The Swift-Boating of Amanda, and the Duke First-Degree Sexual Assault (which includes raping someone with a broomstick) Case
UPDATE 2/8/07 at 12:18 pm EST: Amanda and Melissa have not been fired!
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Remember a few days ago when I mentioned that Amanda was going to work for the John Edwards campaign? Well, in the interim the wingnut noise machine has launched an all-out attack on Ms. Pandagon, which would be funny if people weren’t taking it so seriously. Amanda has been accused of hate speech by such Gandhi-like figures as Michelle “Concentration Camp” Malkin and Bill “Hollywood Jews killed Jesus” Donahue, and Edwards has been warned that if he doesn’t fire her, then Republicans like Malkin and Donahue won’t, er, vote for him. Right. It’s really quite the shitstorm, and just about everybody in the feminist blogosphere (other than me) has been covering it. Liza at culturekitchen has the round-up.
There’s a rumor this evening that the Edwards campaign has caved in to the pressure and fired Amanda (as well as Shakespeare’s Sister, who was hired to do netroots stuff), but nobody seems to know for sure. While we all keep our collective fingers crossed that the rumor isn’t true, you can do your part to help the Edwards campaign stay on the side of the angels by going to their website contact page and writing a little note of support for Amanda and Shakes. You might mention that if Edwards can’t be counted on to defend a woman’s right to speak her own mind on her own blog, then he probably can’t be counted on to defend a woman’s right to anything. Just a thought.
As for the Duke case, one of the things Amanda has been castigated for by the wingnuts is her insistence on believing that if a woman says she’s been sexually assaulted, then there’s a really good chance that she has, in fact, been sexually assaulted. In reading through the posts in defense of Amanda’s right to express her opinion, I was surprised to see a couple of liberal bloggers state that the Duke defendants are “almost certainly innocent” and that the “serious charges” have been dropped. Have I missed something? Actually only the rape charge was dropped, because in North Carolina “rape” has to involve penile penetration and apparently the victim in the Duke case can’t be sure what they stuck in her since they were holding her face down on the bathroom floor. If you rape somebody with something other than a penis in North Carolina, it’s called “first-degree sexual assault.”* The Duke defendants are still charged with that and with kidnapping.
It’s also possible that dropping the rape charge and just going with first-degree sexual assault was a tactical move to avoid dealing with the issue of DNA from men with whom the victim may have had consensual sexual relations in the preceding days or weeks. If you didn’t click on that link in the previous sentence, please do so — look, here it is again! Wendy Murphy does an excellent job of countering the defense attorney spin.
The only thing certain about the Duke case is that the defense is funded by millionaires who have spared no expense in the past year to vilify the victim and win the case in the court of public opinion. Their main line of attack has been, predictably, to argue that the rape didn’t occur at all. Since something like 96% of rape accusations are true and the rate of false accusations is the same for rape as for other major crimes, I’m not particularly inclined to believe that the victim in this case is lying. Certainly there’s always that 4% chance, and this case may prove to be one of the rare ones in which the charges are false, but I haven’t heard anything yet that makes me think an assault of some kind didn’t occur. The victim was confused about the details of the story? She may have IDed the wrong person? That’s normal. When I was attacked by a guy who broke into my house, I was so freaked out and traumatized that afterwards I simply could not reconstruct in my mind the precise sequence of events. I also couldn’t identify the guy’s face, even though we’d been grappling with our noses just inches apart.
As for the Duke players, we do know that they were verbally abusive, yelled racial slurs, threatened to rape the woman with a broomstick, and hustled her into a bathroom. These guys are the scum of the earth. Is it really so hard to believe they thought it’d be fun to fuck with the stripper?
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*Addendum: According to Wendy Murphy, “rape” in North Carolina refers only to penile/vaginal penetration. All other penetration acts are covered under the sexual assault charge. So, penis-in-anus, penis-in-mouth, and object-in-vagina are all considered sexual assault in North Carolina, not rape.
92 Responses to “The Swift-Boating of Amanda, and the Duke First-Degree Sexual Assault (which includes raping someone with a broomstick) Case”
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ehj2 says:
Doctor Violet,
Your words are completely true, but they aren’t all the truth of this moment.
Yesterday’s poem in my zen calendar was:
This snow,
that wafts softly down –
I could eat it!
IssaLast night it snowed here a beautiful three inches of glistening powder and this morning I walked and even danced like your flying monkeys beneath the white-laden trees surrounding this little cabin in the woods with my crazy dog who knows more about everything than I do.
I have tears because it’s all so horrible. And I have tears because it’s all so wonderful.
February 7th, 2007 at 9:21 pm EST -
Andrew says:
I sincerely hope Amanda does not get fired.
After all, for your average Joe, misandry flies below his radar. Amanda does an excellent job of pointing out to him exactly what it is.
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Madison Guy says:
Note to Edwards: At least say something. The silence is hardly presidential. When attacked by swiftbloggers, you need to do the right thing. Fast. And you need to know what it is. Edwards is rapidly sinking deeper and deeper into a quagmire where there’s no good alternative — and where “do the right thing” becomes an oxymoron. Sound familiar?
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Violet says:
After all, for your average Joe, misandry flies below his radar. Amanda does an excellent job of pointing out to him exactly what it is.
Yes, she does. Amanda is great at pointing out that anti-feminists are the ones with the low opinion of men, and that only feminists believe that men are as capable as women of self-control, compassion, generosity, integrity, etc.
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jack d says:
give it up, really. The accuser changed her story and now has a new time line which contradicts timestamps pictures and story from withness including the other dancer. Murphy is an idiot for making that article and anyone that backs her up does so at the cost of their own credibility.
Beside, stats about the false rate anywhere from 4% to 20% but percentages means nothing when evidence comes out. Strangely enough, people like you are dangerous to true victims because you can so transparantly be wrong that in cases where people can really have doubts, they will stop giving the benefit of doubt to the victims because you will have cried wolf too many times
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Violet says:
Fuck off, twit.
Where are the pinheads coming from? Geez, I hope I haven’t been linked to by Vox Day again.
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jack d says:
Violet, did not notice your post before, but you are pretty funny.
Trust me, I don’t need Amanda to point out that men are capable of self-control, compassion, generosity, integrity, etc.
I already consider these male traits but thank anyway, nice try.
She will get fired or Edwards will pay the price. You cannot spew venom and make so many blanket statements at people and think they will not fight back. The problem here is not the right of the political spectrum, but a lot of the left as well.
good luck to your little ideological lovefest.
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Violet says:
Beside, stats about the false rate anywhere from 4% to 20%
For the record, let me just note that the 4% (or thereabouts) is from the FBI, whereas the 20% is a completely bogus figure from people like Glenn Sacks, a misogynist “men’s activist” who’s made a career out of arguing that men almost never really commit rape or domestic violence.
Just want to clear that up, so no one feels compelled to respond to the twit.
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Paul Tergeist says:
One wonders why the North Carolina State Bar charged Mike Nifong with 100 counts of professional misconduct.
Now let’s discuss the statistics. When I state statistics, I attribute them.
False Rape Accusations May Be More Common Than Thought
May 2, 2006
Wendy McElroy
Foxnews.com[propaganda deleted by Violet]
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Violet says:
Paul, if you want to post a link to Fox News you can (though why would you want to?) but I’m not going to host those lies.
Wendy McElroy is a professional anti-feminist who regularly promotes the misogynist bullshit from people like Glenn Sacks. That stuff infuriates me; in a world where rape victims have a hard enough time even being believed, I have no patience with people who spend their time spreading lies that actually make it harder for rape victims to get justice.
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clarence says:
http://www.talkleft.com
http://z9.invisionfree.com/Lie.....index.php?There are documents at these links.
Discovery phase is now over. By NC law the prosecution has turned it all over to the defense.
Read the docs and tell me if you think this case has any legs. I’ve been following it closely since April, and I’ve never yet seen anyone even try to defend it when challenged.
It was painfully obvious from her “Airport” comment that Amanda didn’t know what she was talking about and was spewing without researching. But it fit her ideology and she was not willing to consider otherwise. That’s her true crime.
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Violet says:
One wonders why the North Carolina State Bar charged Mike Nifong with 100 counts of professional misconduct.
There are two main possibilities.
One, if you believe that the NC Bar is full of good upstanding angels who are models of integrity, then it’s because they think Nifong handled the case improperly and made prejudicial statements in the media.
Two, if you notice that some of the attorneys behind the charges are Duke alum and that the parents of the Duke defendants have vigorously pursued the anti-Nifong angle and poured millions of dollars into funding every possible attack and that Nifong seems to have some enemies in the state, then you might think there’s some politics involved.
Or it could be some combination of the above.
But no matter what, Nifong’s conduct as a D.A. tells us nothing about what happened to that woman that night.
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Violet says:
There are documents at these links.
I’m sure a site called “Duke Hoax” is impartial.
You’re right, though, we don’t need rape trials at all. We’ll just let all you sexist, racist white boys decide amongst yourselves. Wait a minute — you’ve already decided that most rape accusations are false, so heck! We can just declare in advance that any woman who says she’s been raped is a lying whore and probably deserves to have a broomstick shoved up her ass, right?
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gwallan says:
Violet
Given Sacks defence of Amanda’s appointment to the Edwards campaign I find your attack on him here quite bewildering.Regarding the Duke case it matters little what the rate of false allegations happens to be. Clearly in this instance the accuser is lying. Your defence of this accuser does your cause no good at all. She is, in fact, your worst enemy.
I’m thankful this event did not occur in Australia because I can guarantee that victims and advocates in the US will be confronting far greater scepticism in future. That is something we can definitely do without.
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Victoria says:
Violet, in case I haven’t said this recently enough: you are awesome.
Thanks for continuing to fight the good fight.
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abyss2hope says:
Trust me, I don’t need Amanda to point out that men are capable of self-control, compassion, generosity, integrity, etc. I already consider these male traits but thank anyway, nice try.
I guess you aren’t a man, then since you aren’t displaying any of those traits.
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Violet says:
She is, in fact, your worst enemy.
Actually my worst enemy is people like you, twit.
The teeny-tiny minority of rape accusers who are lying are not the reason that rape victims have a difficult time being believed. After all, a similar percentage of theft accusers are also lying, as are a similar percentage of accusers of all other major crimes. Yet there is not widespread skepticism that theft victims are lying; when a false theft case occurs it doesn’t make the news; people like you, twit, don’t go around on blogs insisting that all the lying theft accusers are the ones making it hard for theft victims to be believed. Because theft victims don’t have a hard time being believed, do they? Yet the same percentage of people lie about being robbed as lie about being raped.
The difference is that there is a 6,000 year tradition in patriarchal societies of treating rape as either non-existent or the woman’s own fault. There is a built-in misogynist assumption that women who claim to be raped are sluts or liars or both. That’s the problem. That’s why rape victims have a hard time being believed.
You know, there used to be a saying in the civil rights era (and maybe there still is) that a white man in a ditch was just a white man in a ditch, but a black man in a ditch was the entire Black race in a ditch. It’s the same with rape victims. Someone who lies about being robbed — or any other crime, for that matter — is a white man in a ditch, representative of nothing but himself. But a woman who lies about being raped is, for sexist twits like you, representative of all rape victims.
Again: the problem isn’t the handful of people who lie about being raped, because there will always be a handful of people who lie. The problem is the sexist twits who treat false rape victims like the proverbial Black man in a ditch.
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ehj2 says:
Dear Violet,
Thanks for your effort in pulling together the threads of the hard stuff. But as Paden said to Emmett in the classic western Silverado (as they were about to take on some bad guys who’d stolen the treasure from a wagon train), “riding with you is no picnic.”
The meta-conversation here is about power. Politics is about power. Prejudice is about power. Anything about sex is about power.
There are writers here who sometimes seem to suggest they believe that guns and training are the answer to everything. It should be obvious there are other forms of power.
After the Enlightenment, there was some hope that logic and facts and reason would be sufficient power. For someone who understands that you shouldn’t show up at a gun fight with a knife, quoting statistics from Fox hacks (in any conversation, let alone an academic feminist conversation) is like showing up at a tank battle with a plastic fork. Even seeing this done here is embarrassing.
The very existence of Fox punditry, however, demonstrates that logic, facts, and reason (i.e., truth) are insufficient power — most of the collective is simply unconscious and incapable of sustained logical thought, especially where truth is threatening to the existing order. Power remains vested in “lawyers, guns, and money.”
The instant we were aware that millions of dollars and the weight of cultural prejudice was vested in a predetermination of innocence, we should have acknowledged that any hope of an honest outcome was lost. Even judges in this country owe the power structures favors that can be called in, the law is what lawyers massage it to be, and when the “mob” of collectively unconscious people want something badly enough, there are ways to justify it and make it so.
Our anguish resides not simply in this single case, but in the lack of human justice for the powerless, and in our recognition of the huge and for most, still unconscious gulf between male and female power in the culture writ large.
Riding with you is no picnic, but it’s the right place to be.
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will says:
Edwards is twit if he allows himself to be bullied at this point. He should have well aware of Amanda’s style when he hired her. I often agree with her, but she makes her point in a manner that I doubt plays well in convincing the middle of the roaders. If that is your goal (persuasion of undecideds), I do not understand the rationale behind her selection. But once you hire her, stick with her.
I fail to see any reason why other blogger’s style is being come into question.
I am not sure why you insert the Duke case. Other than the idea that you have to believe every person who alleges rape, no matter what the story is, there is every reason to doubt what she has said at this point. If you can even nail down what she is said. The facts all seem to indicate that she fabricated this story.
However, I think it is important to let the process work. I think the rush to judge the Duke players as guilty is disappointing, especially considering that the facts seem to indicate that they are not.
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ehj2 says:
Dear Will,
Think linkage and domino effect. Edwards is being undermined by his linkage to a blogger, who is being undermined by her linkage (commentary) to this case.
Folks against Edwards have a vested interest in undermining a blogger, and a vested interest in the outcome of a trial which is being used to undermine her credentials, and by linkage (via his judgement) Edwards himself.
Why should this trial have anything to do with Edwards? Use your head.
Try to take the 100,000 foot view and imagine how much else in this country and in the culture is effectively linked to the outcome of this case and imagine the pressures on the judical structures (and the power structures).
You’ve got to start looking at who benefits from what you think and why you think it and how you act on what you think.
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will says:
“If I were Edwards, I never would have hired Amanda in a million years (though I like her writing). That said, William Donahue is a fucking fruit loop, and if he can bully Edwards, then Edwards has zero chance of being elected President.”
I stole this quote from someone else.
Someone else described her as being “way to hip for the room.”
Not Edwards best decision to hire her, but he looks and is much worse by firing her. Shame on him.
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will says:
ehj2:
So what does that tell us about the Duke case?
Are you ready to judge the defendants guilty as others here apparently are?
If so, on what evidence? Is there ANY evidence other than her varied stories?
If there is, I havent seen it. Don’t get me wrong. I think the error is pronoucing judgment at this point.
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Violet says:
So what does that tell us about the Duke case?
There is no mysterious connection here. As I noted in my post, Amanda’s commentary on the Duke case is one of the things she’s been specifically castigated for by the wingnuts (the other is her joking about Christianity). Amanda’s most recent Duke post was the subject of Michelle Malkin’s attack and much discussion in the blogosphere and the mainstream media, and a number of the bloggers who defended Amanda have discussed the Duke case.
Are you ready to judge the defendants guilty as others here apparently are?
Sometimes I wonder if you really are a lawyer. You can’t tell the difference between a working assumption that a crime has occurred and the presumption that a particular defendant is guilty?
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will says:
“I’m not particularly inclined to believe that the victim in this case is lying. Certainly there’s always that 4% chance, and this case may prove to be one of the rare ones in which the charges are false, but I haven’t heard anything yet that makes me think an assault of some kind didn’t occur.”
I must have been confused VS. Please tell me which one the above is: “a working assumption that a crime has occurred and the presumption that a particular defendant is guilty?”
Now you are trying to divide the line. Perhaps I should have asked “Do you think a crime has occured?” Certainly, your statements make it clear that you do.
I asked whether you are ready to judge the defendants guilty. You parsed it by essentially saying someone is guilty, maybe or maybe not these particular ones. Are you sure that you are not a lawyer?
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ehj2 says:
Dear Will,
My words are pretty clear on “what this tells us about the Duke case” — there’s so much at stake and so much exogenous power involved that any hope of an honest outcome is lost.
I know extremely little about the case and haven’t written one word suggesting I believe the defendents are guilty (try to stay attentive to the actual text in front of you and don’t make up stuff).
Most of what you write about the case, however, is extremely prejudicial. If you want to pretend you understand American jurisprudence, you can start by acknowledging that all the pseudo-facts in the public domain are incomplete and no more than gossip.
What you can know about the case, by understanding the culture around you, is what’s at stake. This has gone international. You and I are having a conversation about it’s impact on one of the most important decisions that American citizens make — the choice of their President. This is too big. No single person should have to carry this.
And no one could carry this. This is going to crush people.
And you could show some compassion for that understanding.
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Violet says:
I must have been confused VS. Please tell me which one the above is: “a working assumption that a crime has occurred and the presumption that a particular defendant is guilty?”
It’s a working assumption that a crime has occurred.
As for the particular defendants in this case, of course the assumption is that they are innocent unless proven guilty. If you want my opinion, I think it is quite likely that the victim IDed one or more wrong people. But that hardly means that the assault didn’t occur. I have personal experience with not being able to identify my own attacker even though we were face to face, so I sympathize.
I don’t know why you think this is tricky. In most murder trials, the issue at hand is whether the defendant is guilty, not whether the murder has taken place. Same with burglary, theft, assault, etc. The central park jogger — was there ever any doubt she’d been raped? Of course not. The question at trial wasn’t whether she’d consented to be raped by those five boys; it was whether they were the ones who did it. As it turns out, they probably weren’t.
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will says:
“Most of what you write about the case, however, is extremely prejudicial. If you want to pretend you understand American jurisprudence, you can start by acknowledging that all the pseudo-facts in the public domain are incomplete and no more than gossip.”
I am the one saying that we do not have all the facts, therefore, we cannot judge what happened. I did note that the facts that are closest to being objective do not support her statements.
My issue is with those people who have declared the defendants guilty based on gossip.
“there’s so much at stake and so much exogenous power involved that any hope of an honest outcome is lost.”
So you believe that the fix is in?
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Paul Tergeist says:
Wendy McElroy is a professional anti-feminist who regularly promotes the misogynist bullshit from people like Glenn Sacks. That stuff infuriates me; in a world where rape victims have a hard enough time even being believed, I have no patience with people who spend their time spreading lies that actually make it harder for rape victims to get justice.
-VioletThere are lies, damn lies and statistics. If you post numbers, why not attribute them? Calling my statistics lies and deleting them in favor of your unattributed statistics is just silly. Every police officer in the US has to call in a time and mileage when beginning and ending the transportation of female to prevent false rape allegations. Like it or not, women play the rape card because they can, not always because it happened, and that fact causes the actual victims to be taken less seriously. It isn’t right, it just is.
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will says:
“I have personal experience with not being able to identify my own attacker even though we were face to face, so I sympathize.”
I am absolutely sympathetic to this statement. Eyewitness identification is extremely difficult and often messed up. Problems with identification do not mean that a crime did not occurr. DNA has been a tremendous help in this area, both in catching the right people and in preventing convictions of the wrong people. Too much pressure has been on the victim is id the correct person. DNA is a blessing.
Now, whether a crime occured: The “facts” that have come out do not tend to make me think that a crime occurred. The facts get presented at trial though, so I will happily wait until all the facts are presented. Even then, I cannot judge credibility of witnesses bc I am not there. That is what jurors are for.
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Violet says:
If you post numbers, why not attribute them? Calling my statistics lies and deleting them in favor of your unattributed statistics is just silly.
Paul, you’re welcome to spend the day at the Bureau of Justice website or the FBI site or the CDC site (which also tracks sexual violence).
The phony numbers from people like McElroy and Sacks are generated by using, for example, the number of rape cases that don’t result in conviction as the number of “false accusations.” It’s just garbage.
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ehj2 says:
Dear Paul,
Suggesting we should believe in the credibility of Fox is just … not credible. Can’t you find the FBI site?
Abruptly changing the subject to women in police cars is … about something completely different than this thread. Interesting, but really really really off topic. This is a fallacy of logic — if you can’t win the actual argument, change the complete nature of the argument, win that, and believe you’ve won. Sorry.
What we men demonstrate here is our gut reaction to our instinctual fear of being this powerless. The average woman probably experiences some sense of this utter powerlessness EVERY DAY.
Yeah. You could be accused. It’d be bad.
But if you’re a woman. You could be raped. And you’ll know that if you press charges it will always be about more than just the rape. It will be about the credibility of whole groups of people and the balance of power somewhere.
Which form of powerlessness would you prefer? If you choose “I’ll stay a man,” recognize the disparity and stop whining.
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Michelle says:
Edwards knew when he hired Amanda where she stood on certain issues, so if he fires her over this than he is not a very good decision maker and therefore not the best choice for president. Maybe he just doesn’t want to dignify them with a response.
Also, thank you for the link to Wendy’s Op-Ed article. Jumping to conclusions is never a good idea, and when someone is trying to destroy a person’s character in the judicial arena it is usually because they have nothing else to back their case.
I recently watched a movie called Idiocracy, in which Luke Wilson’s character wakes up after 500 years to find that everyone is stupid. He gets arrested and taken before a judge. The case goes on like a Jerry Springer show with the defense brings up such facts as the accused talks gay and other such nonsense while the entire court erupts in applause and laughter. Luke’s character is found guilty.
The way the defense is carrying on in the Duke case made me think of this movie and I died a little inside. To think, has it come down to “she’s so full of shit”(a spanglish accent) and “OMG she is such a filthy whore” (A Jersey or valley girl accent) -
will says:
Michelle:
Does it bother you that these defendants were pronounced guilty by members of Duke’s faculty prior to having their day in court?
Murphy’s article argues to allow the woman her day in court, but, if you remember the begining, these men were judged long ago as rapists. I find it disingenious to complain about the defense playing to the press after the advertisement in the paper prounouncing their guilt.
These cases need to stay out of the press.
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Violet says:
Does it bother you that these defendants were pronounced guilty by members of Duke’s faculty prior to having their day in court?
Except they weren’t. Here’s the original ad taken out by those Duke professors. As you see, the purpose of the ad was to note that they were listening to students and ready to have an open dialogue about racism and sexism.
The interpretation that the professors were pronouncing the Duke defendants guilty is from the wingnut and sexist blogosphere.
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abyss2hope says:
Will:My issue is with those people who have declared the defendants guilty based on gossip.
Yet, like those who attack Amanda’s words on the Duke case, you don’t seem to have an issue with those people who have declared the alleged victim guilty based on gossip.
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abyss2hope says:
Paul Tergeist:Every police officer in the US has to call in a time and mileage when beginning and ending the transportation of female to prevent false rape allegations.
The real cause of this concern isn’t false rape reports, but real rape. If no police officer sexually assaulted or sexual abused someone under their control this wouldn’t be the issue it is. Yet you blame only alleged rape victims.
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ehj2 says:
A thought experiment:
In this culture, one significant form of a woman’s power is her beauty. She is encouraged from every direction to look and act like a hotbot. But everytime she dresses or considers any excursion, she has to think for a moment, will this invite some clown to rape me and will this dress be used to justify his action?
One form of a man’s power is in his wallet — but he gets to keep most of that in the bank. Imagine that a man had to carry his wealth with him and display it openly for it to be accessible as a form of power — and thus his wealth was available to be taken from him by thieves.
In thinking about this, does a man sense the nature of powerlessness associated with the power of displayed wealth (whether beauty or money)?
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will says:
“Yet, like those who attack Amanda’s words on the Duke case, you don’t seem to have an issue with those people who have declared the alleged victim guilty based on gossip.”
Where do you get that?
I repeatedly said that you have to wait until trial. I have said that the facts that have been reported don’t help her cause:
No DNA from the lacrosse players
Several versions from her
Date stamps contradicting her timeline.
Prosecution not using the proper lineupThose issues cause me concern. But the trial is where the evidence comes out.
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will says:
I thought his statement was weak and pathetic.
This is how he should have responded (once again stolen from someone else):
“Meanwhile, we’ve spent two days talking about some bullshit low-level campaign staffer working for one of three major contenders for the Democratic nomination for president over a year from now, instead of Warner et al’s bullshit move to cut off debate about Iraq, the Bush administration’s firing of a shitload of US Attourneys to be replaced with political cronies, Waxman’s Halliburton investigation, the downing of five helicopters in Iraq so far this calendar year, or the forthcoming indictment of high level Bush appointees to the CIA. And what has it cost the right wing? A few hours of Michelle Malkin’s time, and one phone call by anti-Semite Bill Donohue, combined with a blogocentric inclination towards navel-gazing and a dumbfuck media ecosphere.”
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simply wondered says:
stats presumption etc all in doubt – what is certain in my mind is that jack d may fuck self with broomstick for all i care
subtly as ever
xxx -
Michelle says:
“Does it bother you that these defendants were pronounced guilty by members of Duke’s faculty prior to having their day in court?”
Will,
I am not sure if we have read the same articles about this case. I have heard from the beginning that the Duke players were up standing students that were having a little party. And that the woman who is accusing them of rape is a stripper and therefore not reliable. Being that I don’t know any of these people, this statement could be true, but in the same instance it could be false. Which is why I am willing to wait until the trial is over with before I believe any trumped up news agency trying to make a buck on shock and awe articles.
However that being said, I still do not believe that it is right for the defense to drag her through the mud. The case is not about whether this lady is a whore or a stripper or any number of other things. This case is about whether the men on trial did in fact rape her. A whore can still be raped and a stripper can still be raped, even a person such as yourself can be raped. Her character however is not on trial and by bring it up the defense is just pandering to the sexist and misogynistic masses that are screaming, “Burn the witch!” -
therealuk says:
Apparently a statement has been released by the Edwards camp:
“The tone and the sentiment of some of Amanda Marcotte’s and Melissa McEwan’s posts personally offended me. It’s not how I talk to people, and it’s not how I expect the people who work for me to talk to people. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but that kind of intolerant language will not be permitted from anyone on my campaign, whether it’s intended as satire, humor, or anything else. But I also believe in giving everyone a fair shake. I’ve talked to Amanda and Melissa; they have both assured me that it was never their intention to malign anyone’s faith, and I take them at their word. We’re beginning a great debate about the future of our country, and we can’t let it be hijacked. It will take discipline, focus, and courage to build the America we believe in.”
It’s on his blog.
Can’t say I’m that impressed, too little too late really.
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abyss2hope says:
Will:I have said that the facts that have been reported don’t help her cause
Most of these “facts” are not confirmed facts but are rumors based on selective facts being marketed by the defense teams and those who call this alleged victim a hoaxer.
The defense teams’ spin doesn’t help her cause? What a shock.
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will says:
“Most of these “facts” are not confirmed facts but are rumors based on selective facts being marketed by the defense teams and those who call this alleged victim a hoaxer.”
The things that I listed are undisputed facts.
As someone else mentioned, there are MANY, many possible twists that this case can take. (ie witnesses from the party, etc).
Michelle:
It sounds like we are not reading the same things. I do not give any credibility to those who say that since she is a stripper or “whore” she cannot be raped. I certainly haven’t seen anything of that nature coming from the defense team.
Too many people seem convinced that they know what happened or what will happen at trial. My viewpoint is that I have been disappointed how this has been prosecuted. My viewpoint is that the more objective seeming facts do not cast the prosecution is a great light.
I do not know what will happen when is comes to trial.
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Violet says:
My viewpoint is that I have been disappointed how this has been prosecuted. My viewpoint is that the more objective seeming facts do not cast the prosecution is a great light.
Actually this is your viewpoint:
“…there is every reason to doubt what she has said at this point. If you can even nail down what she is said. The facts all seem to indicate that she fabricated this story.”
Straight from Fox News to Will’s mouth.
It is ironic that you’re always saying that we shouldn’t pay attention to media reports suggesting that a rape took place or that an alleged rapist is guilty, yet in this case you have concluded that this woman is a liar on the basis of nothing but defense attorney press releases and media spin.
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will says:
“Other than the idea that you have to believe every person who alleges rape, no matter what the story is, there is every reason to doubt what she has said at this point. If you can even nail down what she is said. The facts all seem to indicate that she fabricated this story.
However, I think it is important to let the process work. I think the rush to judge the Duke players as guilty is disappointing, especially considering that the facts seem to indicate that they are not.”
Here is the full quote. “Concluded” and “seem to indicated” are two very different things.
Vs, you have been expressing certainty, not me. I have repeatedly said what I “think” the facts indicate and repeatedly said that the trial could be vastly different. I have repeatedly asked on what information you express your certainty. All I have heard is that women rarely make false allegations.
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Violet says:
All I have heard is that women rarely make false allegations.
That’s all you need to hear until the case goes to trial. Rape victims need to be granted the same credibility as other victims. Instead, the victim herself is put on trial, her credibility doubted, her reputation destroyed.
96% of rape allegations are true; only 4% are false. Until rape is treated appropriately and this bullshit crucifixion of victims stops, I’m going to approach every single case by reminding people about that 96/4 split.
As for this particular case, the defense attorney/media spin is really very different from the picture that emerges when you look at the case reports. Here is the New York Times review of the files on the case from last year: Files From Duke Rape Case Give Details but No Answers. When I read that article, it seems perfectly believable to me that the woman was sexually assaulted and that she was in a state of extreme shock afterwards. It’s possible that she fabricated the story, but overall — and contrary to what the defense attorneys have been bleating publicly for months — the sequence of events is consistent with a sexual assault.
I also think that the D.A. probably got at least one wrong guy. It’s striking that a number of details of the woman’s account given to police that night actually match other players — Matt, the semen by the toilet, the semen on the rag in the hallway.
None of us knows what actually happened, but the sober details of the investigation are very, very different from the defense attorney/media bullshit about how the woman is a nutcase who can’t keep her story straight and there’s “no evidence,” yadeyadyayde.
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abyss2hope says:
Will:My viewpoint is that the more objective seeming facts do not cast the prosecution is a great light.
The key is “objective seeming facts” and of course they don’t cast the prosecution in a great light. They are doing exactly what the defense teams hoped they’d do.
They want to create the myth that these men have been exonerated and all we’re waiting for is the paperwork to prove that they are the victims of a conspiracy.
Notice that any “objective seeming facts” which don’t cast the Duke lacrosse players in a great light either get disputed as mere rumor or people keep shouting the “objective seeming facts” which fit their bias.
Where I’ve been able to compare the “objective seeming facts” with source documents (such as the paperwork dropping the rape charges) there is a huge difference between the two. Yet the biased summation is treated by many as simple undisputed fact.
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Violet says:
I was just reading some of the comments at the NYT article on Edwards’s decision not to fire Amanda, and the male hysteria over the Duke case just kills me. On every single blog, every single website, men show up absolutely quivering with rage that those poor little lacrosse babies have been vilified and smeared with “hate speech.”
What Amanda said in her airport post is exactly right: “Can’t a few white boys sexually assault a black woman anymore without people getting all wound up about it? So unfair.” That’s the attitude exactly.
These men who complain so loudly don’t deny that the Duke creeps hired strippers and then terrorized them; they don’t deny that the men held up a broomstick and threatened to rape the women with it; they don’t deny the racial slurs; they don’t deny the email about skinning and killing “bitches.” They don’t deny ANY of that — and yet all that alone is clear evidence that the Duke Lacrosse Team are the scum of the fucking earth. No, these men think all that behavior is fine. They’re simply enraged that the poor little babies were charged with rape.
Really, Amanda should have said, “Can’t a few 250-pound white boys terrorize strippers and threaten to object-rape them and hustle them into a bathroom and joke about skinning and killing them without being charged with rape and having people take it seriously? So unfair.”
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will says:
Ridiculous. Did I say any of those things?
As you are very well aware, there is a difference between saying that they treated her poorly and saying that the information seems to indicate that she wasnt sexually assaulted, so maybe you should call them rapists.
Furthermore, are you suggesting that being charged with rape, being suspended from school, and having your face spread across the nations is a walk in the park?
And Abyss, what facts are you refering to?
The absence of DNA is an objective fact. It doesnt prove that nothing happened. But, its absence tends to cooberate the defendants version. Same with the guy’s atm card. Doesnt prove that she wasnt assaulted. But it tends to indicate that he wasnt the guy. The DA decided not to use the accepted method to conduct a photo lineup. Why? Are those made up facts?
What happens if a jury finds them not guilty and there are not any other facts that come out? Do you still believe that she was assault? I am happy to suspend final judgment until the end. But are you? I doubt that will change your minds. Why bother with facts?
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Paul Tergeist says:
“There are writers here who sometimes seem to suggest they believe that guns and training are the answer to everything. It should be obvious there are other forms of power.”
-FrenchieNot at all, but I do suggest that guns and training are without peer in ONE circumstance: home invasion. When someone breaks into your home, knowing that you are there, especially if you are a woman, it doesn’t make sense to rely on God to save you because He (or she) won’t. At the last resort, either you defend yourself or you die and everyone has to decide which they will do.
“After the Enlightenment, there was some hope that logic and facts and reason would be sufficient power. For someone who understands that you shouldn’t show up at a gun fight with a knife, quoting statistics from Fox hacks (in any conversation, let alone an academic feminist conversation) is like showing up at a tank battle with a plastic fork. Even seeing this done here is embarrassing.”
-FrenchieDon’t start on me, Homer. I don’t like either Fox or Rush, but I took the first search result I found and wazzername’s point is as valid as Violet’s because they both refer to FBI statistics without referencing any. If you want to believe for the sake of belief, fine. Vi did the same thing as Foxie and neither ‘facts’ are valid as stated.
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ehj2 says:
Paul,
You’re trapped in a Freudian slip.
The title of this post is “Swift-Boating,” an invective-gossip-driven firehose of rancid excrement masquerading as “informative balanced opinion,” and the signature activity of Fox broadcasting. You merely underscore Violet’s entire point by repeating the horrific slurs of this premier swift-boating entity as if they were credible. Get it? That’s the point.
If you watch Fox for news, you’re too wacky to have guns.
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Paul Tergeist says:
I don’t watch Fox for news. I just finished saying I did a search and took the first result. Capice?
And I understand the name of the thread but I repeat that facts without attribution aren’t facts at all, they are propaganda…which is my point. I shouldn’t have to keep repeating over and over that I am on Vi’s side here, yet you are starting to sound like Dubya. Get a grip, son.
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Violet says:
Ridiculous. Did I say any of those things?
Not you, the people like whatshisname and his buddies upthread — types like that show up everywhere, all screaming that Amanda must be punished for “hate speech.”
As you are very well aware, there is a difference between saying that they treated her poorly and saying that the information seems to indicate that she wasnt sexually assaulted, so maybe you should call them rapists.
I don’t understand the last part of that sentence, but the guys who show up on blogs behave as if the lacrosse team are angels and some horrible injustice has been done.
Why the rage? Seriously, why so much rage that these men have been charged with sexual assault?
First of all, people get accused of crimes all the time. If they’re innocent, then hopefully they’ll be acquitted. The same is true of these Duke players. If the guys are innocent, then presumbably they’ll be acquitted. So again — why the rage?
Secondly, what is not in dispute is that the Duke men were behaving like goddamned animals that night. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that excuses 20 big burly men from threatening to rape two little women with a broom handle, even if the men thought it was just a funny joke. These are not people I would feel personally inclined to spend time championing. So again — why so much rage on their behalf? If they’re innocent of the rape they’ll be acquitted, so — why the rage on their behalf?
The point is, here’s all we, the public, know for sure:
1. The woman claims she was raped, but she may be lying.
2. The men may have raped her, but they may be innocent.
3. The men at the party were definitely behaving like goddamned animals not worth a pile of warm dog poop.Given that that’s all we really know, it’s very interesting that so many men in America are just quivering with rage on behalf of the warm dog poop people.
As for your “objective facts” –
The absence of DNA doesn’t help the prosecution case, that’s for sure, but all it really means is that none of the alleged rapists ejaculated inside the woman.
As for the ATM record, I’ve said several times that I think she may have IDed the wrong guy or guys. I think the IDs are very shaky, and if you read the report she seemed to acknowledge her difficulty (and there’s some indication that the D.A. was pushing for more of an ID than she could really give). I am totally sympathetic to her difficulty, as I mentioned. I couldn’t even begin to identify the face of the man I was grappling face-to-face with — shock, trauma, a very bad memory for faces, who knows why.
As for the lineup problem, it’s really not fair to mention that as if it pokes holes in the woman’s story. That’s a procedural error on the D.A.’s part, surely.
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Paul Tergeist says:
From 36: The real cause of this concern isn’t false rape reports, but real rape. If no police officer sexually assaulted or sexual abused someone under their control this wouldn’t be the issue it is. Yet you blame only alleged rape victims.
-abyss2hopeThat’s just stupid. I am quite certain that some failed cop raped or abused someone at some point in time, but I am a retired cop and no one I knew or ever heard of did or they would have been in the slam for live.
We reported time and mileage for the safety of the transportee of course, but primarily it was a matter of protecting ourselves since there were and still are a LOT of false rape charges. Believe it or not I speak from experience, just as I do when I tell you what happens to female victims if they are unable to defend themselves in their own homes. You want to see the fucking pictures? I am not blaming anyone, but I did the forensics at a LOT of crime scenes and if you haven’t been to one you have no clue.
“Which form of powerlessness would you prefer? If you choose “I’ll stay a man,” recognize the disparity and stop whining.”
-ehj2It isn’t one or the other and I don’t whine. I am not defending Fox noise, nor any of their lackeys. But Violet keeps pounding the 96% of reported rapes are actual and 4% are false and she can’t back them up. Simple. If you don’t like my reference search for one you do like, but don’t blame me for truths you find inconvenient. All I am asking for is a link to the research and I still don’t see it. Here are some links. I don’t vouch for any of them, but at least you can read for yourself instead of having to accept my numbers.
http://lawprofessors.typepad.c.....pe_st.html
http://www.anandaanswers.com/pages/naaFalse.html
http://www.americandaily.com/article/5075
http://www.salon.com/news/1999/03/cov_10news.html
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Violet says:
But Violet keeps pounding the 96% of reported rapes are actual and 4% are false and she can’t back them up. Simple. If you don’t like my reference search for one you do like, but don’t blame me for truths you find inconvenient. All I am asking for is a link to the research and I still don’t see it.
Bullshit. Paul, if you’re a retired cop, then you know the FBI, right? Federal Bureau of Investigation. And you know the Bureau of Justice, right? The crime statistics clearing-house for the nation. GO TO THEIR WEBSITE. I’m not citing some secret research; the BOJ and FBI statistics are the starting point for every discussion of rape in this country.
If you click on the Rape category on this blog you will find some older posts I did on rape statistics with some links, but I think the BOJ has reorganized their website since then and I don’t off-hand have a handy link to give you. Geez.
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Violet says:
That’s just stupid.
No, it’s just logical.
Paul, I’ve warned you before about verbally abusing women on these threads where we’re discussing rape. You’re talking to rape survivors, so keep your tongue in your head.
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Violet says:
Equityfeminism???
Ay yi yi. Paul, I realize you’re not vouching for those sites, but just so you know — equityfeminism is feminist in the same way that Bush’s clear-cutting program is a Healthy Forests Initiative.
“Equity feminism” and “ifeminism” are both anti-feminist movements.
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simply wondered says:
say what you like about ifeminism, but it’s the first time i have heard about the ‘domestic abuse men’s helpline’! sounds useful – i presume we men ring them up and are told not to fucking well do it. it must be something like that, surely?
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will says:
VS:
I simply want the process to work without all of the pronouncements of guilt or innocence. Media reports rarely help justice to be served. Until or unless they are found guilty, they shouldnt be kicked out of school and treated the way they have been treated.
As far as the prosecutor’s conduct, when someone deviates from their normal procedure, there is usually a reason. His conduct troubles me. As you mentioned, ID are incredibly difficult and troublesome. Look to the Innocence Project to see some of the horrendous results of faulty IDs. Moreover, if you get the wrong guy, that means a rapist is still out on the streets. Convicting the correct person serves EVERYONE’s interest. So when a prosecutor bends the rules, that is incredibly scary due to the immense power the prosecutor has.
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abyss2hope says:
Will, you say you want the process to work without pronouncements of guilt or innocence, but you aren’t living up to that standard. You are giving a pronouncement of innocent* (*trial may prove me wrong) as if that disclaimer gets you off the hook for the premature accusations you’ve made against the alleged victim.
You yourself say media reports rarely help justice to be served, but you are making your pronouncements based on those media reports which are fed in large part from sources with the clear agenda of convincing the public that this case is all a hoax.
As for the defendants being kicked out of school, their undisputed behavior that night and the pattern of behavior by team members before that night are what ultimately caused the university to do what it did.
As for what my opinion will be if the defendants have all charges dropped against them or are found not guilty at trial that will depend on the basis for those rulings.
The case may remain credible but unprovable. However, I believe many people would turn unprovable into “it’s been proven that the alleged victim lied.” Many people are already saying this.
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Paul Tergeist says:
Damnit! I don’t care about anything else, I just don’t want to see any more vivisected women. I can’t seem to track down every serial killer so all I can do is rail against women being defenseless. For every rape victim/survivor there should be one less rapist walking the street. That’s my opinion, it always has been, and I stand by it.
I know that the FBI is widely recognized in the LE community as the Fucking Bunch of Idiots, but I will provide a link to their statistics so that we can debate from the same page. W needn’t disagree about statistics when we can easily read them.
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/cvict_v.htm#gender
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/g.....vsxtab.htm
I am not trying to minimize anything. The FACT is that false rape accusations do occur on a regular basis. I am not dissing rape victims. I am not dissing rape survivors. I am not dissing women. I am saying that not every man is a potential rapist and not every woman is a paragon of honesty and that everyone deserves to be treated equally under the law. Not enough men are in prison for rape, but many of the ones who are, with no more evidence against than identification by the victim are probably innocent, while 70% of the guilty ones are roaming the streets. That tells any reasonable and prudent person that a threat is extant.
I don’t know what equityfeminism is but I know that buzzwords don’t stop violent crimes, which brings me back to the only point I am trying to make. Male or female, be prepared to defend yourself in your own home should it ever become necessary.
Humans, having evolved from little rat-things are just big rat-things. Expect the worst and act accordingly.
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will says:
abyss:
I will say it again even though you do not want to read it. The information that I have seen “SEEMS TO INDICATE” that this did not happen. I did not say that they are innocent. I said that it “SEEMS TO INDICATE” that this didnt happen in the context of questioning on what basis VS was pronouncing that a crime had been committed.
Think of it this way. VS said it was going to be sunny today. I respond saying why do you say that when it looks like it is getting dark. It “seems like it might rain.” I am not pronouncing that it is going to rain.
As far as the information that I have seen, please go read the information on what has been filed by the prosecutors. Look only at that information. Looking only at that information, it seems unlikely that a crime occurred.
But, I will repeat for you: a jury gets to decide this case. A jury is the fact finder who hears evidence presented and tested by cross-examination.
The media exists to sell advertising. The more titilating, the better. I do not trust the media to give me the truth, sad as that may be. -
simply wondered says:
PT:’Humans, having evolved from little rat-things’ – no! not conservatives???
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ehj2 says:
Well then, conflating comments 62 and 64, conservatives are evolved from rat-things who rape people (also the planet).
This comment, of course, is almost as bereft of reason as the ad which prompted this conversation, which clearly says:
Conservatives are evolved from rat-things
who rape people (also the planet)
but look marvelous while doing it. -
abyss2hope says:
Will:I will say it again even though you do not want to read it. The information that I have seen “SEEMS TO INDICATE” that this did not happen.
My problem with this as an argument about how to view this case is that it is meaningless. You basically admit as much when you say a trial could prove your conclusion wrong.
If you were saying that the information that you have seen raises some questions about what exactly happened or whether the right suspects were charged, that would be different.
You and many others skip the questions phase and are making accusations against the alleged victim while trying to get off the hook for doing that by using the phrase “seems to indicate.”
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Paul Tergeist says:
You and many others skip the questions phase and are making accusations against the alleged victim while trying to get off the hook for doing that by using the phrase “seems to indicate.
-abyssFar be it from me to jump in on Will’s side, but all he is asking for is fairness and impartiality even though we all agree that the Duke LaCrosse team are scumbags. He didn’t make any allegation against the alleged victim or, if he did I missed it. What post was it in?
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Violet says:
What post was it in?
I think his comment 19 above.
Will, you have changed your tone to be more objective, which is great, but Marcella is exactly right that you came out of the gate sounding as if it was pretty much a done deal that the accuser had fabricated this whole thing. I read your comment that way too. And on another thread sometime recently, you referred to the Duke case as if it was obvious that people had made a mistake to think that a rape had actually occurred.
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Violet says:
Also, Will, in your comments you have said that “it is a shame to rush to judgment” on the players. Isn’t it a shame to rush to judgment on the accuser? And in fact, isn’t it clear (it certainly is if you surf the net or watch TV) that about 99% of the commentary on this case is a rush to judgement on the accuser, not on the players?
The accuser has been called a liar and a slut and a hoaxer since the beginning, and there is now a veritable sea of venom about this woman online and in the airwaves. Try googling “duke rape case” and see how many results you have to go through to find one site that doesn’t refer to it as a “hoax” and a “travesty” and the woman as a “liar.”
That’s what I call a rush to judgment.
As for the working assumption that a rape has occurred, that’s no more a rush to judgement than it is to presume murder if a dead body shows up, or burglary if a house is broken into.
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will says:
“Other than the idea that you have to believe every person who alleges rape, no matter what the story is, there is every reason to doubt what she has said at this point. If you can even nail down what she is said. The facts all seem to indicate that she fabricated this story.
However, I think it is important to let the process work. I think the rush to judge the Duke players as guilty is disappointing, especially considering that the facts seem to indicate that they are not.”
Once again, my original comment. I’ll try another analogy. You walk into the house and say,”Wow, it is really snowing outside.” Five minutes later, I look outside and do not see any snow on the ground, sky, or on the cars. I would wonder whether you told me the truth. But, certainly other people or the news might cooberate your story. If you then change your story again, I might further wonder whether you were telling the truth. But I still need more facts to know for sure.I have asked on what information, other than her original claim, you think a crime occurred. Now that she has changed her story, what does that tell you? Does it cause you concern that she changed her story so that the defendants alibi times do work any more?
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Paul Tergeist says:
I’m thinking his isn’t the kind of evidence one takes to trial.
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Paul Tergeist says:
Before a prosecution can begin, at least in theory, certain elements must be present. The first one is that a crime must have been committed. The physical evidence released so far in this case leads a reasonable and prudent person (me) to conclude that such evidence is not unambiguously present. For instance, all of the defendants volunteered their DNA (which did not match) and volunteered to take lie detector tests, which the police declined to give them.
Secondly, if a crime HAS been committed, the prosecutor must identify the crime by its specific elements as stated in the state or federal penal code. Prosecutors always stack the deck by including every lesser included charge they can think of and the accused, if he (or she) is guilty, will usually plead to one of the lesser charges in exchange for a reduced sentence.
However, if the primary charge is murder, convicting the defendant of murder and kidnapping pursuant to murder won’t fly if the victim shows up in court and says “Oh, I’m not quite dead yet, sorry to have troubled you”.
If the main charge is rape but the victim decides she may not have really been raped, it’s difficult to convict on the lesser included charges. If the investigation is tainted, such a conviction should not be possible…for instance, if the photo lineup shown to the alleged victim has no wrong answers, as happened in this case.
Finally, after proving that a specific crime has been committed, the prosecutor has to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that a specific person or persons committed the crime as charged in the indictment, not simply someone who happened to be present.
In a rape case where DNA exists but is from multiple consensual partners from before the time of the alleged rape, a reasonable doubt must exist. How can it not?
I tend to think the culprit in this case is Mike Nifong. The victim may be getting a bad rap because of the pitiful was he handled the prosecution.
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simply wondered says:
i fear i have been misrepresented if people think conservatives are planet-and-people-rapers who evolved from small rat-like creatures.
i did not wish to imply that conservatives have evolved. they were the ‘little rat-things’ FROM which humans had evolved. the other way around would be so depressing and the only hope would be that humanity was an evolutionary dead end which would soon be over.
happy, happy talking… -
Tom Nolan says:
As for the working assumption that a rape has occurred, that’s no more a rush to judgement than it is to presume murder if a dead body shows up, or burglary if a house is broken into.
Shouldn’t there be a symmetry of elements if an analogy is to work? You’ve said what would lead you to presume a murder had occurred – a dead body. You’ve said what would lead you to presume a burglary had occurred – a break-in. But what is leading you to presume that a rape has occurred?
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Violet says:
But what is leading you to presume that a rape has occurred?
First and foremost, the simple fact that when a woman says she has been raped, there isn’t a 50% chance she’s telling the truth, but a 96% chance (or thereabouts) that she’s telling the truth. You men are sitting around saying, ‘gee, I don’t know’ in a way you would NEVER do if a man reported that he’d been mugged. Yet in the majority of criminal cases, there isn’t the kind of hard evidence of a crime as there is in, say, a murder case where you’ve got a corpse.
“My purse was stolen!” Really? How can you prove that? Maybe you’ve just hidden it.
“I was mugged!” Really? How can you prove that? Unless the mugger left marks on you (unlikely), there’s nothing but your word.
It is only in rape cases — ONLY in rape cases — where the victim’s word is automatically doubted, or the case treated as if there is at best a 50% chance that the crime occurred.
As for this particular case, not only is there the victim’s word, but there’s the positive rape kit, the circumstances of the party, and so on — the fact of a rape happening is perfectly possible.
I have asked on what information, other than her original claim, you think a crime occurred.
Will, I’m not even a lawyer, but I know that the evidence presented to the media in the case is solely the bits the defense attorneys have chosen to publish. More than 1000 pages of the discovery file have not been released to the public. If I were trained to think like a lawyer, I would almost certainly wonder what might be in those 1000 pages and why the defense attorneys haven’t released them.
Things like “she keeps changing her story” is coming from the defense attorneys, and in many cases these are outright fabrications or misstatements of what the woman has actually said. (For example, the defense attorneys are the ones who have spread the lie that she variously claimed to be raped by 3, 5, or 20 men. Actually the various reports come from sources like the Duke campus police who misunderstood a conversation they were overhearing.)
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Violet says:
Furthermore — for those of you who have been reading the defense attorney media spin for the past 10 months and believe that on that basis you can determine that the accuser in this case is a liar and a hoaxer, I recommend that you read back through the media coverage of a few other high-profile rape cases. Defense attorneys will say ANYTHING. In rape cases the main approach is to villify the victim and convince the public that a crime never occurred. In the Haidl rape case (the one where the woman was hideously raped with a pool cue, lit cigarette, etc.) the defense attorney media onslaught was so successful that by the time the case went to trial, everyone in the public had been convinced that the woman had asked the men to abuse her like that and film it in order to “launch her porn career.” Even when the jury was presented with the full evidence, prejudice against the woman was so strong that a rape conviction was unobtainable. The most the prosecutors could get was a lesser conviction on sexual abuse.
That is why I have refused for the past year to try this case in public on the basis of what the defense attorneys are pushing in the media. None of us knows for sure what happened, and hopefully things will become clear at trial (though they may not).
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Paul Tergeist says:
The accuser has been called a liar and a slut and a hoaxer since the beginning, and there is now a veritable sea of venom about this woman online and in the airwaves. Try googling “duke rape case” and see how many results you have to go through to find one site that doesn’t refer to it as a “hoax” and a “travesty” and the woman as a “liar.”
That’s what I call a rush to judgment.
-VioletThat’s what I call railroading the defendants on the basis of an emotional appeal, without regard to the evidence, simply because the alleged victim is a female, and thus it must have happened just as she said the first time. Maybe it would halp if we all read the police report so we know what she DID say.
http://abclocal.go.com/images/.....letter.pdf
The victim has been called names since the beginning but so have the defendants, and right here of all places. But the proof of that pudding is that the rape charges have been dropped because the victim keeps changing her story and because there is no forensic evidence.
The alleged victim’s father says she has falsely alleged rape in the past, the girl who was with her that night said it was the bunk and the evidence, so far as we know it, does not support the accusations.
What it really looks like, and what the state bar is investigating, is that Mikey Nifong grabbed this case and intentionally made a hot-button issue out of it during the run-up to a close election so he could get about 80 free spots on the evening news.
It worked after a fashion because he did get reelected, but no one can possibly prosecute this case now and it will have to be dropped.
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Violet says:
Paul, that link you posted from LewRockwell is not an example of railroading the defendants; it is in fact an example of what I alluded to, a rush to judgment to call the accuser a liar and a hoaxer. The LewRockwell page is exactly the kind of hate-filled character assassination that the sexists and racists and wingnuts have been engaged in for the past 10 months. They have been fed a constant stream of spin and misinformation by the defense attorneys in this case.
Repeating what you’ve heard on TV or from these wingnuts — which comes from the defense attorneys and their allies — is not persuasive. You’re just repeating garbage.
I’m not going to host any more of this stuff. This is a feminist blog, not a forum for defense attorney bullshit.
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Mandos says:
I have one weird question. How do you collect true/false accusation stats anyway? Isn’t there a massive epistemic problem in the entire concept?
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Violet says:
I have deleted that LewRockwell link from Paul’s comment. Not only was it unbelievably tendentious, but it named the accuser. I would leave it up as a good example of the vicious hatred that drives the people who are so anxious to try this case in the media, but I am not going to be party to publicizing the accuser’s name.
As an antidote, here are a few articles from the past two months at the Wilmington Journal, which has done a good job of covering the case:
Duke Official Told By Duke Police “Boys: Called Dancers the “N” and “B” Words
Duke Case: Can Cooper Force Witnesses to Speak?
The Alleged Robbery No One Talks About
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Violet says:
How do you collect true/false accusation stats anyway?
I have no idea, but the FBI estimates the rate of false (or unfounded) accusations for all major crimes. I think most of them are in the same ballpark of 2 to 8% or so, but it fluctuates.
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anon says:
As an antidote, here are a few articles from the past two months at the Wilmington Journal, which has done a good job of covering the case
Is that a real newspaper, or is it just somebody’s blog?
Because if it’s a real paper, I wouldn’t think they’d publish a story with a grammatical error in the FIRST SENTENCE.
On the internet I’m never finicky with grammar — how could you be? You’d go mad. But if something makes it into newsprint, I assume that at some point in the editorial process someone’s going to look at the phrase ‘bared out’ and say, “hey, is that REALLY the past tense of ‘bear out’?”
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simply wondered says:
an anon – you don’t see a lot of those around here, as the wide-mouthed frog remarked.
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Violet says:
Is that a real newspaper, or is it just somebody’s blog?
Are you an asshole, or just stupid?
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Violet says:
Folks, I’m going to close comments on this thread while I go sleep. I can’t personally moderate the racist-sexist flying monkeys while I’m sleeping (amazingly enough) and I don’t seem to have the capability to turn automatic moderation on for just this thread, so I’ll just close comments on this post until I wake up.
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Violet says:
Comments are back on.
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Paul Tergeist says:
I have no idea, but the FBI estimates the rate of false (or unfounded) accusations for all major crimes. I think most of them are in the same ballpark of 2 to 8% or so, but it fluctuates.
-VioletSo you keep saying, but no study has ever been published which sets forth an evidentiary basis for the ‘two percent false rape complaint’ thesis. Show me the statistics you keep insisting exist.
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Violet says:
the ‘two percent false rape complaint’
I’ve never said two percent. I don’t know exactly what the number is, but it’s somewhere in the single-digit area, the same order of magnitude as other major crimes. I imagine the number also fluctuates a bit each year as the national crime survey is published.
There is no reason to dispute the FBI’s numbers. The only people who do are misogynists who want to spread the propaganda that women routinely lie about rape.
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Paul Tergeist says:
I’ve never said two percent.
-VSMy bad. You said this: “Beside, stats about the false rate anywhere from 4% to 20%….
For the record, let me just note that the 4% (or thereabouts) is from the FBI.”So when you invoked ‘the record’, I asked to see it. It seems a perfectly reasonable request to me.
“I don’t know exactly what the number is, but it’s somewhere in the single-digit area, the same order of magnitude as other major crimes.”
-VSFair enough, 4%. Just show me “the record” to prove you aren’t making it up and I’ll be happy as a clam.
“There is no reason to dispute the FBI’s numbers.’
-VSAgreed. Let’s see ‘em.
“The only people who do are misogynists who want to spread the propaganda that women routinely lie about rape.”
-VSIf the records exist you would have found them by now so I don’t think they do. I think you have reported a ‘fact’ which doesn’t exist.
Just saying.
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Violet says:
If the records exist you would have found them by now so I don’t think they do. I think you have reported a ‘fact’ which doesn’t exist.
Hey, Paul, I’m pretty tolerant of you, but insulting me is not on.
I answered you quite clearly above when I pointed you to older posts of mine that had some statistics and referred you to the FBI.
When I did some posts on rape last spring, I spent a couple of days collecting links to research on rape. I can’t find that document nor the draft version of the post where I stored all the links. I’ve either deleted it or misfiled it — not an unusual occurence when I’m finished working on something. It’s annoying that I can’t find it, because I remember spending quite a bit of time on it and realizing how complex the rape reporting statistics are in this country. But for you to suggest that because I’m not willing to drop everything and do this research for you, then I’m lying, well, you can just go fuck yourself.
The only thing I can still point you to (because I do have the link in one of my folders) is this report, which actually explains some of the complexity in assessing the rate of false cases:
Unfounded Cases and False Allegations
The main problem with rape in this country is that people like you, including police officers, cling to the myth that women routinely lie about rape or somehow bring it on themselves. You are the biggest barrier to proper reporting and prosecution of rape cases.
Yes, of course some small number of false allegations exist, but saying that that’s the problem with rape is like saying (to paraphrase Al Franken) that the problem with Al Qaeda is that they use too much oil in their hummus.
Now, I realize you think this is all terribly entertaining, just an abstract game to play. But rape is not a game and it’s not entertaining. I’m not going to allow this to turn into yet another forum for this kind of incredibly insulting and damaging bullshit.
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Paul Tergeist says:
Hey, Paul, I’m pretty tolerant of you, but insulting me is not on.
-VioletI don’t think I insulted you at all. I merely asked to see your fact and you don’t have it. So you turned the debate into a personal attack. Way to go.
“The main problem with rape in this country is that people like you, including police officers, cling to the myth that women routinely lie about rape or somehow bring it on themselves. You are the biggest barrier to proper reporting and prosecution of rape cases.”
-VioletOK, talk about insulting someone! I didn’t say anything like that and police officers, MANY OF WHOM ARE FEMALE, do not believe that women routinely lie about rape.
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Zeke says:
I wish you and Amanda would stop examining things like facts and evidence. You weren’t there, and unlike the rest of us who weren’t there but know exactly what happened based on hoary societal myths, you two are uniquely unqualified to have an opinion. Having an opinion is wrong and prejudgeing is wrong unless it’s my opinions and my prejudging. Clear?
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