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<p>Jackie has no assets. They will go after RS.</p>
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<p>I agree; you never said all were true.</p>
<p>The problem though is this - I agree the accusations that sex took place are mostly true, but that is quite different than saying that most accusations satisfy the legal definition of rape worthy of a conviction. But that is another issue all together for another thread.</p>
<p>In general, it is better that the guilty go free than the innocent be punished for crimes they did not commit. This is partly why we advise people to protect themselves. </p>
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<p>Actually, that <em>is</em> the crux of the discussion when it comes to rape. </p>
<p>And I agree with the quoted part as well.</p>
<p>TV4caster - I would say build a better mousetrap and have less mistakes made on both sides. It is the utter agony of those mistakes - innocent people convicted, even executed, and guilty people let go, sometimes to rape or kill again - that torments us all. DNA evidence has liberated us from some of those mistakes. Cell phone video is liberating us from other mistakes.</p>
<p>Just think of how many people were on death row and freed by DNA and also how many people have lied about something only to face the hard evidence of video. Memory is faulty, eye witness testimony sucks, we humans are quite fallible but hopefully we can rely on science and technology to help us see the truth - as best we can. </p>
<p>“In general, it is better that the guilty go free than the innocent be punished for crimes they did not commit. This is partly why we advise people to protect themselves.”</p>
<p>I think everyone will agree with this. However, the truth is that some percent of people will be wrongly convicted. Every year people are freed after years in prison because DNA or some new technology proves their innocence. The process frees many guilty people to minimize wrongful convictions, but they still happen.</p>
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<p>I fully agree with this statement. </p>
<p>However, asking for proof is not the same as assuming lying. No one should believed about a serious offense affecting another without proof. That does not mean anyone thinks the accuser is lying; it means that we are not going to convict people and sentence them just on someone’s word or in secrecy.</p>
<p>Marie said: “Here’s the problem TV4caster. The same people whose message is believe everyone have delivered us this mess. Now what?” </p>
<p>I agree. On the other hand I think we can safely say that the people that don’t believe anyone have gotten us in this mess as well -and by this mess I mean the fact that many (most?) rapists go unpunished.</p>
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<p>Isn’t the judicial system supposed to believe nothing but evidence? How is that responsible for rapists getting away?</p>
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<p>The hallmark of Western judicial system right from the days of Voltaire has been that it is better that many guilty people go free than a single innocent wrongly convicted. I agree with that. </p>
<p>I think in cases of rape - as opposed to criminal sexual conduct in a lower degree - if women pushed to prosecute we would not have a high percentage of rapists going free. I think the rhetoric about rapists going free is because women or their lawyers don’t push to prosecute. But I also think there are cases that are being called rape that aren’t rape that meets the legal definition of that particular state, it may be criminal sexual conduct but not rape which may or may not result in jail time.I don’t think colleges and universities no matter who they hire have the resources to figure it out, but I have confidence the judicial system can. I don’t think we’d have a mass of men accused of false rape.</p>
<p>The distinction is that most of the lawsuits we are hearing from are of men in college who have been expelled but had their due process rights trampled along because of shoddy procedures by the colleges. The common thread in all of this is the police and to some extent the prosecutor’s office. Most colleges are going to err on the side of caution rather than willy nilly expel people because one person wants it. </p>
<p>I have every belief that if “Jackie” would have presented at the hospital with cuts and bruises and a rape kit was done that night someone could be in jail and it would have been the right thing. </p>
<p>I don’t think there is any “less wrong” or “more wrong.” What is wrong is women calling men rapists when there has been no prosecution or calling men rapists when choosing a college tribunal which is really adjudicating sexual misconduct not rape. And even then the colleges and universities need to be very careful with their procedures and their punishment because they are loosing many civil cases. Accusers need to be careful lest they defame people when they have not gone through a judicial process. That, to me, is the trade-off and one that women are choosing without maybe understanding the inherent differences and potential outcomes. While we have two systems people, men and women, just need to be careful, not only to prevent a bad situation but to prevent false rhetoric. </p>
<p>I’m just waiting with baited breath until the lawsuits begin in California with women who are upset they were videotaped or recorded without consent. I was shocked, absolutely shocked when #3 was in a car with three friends a few years ago who were stopped by the police for no apparent reason. (no lights out, no running of a stop sign, just general harassment that happens in our town and has for decades.) The first thing he did was turn his phone on and record the cop, he was a passenger. He’s a really strategic thinker so it shouldn’t surprise me. Kids in college right now have grown up with these devices attached to their fingers and their mind. So I have no doubt that smart Cali boys are going to tap their phones and ask women if they are consenting, not a doubt in my mind. The shy ones aren’t going to ask they are just going to tap. Alittle off topic but random Friday thoughts - now back to the original thread. </p>
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<p>Fair point, but I was looking at actions demanded in response.</p>
<p>I was going on the many posts on how this case shows how bad frats are and how UVA should come down hard on them because of this horrible incident. </p>
<p>Basically, if no one were “dead sure” and did not know what really happened, it strikes me as disingenuous to act like it was for certain that the frat actually did do it and people were happy with their suspensions etc. Too many people then who were not sure what happened darn sure talked and verbally convicted the frats like it happened. That is what I was going on in my post. I am just not into taking a unproved situation and using it as a whipping tool to try and get something else accomplished. This is what seems to have occurred here.</p>
<p>I do stand corrected, as you did not actually state what I said in the post. </p>
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<p>Yes-means-yes at its finest manifestation, indeed. So when will documenting taking consent stop? Engagement? Marriage? Starting to live together like brothers and sisters in middle age? Divorce?</p>
<p>“juries who will convict her of slander because it is and she should be convicted if that is the case.”</p>
<p>Just to clarify, slander is generally a tort that would be covered in a civil suit, rather than a crime of which someone can be convicted. There are some states where slander is a crime, but generally a misdemeanor, and prosecutors would only charge someone if they thought it was worth their limited time and money to prosecute. They would have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the information was false and that the speaker knew it was false. That’s darn hard to prove, and I would be shocked to see prosecutors try. It’s just as tough to prove that a rape didn’t occur at Phi Psi as to prove that it did. Even if you could, it’s darn near impossible to prove that the speaker lied, as opposed to being mistaken or confused, which would not be criminal.</p>
<p>Phi Psi or an accused member suing RS is more plausible, but if I were their attorneys, I’d probably urge them not to. It’s not a tort to violate journalistic standards. More importantly, keeping the story in the news does not serve their interests.</p>
<p>We are rarely dead sure about anything but we still form opinions and we throw them out here on CC. Usually, I try not to do this. I am usually not on these kind of threads. I don’t think I ever participted in the Duke thread and I didn’t read many of the posts on that thread for example. </p>
<p>This story resonated with me as I stated. I thought the story was true. Maybe not everything in the story, but enough.
The story is not just about Jackie by the way. There are other people with stories in that RS story. UVA still hasn’t kicked anybody out of the school for sexual assault for how long?</p>
<p>We talked about the Hobart and Smith case where the accused lied. Anna still lost. </p>
<p>We are never going to get things perfect. </p>
<p>86 percent of the cases are thrown out while the FBI says 92 percent of the cases are true. </p>
<p><a href=“The Neurobiology of Sexual Assault: Implications for Law Enforcement, Prosecution, and Victim Advocacy | National Institute of Justice”>http://nij.gov/multimedia/presenter/presenter-campbell/Pages/presenter-campbell-transcript.aspx</a></p>
<p>When there is trauma, the brain reacts. Memories can be lost and distorted. Makes these cases more difficult. The women go to the police station. They are disoriented. The women don’t make sense. The police throw the cases in the garbage. The reason some of the women don’t make sense is because they were raped. </p>
<p>There are also he said-she said cases. Those are brutal.</p>
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<p>Yeah, I noticed. ;-)</p>
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<p>Good for you.</p>
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<p>FBI, thankfully, is not a court of law. Would you like to live in a country where the cops were justices too? Do you believe cops when they say an unarmed African American kid was actually threatening an officer brandishing a gun so just had to be shot?</p>
<p>I have a belief that there are many low income African American kids who are in jail convicted of rape, a crime that they didn’t commit, and where the cops railroaded them. I may be wrong.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/u-va-fraternity-to-rebut-claims-of-gang-rape-in-rolling-stone/2014/12/05/5fa5f7d2-7c91-11e4-84d4-7c896b90abdc_story.html”>http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/u-va-fraternity-to-rebut-claims-of-gang-rape-in-rolling-stone/2014/12/05/5fa5f7d2-7c91-11e4-84d4-7c896b90abdc_story.html</a></p>
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<p>Now that’s interesting.</p>
<p>Also, at first the Washington Post had in their article that “Drew” had never met “Jackie.” They have since retracted that claim. </p>
<p>So now we hear from “Andy,” who remembers the night in question. According to him, “Jackie” said that night that she had been raped by a group of men. </p>
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<p>For 2 years Jackie pretended she was raped? Why would she do this?</p>
<p>If anything this whole case shows why people should not jump the gun and presume guilt. It is also why a court of law needs to be involved to adjudicate and not college administrators. Who knows what happened but the bottom line is her story does not add up and the reputation of those boys in that frat have been harmed. In recent years as information flows with the advent of the internet and the media all too often people jump to conclusions with partial information and decide guilt without hard evidence and have forgotten the notion innocent until proven guilty. Its the mob mentality that is just so wrong. He said she said is not enough to convict anyone nor should it be but it is enough to ruin innocent lives.</p>