in the article alleged intimidation of McCormick’s advocate is mentioned.
@bearpanther, I think there’s some kind of bug. I could see in the Forums listing that you had posted, (not your #635 post, but a previous post within the last couple of hours) but then when I tried to see your post, it was not to be found. I saw the same thing a couple days ago with another poster.
I suppose it could happen that your post was deleted by a mod, but your posts haven’t seemed to me to be objectionable and deletion-worthy, and anyway when a post is deleted usually all traces of it go away. I think there’s a bug where some posts are going away.
