Isn’t it generally true that crimes are only punished by the authorities when the victim makes a complaint? Why would this be uniquely a problem for sexual assaults, and not for other offenses?
Well, because if your purse is snatched it’s a crime whether you decide to report it or not. In some of these murky sexual assault grey area cases the same thing can happen exactly and it’s only considered misconduct or criminal if the young woman later says she didn’t really want to do that. So, it is a little different.
A robbery is a robbery whether or not someone reports it. Consensual drunk sex is not a crime unless the woman decides she was too drunk to consent (assuming she is not passed out or very obviously incapacitated). That is what makes it different. Two woman at the same level of drunkenness consent to and engage in sex with two different guys. One is fine with it, the other decides it was nonconsensual because she was too drunk. One guy continues with his life. The other is labeled a rapist and expelled. Yet they did the same thing.
Some thing I missed earlier, but it’s significant: Someone posted upthread that a text along the lines of “I thought that she consented” should be taken as an admission of guilt, because someone shouldn’t think they have consent. they should know. That’s not the way English communication works, though—yes, it could mean the utterer was admitting to operating on an assumption at the time, but there’s another, and actually more widespread in conversation, possibility: If someone is in a state of knowledge of something at one point in time and then, at a later point in time, is faced with something that throws that into doubt, then reacting with “I thought that…” is a completely normal thing, and it might actually be used to affirm the previous state of knowledge (i.e., it’s being offered as counter-evidence to the new information).
Basic linguistic pragmatics— and it’s part of the problem here, human beings (not just English speakers, all humans) don’t actually use a lot of directness in language.
Yes. dstark yes, if a woman is denied the right to file a criminal complaint or even a college grievance I would have a huge, huge problem. It’s what follows that is essential.
And yes dfbdfb, I pointed that out also and agree with you. ‘I thought’ means at that point of time, which is essential to the discussion and why these change of minds days, weeks, months later are problematical.
Mom2 re post 662 that is really true and a big problem. In the big picture I don’t think society has the stomach to criminalize something that isn’t inherently criminal which is why some of the states are starting to take a hard look at what these colleges are doing and require police involvement- which is a good thing.
dstartk In the FSU case the woman did report it to the police, the police are saying they dropped it because she failed to cooperate, but then it did get sent to the attorney general 9 months later so on surface she did not have her rights violated and her police reports, the investigation etc. are documented. I think she’s failed a couple times in her attempt to prove her case and is now engaged in the civil courts against the college.
What did the DA say?
dstark, this is all I could find on the prosecutor from CBS news from 2013 when this case was younger…
This is an old news report from CBS but seems like a pretty straightforward timeline:
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/inside-the-jameis-winston-rape-case-file/#postComments]
Isn’t this the case where the college also fairly recently hired a retired judge or someone because the woman also pressed charges throught he college? That judge also declined to side with one side or the other? Maybe I’m mixing things up, but it doesn’t sound like the accuser has been denied her rights at all. Sounds like a case that isn’t solvable by one onethousandth of a percent. I think she’s suing in civil court now so she is persisting and using every avenue available to her as she has a right to and over the course of three years since it appears this began in 2012.
And here’s the colleges course of events;
She’s filed a civil suit against the college and this is their response;
Sounds like the woman should have cooperated more from the outset and that she hampered her chances at adjudication, both the police and the college claim she was less than cooperative and now years have passed. This kid was well known and it sounds like he’s graduated and going to play professional football so I’m guessing everyone involved was documenting left and right. I wish her well.
re 662, yes. Just as we discussed eons ago on another thread far far away, some people brush off a butt grab at a street fair as gross but no big deal, and others are flagging down the nearest cop to make a report. One person does not think it worth bothering about, one person thinks it is a crime and wants an arrest.
And for sure we have read multiple cases here over several threads (please don’t make me go back and find them all!) where the accuser indicates it was only after talking to a roommate/friend/parent/professor/etc and being informed by that person she was raped that a complaint was filed.
Perhaps the advice to file is given with the accuser’s best interests at heart. Perhaps it is given by those with an agenda (say that professor at Occidental who seems to think all smart boys from good families are just rapists waiting to happen). From the Business Insider article:
"From the onset of their discussions, Jane’s testimony indicates, Dirks appears to have concluded that Jane was raped — telling Jane that John fit the profile of a rapist and that, from her observations, there was a pattern of male Occidental students who take advantage of drunk female freshmen.
[Jane] stated that she had learned that 90 percent of rapes are done by repeat offenders. She stated that another reason she decided to report this incident was because, based on what Jane Doe was told by Professor Dirks, John fit the profile of other rapists on campus in that he had a high GPA in high school, was his class valedictorian, was on [a sports] team, and was ‘from a good family.’
The professor denies it now according to the same article but it is Jane’s testimony.
At any rate, the decision to call it rape instead of a bad experience or a drunken mistake comes from someone outside the actual incident who was NOT there at the time.
Momofthreeboys,
You didn’t read my response to you in the Hunting Ground thread? 
Must not have but I’ll go look 
I don’t totally “get” the FSU story - sounds like she reported it to the campus police who turned it over to the city police since it happened off campus who report the victim was not cooperative so they shelved the investigation, then the media got wind that it was a football player so the city police pulled out the investigation again, did some more investigating and turned it over to the prosecutor. Meanwhile it sounds like at some point the college administration heard about it probably because the guy reported it to the athletic department and the guy got a lawyer which seems pretty normal and the college administration started asking the woman if she wanted to file a complaint under Title IX but she did not, so the college also investigated minus a complainant using the "voluminous’ documents from the police and the prosecutor and decided there was not a enough evidence. What am I missing? Where was she denied due process or rights? Tell you what dstark I’ll go surfing and see if I can find her complaints about the process she went through.
Yes, in September 2014, nearly two years after the incident occurred, the college brought in Major Harding, a former Chief Justice of the FL Supreme Court, to adjudicate. By the time Harding became involved, the case had been irreparably damaged by the mishandling by Tallahassee Police and prosecutor, with the collaboration of FSU’s athletic department. Because of long delays in reaching out to witnesses, positions were hardened and memories were fuzzy. Critical evidence (like the video tape taken by Winston’s roommate!) had been destroyed.
Erica Kinsman’s case is against FSU’s trustees, but does not name the Tallahassee Police Department. "The lawsuit alleges the university violated two counts of Title IX federal statutes, providing a ‘clearly unreasonable response’ and creating a ‘hostile education environment.’ " It basically accuses the university’s athletic department of colluding with the police to thwart the investigation.
I don’t know that Kinsman was technically denied due process, but the way the police and the college handled the investigation was biased and incompetent. I don’t fault Judge Harding for making the decision that he made, but I agree that had all the evidence been available to him he might have made a different decision.
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/sports/florida-state-seminoles/jameis-winston/os-fsu-jameis-winston-federal-lawsuit-title-ix-20150107-story.html#page=1
Why are the college and the police saying she was uncooperative? Seems like she’s still fighting even three years later and she appeared in the advocacy documentary so why the claims she was uncooperative? If she was, she didn’t help the matter, if she wasn’t uncooperative why wasn’t her lawyer screaming to high heaven?
Momofthree boys, I thought you read this. The NYTimes investigated the case too…
This is a really bad case…
It is a strange one…if officials are saying she didn’t cooperate it surprises me her lawyer wasn’t making a huge stink. Something is “off” about this story for sure. This should have been over and done with prior to 2014.
This case seems to have unfolded in slow motion, over two years, with many unforced errors along the way. By the time FSU’s administration woke up to the PR disaster on their hands, the damage had already been done by the athletic department and the police.
The police say they closed the case because Kinsman was uncooperative, which she denies. Her suit doesn’t name the police so they haven’t made an official response to her denial or offered a convincing reason why they considered her uncooperative.
The college’s point of view is outlined here in their response to her lawsuit. They contend that they couldn’t take action until Kinsman filed an official complain, which she delayed doing for almost two years. My impression is that FSU’s administration’s actions were too little, too late and that the athletic department was operating in its own universe in collusion with the police.
http://i.usatoday.net/sports/Investigations-and-enterprise/FSU%20response%20to%20lawsuit.pdf
FSU is also fairly steamed that the makers of the film, The Hunting Ground, didn’t reach out to them for their side of the story.
http://titleix.fsu.edu/statements/response-to-documentary-on-sexual-assault/
Here’s her full complaint if you’re interested.
http://i.usatoday.net/sports/Investigations-and-enterprise/FSU%20complaint.pdf
The above is from the NYTimes.
Momrath, thanks for the link of the lawsuit.
If Ms. Kinsman claimed she was drugged that should have shown in the hospital tests and it would have been pretty open and shut. There was a claim she was hit on the head which appeared then disappeared from media reports. I’m still reading and my gut reaction was that her friends whose stories didn’t line up, and the accuser’s text messages didn’t support the story well. All the rest, accusations of cover up, timing etc., are confusing, but the documents sent to the prosecutors office are the heart of the case and the actions of the accused lawyer seems to be exactly what an accused lawyer would do. The very first thing a criminal lawyer would do is get affidavits from any witnesses that support the client and request the police report.
Once there is a police report anyone can make a request so the original police report is important…regardless of how much time passed. The facts of the case from both sides would not change even if the police would have sent the case to the prosecutor earlier and an accused person would never talk to the police without a lawyer present…the accused did get screwed by the the delay to the prosecutor, but I’m surprised her lawyer wasn’t pushing and pushing to get the case in front of the prosecutor unless the reports that the accused didn’t want to pursue the case or cooperate were true, then her lawyer wouldn’t be pushing to get the case to the prosecutors office. I don’t understand that part of it. It’s difficult to sort out all the speculation about this or that because you have to weed out all the media involvement and focus just on the investigative notes, the accused witness statements, the accuser’s witness statements, etc. There was speculation that the police “hid evidence” and I’m not finding what that relates to. There was speculation that the college covered up and I’m not finding that - though that would come out in Ms. Kinsman’s current civil suit against the college. The guy is now out of college and a public figure so the scrutiny of all the documents and the timeline should actually have been amplified, but there is very little except accusations of impropriety.
I’m guessing once you strip away all the media hype there might not have been an actual case to prosecute, but again I’m still reading and looking for actual documents from the investigation. My gut says her lawyer and the advocacy folks the college supplied to her is key to the problems if she really wanted to prosecute this guy and her story was accurate. If the lawyer and she had been swift and got in front of this perhaps she would have also had a more empathetic prosecutor…the longer the time passed did not help her. If she didn’t want to prosecute then I don’t understand why she agreed to participate in an advocacy documentary years later but that is entirely her decision and perhaps it’s cathartic. If the movie gets traction perhaps more facts supporting her case will surface, but it sounds like there is quite abit of documentation already.
I don’t know what rights an accuser has with regard to getting a case in front of a prosecutor - I don’t know legally if the police are the gatekeepers or how that process would proceed in the state of Florida. The police interviewed her three times right after her complaint and she did go quickly to the hospital for evidence collection so that is documented and was documented in a timely manner - her statements, evidence, etc. Her lawyer should have known all this and taken it into consideration of how to proceed. I feel sorry for her for that.
This pretty much aligns with what i can find.