Hacker News Reader

Comment by corndoge | Hacker News Reader

Awful lot of filler and dramatic crescendos. Probably could have cut the word count in half. I also don't see the point in this trend of public character assassination in lieu of criminal charges. If someone raped you in the ass, and you're willing to publicize it on Twitter and Facebook and The Verge, file a criminal charge instead. But no, the real justice is getting their Twitter account stripped of it's verified status! Social media justice is just a bad joke.

View on HN

People keep on blaming women, asking "why didn't she come forward earlier". Simultaneously, many women HAVE gone to the police and the police have ignored them. Often times, cases where women came to the police and were ignored come to light only after many years. Don't you think that these maters should be solved in public so that at least it is publicly known that an accusation has been made?

>Don't you think that these maters should be solved in public so that at least it is publicly known that an accusation has been made?

Ideally, no, it would be settled in courts so that unsubstantiated allegations wouldn't damage the reputations of any innocents accused.

What I would like to see in public is all of these cases the police are ignoring and those investigators brought to task, because they are presumably the root of the rot in the legal system which makes it such that the only perceivable route of justice is instead through the court of public opinion. I fail to understand why this isn't the primary political thrust of activists regarding this issue, seeing as that's the part of this equation addressable by public policy.

Loss of trust and faith in the legal system is deadly to a society.. with that restored, these women would have justice, the perpetrators would be in jail where they belong, and the critics who call "witch hunt" wouldn't have a leg to stand on.

These allegations are not unsubstantiated, as the article clearly shows.

Yeah he basically admitted it in a PGP signed message. Why are we debating his innocence?

I was commenting on the topic generally and not on the specific case from the OP.

There is no way to substantiated he said she said only two of us after party rape accusation. Especially not when accusers are not stereotype of modest lady. Just about the only way is if multiple events collect and the stories match - effectively becoming they said he said.

It would be cool if justice system could wave magical wand and know for sure what happened behind closed doors. They can't.

> Loss of trust and faith in the legal system is deadly to a society.. with that restored, these women would have justice

Ok, but how about society fixes that first before they are allowed to say what ways women can or cannot have justice?

I didn't blame women, and no I don't. Innocent until proven guilty. Hate all you want after the verdict comes in and not before.

That's absolutely not how reputation works. Your logic is easily flipped onto its back: if they're lying, they're doing horrific damage to him. Why is he not suing?

We know why he's not suing, and that's why he's finished.

If I understood the article, he has confessed to this behavior, there are many victims with similar stories, and corroborating evidence. I agree he should have a trial and a criminal conviction, but reporting the abundance of evidence that a person is a serial rapist hardly strikes me as "character assassination."

What's especially troubling for me is that this was apparently known, by some, for a long time, and nothing effective was done to deter this person from committing additional rapes.

Rape is traumatizing and the criminal prosecution process is not helpful in letting the victim recover. Imagine being told to recount the events in front of strangers countless times, while one party's job is to make anything you say doubtful and convince others you're wrong to be traumatized. At least with social media you only have to write it out once.

Imagine if other forms of violent assault were held at that standard.

They are. For instance: more than one college basketball coach has been fired over allegations of physical abuse of players.

I was not aware of that. You're right. Guess I'm too idealistic in my views.

It's a strange sort of idealism that denies the victims of sexual abuse the agency to make their own decisions about how to relate those abuses to their peers.

Thank you! I was about to say the exact same thing. First the act of rape takes away the victim's agency. Then random commenters on this site are presumptuous enough to try and take it away as well.

Well to each his ideals and his priority of ideals.

I for one think that:

  * social ostracisation is a form of punishment.

  * It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.

  * social media in most cases are worse at determining 
    guilt  than the justice system.

 and view that:

  - social media and public opinion in general have 
    favored the accused in the past( victim blaming,..) 
    and as an overcorrecting favors the accuser now. In 
    both cases such a system leads to unfairness and 
    unregulated punishment.

These 3 ideals and one experience lead me to prefer a world where all crimes no matter their nature are decided on by court. if that's strange, well I'm strange.

Although, I'd like to say that in this idealised situation the victim is free to relate those abuses in his closed social circle and to the public after the judgment is made

A victim of a crime has the right to pursue justice in whichever way they please, as long as it's legal. Ruining someone's reputation is perfectly legal, last I checked.

I thought, that we as society surrender our right to judge and punish criminal matters to the court, in exchange for a fair trial for each and everyone of us.

Just the punishing is reserved for the legal system.

For instance, at least in the US, we have pretty strong free speech laws, so you can publicly state opinions about almost anything, such things aren't reserved for courts.

I'm by no way a lawyer, but don't you have libel laws? I thought that's why newspapers use allegedly when reporting on such incidents.

Truth is an affirmative defense against a libel claim.

Sure, we have libel laws.

And you can be sure that The Verge had a lawyer look at this piece.

Only a court can order someone incarcerated or stripped of their assets. As an individual you're perfectly free to shun someone who you think is guilty of atrocious behavior even if they haven't been convicted.

No. We give up the right to use violence to the court system. Not justice in general. Ruining a rapist's reputation is a perfectly fine way to achieve justice, if that's what the victim desires.

Other ways to achieve justice outside the court system include protests, strikes, civil disobedience and so forth.

I don't think victims' desires are paramount in any way, regarding the perpetrator, other than their security and privacy. Some victims desire retribution. Others want to extend forgiveness. Neither of these things should be relevant to the criminal justice system.

Of course it is relevant. Cases tend to get much weaker if the victim refuses to testify.

The problem is that while I can admit that most of the victims are indeed victims. It is also possible that some might be accused infairly or inaccurately.So I would not really call it a fine way.

The general notion of "innocent until proven guilty" is simplistic even when applied to just the legal system. Even in criminal court you only have to establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. You do not have to "prove" guilt to the same degree of confidence as, say, the Higgs boson.

This means that a small number of innocent people are convicted every year. This is unfortunate, but less bad than the alternative — the only way to guarantee no false positives is to never convict anyone.

The legal system, like any other justice system, is about finding an appropriate balance between false negatives and false positives.

when we talk about proven in the empiric sense a margin of error is always expected. but what "innocent until proven guilty" guarantees is that best efforts were made to make sure that someone is really guilty. Trial by social media cannot reasonably offer such guarantees.

Also, I presume you would agree that the police and by extension the court have better means than your average newspaper for determining guilt.

While the legal system might have more power than the average newspaper, that doesn't mean that it is more effective at determining guilt.

I was raped 10 years ago when I was a teen. There is no evidence of the crime. No court is going to convict my rapist.

cf. libel and slander, and consider that in the United States and many (but not all) societies, a person accused of a crime is to be considered innocent (in a legal context) until found guilty in a court of law (by jury or bench trial).

Truth is the gold standard defense against slander and libel.

So if someone is raped, they are pretty safe calling the attacker a rapist, they just can't call them a convicted rapist until a court has decided that.

It's not always safe. I sympathize with real victims, but some people abuse the principle to influence public opinion in hopes of driving things toward a big monetary settlement in civil court. A personal friend was falsely accused of sexually abusing a minor, really nasty accusations, changed his life forever even though he was/is innocent. An organization that champions the victims of such crimes went all out, and together with the alleged victim's parents slimed him hard, publicly and repeatedly, over a year+ while the thing wound its way through the courts; they were very careful to avoid use of the word "convicted." The press gave the slimeballs all sorts of coverage, as it was a noteworthy case. The criminal case was tossed, with harsh words from the judge for the prosecution, the alleged victim's civil case evaporated, and my friend sued the slimeballs in federal court. The result was the utter obliteration of the organization that slimed him, they are now defunct for all intents and purposes. My friend's suit made claims of injury by libel and slander, and conspiracy to commit the same.

What does your comment have to do with So if someone is raped,, which is what I said?

Looking at it from a 3rd party's point of view, the if is very much in question. So, flipping it around, though this may sound cynical, I would caution anyone about making what are essentially public accusations. They had better be prepared for a legal backlash, and they had better have bulletproof evidence.

I spoke (politely) with the guy who ran the organization that publicly went after my friend — I think he genuinely considered what he was doing to be legally safe, and I also think he was convinced my friend was guilty. His livelihood is now in tatters.

I still don't understand why you felt the need to reply about this to my comment about victims. I wasn't talking about false accusations or third parties, and it isn't a long or complicated comment.

I intended my reply as a pointed cautionary tale — understanding full well you had in mind true victims — for those who may misunderstand what's involved and what's at stake regarding both accused and accuser and so may pursue a regrettable course. Sadly, from a 3rd party's point of view, it's difficult today to distinguish true victims from false accusers.

> and they had better have bulletproof evidence

No you don't need that. The OTHER party needs to have bulletproof evidence, because the accuser is innocent until proven guilty.

If something is true, then you should never ever ever be afraid to say the truth. Go public with your true accusations, and then force the other side to sue you.

Because if you are telling the truth, then you will win, because the other side can't have evidence that you are lying, because the evidence doesn't exist.

It is basically impossible to get in legal trouble for libel, if you know that what you are saying is true.

You are innocent of libel and slander until proven guilt.

Innocent until proven guilt works both ways.

If someone publicly accusing another person of a crime, the accuser is innocent of slander and libel unless you 100% prove that they are being malicious.

It is completely within your right to show evidence to the world and someone should not ever get in trouble with the law if everything that they have presented is true.

The only way you can convict someone of slander is if you prove that they were lying. Good luck doing that, because you almost certainly won't succeed.

See my reply above.

The victim had presumably considered the trade-offs and made an appropriate choice. It is no one else's position to judge them.

In the US, truth is an absolute defense against libel and slander.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com