Even if we take into consideration that 90% (out of 25) could be lying (they aren’t), that’s still ~3 women he assaulted.
Edit: Damn y’all, thanks for that old internet feeling I keep coming back to Lemmy for. Not a girl in sight in these comments.
Is testifying under oath not considered evidence? There have been so many credible lawsuits against this guy for sexual assault. Honestly what are these files going to prove that we don’t already have plenty of evidence for?
And lastly, do you have any idea what going after a rich powerful man for sexually assaulting you does to your life? Why the fuck would anybody put themselves through that if they weren’t absolutely sure they had a credible case? Some of the plaintiffs in these cases had their lives and their family’s lives threatened and disrupted.
Welp, to the bottom with me I suppose.
Ah, yes, ye Olde “just believe them” attitude.
No one would ever lie for personal gain, right?
I don’t “believe” claims that have significant impact - that requires evidence. Which is the basis of our legal system.
Just wait till you’ve been wrongfully accused about something and have to stand before a judge. It’s no fun, and you’ll be grateful then that evidence is required.
This is exactly right. The “believe women” stance is so childish and naive. “Take women seriously” would be just as effective, less dangerous and fit into every just legal system on the planet
For every 100 rapes and sexual assaults of teenage girls and women reported to police, only 18 lead to an arrest
It’s naive to believe our criminal justice system is reliably investigating and prosecuting instances of sexual assault.
I don’t think the current legal systems are perfect, but I do think “believe women” would make them fundamentally worse.
How do you handle the issue of future false accusations? And don’t give me the hand wavy “but there are so few false accusations” because that doesn’t matter to the person being accused.
THE core tenet of most legal systems is effectively “innocent until proven guilty”. “Believe women” utterly breaks that, they cannot exist within the same legal framework.
So, would you rather have the legal system change to better serve women by equally investigating their accusations, or by removing “innocent until proven guilty”?
The same way you do it with men, presumably. Document the incident, collect forensic evidence, interview suspects, refer the matter to the local DA.
I’m trying to imagine this response for any other crime. “Oh, you want us to investigate your car jacking? How do we know you don’t loan it out voluntarily? I guess we should just convict an innocent person!”
See, this is the problem. “Believe women” implies that women are telling the truth before an investigation has taken place. If you had read my original comment you’d see that I’m not suggesting women should be treated as they currently are, but that “believe women” specifically is a harmful rhetoric.
If we both want women’s accusations to be taken seriously and investigated as any other potential crime would be, then we’re on the same page and want the same thing. The statement “believe women” does not literally or figuratively mean that though, the problem is the wording. Say what you mean instead of this wishy washy language that is detrimental to the cause.
In 2022, at least 25,000 untested rape kits sat in law enforcement agencies and crime labs across the country. This figure only accounts for data reported by 30 states and Washington, DC; the total backlog number is unknown.
Findings from Canadian national policing data indicate that one in five cases (i.e., 20%) of sexual assault reports to police are deemed baseless (Doolittle et al., 2017). However, the high rates of unfounded are inconsistent with findings from a meta-analysis of seven studies of confirmed false reports of sexual assault to police (Ferguson & Malouff, 2016). They reported that the rate of false reports was approximately 5% (0.52 [95% CI .030, .089], which is considerably lower than the Canadian average for unfounded sexual assault classifications. Sexual assault appears to be coded as unfounded with relative regularity and seems to be ubiquitous within law enforcement discourse. High rates of unfounded sexual assaults reveal that dismissing sexual violence has become common practice amongst police in Canada
In the fall of 2016, Harvey Weinstein set out to suppress allegations that he had sexually harassed or assaulted numerous women.
The explicit goal of the investigations, laid out in one contract with Black Cube, signed in July, was to stop the publication of the abuse allegations against Weinstein that eventually emerged in the New York Times and The New Yorker.
Can you tell me how this is relevant to the point I made? How any of that suggests something other than what I said?
If you want to have a conversation, let’s have a conversation but don’t throw data that is irrelevant to the point I made while dodging the point I made.
How do you have a conversation about the trustworthiness of an alleged rape victim if you throw the rape kit in the trash, file the complaint as “unfounded” based on gut instinct, and turn a blind eye to well-financed smear campaigns by serial abusers?
When people have sex, they usually do it in private, without any witnesses. Whatever happens during that time is often difficult to prove afterward, since it typically comes down to one person’s word against the other’s. Unless there’s clear physical evidence of assault, it can be extremely hard to establish that something was done against someone’s will. Most reasonable people would agree that “she said so” alone doesn’t amount to proof - and isn’t, by itself, a valid basis for sending someone to prison.
“Listen, you were in an alley and nobody was around, so how do we know you weren’t handing over the wallet voluntarily?”
“Maybe you asked them to hit you when you volunteered to hand over your wallet.”
“Hey Pete, this guy is one of those men trying to ruin innocent people’s lives with false mugging claims!”
Hot damn this comment section is a flood of sexist shitheads being perfect example of the culture that assumes women’s accusations are false and trying to ruin men’s lives. So damn disappointing.
What are you suggesting exactly? You have an actual solution here to offer or you just want to be a smart ass?
That police and prosecutors do their fucking jobs.
Well let’s hear some suggestions then.
They do the jobs and follow up on reports? That’s not a hard thing to ask.
He wants cops to sit in a cuck chair and observe every sexual encounter to ensure no funny business. He’ll also have a little retail iPad where you do an esignature for consent before starting.
“Just believe them” is shorthand for “Believe them long enough to actually press charges and hold a trial instead of dismissing them by default”.
Between charges and a trial is a criminal investigation. If that doesn’t give enough reason to proceed to trial, charges are dropped.
A better stat would be %age of accusations that result in an investigation. That should be a lot higher, but police shouldn’t be trying to prosecute cases that have nothing but an accusation to court.
So if you are assaulted with no witnesses then having bruises, stab wounds, and other injuries shouldn’t be enough for the police to take any action?
Because that is the physical evidence that the police routinely dismiss.
That’s because they’re not looking for evidence that shows a crime was committed, they’re looking for evidence of who committed the crime
Your injuries are evidence of a crime, but not necessarily evidence of a specific perpetrator
They aren’t processing evidence, so what else can they prosecute with? Vibes?
https://www.endthebacklog.org/what-is-the-backlog/
Look up statistics for your area.
More capacity to process rape kits is something I can get behind. More evidence is good. It would stop people clamouring for convictions based on accusations alone.
Yeah, I think a lot of people are completely missing the point. Very similar to how saying “black lives matter” doesn’t imply that non-black lives do not matter, or that black lives must somehow be considered more important than any other life, the phrase “believe women” doesn’t imply that we should start doubting men, or that a woman’s testimony should be held as a higher form of evidence than anything else. It’s pointing out the clear systemic bias against women in a system controlled and dominated mostly by men who do not want to cede their power and authority.
One of the many flaws of the English language is how difficult it is to condense a very complex sociopolitical message down into a catchy one-liner without losing a ton of the context that got people there in the first place.
Wasn’t BLM just a scam to extract money for its operators?
Believing women doesn’t mean convicting every person who is accused. It means if someone makes an accusation you should look into it instead of immediately disregarding it.
How does “We wouldn’t need [evidence] if society just trusted women” fit your argument?
The Epstein list isn’t the only evidence they would find.
Also, if women’s testimony isn’t good enough, why is a list written by a man good enough?
Then use that evidence.
Being in the Epstein log books isn’t evidence of sexual assault comparable to simply listening to Virginia Giuffre.
And, ffs, Testimony Is Evidence. If a woman says “I’ve been raped, that’s the guy who did it”, that’s evidence of the accused committing a rape.
UnderpantsWeevil raped me.
You do know what a testimony is right? 😂
Would you be willing to say that in court, under threat of perjury?
If I knew you personally and I was in a desperate situation and thought I could extract life changing amounts from you, yes, I might be willing to say that in court, under threat of perjury.
You’re implying this doesn’t happen, which is clearly false. False accusations of rape have been made in court. At least OP is asking people to believe women without evidence, but you’re asking us to believe no one ever files frivolous lawsuits, contrary to much available evidence.
In fact, in a legal system like the US that often favors persecution over defense, once an accusation is made to a cop, it can take on momentum toward court.
Blindly believing accusers because they are women isn’t egalitarian, it’s sexist.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Banks_(American_football)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_lacrosse_rape_hoax
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Rape_on_Campus
According to OP “We wouldn’t need the Epstein files to prove DJT’s guilt if society just trusted women in the first place.”
So, believing women is proof, and not only proof, but proof so strong that we wouldn’t even need the Epstein files. You might think that believing women doesn’t mean convicting every person who is accused, but OP sure seems to think so.
So, you’re saying don’t believe them? Because if you believe them, then the accused is guilty, end of story.
I mean I don’t think 25 women would lie about stuff that would be slander or libel when it comes to someone as litigious and thin skinned as Trump.
Not much evidence you can provide when it’s one person’s word over another. Only thing I can say is he never won a libel suit against his accusers as far as I know.
I don’t care who is accused - I refuse to convict anyone on anything just from an accusation.
More people making a similar accusation isn’t evidence, at best that’s a witch hunt.
I also that, but I’m also in support of massively reforging the legal system so that everyone can and will use it appropriately.
Which a large part of that will be changing how it is funded and expanding it all that appearing before a court to have your case heard is as easy as possible.
Any issue before a court shouldn’t be swayed so easily by how much money you can spend on it, or how long you can tie up the issue to delay and it avoid resolution.
It’s a weird situation where I think more is better
And like a good scientist, I don’t give a shit what you think. Give me evidence.
People can’t argue that Donald Trump’s assault on due process is wrong and then turn around and argue that any individual should not get due process, even that scum himself. The gender of the witness is irrelevant, witness testimony is unreliable as it is subject to intimidation, coercion, deception, or even the plain old fallibility of human memory.
I absolutely think there is evidence out there. This man has said so many awful things and I don’t believe all 25 accusers are lying. But I do believe every case should be prosecuted to the fullest extent that the evidence allows.
Donald Trump’s crimes must be laid bare and proven beyond a doubt because even then the MAGA cult will do their mental gymnastics but he will truly have been dethroned as the populist leader of the right that he’s been since 2016.
A-fucking-men
Wait, which do you think happens more often: a false accusation, or an uninvestigated sex crime? Because false allegations happen, but statistically it’s like saying you shouldn’t go to restaurants because occasionally chefs murder people with knives. It’ll probably make the news, but only because it’s so fucking rare.
I said neither of the above. Don’t put words in my mouth.
People are falsely accused of crimes all the time, which is why the legal system requires evidence.
What I said is wait until you stand before a judge falsely accused. I didn’t say of what crime, you assumed.
All the time? Like once a week? Or like every day? Or maybe like roughly every minute of every day of the year?
Can you think of an answer to your question would justify the removal of due process or need for proof beyond a reasonable doubt?
The legal system errs on the side of letting some guilty people go free in order to try to protect against innocent people being unfairly punished.
That’s why the standard for criminal conviction is that the accused is innocent if you have any reasonable doubt.
Who the fuck said we should remove due process? You understand that when a sexual assault is reported that over 90% are not investigated. “Believe women” is an instruction for the police to begin due process for victims, it’s not like jury instructions. Due process is denied to the victims because police don’t believe women.
Swear to fucking Christ, you’re like those people who act like the BLM movement is saying other lives don’t matter.