Unfortunately, private citizens cannot initiate criminal trials, and most police do not take reports of sexual assault very seriously, if indeed they do anything at all.
In any case, I don't think vigilante justice by blog post is an appropriate solution.
They take it into their own hands to administer justice. You become concerned that employers, friends and family members will see the accusation if they search for your name.
So, if you're angry at someone, you can achieve a form of vigilante justice by publishing negative information about them and sharing it with many people - even if your account appears to be factual and not sensational.
You'll see people attempting to take justice into their own hands if you look at the comments below the author's post.
Yet, equivocating "harass you in comments, emails, and sometimes phone calls" with being sexually assaulted is... yeah.
Note that Joe has specifically said that he's radio silence on this issue. No apologies, no rebuttal, no his side of the story.
Except if the person being harassed is female, in which case of course they're equivalent and you're a rape apologist if you disagree.
You mean like what happens to women when they talk about sexism in our industry? You mean like what people are doing to Justine right now?
Yes, that would be bad.
And I have to say that seems perfectly reasonable to me, as public accusations outside the justice system are something I really disapprove of.
To explain: the media cannot report on an accusation until the accused is convicted, as I understand it, though I'm not British and not familiar with the very probable nuances that exist.
Let's introduce Bob (not his real name). Bob is a mid-level engineering manager. Single, handsome, mid-30s. Bob is a friend of mine from school and I've known him for 17 years. At work, he has a handful of direct reports, all developers. One of these reports is Ashley (not her real name). The entire time Ashley has reported to Bob, she never made any display of personal affectation, never so much as having a cigarette with Bob on a break.
Early this year, Ashley and Bob represented the company at a conference. Bob was having a drink at the hotel bar when Ashley materialized and asked to join him. Bob agreed, and they were alone in a dark corner of the bar for more than a couple hours. Bob tells me that the conversation was light, cheerful, and fun. At the end of the evening, Bob walked Ashley back to her room, said good night, and went back to his room. That's what Bob told me happened. I pressed him; "are you being truthful with me?" He indicated that he was, and I believe him because I've known him for the better part of my adult life. If he needed to maintain a lie publicly, he would have confided it to me. He has no reason to lie to me and I can safely say that he never has.
Ashley isn't the best employee and knew it. Bob was, in fact, preparing to hit Ashley with negative performance, which would have prevented transfer and a bunch of whole other terrible things. It just so happens that this conference was two weeks before her annual review, which is salient because Ashley attempted to blackmail Bob. She showed him a Tumblr draft that claimed that Bob had attempted to rape her when he walked her back to her hotel room, in enough detail to sell the story. The implication was clear: be good to me on my review or I publish this.
Bob confided this to me because he had no fucking idea of what to do. He had no proof either way, and as the alleged victim would be a report, things would look bad if he attempted to terminate her. And then, if he did, she'd potentially revise the draft to make it look like Bob fired her to cover up his alleged misdeeds. This happened in the last six months, and I am legally prohibited from knowing how it resolved. Bob cannot tell me, but he still has his job and a career, so the shoe hasn't dropped yet.
Clearly, Ashley is quite aware that when stories like this are published on Hacker News or other media, a sweeping majority of the audience will immediately interpret what is presented as hard fact. In this case, there are two witnesses, but in others there have not been. Bob's ordeal gave me a thought exercise and made me think of all the times I've been alone with people at conferences: if someone wrote this exact post and substituted all the details for me, instead, what recourse would I have as the accused? The answer is none. Even walking away with the lesson of "don't be alone with someone" doesn't really help, because by the time witnesses step forward to defend you and say a blog post is completely fabricated, it's already bounced off the moon and come back.
And yes, I realize sociopaths like Ashley are rare. But given how demonstrably effective blogging like this is, do you really think they will remain rare in the long-term?
The only solution to this is to be suspicious of everything you read that is one-sided. Be suspicious of my anecdote, even; I could be making it up, for all you know. The thought underlying it, that the Internet's talent for rushing to conclusions on one side of a story is extremely dangerous (Sunil Tripathi, anyone?), is the important part of the story that I want to convey. Imagine if this blog post appeared on the Internet with your name and a conference you've been to substituted in. As Twain said, how long would it take you to get your boots on? Would you ever recover from that kind of damage?
We can't foster this environment in our industry, and I'm saddened that it just continues to get worse. It's going to get worse because time after time after time, the Internet makes clear that understanding both sides of a story is a historical artifact, and events of the future will be determined by who blogs about them first. Scary shit. Imagine sharing a name with the accused, even! My mom just got denied an apartment because a woman of a different race shares her name and has a felony conviction. And that's a government system, not a social network.
A pile of folks have made clear, too, especially some well-known names in the industry that are already all over this thread, that if you express the opinion that I just did you are enabling rapists to completely gut our industry, blaming and/or silencing victims, and so forth. I made the mistake once of sharing this opinion in another high-visibility disclosure similar to this one, the thrust of which was "let's not blog about someone's guilt or innocence on any topic until they've been convicted of something regardless of gender or offense," and I was directly accused of being a rape apologist because of the context. The only reason I'm even sharing this opinion is because I'm on a throwaway, but my identity is fairly deducible if you follow my history. Another commenter was right: there is really no talking about this. It really chills me on the industry, to be entirely honest, and I've had exiting the industry on my mind since the PyCon incident involving dongles.
Rape is, at present, more of a problem to our society than false rape accusations.
Perhaps that will change in the future. I hope it does.
Rape is, at present, more of a problem to our society than
false rape accusations.
It's a very difficult topic to study.
Which still wouldn't be worth worrying about, especially compared to all the actual rape that is happening, except there's a lot of pressure from certain groups to shun any man who's accused of rape regardless of the merits of the accusation. There's a very vocal school of thought that says if you employ or are friends with one of those men you're a rape apologist.
Though in this case it does sound very much like she was raped and can prove it.
So, knowing that and knowing how difficult of a topic false accusations are to study and how little we know about the bad side of human beings, I would hope that anybody who is reasonable would read "rape is a bigger deal than false accusations of rape" and say whoa, nelly, partner, do you know something that the rest of us don't or are you acting on your gut feeling? Or are rape victims just the team you happen to root for in the "victims I need to give a shit about" World Series?
The fact that you don't think it's bold reinforces my entire point about concluding things too soon. And I'm intentionally discussing this on a deliberate action that demonstrates that false accusations are easier than ever, given the Internet's (a) reach, (b) accessibility, and (c) slow erosion of doubt in most folks, who make up their minds rather readily on the first thing they see.
Rape is endemic in our society.
If you are comparing them 1:1, we can have a discussion, but I am speaking in aggregate.
Look, it's your prerogative to dismiss victims of false accusation. It's even your prerogative to condescendingly dismiss me from the discussion as you are doing here. It's my prerogative to care about the things you don't, and by dismissing a problem due to frequency, you are no better than the people that dismiss rape in the industry. Can you really not see that?
I already made clear that I do not want to argue about this. I'm simply uninterested in your opinion on false accusation victimhood because based on how dismissive you are of it, you haven't been paying attention and you haven't had it hit close to home. I've been in a similar situation that resulted in my life being threatened at a conference. I know how victims of rape feel, having to sit on HN and keep reminding people that rape really is a problem and shouldn't be dismissed, because here I am debating false accusation victimhood with some random on HN.
In particular, I lamented that I was aware of this incident at all and pivoted into my larger point.
> False accusations create victims.
This is almost certainly not a false accusation since Justine has multiple eyewitnesses, two of whom have confirmed her story on their blogs.
Why are you bringing up the problem of false accusations?
edit: I really am interested in your answer, more so now that you responded but failed to answer. Rereading the post I think you're referring to didn't really help.
Imagine sharing a name with the accused, even! My mom just
got denied an apartment because a woman of a different
race shares her name and has a felony conviction. And
that's a government system, not a social network.
https://twitter.com/pianoman265/status/387725741573799936
I was like "WTF?" because I don't know the guy who tweeted it and while perusing his followers list I realized what happened. He has a friend who is also named Andrew J de Andrade, but uses a different handle, @ajayyd, which is totally odd because there are probably only a half dozen or so Andrew de Andrade's in the world.
There are some really nasty people out there.