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
The “believe women” stance is so childish and naive.
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”?
How do you handle the issue of future false accusations?
The same way you do it with men, presumably. Document the incident, collect forensic evidence, interview suspects, refer the matter to the local DA.
removing “innocent until proven guilty”?
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.
“Believe women” implies that women are telling the truth before an investigation has taken place.
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
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.
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.
Whatever happens during that time is often difficult to prove afterward
“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?
What are you suggesting exactly?
That police and prosecutors do their fucking jobs.
Well let’s hear some suggestions then.
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.
We wouldn’t need [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)
So, you’re saying don’t believe them? Because if you believe them, then the accused is guilty, end of story.
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.
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.
When a woman claims to have been assaulted, I automatically believe her in regards to how I treat her.
As far as the person she’s accused goes, though, I think it’s pretty easy to understand that nobody should be convicted on the sole evidence of their accuser’s testimony, and I think that should apply to the court of public opinion as well.
It’s a situation where either one person is guilty of a horrible crime, or the other is making false allegations of said crime. In order for both to be “innocent until proven guilty”, you need to assume the allegations are true when interacting with the woman, and assume they’re false while interacting with the accused. It’s really counterintuitive and maybe impossible to do
No one should be “just believed”. Everyone’s claims should be taken seriously and looked into. But no one should be believed automatically.
In this thread, so many people who misunderstand the meaning of “Believe women”.
Brett Kavanaugh raped a woman in high school, and had three additional accusations of sexual assault, yet all of that was ignored to put him on the Supreme Court. Donald Trump has a 67-page Wikipedia article on all the sexual assault claims against him, yet he was still a reality tv star, a popular media figure, and now president. Allegations and rumors against Kevin Spacey and Harvey Weinstein circulated for years before anyone took things seriously enough to bother doing something about it. Brock Turner raped an unconscious woman and was let off with six months because the judge didn’t want to “ruin such a promising future” (or similar words), served it in county jail, and was released after 3 months.
“Believe women” means taking each allegation seriously instead of doubting women with questions like “are you sure you want to report this”, “are you sure it wasn’t just a misunderstanding”, “are you sure you weren’t drunk”, etc. “Believe women” means stop trying to dismiss or downplay behavior with things like “why would he do that” (Trump’s assault on the plane), or “she’s not that pretty”, or “she was asking for it”, and actually investigating the crime instead of brushing it off as a college prank, or the casting couch, or someone trying to get 15 minutes of game by accusing someone famous.
“Believe women” doesn’t mean automatically accepting every claim, but believing it enough to accept that it might have happened and conducting a thorough investigation of the alleged incident.
In this thread, so many people who misunderstand the meaning of “Believe women”.
Including OP who said “We wouldn’t need the Epstein files to prove DJT’s guilt if society just trusted women in the first place.”
According to OP, there’s no need to know what the Epstein files say because these women’s accusations are enough to convict him on their own. People are reacting to that absurd phrasing, not to the idea that women’s accusations should be taken seriously and investigated.
No, the problem is the saying itself. It literally just says “believe women”. There’s no room for interpretation in there. The problem is the phrase itself. If you want a phrase that means take women’s allegations seriously, then the phrase you should use is “take women’s allegations seriously”
Everyone’s claims should be taken seriously and looked into.
That is what “believe women” means. It means actually looking into the claims instead of dismissing them out of hand.
No, that may be what you WANT it to mean, but this is a very clear two-word phrase that can only mean one thing by any english speaker. Words mean things, you can’t just use alternative definitions any more than Republicans can use alternative facts. Words are words, and facts are facts.
Um… I’m a girl, and I totally believe these women were assaulted because we’re talking about rich assholes who literally feel like they can do anything.
But you have to present evidence no matter what. That’s literally how the court works. If all we have is he-said-she-said, then there’s not much we can do to reach a verdict. There have been regular people who have been incorrectly deemed assaulters/rapists due to lack of evidence. We have seen women who lie about this. You NEED to have proof, to ensure that it’s an undeniable fact that the accused is officially recognized as a shit person.
This is an unrealistic ideal, I’m gonna be real. I want these women to win and be acknowledged. I want all who interacted with Epstein to rot in prison and hell. But we need evidence. That’s just the truth.
Fuck the courts?
I agree not hurting people without evidence, but there’s plenty in public domain in this case. Like, i dont know exactly where the line on calling someone a nazi is, but when hellboy, indiana jones, and georgei zukov all have you at the top of their personal shit-list and you’ve got a sonnenrad tattoo that covers your entire back, and you cannot order breakfast without shouting “BLOOD AND SOIL”, It’s pretty obviously over that line.
This is kinda that, but for pedophilia.
Having the evidence needed to convict is different than evidence to no longer trust and shun.
With 20+ woman making accusations, being friends with a known pedophile and literally having recordings of him bragging about sexually assaulting women and bragging about going backstage with undressed teen girls the world shouldn’t need any more evidence. The honest and rational world doesn’t in fact.
Believing women dosnt mean just acting blindly on a womans word and nothing more.
Believing women means intiating proper procedures, starting investigations, and gathering the facts and evidence, impartially and without prejudice.
So yes, We need the epstein files, even if we believe women, because they are evidence that, in all likelyhood, supports their claims.
These files should have been handled a decade ago, but the fact that they’ve spent so much time and energy trying to alter and hide them shows how damning they really are, that even after having months of time to alter and remove Trumps name, that they still were not able to and had to emergency switch to “Epstein files? What files? No such files exist!”
Convicting based upon words sworn under oath and with no facts to back it up but feelings and outage has lead to a lot of overturned verdicts and innocent lives ruined.
Believing women means intiating proper procedures, starting investigations, and gathering the facts and evidence, impartially and without prejudice.
The average person isn’t smart enough to understand this, and if told to “just believe women”, will harass DARVO victims.
The only effective solution to the issue of believing survivors is to teach the general public critical thinking and evidence evaluation skills.
This can still ruin someone’s life though. As soon as there are whispers of an accusation that are official it’s over. There needs to be a better way.
What way is better than investigating allegations impartially? Do you know of something better that wouldn’t require someone to be psychic, or require everyone coming to some nigh impossible position where no one lies?
I agree with your first sentence but then you went off on a mocking-tangent instead of promoting an actual conversation that’s important. We see investigations used both politically and socially (perp-walks are one way law enforcement berates during an investigation, also giving press releases/public announcements before all the facts are collected). There are ways which police act respectfully during an investigation when it’s someone they like, a more neutral way for EVERYONE can be achieved.
That is a whole different issue than what was said by the previous person, who said the idea behind believe women is for authority figures to take their allegations seriously and do their jobs properly, and investigate the claims. It was not mocking as, in the context of what the previous poster said, and not the expanded issues of the system beyond the scope of this, it would take something like psychic knowledge, or some impractical expectation of humanity. They said doing their job impartially, and impartially is the important word here, as everything you brought up is a result of not doing their job impartially, and thus, not correctly.
God, I remember stories of some women who falsely claim sexual assault which has ruined people’s livelyhoods. When there are consequences, just ruling on vibes and a 1 sided account of a story is so incredibly bad.
Name one time.
Ever think that women’s lives are often ruined by being raped and not being believed when they do report it?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottsboro_Boys
Somewhat famous case, thought partially to have been a source of inspiration for a book called “To Kill a Mockingbird”, somewhat famous in its own right.
Highly recommend you read it
How bad does the damage from the false accusation need to be?
One I’m fond of pointing to as evidence that they happen is Tracy West accusing her ex Louis Gonzales. He spent three months in jail while it was being investigated, and only got out because he happened to have a very heavily corroborated alibi for the day that left only a 6 minute window during which he would have had to travel a total of 2 miles, obtain a duffel bag full of forensic countermeasures, subdue and rape the victim, dispose of said duffel bag in a manner it would never be recovered and return. And that 6 minute window was not when she originally said it happened, until they allowed her to revise her statement which became much fuzzier about when it happened. Also there was evidence that she was researching the way she was tied up in the days leading up to her being tied up exactly that way. By all appearances this case was about a custody dispute over their kid, and despite the case being dropped because it was physically impossible for him to have done it she still got to use it against him because fucking family courts. He eventually got a finding of factual innocence from CA courts and had the entire thing expunged from his record - to be clear, this essentially requires proving beyond a reasonable doubt that you could not have committed the crime. When he was interviewed by an LA paper about the case, he’d developed an obsession with being as publicly visible with as much paper trail as possible at all time, just in case because of how lucky he was with his alibi from this case (if he’d eaten before he left to get the kid, his alibi wouldn’t exist and that alibi is the reason he only spent 3 months in jail).
How about Brian Banks? Kid with a real chance of going into professional football, Falsely accused, threatened with 41 years, plead to 5 years + 5 probation + registering as a sex offender on advice of his lawyer. The accuser sues the school and wins $1.5M. 9 years later, his accuser contacts him on Facebook and they speak. He secretly records the conversation, in which she admits to having lied but refuses to tell authorities that because she was afraid that they might make her pay back the money. The video gets released publicly and the Innocence Project gets involved. He goes on to briefly join the UFL and then NFL after not having meaningfully played for 11 years (time that would have been the prime of his career if not for the accusation).
Speaking of the Innocence Project, what’s your opinion of them? It tends to vary for left leaning folks - either they like it because a lot of the people exonerated are POC or they hate it because a significant majority of people exonerated by it were imprisoned for some flavor of sexual assault. Go look at their list of cases: https://innocenceproject.org/all-cases/ According to the site when filtered for sex crimes 184 of the “more than 250” people were imprisoned wrongly for a sex crime. 124/184 of those exonerated by the Innocence Project that were imprisoned for a sex crime were misidentified by an eyewitness. For sex crimes, that eyewitness is very often the alleged victim.
I’m old, so I’m more familiar with before me too than after. I believe a piece of what she is trying to say is the doubt that permeates any initial accusation. Doubt was the standard approach to any mention of rape or assault for decades.
Back in college, in the 90s, a good friend was followed home from a party. She made it home, thought she was safe. While she was showering in her basement (house) apartment, she looked up to see hands and a nose pressed to the frosted glass of the window, trying to see in. She called the police. A pair of cops showed up and the first thing they asked wasn’t: are you ok. Or. Did you get a good look at the guy. No. They asked her if she’d been drinking tonight. Then: Well, what were you wearing when you walked home from this party?
Footprints and knee prints in the dirt consistent with someone tramping into the flower bed to kneel down by her bathroom window. Hand prints and a nose grease smear on the glass. No attempt to investigate further. Chastised to drink less. She was not drunk, yet this was the takeaway message of that encounter instead of her safety. Encounters like these regarding the sexual safety of women were so common in the 90s.
The salient point here is this post likely is not about flipping the innocent until proven guilty narrative. This is about the preliminary circumstances that would lead into a case and taking the woman’s safety seriously instead of ignoring perpetrators who leave evidence behind.
If no one listens to you or takes you seriously, or avoids asking the relevant questions, that is a problem. Worse it’s a problem that was the status quo for decades.
So, when OP says maybe we should listen to trumps accusers that’s what it likely means. To listen. Not to flip the innocent until proven guilty narrative.
ITT: Bunch of people who don’t understand how the justice system works, accusing everybody else in it of being misogynistic incels.
You haven’t actually proven anything, you’ve just modelled a possible scenario.
Gee I wonder who this guy(male) voted for
OMG stop. I voted for Harris. I VOLUNTEERED for Harris. After looking into the claims against Trump i believe the women’s accusations are absolutely true. And i also know that no one’s claims should just be believed automatically without doing further looking into the facts first
The burden of proof for a criminal rape suit is really high, and you can’t really just He-said She-said it.
We just had to believe him when he bragged about it!
So you’ll believe the guy, but not the women.
And that’s exactly what’s wrong with most of these comments.
They said you don’t need victim testimony because the rapist is bragging about it, and your interpretation is that said don’t believe women.
You’re the sexest one, even if you don’t realize it.
evidence needs to be present to determine guilt.
nice try though. release the files.
No, we would still need evidence.
Because of that ‘innocent until caught’ and ‘due process’ things you may had heard about.
Note: a credible testimony IS evidence, although it must be a little bit beyond the simple ‘trust me’ stuff.
One thing is certain: someone who has been declared a rapist by a court of law and has been convicted of many serious crimes should never be president of a country — especially not if he is also doing everything in his power to withhold incriminating material relating to the investigation of a pedophile ring.
Lemmy is mostly men, it is hard to share any other perspective. SA is hard to get a conviction in. If there isn’t physical evidence like semen, then the victim is called a liar. If there is semen evidence, then the victim is called someone who regretted their choice and is now getting back at the person. (And this is assuming the perpetrator was male, there can be female perpetrators too). A lot of victims do not come forward about what happened because they don’t want to be called a liar and labeled a pariah publicly. The absolute shame and rejection when someone doesn’t believe you. This subject is pretty sensitive to me and lemmy just really, really disappoints sometimes.
If there isn’t physical evidence like semen, then the victim is called a liar.
They are called liars when there is physical evidence. Not to mention the massive backlog of processing rape kits.
Yeah, this comment section is a dumpster fire of people spouting the same shit the police do when they dismiss rape accusations and the fact that they are upvoted is even more depressing.
