Oh come on. It wasn't even a firing decision, it was a decision on which interns to hire. They can't have been short of applicants. How about not hiring the guy with the rape allegation?
Alternatively, if you believe the woman is entirely lying, why wasn't she barred from hiring? No, they just dropped the question on the floor entirely.
Should you be unemployed for life now?
Due process is important. Raped women should press charges, there should be an investigation, the trial, and prison time.
So relative to the set of all possible destruct rumors, allegations of sexual assault stand as outliers for how uniquely protected the accused actually are.
However, if they want to hire someone who only has accusations against him, I don't see the problem. Businesses can and do hire full-fledged known criminals (typically after they've paid their legal penalty); and this is better for us all then having them uselessly sitting around. Many of them will still be perfectly good workers. Having done something illegal doesn't mean getting ejected from society; being accused certainly doesn't.
http://variety.com/2017/film/news/ashley-judd-mira-sorvino-w...
Edit: In case it’s not clear, the link talks about how Weinstein used his influence to harm the careers of Sorvino and Judd (in 1998) after they rejected him (in 1995 and 1997). The accusations of sexual harassment (not rape) have been made in 2017. How does one conclude that making rape allegations can make you unemployable?
Pressing charges and seeing the process through is often reported as being a significant re-traumatization — sometimes even worse than the assault, itself.
It also ignores the fact that "hiring decisions" aren't subject to due process — and that "unemployed for life" is specious hyperbole.
EDIT: Down-voters, assume an actual rape occurred. Please convince me of how it's incumbent upon the person that was raped to subject herself to all of that, just to be "fair" to the job prospects of her rapist. If the statistics are anything to go by, he's overwhelmingly likely to be acquitted, anyway.
Why should I hire anyone who is accused of rape when I do my background check? Why should anyone else hire such people?
Look: aperrien raped my sister today.
Why should anybody hire you or work for you now?
I propose due process, evidence, trials.
What do you propose?
For starters, a justice system and ideological climate that isn't predisposed to discount women's lived experience of harassment and assault.
I understand it's a traumatic experience, but so is all of violent crimes.
I'm talking about a climate where when a woman claims she's being harassed, the response is to credit the (stated) intent of the person allegedly harassing her ("I was just flirting" or "Can't you take a joke?") over her experience. I don't think it matters what your intent was. If you're making someone — anyone — uncomfortable, that's on you; it's your behavior that caused the discomfort.
Or, when a woman actually does press charges for a rape, the way it generally works out, there's substantial burden-of-proof placed upon her to substantiate her own experience. Yes, even — especially — from the police and prosecution, whose jobs it literally is to do that for her.
> The problem is, many women don't.
Given the above, and the underlying attitudes that give rise to it, can you blame them?
We have a profoundly shitty attitude, as a culture, regarding women and their sexual agency, and the way we treat rape is only a sliver of that.
Just scratching the surface, consider the massive, systemic backlog of untested rape kits in the US.
Women aren't legally prevented from pressing charges by this maddening lack of cooperation, but in practice many rape cases go unprosecuted because of police indifference or hostility.
How come nobody freaks out over THAT? Saying "this person is unpleasant to work with, ND we shouldn't hire them" wouldn't make anyone bat an eye...
Assholes get hired all the time, even when it's known. Ever read Linus's emails? Yet I'd work with him in a heartbeat.
I say "this person is awful to work with. Don't hire them".
And they won't get hired, 99% percent of the time.
And I can do all of this in my word alone, without and judge jury or trial.
Society already says that this is ok in hiring. Nobody is going to go around saying "you can't accuse someone of that and prevent them from being hired! That is he said she said!".
Ugh. This was a nasty flamewar already—the kind of thing this site is not for. Please don't take things even closer to the bottom of the barrel.
From what I can see, in this particular case the girl didn't press charges, even though she had a strong case (his DNA, her being very drunk, done the med evaluation quickly).
What do you propose exactly? Always believe the accuser? No more innocent till proven guilty? Make the accused unemployable? For how long?
Cause it would be trivial to create dozens of FB profiles and accuse you of rape once a week.
And that happens in places where it's prima facie rape to have sex with someone who's too intoxicated to meaningfully consent. How is that not an impossible double standard?
Here the girl reported a crime, there appears to have been compelling evidence that what she says was true, and the state declined to press charges.
That's not her fault, it's a systemic failure.