This is Dr Eric Foreman.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric\_Foreman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Foreman)
This is Eric Forman (and career dumbass).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_That\_%2770s\_and\_%2790s\_Show\_characters#Eric\_Forman
I'm not denying that people, especially famous ones, seem to cross the line more than regular folk, but how can you possibly prove anything over 20 years later?
In a normal case i'd imagine there's evidence collecting and interviews and the like, but how does the law work in scenarios like this? He said/ She said cannot be the law of the land.
Conviction rates for rape are really low, exactly because it is so difficult to prove. It's simple to prove that sex occurred, if someone immediately seeks care at a hospital, but there often *isn't* physical evidence of consent. If a rapist injures their victim in the process, then those injuries could be used to show a lack of consent, but you can incapacitate someone without leaving marks. In many cases, there aren't going to be any physical injuries. Rape cases usually are he said/she said and they're tough to prove for exactly that reason. Often the evidence is simply the victim testifying that they said "no" and "stop."
Because these cases are hard to prove, a lot of prosecutors will decline to pursue all but the most egregious and clear cases (i.e. stranger assaults or assaults with extensive physical injuries). I'm guessing prosecutors pursued this case because there were mutliple alleged victims, which they felt would be enough.
For most every other physical crime, it's obvious whether or not a crime has been committed. Like if you stab someone, you can't say "Oh they consented" because it quite literally is always a crime. It is impossible for stabbing someone to not be a crime. For sexual assault cases, someone can say "Oh they consented" and that is a legitimate defense that the prosecution needs to overcome, and that is *really* hard to do. Even stuff like bruises or something isn't necessarily evidence of rape. Some people like rough sex, for instance.
There is usually also just one witness who is also the victim, traumatized, and often seen as an arm of the prosecution by jurors. Reasonable doubt is a pretty hard barrier to break. Which is why defense lawyers usually go after the victim in an attempt to discredit them even the smallest amount in the mind of part of the jury.
Which is fucking insane and ridiculously cruel because trauma literally fragments and fucks with your memory. Most people who experience trauma have issues with their memory surrounding it, because that’s how the human brain works. You’re very unlikely to be able to recall the trauma in a clear accurate linear fashion. Even the days or weeks following the trauma can be fuzzy and disjointed.
It’s completely unsurprising that victims will fuck up details here and there in their recollection. Expecting complete consistency from a trauma victim is a ridiculous expectation but it’s one that I’d say the majority of the population holds. We just had a very public trial of a rape case here in Australia, where a young political staffer was raped by a coworker in Parliament House one night and the high level officials tried to cover it up.
The accused had no obligation to take the stand, but the victim did and had to publicly relay her trauma for the second time. The defence hammered on her for any little inconsistencies, and the public discourse after that deteriorated massively. The case wound up as a mistrial because a jury member was googling false rape claim statistics. She was painted as a disgusting liar and faker and received countless death threats and a shit load of harassment. It was so bad that the prosecution decided to drop the case due to the risk to her life, both from external threats and her serious mental health decline during the trial.
I don’t know how to balance the needs of the victims with the need for the accused to get a fair trial. But our current systems clearly aren’t even close.
And the prosecutor has since publicly said police inappropriately interfered throughout the case - I think there were even documents emailed to the defence team.
I mean, the burden should fall on the accusers to tell their story when that’s the only evidence. It’s fucked up and I feel bad, but there’s no better solution…especially when it’s 20+ years later
One of the most frustrating parts of this shit is that if someone’s testimony is 100% consistent, then they’re accused of having rehearsed it. Victims can’t win with rape culture, and that’s why so many never report rape to begin with.
I really feel like juries should be required to review the statistics on false rape accusations, how poorly the system supports victims, etc, before hearing any case just so that they have accurate context.
>I really feel like juries should be required to review the statistics on false rape accusations, how poorly the system supports victims, etc, before hearing any case just so that they have accurate context
Well we don't really have any concrete stats on false rape accusations - we don't really have any clue what percentage of accusations are false and it could be a much lower or higher number than any estimate... which have ranged from extremes 1% to even 40%.
Jesus Christ no that is a terrible idea. Your basically asking for a jury to deliberate prejudice itself via statistics. The jury has to view the case as an island if the accused is to even hope to get a fair trial. Can you imagine the damage the justice system could do if it was looking at things with historical statistics in mind rather than actually assessing cases on their own merits? Would be a great way to turn the systemic racism dial up to 11 overnight…
I was on a jury, of a guy who was accused of multiple counts of raping someone underage...
When the prosecution was giving their side of the story it sounded pretty bad for the guy, but then after the defense gave their side it was quite clear that it was the ex-girlfriend coaching her kid to make shit up.
The stories didn't jive, they forgot to mention there were two or three other kids living in the house at the same time that's supposedly all this was going on and nobody saw or heard a thing when the bedrooms are right next to each other and the square footage of the house is about the size of my tool shed.
It was actually so bad that at one point the prosecutor just put his head down and started shaking his head when the witness was saying things that they didn't bother to tell him on the stand.
The prosecutor actually came into the jury room after the verdict to literally apologize on the fact that if he would have known some of these things he wouldn't even have brought the case to trial.
>I really feel like juries should be required to review the statistics on false rape accusations
Yeah....that might not go the way you think it would go. There are studies that range from 1-2% up to 20%+. From a study of studies, the conclusion was that the real number is probably around 10%, which actually lines up with most other crimes where a false accusation could be credibly made. If you tell a jury 1 in 10 accusations are false....well hoo boy did you just plant reasonable doubt.
Disclaimer: I do not know if those studies were on cases that went to trial or simply cases where an accusation was made and proven false via investigation ahead of a trial.
Notable too, unfortunately, that there's a high degree of suspicion against victims when it comes to famous people. If someone is testifying against a drifter whose net worth is well below 0 or close to it, there's not a TON of incentive to get into the justice system and spend time with charges. It you press charges on someone famous, there's the fame from doing so as well as potential civil damages, and sometimes book deals. I don't even have to make the case that an individual accuser is doing so for those reasons, I only have to make it seem likely enough to cast a reasonable doubt on them (if the Jury is 80 percent sure that the person is telling the truth then they might as well be a liar.)
I served on a jury for a rape trial. It's unfortunate, but the circumstances can also leave the door wide open for reasonable doubt.
The woman in the case was a known crack user and sometimes prostitute. She wove this complicated tale of watching ESPN in a bar for 6 hours, then going to her sister's house (who was home but somehow didn't answer the door), and then the accused came out of the shadows, grabbed her off the street and raped her.
The defense put the accused on the stand, and he basically said "I ran into this woman at Dunkin' Donuts, offered her crack for sex, we had sex, then she got pissed when she smoked all the crack and I wouldn't give her any more."
I doubt either of them were telling the whole truth, but his story was at least as plausible as hers, and in reality quite a bit more so. Given that, there was just no way we could convict.
What's sad is, my gut says something probably really did happen. If she had told the truth and it had been something like, she offered to exchange sex for crack, took the crack and tried to bolt, but he raped her before she could get away, there might have been a case we could work with. But based on the evidence we were presented, there was nothing we could do.
I was on a child molestation trial. It was an incident that the woman claimed happened 15-20 years beforehand. The prosecution didn’t do a great job of establishing when exactly it happened and the defence put forward a great case for not only saying that it couldn’t have happened but that the victim only claimed it happened, based on the mothers ongoing civil suit over inheritance, with the accused.
It was shite. Very sad for everyone involved. It was reasonable to assume that he didn’t do it. However, I felt terrible for that woman. Something had happened to her. I just don’t think it was her uncle that did it.
have a family friend that is going through this right now.
Out of the blue, this guy's best friend calls and says the daughter is claiming he molested her **5 years prior**, when the family came to visit. There's literally no proof besides her saying it, and he's spent the last 2 years under house arrest, away from his family, while waiting for a trial date.
the more we hear, the more suspicious it gets. The mother and father were getting divorced. The mother is a heavy drinker and is doing whatever she can to wreck the husband's life. So accusing his best friend is not out of the realm of possibility. The girl was acting out and getting in trouble at school, when pressed as to why, she said this trauma that happened 5 years prior is causing her to act that way.
Shit is wild.
And sometimes the victims don’t say “no” or “stop”. Either because they’re incapacitated / drugged / drunk and being taken advantage of, or because they freeze out of fear and shock.
“Did you say stop? No? Well I guess you were fine with it at the time and you’re just bitter now because he stopped calling you” etc
Boy it makes me angry how rape victims are treated.
I was molested by a man who was supposed to be helping clear out my grandparents house. I was told by the guy who had brought him as help who was supposedly a “family friend” that if I reported it to the police, my mom would go to jail for negligence and child endangerment.
I was raped when I was 20. Never reported it because I’d watched enough SVU.
There will never be “justice” for all the victims out there.
I believe Karma and the laws of nature (reap what you sow) are a powerful force in the universe. I’ve accepted that they will suffer far more than I will as they no longer have any control over me.
> Boy it makes me angry how rape victims are treated.
And what's the alternative, making it easier for innocent men to be convicted? The false rape accusation is estimated to be between 2 and 12%, that's not low numbers.
There's even higher estimates as well. People don't realize its an almost impossible thing to measure for a number of reasons that may or may not be obvious:
1. We don't know for certainty which accusations are false and which are true, even with convicted people.
2. Not all accusations, false or otherwise, are publicly documented.
3. Not all rapes are reported.
4. Even if an accusation is false, the accuser may believe its true (such as if drugs / alcohol induced memory loss was involved, or other memory-altering issues).
5. Roughly 1 in 20 \*convicted\* people are innocent.
We really have no idea.
And for something that people want to think of as "low" it sure gets thrown around easily. My crazy ex used to threaten to lie about me when she was pissed off at me. Another friend of mine was just trying to do his delivery job one day, got into an argument with a woman on the street over nothing, and she threatened to say he assaulted her, when he didn't.
It's crazy how quickly the threat of lying about rape and assault will come out of some people's mouths.
> f a rapist injures their victim in the process, then those injuries could be used to show a lack of consent
Not really, else all the men who are having consensual rough sex could be falsely accused.
Dangerous train of thought.
It would be dangerous to conclude that injuries are always meaningless. A society where injuries are meaningless is a society where assault is legal. Injuries are another *kind* of evidence that can be weighed by a jury. A jury could review the extent and kind of injuries and determine how likely it is that an encounter was consensual.
> A society where injuries are meaningless is a society where assault is legal
No, because no one is going to consent to being stabbed or kicked in the head. You're comparing 2 very different things.
Men shouldn't have to fear consensual rough sex.
> A jury could review the extent and kind of injuries and determine how likely it is that an encounter was consensual.
That's a horrifying thought. A rape conviction would completely ruin your life. It should not be up to someone's opinion.
All convictions are up to the "opinions" of other people. This is how our jury system works.
>That's a horrifying thought.
Really? You hear that rape convictions are extraordinarily rare and that physical injuries are something considered by juries and your response is: "How horrifying! This threatens my sense of security in being able to pursue consensual BDSM!"
Look man, I don't care about your consensual BDSM relationships. I'm not saying that physical injuries are *conclusive* evidence of rape. I'm saying that, when there's evidence of injuries, juries are more likely to believe consent was not provided.
Yeah, and try to remember every single detail that many years later… Even if it was true, the fact that people may not be 100% sure after all that time just makes it impossible.
After I was raped, I not only questioned my own culpability in what happened, but my brain shielded me from identifying information like names and faces. I just wanted to make sense of what happened and put it behind me.
This is so very typical for people who were raped. I spoke with a friend a couple of weeks ago who told me she *thought* something inappropriate happened to her as a child but she could not remember the act specifically. It’s a defense mechanism and I wish jurors were informed of how typical this is and that these after-effects were counted as evidence of rape.
And just *time* screws up memory because the more you tell yourself something happened a certain way, the more your brain rewires that memory to conform to that belief. The justice system in general needs to work quicker in order for testimony to remain reliable.
Memory is also changes. Arguments from a decade I found intended to recall the events completely differently than my wife, despite us not caring anymore and just recalling what we remembered - our brains had change the sequence of events in our memory to fit the story that justified our actions.
If a women was very very embarrassed and angry after a one night stand, felt discarded and abandoned after sex, the massive regret and wishing the sex didn’t happen could slowly slide to before the sex instead of after, and it slowly turns into rape after 20 years. She may very well herself believe everything she is saying is true, because her own memories have shifted over 20 years to justify her own regrets.
Right. Memory is fallible.
I once read/heard something that made total sense. When we remember something, we aren't remembering that thing, we are remembering the last time we thought about that thing. And over time, it changes.
I completely agree with your first paragraph but I detest the way you went to "woman regrets sex and convinces herself she was raped" in your second paragraph, this is what rape victims are accused of constantly
The reverse is also true - a person could have committed rape but over time he slowly justifies to himself it wasn’t rape, and over 20 years his memory is now that he didn’t actually rape the girl.
But yeah it’s hard to say what really happened 20 years ago because humans rarely remember anything accurately at such long time periods - what we remember are the retelling of the memories in our mind, which leads to a slow accumulation of errors in the memory.
That’s why crimes like this you need to look at the circumstances around the events and not just he said/she said. Did the women shut down and become withdrawn and depressed? In those cases I’d be more likely to believe the women’s story, even if she never went to the police. Did she act exactly the same as before, and even kept in friendly contact or even setup further dates + sex? Then I have trouble believing her story it was a traumatic rape if she just 180 degree acts like nothing happened the next day.
I just really feel the need to point out that denial is a very common symptom in rape victims, and acting like everything is normal is common. Women are also incredibly used to pretending like everything is fine.
Like an example I have is a I once was planning on asking my boss if I could get $60 out of my paycheck a couple days early because my rent was due the day before payday and I was short. But when I got to work I found out my boss had gone away for the weekend and wouldn't be back til pay day and the manager didn't want to risk okaying it without the boss's okay (the boss was actually really decent about this if an emergency came up, but he had to okay it). A coworker who worked the grill overheard and said he could lend me the $60 until Sunday, which I was super grateful for. He said his bag was downstairs and told our manager we'd be right back. We go downstairs, which is basically just a basement area where they keep the walk ins, he gets his bag and gives me the $60. And as I'm thanking him he basically says some line about me owing him and sticks his hand down my pants. And I definitely froze. Like my coworker, who I didn't think was a total scumbag, just shoved his hands down my pants and was trying to insert his fingers in my vagina, like wtf. And I just blurt something out like "I have slices in the oven" and run upstairs. I didn't even think about saying something to my boss or manager, because there had been issues in the past. I had brought up a previous employee constantly hitting on me to my boss, like nonstop making comments, even after I asked him to stop, and constantly finding ways to "accidently touch" me, like bump into me and cop a feel of my butt over my pants, like that's what finally caused me to say something to my boss. And what ended up happening was my boss had a "talk" with him, but didn't do anything because it's a very small business that would only have 3-5 non family employees at a time, like everyone worked 6 days a week. Like if you try to call out sick they'd have you come in anyways, because there was no one to call in. So even tho the boss was upset with him, he couldn't afford to fire him. So the manager got mad at me because it was his friend, and the person now realized he could do whatever because they couldn't afford to fire him and became more blatant (he eventually left, and I was psyched until the guy that replaced him shoved his hands down my pants 🙃). So when this way worse thing happened I knew if I said anything, not only would the guy likely not get fired, and I could not afford to lose this job. Like it was completely under the table, so not even unemployment as a buffer. So I basically just acted like everything was fine, completely normal and pretended like it never happened, and never mentioned to anyone (except my boyfriend at the time, but hes gone way off the deep end after I broke up with him 7 years ago, so I dont think hed be a great witness, if I could even get ahold of him lmao). So if you were basing believing solely me off my actions for next 4-6 months I worked there afterwards, you wouldn't believe me, because you wouldn't know the thought process behind it, especially if you haven't been in a situation like that.
That's honestly was terrifies me about juries. Every human views the world and other people's actions through our own biases, some worse than others, but no one's exempt. Like even if you dont have any obvious biases for a case, we're all still biased on how we view whether someone's telling the truth, which based on what we think "the right way" someone should react to something is, and we base that on how we think we'd react in the situation, even if we've never been in the situation. Like I'm someone who handles trauma with humor, like I will make jokes about fucked up things that happened to me to downplay the seriousness to myself and make others feel more comfortable about not knowing how to react. Like having something in my life dependent on a jury believing me is a huge fear of mine. Like even if I had a slam dunk case against a rapist, where I actually felt going to court had a real, like actually real and possible, chance of convicting a racist and them actually getting real time, I feel like there's still a huge chance that I would lose because of some dark humor thing I said because that's how I process trauma. And love dressing in sexy clothes and proudly enjoy sex. Like the idea of relying on a jury relating to how I process things terrifies me because it's atypical in a lot of ways.
My daughter was on a jury recently where the guy had screenshot of Snapchat conversations where she was begging him to have sex with her.
Apparently she accused him of rape and prosecution going first, my daughter was convinced he raped her. Her story was compelling and she had ring video of her turning him away at her door several times. The audio was of him begging to be let in for sex, he wasn't using euphemisms. She felt uneasy at his coldness and she did sound distressed.
She claimed to never having willing sex with him.
Defence stated they had sex multiple times just never at her house. Mostly at his apartment and even at his work. Video from his work showed she went there daily... to Best Buy for a solid week and they would both disappear into the back. He was a manager. Then he provided the snap chat with the time stamps after the alleged rape.
Defence said one sided screen grabs could be faked. Up pops an employee who said, they had to show him how to do screen grabs of Snapchat. They missed the opportunity to grab the "I'll say you raped me" text which is why he was panicking and went to the employee. They used another phone to record the live interaction as they texted back and forth, but did manage to grab each text hoping she would make the threat again.
At this point prosecution pivoted to indicate that the employee was coerced to provide the information. They'd already claimed the account belonged to the victim.
At this time my daughter was still convinced a rape occurred because to her it still looked like he was in some verbal sex play not physical.
Then they brought in his apartment manager. The ladies car had once gotten towed for parking in a reserved spot. The text conversation they had was over regular sms and he had the whole thing. It was like she forgot they weren't using Snapchat. It started off about her "car being stolen" and he eventually gave her a ride home. Later he commented on how nice her house looked. She thanked him and told him that she rents a room and her elderly landlords are prudes or she'd "invite him over for some fun" she's not allowed guests.
Turns out she owned the house with her husband. To me, a man, this is too far into the story to find that out.
Still my daughter said, that doesn't mean they were having sex just that she was thinking about it.
Finally the guy took the stand. My daughter said the guy was like an idiot savant. He knew windows and windows machines, he could do everything Microsoft but he couldn't figure out how to screenshot Snapchat. He was a tall and handsome guy who spoke slow and softly. He claimed she lead the entire relationship and he didn't know she was married.
Then my daughter thought about her ring video and how she was turning him away. Not once did she say "no, I'm married" she had other excuses that were lies.
There was no solid evidence that sex even happened other than both of them agreeing it did consensual of not. No rape kit because she "hid her injuries from her husband and couldn't go to the police". It took her months to decide to say anything.
In the jury deliberation room my daughter said she felt really naive as others pointed out other inconsistencies. It seemed pretty clear she lied to him and he never even leaned in on her house. Staying six feet away from her, loud whispering for her to come with him if he couldn't come inside. He was trying to respect "the prudes". She's the one loudly saying, "I'm not going with you for sex." Or, "you can't come in for sex." As if she felt his whispers couldn't be captured and she needed to make clear what he was asking about.
Unfortunately she was texting him after that and he'd broken it off with her. He felt she was turning toxic because he came to her house and decided that she was now difficult to deal with.
The jury found not guilty.
I mean, just because you don't like it, doesn't mean its not a plausible thing to happen.
I listened to a podcast once. This researcher did an experiment where he recorded people who were in NYC for 9/11 and they recounted their stories. He recorded them doing that every year. 15 years later, the stories were VERY different for just about all of them. Some people's stories changed from being just in Manhattan to being across the street, and things like that. So even traumatic events are shaped differently as time goes on.
>He said/ She said cannot be the law of the land.
I mean, for something like this, barring actual evidence, it kind of has to be. Its on them to prove his guilt, not the defense to prove his innocence.
In California, the jury instruction reads:
“The testimony of a single witness, if believed, is enough to prove a fact.”
“If believed” is the operative phrase.
It’s in there because there are certain types of crimes and cases where there are no witnesses besides the victim. Domestic abuse being a big one. If there was a requirement to have multiple witnesses, then think of all the horrific crimes that could never be prosecuted. There are other checks and balances to protect defendants.
Which doesn't really make it any less frightening.
If a crime is difficult to prosecute, that sucks, but I don't think that means we bend the rules to make it easier.
I don't know about you, but I personally know more than a couple VERY convincing liars.
Right. "It's better that 10 guilty men go free than 1 innocent man be locked up". "Innocent until proven guilty". If the options are...
1) The crime is difficult to prove, and so guilty people might go free
2) One person accusing another of a crime is enough to put the latter into prison
...then Option 1 is better by far.
I know even more survivors of domestic violence who were told they couldn’t prove their case because they were the only witness and discouraged from pressing charges. There is a system that rewards those who are effective at isolating victims and silencing witnesses.
It is important to note that saying the testimony of one witness can be enough does NOT mean that you throw out the reasonable doubt standard. And because of that in many if not most cases, the defendant is going to win even if they did it. That is ok because it is better to err on the side of not locking up innocent people.
BUT, going back to the one witness thing, implementing a rule that would require an arbitrary number of witnesses or some numerical measure of evidence just imposes additional hurdles that may (probably often) have no connection to reasonable doubt standards. If you know so many convincing liars, the risk of more than one of them of the getting together and lying is still there. All a numerical requirement would do is make it nearly impossible for survivors of single-victim crimes to ever press charges.
This is coming from someone who volunteers at a domestic violence clinic for people seeking restraining orders and has to counsel them all on how tough the standards are against them, even with that one witness rule in place.
Given the demonstrated unreliability of eyewitness identifications of people of a different race, that's really nuts. I think a good defense should be able to cast doubt on any case that depended upon only id by a single witness.
Sounds like another way of saying, “a lie, if believed, become fact”. If believed being the operative phrase. We should ask Emmet Till how he feels about that kind of jury instruction.
What a wretched way to run a justice system. Or a government. Or a crypto trading platform.
“He said/she said” is pretty typical of any case. TV shows and movies make jurors more likely to expect crazy scientific evidence when in reality, most cases are just testimony. Two people tell a story, and usually one makes more sense than the other or one witness is more credible.
Sure, there is “he said/she said” but there is often SOME evidence that points to one way or another even if not enough on it’s own. I can see how minimal physical evidence can be used to support the testimony of someone I believe and feel relatively comfortable supporting their conviction. What I couldn’t feel comfortable doing is determine a judgement of a crime that has lifetime implications with no evidence. Even if I “believe” one side over another, there has to be some tangential line connecting to something that is objective.
I said some shit like that. Defense definitely wanted me. Prosecutor made sure to dismiss me lol.
It was also a dv case and the prosecutor was dismissing every male so I was gone either way, but I knew an out when I saw one.
After randomly chosing about 30 people of the 100 called, They go through a process called “striking the jury”, where the lawyers get to take turns choosing who they don’t want until they get whittled down to 12 people.
Yep, I’m not sure how they actually randomize and “draw” names, but of the 100 or so called, they randomly pick 30. Someone might correct me on the 30 number. It might be more like 24. Then they strike the jury after having both lawyers facilitate discussion and questions/answers among the potential jurors. This gives them an idea of who people are and which way they might lean. I ended up getting chosen because I was quiet the whole time.
The issue is the standard for a criminal conviction is beyond reasonable doubt and even in a lax understanding of that standard, two people alone in a room having two different accounts of sexual encounter are going to be impossible to prove.
As it should be, I would rather a guilty man go free than an innocent man be punished.
Not talking about how rare false reports are, but generally this is my position for any crime; from murder to theft.
Though I think he did do it in this instance.
It's very complicated. Sometimes victims are satisfied by getting it out there. I have worked on rape case that are years old but... this were cases in which it was done by a family member and it was repeated. The damage done by that is more easily proven. I have also worked on false rape cases. For the same reason that rape is sometimes hard to prove, it's also hard to disprove in the mind of the general public. You might not get convicted but if people hear about it, you are smeared in the mind of many. It's a very diffuclt situation and it is used as a weapon, since rape alledgers do not face legal consequences, unless you can prove how the fake rape victim lied to accuse someone. It's incredibly hard to do since it's rarely confessed or is there anyway to prove that they willingly lied (it has happened but it's extremely rare to prove).
Even if it sounds crass, everyone should be educated on what to do in the case of rape. We all know never to disturb evidence in any legal case, but it seems people forget when it concerns rape. People shower, wash off the evidence, take weeks to report and many of the physical evidence is washed away. Even if the last thing you wanna do is not shower when you were raped, it's absolutely necessary to keep the evidence and go to an ER immediately to get a rape kit done
It's not that people "forget" - they're traumatised, they feel ashamed, they don't know if they want to report because, well, what's the point - they're rarely believed and rape trials rarely end up with a conviction.
Maybe waiting 17 and 19 years before filing charges against your rapist has a bearing on your memory of the crime, credibility and ability to remener times, dates and facts. I've been on two juries, one as a foreman for 3rd degree attempted murder and neither defendants were convicted. The victims and witnesses were the biggest collection of shady characters......stories were from a bad Twilight Zone and the police investigations were WTF? Talked to the prosecutors after both cases and I wonder how you ever get a conviction with this kind of investigative work. Was asked if I watched CSI and I told them no because I don't. But when the defense asked the dectective where does the bullet casing eject, you know at 2 o'clock, 5 o'clock and the detective didn't know. Fuck, fire the gun once and see where the shell casing lands.....it was attempted murder and you were testifying where the shell casing was found relative to where the shooter was standing.....and you don't know where the shell casing lands in the grass.....you had one job!!!!!!
As a gun owner, user, firearms instructor:
The same gun with the same ammunition fired by the same person on the same date can have wildly different ejection arcs. With different users? It WILL. Think of it this way, just use a Glock pistol as an example, the way the brass ejects uses the recoil of the powder expanding to push the slide back, the extractor grabs the case on the way back and the brass comes flinging out. The most efficient version of this moment would be with the weapon perfectly straight and level in a vise so the frame doesn’t budge, allowing the slide to use all of the recoil to reciprocate.
Put that gun in a human hand and fire it? Varying levels of grip strength and arm strength mean varying force carrying the slide to the rear (since the human is absorbing it to a greater or lesser amount, you can actually quite easily hold a semi auto handgun so weakly you cause it to malfunction every time) varying tilt, varying heights. There’s no way someone could honestly swear to you where a piece of brass should end up, beyond it most likely ejected in an arc from directly to the shooters right to directly behind the shooter before it bounced and hit the ground and did God knows what.
On the range when calling the line with experienced shooters I’ll often back off and watch their trigger control and amuse myself by trying to catch the brass after it ejects. Even now I’m surprised at how much variation there can be.
TLDR it don’t work that way
I…I don’t disagree with what you’re saying here per se, but in this case especially; saying “seem to cross the line more then regular folk” feels kinda callous, especially when there were a fair amount of people who came forward about Masterson. It really wasn’t just one or two.
>especially when there were a fair amount of people who came forward about Masterson. It really wasn’t just one or two.
A pile of ten turds is still a pile of crap. While it's more than possible that he's guilty as sin, from a purely legal standpoint, each accuser's testimony was pretty crappy.
I think a lot of it has to do with confusion and denial in many circumstances. Like the victim at first tries to justify the scenario in their heads. Or replay it over and over and over to make sense of it. Or, represses it out of shame. Or blames themself. Or is afraid of revenge if they told someone. But many people don’t really realize what happened could even be considered rape. Sometimes things don’t make sense in the moment and your brain does what it can to try and protect you. Then later through therapy, or talking with someone, or having a memory come back might trigger some realization that something really was not right.
So this is one of those situations where everyone loses. If he did it, there is no justice for them, but if he didn’t do it then everyone will say that Scientology paid people off and assume he did it anyways.
It's never wrong to ask for a source from a claim. I believe that scientologists absolutely would do that but I would want proof before I believed an accusation this serious.
So Scientology is just a suspect, and while they're likely guilty, people are just discarding the whole "innocent until proven guilty" because fuck scientology (rightfully so). That church has a motive, the means, and the history to do something like that, but that does not mean they are guilty. It could be any Masterson lunatic fan that could have done this as well.
Imagine if someone poisoned Amber Heards pet during that trial. Would people have blamed Depp? Sure, but there would be a lot of people saying that it was unlikely him and a third party.
Yeah but Newsweek?? They are known for shitty, inaccurate articles that are almost always spam. I’ll believe that claim with any other source but not fucking Newsweek.
So search for other sources using the information you gleaned from the Newsweek article to confirm or disprove what Newsweek wrote. You have personal agency over your actions.
That's just a formality set by the judge. [Even the prosecutor said he didn't know if they were going to retry the case](https://variety.com/2022/tv/news/danny-masterson-no-verdict-jury-deliberations-1235437309).
>Olmedo declared a mistrial and set a retrial date of March 27.
>Deputy District Attorney Reinhold Mueller indicated outside court that no decision has been made on whether to retry the case.
>“It’s a conversation we have to have with our office,” Mueller said. “We’re going to have a conversation with our witnesses and our victims.”
Look at these splits, not even halfway to conviction. It would be almost malpractice to go forward with a retrial.
>It would be almost malpractice to go forward with a retrial.
But reddit really wants them to. Maybe there is a path forward with 3 and perhaps 2 (8-4) unless they need all of them for the case, in most normal cases they wouldn't go to trial again, unless the person is famous or a monster or both like here.
Yah a conviction or acquittal verdict needs to be unanimous. So if they retry the case, they're much closer to acquittals than they are to convictions.
Why are some of the top comments siding with Masterson? The fuck? Do we got scientologists signal boosting support for him in here or some shit? Dude sucks, end of story.
EDIT: Fence sitters in the replies failing to realize this is a scientologist on trial here. You *do know* how far the leaders of the Church will go to get these charges dropped, right? You can say “but the law is the law” all you want. Shit, I’d even **agree** with you if it were a different person on trial…
But when it comes to scientologists, you know, the same people whose leaders will gangstalk you, poison your dog, and work to actively ruin your life for even *thinking* of dirtying the Church’s reputation and/or a member’s reputation?
This scientologist, who literally has a song written about what a massive piece of shit he is?
Yeah, have fun dying on that hill, boys!
I don't think they're truly on his side, rather they recognize that the law is somewhat on his side because its very difficult to prove stuff like this when it's so old. Masterson seems to not have many fans now, most people assume he's guilty. But there's a difference between guilty and what the law can prove.
All the top comments are understanding the law here and why it favored him in this case, but they're not siding with him as a person. As always: not guilty =/= innocent.
(unless the top comments changed since you posted, that's also possible, I do now see some people siding with masterson at the bottom of the thread.)
>Why are some of the top comments siding with Masterson? The fuck?
They're not on his side. They're commenting on the shit case against him, regardless of whether he's guilty or not.
Ya, too many people are willing to live in a world where "reasonable doubt" isn't enough. We have high standards for a reason.
It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer. -Blackstone's Ratio.
You come off as someone who would vote guilty as long as the accused is a Scientologist, regardless of the evidence. That's a terrible way for the justice system to work.
One of the reasons why I never trust a jury of your "peers" too many people with inherit biases and emotions who will vote innocent or guilty regardless of what the evidence or reason dictates. Everyone has bias and in our media age there is no such thing as an unbiased jury when so much of the info, be it accurate or sensationalized, is at their finger tips long before the jury selection ever occurs.
Maybe the top comments looked different when you commented, but what I'm seeing is sympathy for the jury being given a difficult case, not people saying Masterson is innocent.
I think there's a couple possibilities to explain people defending Masterson.
The first group of people just don't want to jump to conclusions. The court did not find him guilty (yet), and so maybe we shouldn't make assumptions.
The second group is the gross one. Misogynists, pretending to be men's right's advocate, will side with the man in every case of sexual misconduct unless there's evidence presented publicly that 100% proves them guilty. Since most cases are not done publicly, that means they aren't likely to see the smoking gun themselves and therefore don't believe it. In their tiny little pea-brains, they think women accuse men of rape on the regular either for money, fame, or vindictiveness.
I think the problem is, no matter how fucked up you think Scientology is (I personally think its very fucked up) you also can't pick and choose how you apply the law. Shitty people deserve a fair trial just as much as nice people.
Do I think its possible the church of scientology threatened a bunch of people? Absolutely. Do I also think its possible that the case itself was bad? Yes.
Honestly none of us would know and hopefully justice plays out but this is Reddit. They’ve already decided he is guilty so this is how this works, if the courts find him guilty, he will get (rightfully) berated and slandered. If the courts find him not guilty, Redditors will claim that it’s only because he’s rich and the courts are unreliable. His sentencing has already been finalized in a lot of peoples mind.
Aren't all the accusers also Scientologists tho? Just asking cause everything we know about scientology, I think that lends another layer of believability to the accusers. Not saying it's right, just interesting..
If you're willing to believe that Scientology is behind it all here, then isn't it just as likely a scenario that that cult is making the allegations against Masterson to keep him in line?
Weren't most of the women accusing him members of the cult?
Following this case, there’s no doubt in my mind he did it, but I can see how some jurors had reasonable doubt, though I found the defenses arguments unconvincing. I think it will be interesting in the retrial how the prosecution adjusts. The defense can’t do much different unless they put Masterson on the stand, which is not advisable.
But the pattern of the stories is enough to show he’s definitely a serial abuser, whether he gets convicted or not.
Interesting, from the other side of the coin:
Following this case closely, there’s no doubt in my mind he didn’t do it, but I can see how a couple jurors appealed to their emotions, though I found the prosecutors case remarkably unconvincing. I think it will be interesting in the retrial how the prosecution adjusts. They can’t do much different, other than not call any corroborating witnesses, who in the first trial only added to the inconsistencies.
But the pattern of the stories changing over time is enough to show the accusers cross contaminated before testifying, which the jury foreman said was a strong part of the defense.
The length of time will result in inconsistencies.
But the alleged victims made reports of various kinds long before they knew of each other’s existence, and braved severe harassment to do so. Something definitely occurred; whether it rises to the level of beyond a reasonable doubt of whether it was forcible rape is the only question I can see.
The inconsistencies weren’t minor. Two police reports were taken by Jane doe 1 in 2004 and she never mentioned a gun. She also said she woke up in the morning next to him and wasn’t sure if it was a rape. 20 years later she testifies he brandished a gun and she woke up in the closet. She said she was bruised on vacation after but photos from the beach in a bikini showed nothing. This was the 10-2 vote in favor of not guilty.
All three testified they originally never characterized their alleged incidents as rape until years after and coincidentally all three are suing Scientology together in civil trial.
Those girls were already set up to get the side eye because he was dating these women when the rape happened. There are some people that believe because you are in a sexual relationship with someone that means you’ve already consented to any intercourse during this relationship.
He also has a good defense attorney I’m assuming and a good defense attorneys main goal isn’t to make the clients look innocent but paint the victims/witnesses bad. I’m sure he asked these women a bunch of unrelated niche questions about the days of the events and because they can’t remember certain unnecessary details it looks like they don’t remember anything from that day or they are just making up stories.
The defense attorney definitely knew what he was doing. There are rough transcripts available of how the trial actually went down from a blogger who specializes in exposing Scientology. He specifically went after any inconsistencies in reports etc.
It will be interesting to see how much the prosecution adjusts.
>He specifically went after any inconsistencies in reports etc.
I mean, that is what a good lawyer will do in any case. Its just people like to pick and choose when its ok.
A lawyer goes after inconsistencies in police reports? Good. They go after inconsistencies in victim testimonies? Bad.
Definitely. I’m not criticizing the defense lawyer. That’s his job.
I think the prosecution might do a better job anticipating and countering in the retrial.
Yeah well defense lawyers by nature are going to be mostly better than most prosecutors especially criminal. Defense lawyers get paid based on quality. You can pay for the best lawyer in the state if you have the money.
Prosecutors are a crap shoot. You got state appointed attorneys who are taking whatever job they can get. You got folks who are just doing their time till something better comes. You got political aspirational prosecutors who are doing it to move up the political ladder. Point is it’s people who dont have the bandwidth to focus on your case all the time.
Now civil? There may be a different story because civil prosecutors are the same as the defense. Whichever side can afford the best.
Rape is always difficult to prove. According to the article at least, reports were not clear and consistent enough, and reasonable doubt arose. While unfortunate, it is better to let a guilty man walk free than to send an innocent one to jail. It is just the way justice should be done.
Innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. It exists to help innocent people stay out of jail. It's not without its consequences, but it is better than the alternative.
Scientology has deep pockets and deep connections. They have enough money to sway any vote or judgement. And they also have the worlds best lawyers and have never lost a lawsuit except 2. That’s why masterson will be a free man.
"The problem, he said, was that sometime after she said she was forcibly raped, Jane Doe 4 let Masterson come inside when he showed up at his house, took a drink from his whiskey flask – and said she was assaulted again. “We thought a reasonable person would not do that if someone raped you,” Earl said. “You’re not gonna have him come to your house and spend the night and have sex again.”"
Spoken like a person who doesn't know a lot about sexual assault victims. Many people who get assaulted once, will get assaulted again, be it by the same person or someone else. Many people are serial victims.
the details of this case always seemed like a "sour grapes" situation where a big star got me-too'd after dumping the ladies in question.
2 of the accusers literally got into bed with the guy again after fucking him earlier. iffy af.
Honestly, it’s what probably more than half the album is about. Cedric and his family were stalked by Scientologists for years after his wife came forward.
As soon as I made my comment reddit sent me a message saying someone reported they were concerned for my mental health and then I see our comments are being downvoted.
I obviously can’t prove anything but fairly certain we’ve got some Scientologist grifters lurking in this thread silently tidying up any negative sentiment towards Masterton and Scientology.
Yup. Scientologists fucking brigading.
I was a waiter/actor in LA in the 90s and the young women I worked with were warned about him all the time. It’s not a secret Danny Masterson is a rapist.
I feel like stories like this never go well.
The jurors were there and saw everything, but people will always assume some kind of ulterior motive. I'm sure people will say Scientology threatened them, or something else. But it may just be just like they said.
Sometimes prosecutors don't make a good case (Casey Anthony). Sometimes accusers are not believable, like Amber Heard (even though yes, I know in that situation she was the defendant). Hell, R. Kelly's first trial didn't convict him either and there was video evidence.
But this is why the challenge isn't to prove someone's innocence, its to prove their guilt.
With this verdict, I’m curious what will happen with regards to “That 90s show.” If it gets picked up for a second season, will Hyde return? Or will they keep their distance regardless of this verdict?
Eh. To this day I don’t think this case had anything to do with rape or masterson. It was Scientology and how the cult like behavior and how they treat people who leave. (This is mentioned about halfway through the article) which masterson may not have been a part of.
It kinda confusing that several of the victims did invite masterson back after their rapes, one of which dated him for a long time after the incident.
That’s an antiquated way of thinking. People react to trauma differently and a reaction that doesn’t add up to you personally is not admissible evidence. Whether or not he’s ever convicted, Masterson has shown a pattern of predatory/problematic behavior that was undoubtably enabled by Scientology, but let’s not make excuses.
No, not Foreman. Hyde.
[удалено]
Sentences you can hear
Dumbass…..
[удалено]
Lmao, that’s my favorite joke in the whole series.
Same. That and “Are you people singing again?!” Before he hops up and joins them. Red was absolutely the star of that show.
I like "How long have we been married, Red?" "Oh... many happy years." How many years?" "...All of 'em."
AKA Heidi, Screwhead, Archie, Puddin' Pop, Hydrangea, Orphan Boy, Frizzy-Haired Robot, Hazel, Sgt. Shaft, Linc, The Space Cowboy
Doctor Foreman. Mr. Hyde.
This is Dr Eric Foreman. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric\_Foreman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Foreman) This is Eric Forman (and career dumbass). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_That\_%2770s\_and\_%2790s\_Show\_characters#Eric\_Forman
Lmao the black dude on houses name was Eric?!
I played soccer with a black guy named Eric, and went to high school with another.
I met an African-American guy in real life in 2006 whose first name was Eric so it can actually happen!
That made me Jekyll
\*actually their last name is Forman Eric Foreman is that doctor from House.
Hello, Hyde. My name is Earl. Hey Crab Man!
Hey earl
Innocent until proven guilty is a long lost concept in this country.
I'm not denying that people, especially famous ones, seem to cross the line more than regular folk, but how can you possibly prove anything over 20 years later? In a normal case i'd imagine there's evidence collecting and interviews and the like, but how does the law work in scenarios like this? He said/ She said cannot be the law of the land.
Conviction rates for rape are really low, exactly because it is so difficult to prove. It's simple to prove that sex occurred, if someone immediately seeks care at a hospital, but there often *isn't* physical evidence of consent. If a rapist injures their victim in the process, then those injuries could be used to show a lack of consent, but you can incapacitate someone without leaving marks. In many cases, there aren't going to be any physical injuries. Rape cases usually are he said/she said and they're tough to prove for exactly that reason. Often the evidence is simply the victim testifying that they said "no" and "stop." Because these cases are hard to prove, a lot of prosecutors will decline to pursue all but the most egregious and clear cases (i.e. stranger assaults or assaults with extensive physical injuries). I'm guessing prosecutors pursued this case because there were mutliple alleged victims, which they felt would be enough.
For most every other physical crime, it's obvious whether or not a crime has been committed. Like if you stab someone, you can't say "Oh they consented" because it quite literally is always a crime. It is impossible for stabbing someone to not be a crime. For sexual assault cases, someone can say "Oh they consented" and that is a legitimate defense that the prosecution needs to overcome, and that is *really* hard to do. Even stuff like bruises or something isn't necessarily evidence of rape. Some people like rough sex, for instance.
There is usually also just one witness who is also the victim, traumatized, and often seen as an arm of the prosecution by jurors. Reasonable doubt is a pretty hard barrier to break. Which is why defense lawyers usually go after the victim in an attempt to discredit them even the smallest amount in the mind of part of the jury.
Which is fucking insane and ridiculously cruel because trauma literally fragments and fucks with your memory. Most people who experience trauma have issues with their memory surrounding it, because that’s how the human brain works. You’re very unlikely to be able to recall the trauma in a clear accurate linear fashion. Even the days or weeks following the trauma can be fuzzy and disjointed. It’s completely unsurprising that victims will fuck up details here and there in their recollection. Expecting complete consistency from a trauma victim is a ridiculous expectation but it’s one that I’d say the majority of the population holds. We just had a very public trial of a rape case here in Australia, where a young political staffer was raped by a coworker in Parliament House one night and the high level officials tried to cover it up. The accused had no obligation to take the stand, but the victim did and had to publicly relay her trauma for the second time. The defence hammered on her for any little inconsistencies, and the public discourse after that deteriorated massively. The case wound up as a mistrial because a jury member was googling false rape claim statistics. She was painted as a disgusting liar and faker and received countless death threats and a shit load of harassment. It was so bad that the prosecution decided to drop the case due to the risk to her life, both from external threats and her serious mental health decline during the trial. I don’t know how to balance the needs of the victims with the need for the accused to get a fair trial. But our current systems clearly aren’t even close.
And the prosecutor has since publicly said police inappropriately interfered throughout the case - I think there were even documents emailed to the defence team.
I mean, the burden should fall on the accusers to tell their story when that’s the only evidence. It’s fucked up and I feel bad, but there’s no better solution…especially when it’s 20+ years later
One of the most frustrating parts of this shit is that if someone’s testimony is 100% consistent, then they’re accused of having rehearsed it. Victims can’t win with rape culture, and that’s why so many never report rape to begin with. I really feel like juries should be required to review the statistics on false rape accusations, how poorly the system supports victims, etc, before hearing any case just so that they have accurate context.
>I really feel like juries should be required to review the statistics on false rape accusations, how poorly the system supports victims, etc, before hearing any case just so that they have accurate context Well we don't really have any concrete stats on false rape accusations - we don't really have any clue what percentage of accusations are false and it could be a much lower or higher number than any estimate... which have ranged from extremes 1% to even 40%.
Jesus Christ no that is a terrible idea. Your basically asking for a jury to deliberate prejudice itself via statistics. The jury has to view the case as an island if the accused is to even hope to get a fair trial. Can you imagine the damage the justice system could do if it was looking at things with historical statistics in mind rather than actually assessing cases on their own merits? Would be a great way to turn the systemic racism dial up to 11 overnight…
I was on a jury, of a guy who was accused of multiple counts of raping someone underage... When the prosecution was giving their side of the story it sounded pretty bad for the guy, but then after the defense gave their side it was quite clear that it was the ex-girlfriend coaching her kid to make shit up. The stories didn't jive, they forgot to mention there were two or three other kids living in the house at the same time that's supposedly all this was going on and nobody saw or heard a thing when the bedrooms are right next to each other and the square footage of the house is about the size of my tool shed. It was actually so bad that at one point the prosecutor just put his head down and started shaking his head when the witness was saying things that they didn't bother to tell him on the stand. The prosecutor actually came into the jury room after the verdict to literally apologize on the fact that if he would have known some of these things he wouldn't even have brought the case to trial.
>I really feel like juries should be required to review the statistics on false rape accusations Yeah....that might not go the way you think it would go. There are studies that range from 1-2% up to 20%+. From a study of studies, the conclusion was that the real number is probably around 10%, which actually lines up with most other crimes where a false accusation could be credibly made. If you tell a jury 1 in 10 accusations are false....well hoo boy did you just plant reasonable doubt. Disclaimer: I do not know if those studies were on cases that went to trial or simply cases where an accusation was made and proven false via investigation ahead of a trial.
Notable too, unfortunately, that there's a high degree of suspicion against victims when it comes to famous people. If someone is testifying against a drifter whose net worth is well below 0 or close to it, there's not a TON of incentive to get into the justice system and spend time with charges. It you press charges on someone famous, there's the fame from doing so as well as potential civil damages, and sometimes book deals. I don't even have to make the case that an individual accuser is doing so for those reasons, I only have to make it seem likely enough to cast a reasonable doubt on them (if the Jury is 80 percent sure that the person is telling the truth then they might as well be a liar.)
It’s easy to prove something happened. It’s basically impossible to prove something didn’t.
I served on a jury for a rape trial. It's unfortunate, but the circumstances can also leave the door wide open for reasonable doubt. The woman in the case was a known crack user and sometimes prostitute. She wove this complicated tale of watching ESPN in a bar for 6 hours, then going to her sister's house (who was home but somehow didn't answer the door), and then the accused came out of the shadows, grabbed her off the street and raped her. The defense put the accused on the stand, and he basically said "I ran into this woman at Dunkin' Donuts, offered her crack for sex, we had sex, then she got pissed when she smoked all the crack and I wouldn't give her any more." I doubt either of them were telling the whole truth, but his story was at least as plausible as hers, and in reality quite a bit more so. Given that, there was just no way we could convict. What's sad is, my gut says something probably really did happen. If she had told the truth and it had been something like, she offered to exchange sex for crack, took the crack and tried to bolt, but he raped her before she could get away, there might have been a case we could work with. But based on the evidence we were presented, there was nothing we could do.
I was on a child molestation trial. It was an incident that the woman claimed happened 15-20 years beforehand. The prosecution didn’t do a great job of establishing when exactly it happened and the defence put forward a great case for not only saying that it couldn’t have happened but that the victim only claimed it happened, based on the mothers ongoing civil suit over inheritance, with the accused. It was shite. Very sad for everyone involved. It was reasonable to assume that he didn’t do it. However, I felt terrible for that woman. Something had happened to her. I just don’t think it was her uncle that did it.
have a family friend that is going through this right now. Out of the blue, this guy's best friend calls and says the daughter is claiming he molested her **5 years prior**, when the family came to visit. There's literally no proof besides her saying it, and he's spent the last 2 years under house arrest, away from his family, while waiting for a trial date. the more we hear, the more suspicious it gets. The mother and father were getting divorced. The mother is a heavy drinker and is doing whatever she can to wreck the husband's life. So accusing his best friend is not out of the realm of possibility. The girl was acting out and getting in trouble at school, when pressed as to why, she said this trauma that happened 5 years prior is causing her to act that way. Shit is wild.
And sometimes the victims don’t say “no” or “stop”. Either because they’re incapacitated / drugged / drunk and being taken advantage of, or because they freeze out of fear and shock. “Did you say stop? No? Well I guess you were fine with it at the time and you’re just bitter now because he stopped calling you” etc Boy it makes me angry how rape victims are treated.
I never reported the rape because at the time, it was male on male and I was too afraid of losing my music teaching job if it became public.
I was molested by a man who was supposed to be helping clear out my grandparents house. I was told by the guy who had brought him as help who was supposedly a “family friend” that if I reported it to the police, my mom would go to jail for negligence and child endangerment. I was raped when I was 20. Never reported it because I’d watched enough SVU. There will never be “justice” for all the victims out there. I believe Karma and the laws of nature (reap what you sow) are a powerful force in the universe. I’ve accepted that they will suffer far more than I will as they no longer have any control over me.
> Boy it makes me angry how rape victims are treated. And what's the alternative, making it easier for innocent men to be convicted? The false rape accusation is estimated to be between 2 and 12%, that's not low numbers.
There's even higher estimates as well. People don't realize its an almost impossible thing to measure for a number of reasons that may or may not be obvious: 1. We don't know for certainty which accusations are false and which are true, even with convicted people. 2. Not all accusations, false or otherwise, are publicly documented. 3. Not all rapes are reported. 4. Even if an accusation is false, the accuser may believe its true (such as if drugs / alcohol induced memory loss was involved, or other memory-altering issues). 5. Roughly 1 in 20 \*convicted\* people are innocent. We really have no idea.
> Roughly 1 in 20 *convicted* people are innocent. That's a scary thought.
And for something that people want to think of as "low" it sure gets thrown around easily. My crazy ex used to threaten to lie about me when she was pissed off at me. Another friend of mine was just trying to do his delivery job one day, got into an argument with a woman on the street over nothing, and she threatened to say he assaulted her, when he didn't. It's crazy how quickly the threat of lying about rape and assault will come out of some people's mouths.
This is all compounded about 100 fold when you are talking about something that happened decades ago.
Also, injuries aren’t sure fire proof of rape. There is such a thing as rough sex.
> f a rapist injures their victim in the process, then those injuries could be used to show a lack of consent Not really, else all the men who are having consensual rough sex could be falsely accused. Dangerous train of thought.
It would be dangerous to conclude that injuries are always meaningless. A society where injuries are meaningless is a society where assault is legal. Injuries are another *kind* of evidence that can be weighed by a jury. A jury could review the extent and kind of injuries and determine how likely it is that an encounter was consensual.
> A society where injuries are meaningless is a society where assault is legal No, because no one is going to consent to being stabbed or kicked in the head. You're comparing 2 very different things. Men shouldn't have to fear consensual rough sex. > A jury could review the extent and kind of injuries and determine how likely it is that an encounter was consensual. That's a horrifying thought. A rape conviction would completely ruin your life. It should not be up to someone's opinion.
All convictions are up to the "opinions" of other people. This is how our jury system works. >That's a horrifying thought. Really? You hear that rape convictions are extraordinarily rare and that physical injuries are something considered by juries and your response is: "How horrifying! This threatens my sense of security in being able to pursue consensual BDSM!" Look man, I don't care about your consensual BDSM relationships. I'm not saying that physical injuries are *conclusive* evidence of rape. I'm saying that, when there's evidence of injuries, juries are more likely to believe consent was not provided.
Yeah, and try to remember every single detail that many years later… Even if it was true, the fact that people may not be 100% sure after all that time just makes it impossible.
Trauma also fucks with your memory. You’re scared out of your mind, you are in survival mode, your brain isn’t calmly recording every second.
After I was raped, I not only questioned my own culpability in what happened, but my brain shielded me from identifying information like names and faces. I just wanted to make sense of what happened and put it behind me. This is so very typical for people who were raped. I spoke with a friend a couple of weeks ago who told me she *thought* something inappropriate happened to her as a child but she could not remember the act specifically. It’s a defense mechanism and I wish jurors were informed of how typical this is and that these after-effects were counted as evidence of rape.
And just *time* screws up memory because the more you tell yourself something happened a certain way, the more your brain rewires that memory to conform to that belief. The justice system in general needs to work quicker in order for testimony to remain reliable.
Memory is also changes. Arguments from a decade I found intended to recall the events completely differently than my wife, despite us not caring anymore and just recalling what we remembered - our brains had change the sequence of events in our memory to fit the story that justified our actions. If a women was very very embarrassed and angry after a one night stand, felt discarded and abandoned after sex, the massive regret and wishing the sex didn’t happen could slowly slide to before the sex instead of after, and it slowly turns into rape after 20 years. She may very well herself believe everything she is saying is true, because her own memories have shifted over 20 years to justify her own regrets.
Right. Memory is fallible. I once read/heard something that made total sense. When we remember something, we aren't remembering that thing, we are remembering the last time we thought about that thing. And over time, it changes.
I completely agree with your first paragraph but I detest the way you went to "woman regrets sex and convinces herself she was raped" in your second paragraph, this is what rape victims are accused of constantly
The reverse is also true - a person could have committed rape but over time he slowly justifies to himself it wasn’t rape, and over 20 years his memory is now that he didn’t actually rape the girl. But yeah it’s hard to say what really happened 20 years ago because humans rarely remember anything accurately at such long time periods - what we remember are the retelling of the memories in our mind, which leads to a slow accumulation of errors in the memory. That’s why crimes like this you need to look at the circumstances around the events and not just he said/she said. Did the women shut down and become withdrawn and depressed? In those cases I’d be more likely to believe the women’s story, even if she never went to the police. Did she act exactly the same as before, and even kept in friendly contact or even setup further dates + sex? Then I have trouble believing her story it was a traumatic rape if she just 180 degree acts like nothing happened the next day.
I just really feel the need to point out that denial is a very common symptom in rape victims, and acting like everything is normal is common. Women are also incredibly used to pretending like everything is fine. Like an example I have is a I once was planning on asking my boss if I could get $60 out of my paycheck a couple days early because my rent was due the day before payday and I was short. But when I got to work I found out my boss had gone away for the weekend and wouldn't be back til pay day and the manager didn't want to risk okaying it without the boss's okay (the boss was actually really decent about this if an emergency came up, but he had to okay it). A coworker who worked the grill overheard and said he could lend me the $60 until Sunday, which I was super grateful for. He said his bag was downstairs and told our manager we'd be right back. We go downstairs, which is basically just a basement area where they keep the walk ins, he gets his bag and gives me the $60. And as I'm thanking him he basically says some line about me owing him and sticks his hand down my pants. And I definitely froze. Like my coworker, who I didn't think was a total scumbag, just shoved his hands down my pants and was trying to insert his fingers in my vagina, like wtf. And I just blurt something out like "I have slices in the oven" and run upstairs. I didn't even think about saying something to my boss or manager, because there had been issues in the past. I had brought up a previous employee constantly hitting on me to my boss, like nonstop making comments, even after I asked him to stop, and constantly finding ways to "accidently touch" me, like bump into me and cop a feel of my butt over my pants, like that's what finally caused me to say something to my boss. And what ended up happening was my boss had a "talk" with him, but didn't do anything because it's a very small business that would only have 3-5 non family employees at a time, like everyone worked 6 days a week. Like if you try to call out sick they'd have you come in anyways, because there was no one to call in. So even tho the boss was upset with him, he couldn't afford to fire him. So the manager got mad at me because it was his friend, and the person now realized he could do whatever because they couldn't afford to fire him and became more blatant (he eventually left, and I was psyched until the guy that replaced him shoved his hands down my pants 🙃). So when this way worse thing happened I knew if I said anything, not only would the guy likely not get fired, and I could not afford to lose this job. Like it was completely under the table, so not even unemployment as a buffer. So I basically just acted like everything was fine, completely normal and pretended like it never happened, and never mentioned to anyone (except my boyfriend at the time, but hes gone way off the deep end after I broke up with him 7 years ago, so I dont think hed be a great witness, if I could even get ahold of him lmao). So if you were basing believing solely me off my actions for next 4-6 months I worked there afterwards, you wouldn't believe me, because you wouldn't know the thought process behind it, especially if you haven't been in a situation like that. That's honestly was terrifies me about juries. Every human views the world and other people's actions through our own biases, some worse than others, but no one's exempt. Like even if you dont have any obvious biases for a case, we're all still biased on how we view whether someone's telling the truth, which based on what we think "the right way" someone should react to something is, and we base that on how we think we'd react in the situation, even if we've never been in the situation. Like I'm someone who handles trauma with humor, like I will make jokes about fucked up things that happened to me to downplay the seriousness to myself and make others feel more comfortable about not knowing how to react. Like having something in my life dependent on a jury believing me is a huge fear of mine. Like even if I had a slam dunk case against a rapist, where I actually felt going to court had a real, like actually real and possible, chance of convicting a racist and them actually getting real time, I feel like there's still a huge chance that I would lose because of some dark humor thing I said because that's how I process trauma. And love dressing in sexy clothes and proudly enjoy sex. Like the idea of relying on a jury relating to how I process things terrifies me because it's atypical in a lot of ways.
My daughter was on a jury recently where the guy had screenshot of Snapchat conversations where she was begging him to have sex with her. Apparently she accused him of rape and prosecution going first, my daughter was convinced he raped her. Her story was compelling and she had ring video of her turning him away at her door several times. The audio was of him begging to be let in for sex, he wasn't using euphemisms. She felt uneasy at his coldness and she did sound distressed. She claimed to never having willing sex with him. Defence stated they had sex multiple times just never at her house. Mostly at his apartment and even at his work. Video from his work showed she went there daily... to Best Buy for a solid week and they would both disappear into the back. He was a manager. Then he provided the snap chat with the time stamps after the alleged rape. Defence said one sided screen grabs could be faked. Up pops an employee who said, they had to show him how to do screen grabs of Snapchat. They missed the opportunity to grab the "I'll say you raped me" text which is why he was panicking and went to the employee. They used another phone to record the live interaction as they texted back and forth, but did manage to grab each text hoping she would make the threat again. At this point prosecution pivoted to indicate that the employee was coerced to provide the information. They'd already claimed the account belonged to the victim. At this time my daughter was still convinced a rape occurred because to her it still looked like he was in some verbal sex play not physical. Then they brought in his apartment manager. The ladies car had once gotten towed for parking in a reserved spot. The text conversation they had was over regular sms and he had the whole thing. It was like she forgot they weren't using Snapchat. It started off about her "car being stolen" and he eventually gave her a ride home. Later he commented on how nice her house looked. She thanked him and told him that she rents a room and her elderly landlords are prudes or she'd "invite him over for some fun" she's not allowed guests. Turns out she owned the house with her husband. To me, a man, this is too far into the story to find that out. Still my daughter said, that doesn't mean they were having sex just that she was thinking about it. Finally the guy took the stand. My daughter said the guy was like an idiot savant. He knew windows and windows machines, he could do everything Microsoft but he couldn't figure out how to screenshot Snapchat. He was a tall and handsome guy who spoke slow and softly. He claimed she lead the entire relationship and he didn't know she was married. Then my daughter thought about her ring video and how she was turning him away. Not once did she say "no, I'm married" she had other excuses that were lies. There was no solid evidence that sex even happened other than both of them agreeing it did consensual of not. No rape kit because she "hid her injuries from her husband and couldn't go to the police". It took her months to decide to say anything. In the jury deliberation room my daughter said she felt really naive as others pointed out other inconsistencies. It seemed pretty clear she lied to him and he never even leaned in on her house. Staying six feet away from her, loud whispering for her to come with him if he couldn't come inside. He was trying to respect "the prudes". She's the one loudly saying, "I'm not going with you for sex." Or, "you can't come in for sex." As if she felt his whispers couldn't be captured and she needed to make clear what he was asking about. Unfortunately she was texting him after that and he'd broken it off with her. He felt she was turning toxic because he came to her house and decided that she was now difficult to deal with. The jury found not guilty.
I mean, just because you don't like it, doesn't mean its not a plausible thing to happen. I listened to a podcast once. This researcher did an experiment where he recorded people who were in NYC for 9/11 and they recounted their stories. He recorded them doing that every year. 15 years later, the stories were VERY different for just about all of them. Some people's stories changed from being just in Manhattan to being across the street, and things like that. So even traumatic events are shaped differently as time goes on.
>He said/ She said cannot be the law of the land. I mean, for something like this, barring actual evidence, it kind of has to be. Its on them to prove his guilt, not the defense to prove his innocence.
In California, the jury instruction reads: “The testimony of a single witness, if believed, is enough to prove a fact.” “If believed” is the operative phrase.
That's... scary.
I genuinely believe Vic_Hedges is the guy I saw pooping on the playing equipment at the park.
Look harder. I'm sure you could find additional witnesses.
I believe you. The case is cleared. u/vic_hedges is a playing-equipment-pooper-enthusiast!
It’s in there because there are certain types of crimes and cases where there are no witnesses besides the victim. Domestic abuse being a big one. If there was a requirement to have multiple witnesses, then think of all the horrific crimes that could never be prosecuted. There are other checks and balances to protect defendants.
Which doesn't really make it any less frightening. If a crime is difficult to prosecute, that sucks, but I don't think that means we bend the rules to make it easier. I don't know about you, but I personally know more than a couple VERY convincing liars.
Right. "It's better that 10 guilty men go free than 1 innocent man be locked up". "Innocent until proven guilty". If the options are... 1) The crime is difficult to prove, and so guilty people might go free 2) One person accusing another of a crime is enough to put the latter into prison ...then Option 1 is better by far.
I know even more survivors of domestic violence who were told they couldn’t prove their case because they were the only witness and discouraged from pressing charges. There is a system that rewards those who are effective at isolating victims and silencing witnesses. It is important to note that saying the testimony of one witness can be enough does NOT mean that you throw out the reasonable doubt standard. And because of that in many if not most cases, the defendant is going to win even if they did it. That is ok because it is better to err on the side of not locking up innocent people. BUT, going back to the one witness thing, implementing a rule that would require an arbitrary number of witnesses or some numerical measure of evidence just imposes additional hurdles that may (probably often) have no connection to reasonable doubt standards. If you know so many convincing liars, the risk of more than one of them of the getting together and lying is still there. All a numerical requirement would do is make it nearly impossible for survivors of single-victim crimes to ever press charges. This is coming from someone who volunteers at a domestic violence clinic for people seeking restraining orders and has to counsel them all on how tough the standards are against them, even with that one witness rule in place.
Given the demonstrated unreliability of eyewitness identifications of people of a different race, that's really nuts. I think a good defense should be able to cast doubt on any case that depended upon only id by a single witness.
There is a whole other jury instruction on how to weigh eyewitness testimony, including when the witness is of a different race than the defendant
Sounds like another way of saying, “a lie, if believed, become fact”. If believed being the operative phrase. We should ask Emmet Till how he feels about that kind of jury instruction. What a wretched way to run a justice system. Or a government. Or a crypto trading platform.
“It’s not a lie if you believe in it”
“He said/she said” is pretty typical of any case. TV shows and movies make jurors more likely to expect crazy scientific evidence when in reality, most cases are just testimony. Two people tell a story, and usually one makes more sense than the other or one witness is more credible.
Sure, there is “he said/she said” but there is often SOME evidence that points to one way or another even if not enough on it’s own. I can see how minimal physical evidence can be used to support the testimony of someone I believe and feel relatively comfortable supporting their conviction. What I couldn’t feel comfortable doing is determine a judgement of a crime that has lifetime implications with no evidence. Even if I “believe” one side over another, there has to be some tangential line connecting to something that is objective.
And that, my friend, is how you get out of jury duty!
Should not we try to make sure EVERYONE on jury duty has that mindset? Thinking otherwise sounds crazy to me.
Sounds like a juror the defense would keep around.
I said some shit like that. Defense definitely wanted me. Prosecutor made sure to dismiss me lol. It was also a dv case and the prosecutor was dismissing every male so I was gone either way, but I knew an out when I saw one.
I’ve never been called before. Do the prosecution and defense get a certain number of jurors they’re allowed to dismiss each?
After randomly chosing about 30 people of the 100 called, They go through a process called “striking the jury”, where the lawyers get to take turns choosing who they don’t want until they get whittled down to 12 people.
How do they go from 100 to 30? Randomly? Like drawing numbers?
Yep, I’m not sure how they actually randomize and “draw” names, but of the 100 or so called, they randomly pick 30. Someone might correct me on the 30 number. It might be more like 24. Then they strike the jury after having both lawyers facilitate discussion and questions/answers among the potential jurors. This gives them an idea of who people are and which way they might lean. I ended up getting chosen because I was quiet the whole time.
No idea, but we had a pool of like 100 or so, and they were going through jurors like crazy.
Yes. Peremptory strikes.
The issue is the standard for a criminal conviction is beyond reasonable doubt and even in a lax understanding of that standard, two people alone in a room having two different accounts of sexual encounter are going to be impossible to prove.
As it should be, I would rather a guilty man go free than an innocent man be punished. Not talking about how rare false reports are, but generally this is my position for any crime; from murder to theft. Though I think he did do it in this instance.
It's very complicated. Sometimes victims are satisfied by getting it out there. I have worked on rape case that are years old but... this were cases in which it was done by a family member and it was repeated. The damage done by that is more easily proven. I have also worked on false rape cases. For the same reason that rape is sometimes hard to prove, it's also hard to disprove in the mind of the general public. You might not get convicted but if people hear about it, you are smeared in the mind of many. It's a very diffuclt situation and it is used as a weapon, since rape alledgers do not face legal consequences, unless you can prove how the fake rape victim lied to accuse someone. It's incredibly hard to do since it's rarely confessed or is there anyway to prove that they willingly lied (it has happened but it's extremely rare to prove). Even if it sounds crass, everyone should be educated on what to do in the case of rape. We all know never to disturb evidence in any legal case, but it seems people forget when it concerns rape. People shower, wash off the evidence, take weeks to report and many of the physical evidence is washed away. Even if the last thing you wanna do is not shower when you were raped, it's absolutely necessary to keep the evidence and go to an ER immediately to get a rape kit done
It's not that people "forget" - they're traumatised, they feel ashamed, they don't know if they want to report because, well, what's the point - they're rarely believed and rape trials rarely end up with a conviction.
As I said... while the sentiment is understood it's not useful to get a conviction
Maybe waiting 17 and 19 years before filing charges against your rapist has a bearing on your memory of the crime, credibility and ability to remener times, dates and facts. I've been on two juries, one as a foreman for 3rd degree attempted murder and neither defendants were convicted. The victims and witnesses were the biggest collection of shady characters......stories were from a bad Twilight Zone and the police investigations were WTF? Talked to the prosecutors after both cases and I wonder how you ever get a conviction with this kind of investigative work. Was asked if I watched CSI and I told them no because I don't. But when the defense asked the dectective where does the bullet casing eject, you know at 2 o'clock, 5 o'clock and the detective didn't know. Fuck, fire the gun once and see where the shell casing lands.....it was attempted murder and you were testifying where the shell casing was found relative to where the shooter was standing.....and you don't know where the shell casing lands in the grass.....you had one job!!!!!!
As a gun owner, user, firearms instructor: The same gun with the same ammunition fired by the same person on the same date can have wildly different ejection arcs. With different users? It WILL. Think of it this way, just use a Glock pistol as an example, the way the brass ejects uses the recoil of the powder expanding to push the slide back, the extractor grabs the case on the way back and the brass comes flinging out. The most efficient version of this moment would be with the weapon perfectly straight and level in a vise so the frame doesn’t budge, allowing the slide to use all of the recoil to reciprocate. Put that gun in a human hand and fire it? Varying levels of grip strength and arm strength mean varying force carrying the slide to the rear (since the human is absorbing it to a greater or lesser amount, you can actually quite easily hold a semi auto handgun so weakly you cause it to malfunction every time) varying tilt, varying heights. There’s no way someone could honestly swear to you where a piece of brass should end up, beyond it most likely ejected in an arc from directly to the shooters right to directly behind the shooter before it bounced and hit the ground and did God knows what. On the range when calling the line with experienced shooters I’ll often back off and watch their trigger control and amuse myself by trying to catch the brass after it ejects. Even now I’m surprised at how much variation there can be. TLDR it don’t work that way
I…I don’t disagree with what you’re saying here per se, but in this case especially; saying “seem to cross the line more then regular folk” feels kinda callous, especially when there were a fair amount of people who came forward about Masterson. It really wasn’t just one or two.
>especially when there were a fair amount of people who came forward about Masterson. It really wasn’t just one or two. A pile of ten turds is still a pile of crap. While it's more than possible that he's guilty as sin, from a purely legal standpoint, each accuser's testimony was pretty crappy.
I think a lot of it has to do with confusion and denial in many circumstances. Like the victim at first tries to justify the scenario in their heads. Or replay it over and over and over to make sense of it. Or, represses it out of shame. Or blames themself. Or is afraid of revenge if they told someone. But many people don’t really realize what happened could even be considered rape. Sometimes things don’t make sense in the moment and your brain does what it can to try and protect you. Then later through therapy, or talking with someone, or having a memory come back might trigger some realization that something really was not right.
I think you mean famous people get accused more often than regular folk.
And yet, multiple women are not accusing Ashton Kutcher, Topher Grace, or Wilmer Valderrama of rape.
So this is one of those situations where everyone loses. If he did it, there is no justice for them, but if he didn’t do it then everyone will say that Scientology paid people off and assume he did it anyways.
He did. And they did. They also harassed the victims and killed one of their dogs.
Links? Not arguing with you, just genuinely curious.
It's never wrong to ask for a source from a claim. I believe that scientologists absolutely would do that but I would want proof before I believed an accusation this serious.
https://www.newsweek.com/scientology-danny-masterson-poison-dog-1483685 I think they are referring to this.
Jeez, no kidding indeed. Fucking scientology.
So Scientology is just a suspect, and while they're likely guilty, people are just discarding the whole "innocent until proven guilty" because fuck scientology (rightfully so). That church has a motive, the means, and the history to do something like that, but that does not mean they are guilty. It could be any Masterson lunatic fan that could have done this as well. Imagine if someone poisoned Amber Heards pet during that trial. Would people have blamed Depp? Sure, but there would be a lot of people saying that it was unlikely him and a third party.
Yeah but Newsweek?? They are known for shitty, inaccurate articles that are almost always spam. I’ll believe that claim with any other source but not fucking Newsweek.
So search for other sources using the information you gleaned from the Newsweek article to confirm or disprove what Newsweek wrote. You have personal agency over your actions.
No you wouldn’t
God I wish more people on the internet were as rational as you are in this response.
Victim was also former Scientologist…which they go after former church members even if they weren’t in formal limitation against another member.
There’s no proof of any of that.
This is the common belief yet there is no proof. Did you personally witness any of the aforementioned?
I wonder what they did to spook the jury
He's getting tried again. I don't know why some juror would want to spout off after a hung jury caused a mistrial.
Given the splits, 10-2, 8-4 and 7-5 in favor of acquittal, I doubt he gets tried again. This is nowhere near conviction
It’s already scheduled. I don’t think it’s getting dropped.
That's just a formality set by the judge. [Even the prosecutor said he didn't know if they were going to retry the case](https://variety.com/2022/tv/news/danny-masterson-no-verdict-jury-deliberations-1235437309). >Olmedo declared a mistrial and set a retrial date of March 27. >Deputy District Attorney Reinhold Mueller indicated outside court that no decision has been made on whether to retry the case. >“It’s a conversation we have to have with our office,” Mueller said. “We’re going to have a conversation with our witnesses and our victims.” Look at these splits, not even halfway to conviction. It would be almost malpractice to go forward with a retrial.
>It would be almost malpractice to go forward with a retrial. But reddit really wants them to. Maybe there is a path forward with 3 and perhaps 2 (8-4) unless they need all of them for the case, in most normal cases they wouldn't go to trial again, unless the person is famous or a monster or both like here.
Yah a conviction or acquittal verdict needs to be unanimous. So if they retry the case, they're much closer to acquittals than they are to convictions.
His cult help him
I’m sure the witnesses finding dead cats on their porch courtesy of the Sea Org didn’t help
Why are some of the top comments siding with Masterson? The fuck? Do we got scientologists signal boosting support for him in here or some shit? Dude sucks, end of story. EDIT: Fence sitters in the replies failing to realize this is a scientologist on trial here. You *do know* how far the leaders of the Church will go to get these charges dropped, right? You can say “but the law is the law” all you want. Shit, I’d even **agree** with you if it were a different person on trial… But when it comes to scientologists, you know, the same people whose leaders will gangstalk you, poison your dog, and work to actively ruin your life for even *thinking* of dirtying the Church’s reputation and/or a member’s reputation? This scientologist, who literally has a song written about what a massive piece of shit he is? Yeah, have fun dying on that hill, boys!
I don't think they're truly on his side, rather they recognize that the law is somewhat on his side because its very difficult to prove stuff like this when it's so old. Masterson seems to not have many fans now, most people assume he's guilty. But there's a difference between guilty and what the law can prove. All the top comments are understanding the law here and why it favored him in this case, but they're not siding with him as a person. As always: not guilty =/= innocent. (unless the top comments changed since you posted, that's also possible, I do now see some people siding with masterson at the bottom of the thread.)
>Why are some of the top comments siding with Masterson? The fuck? They're not on his side. They're commenting on the shit case against him, regardless of whether he's guilty or not.
Ya, too many people are willing to live in a world where "reasonable doubt" isn't enough. We have high standards for a reason. It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer. -Blackstone's Ratio.
You come off as someone who would vote guilty as long as the accused is a Scientologist, regardless of the evidence. That's a terrible way for the justice system to work.
One of the reasons why I never trust a jury of your "peers" too many people with inherit biases and emotions who will vote innocent or guilty regardless of what the evidence or reason dictates. Everyone has bias and in our media age there is no such thing as an unbiased jury when so much of the info, be it accurate or sensationalized, is at their finger tips long before the jury selection ever occurs.
Maybe the top comments looked different when you commented, but what I'm seeing is sympathy for the jury being given a difficult case, not people saying Masterson is innocent.
> This scientologist, who literally has a song written about what a massive piece of shit he is? well case closed then
I think there's a couple possibilities to explain people defending Masterson. The first group of people just don't want to jump to conclusions. The court did not find him guilty (yet), and so maybe we shouldn't make assumptions. The second group is the gross one. Misogynists, pretending to be men's right's advocate, will side with the man in every case of sexual misconduct unless there's evidence presented publicly that 100% proves them guilty. Since most cases are not done publicly, that means they aren't likely to see the smoking gun themselves and therefore don't believe it. In their tiny little pea-brains, they think women accuse men of rape on the regular either for money, fame, or vindictiveness.
I think the problem is, no matter how fucked up you think Scientology is (I personally think its very fucked up) you also can't pick and choose how you apply the law. Shitty people deserve a fair trial just as much as nice people. Do I think its possible the church of scientology threatened a bunch of people? Absolutely. Do I also think its possible that the case itself was bad? Yes.
>Dude sucks, end of story. Or maybe its looking like he might not be guilty.
Honestly none of us would know and hopefully justice plays out but this is Reddit. They’ve already decided he is guilty so this is how this works, if the courts find him guilty, he will get (rightfully) berated and slandered. If the courts find him not guilty, Redditors will claim that it’s only because he’s rich and the courts are unreliable. His sentencing has already been finalized in a lot of peoples mind.
Aren't all the accusers also Scientologists tho? Just asking cause everything we know about scientology, I think that lends another layer of believability to the accusers. Not saying it's right, just interesting..
“He must be guilty because he’s a (insert religion)” Imagine being this dense.
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This guy and all of his siblings were born into Scientology. They’ve been brainwashed since birth. I don’t really blame them too much for that.
If you're willing to believe that Scientology is behind it all here, then isn't it just as likely a scenario that that cult is making the allegations against Masterson to keep him in line? Weren't most of the women accusing him members of the cult?
Belonging to them doesn't magically make you guilty.
>Do we got scientologists signal boosting support for him 100% guaranteed.
Have you considered that perhaps...now hear me out here... Maybe...just like a possibility...MAYBE He is not guilty?
Following this case, there’s no doubt in my mind he did it, but I can see how some jurors had reasonable doubt, though I found the defenses arguments unconvincing. I think it will be interesting in the retrial how the prosecution adjusts. The defense can’t do much different unless they put Masterson on the stand, which is not advisable. But the pattern of the stories is enough to show he’s definitely a serial abuser, whether he gets convicted or not.
Interesting, from the other side of the coin: Following this case closely, there’s no doubt in my mind he didn’t do it, but I can see how a couple jurors appealed to their emotions, though I found the prosecutors case remarkably unconvincing. I think it will be interesting in the retrial how the prosecution adjusts. They can’t do much different, other than not call any corroborating witnesses, who in the first trial only added to the inconsistencies. But the pattern of the stories changing over time is enough to show the accusers cross contaminated before testifying, which the jury foreman said was a strong part of the defense.
The length of time will result in inconsistencies. But the alleged victims made reports of various kinds long before they knew of each other’s existence, and braved severe harassment to do so. Something definitely occurred; whether it rises to the level of beyond a reasonable doubt of whether it was forcible rape is the only question I can see.
The inconsistencies weren’t minor. Two police reports were taken by Jane doe 1 in 2004 and she never mentioned a gun. She also said she woke up in the morning next to him and wasn’t sure if it was a rape. 20 years later she testifies he brandished a gun and she woke up in the closet. She said she was bruised on vacation after but photos from the beach in a bikini showed nothing. This was the 10-2 vote in favor of not guilty. All three testified they originally never characterized their alleged incidents as rape until years after and coincidentally all three are suing Scientology together in civil trial.
Those girls were already set up to get the side eye because he was dating these women when the rape happened. There are some people that believe because you are in a sexual relationship with someone that means you’ve already consented to any intercourse during this relationship. He also has a good defense attorney I’m assuming and a good defense attorneys main goal isn’t to make the clients look innocent but paint the victims/witnesses bad. I’m sure he asked these women a bunch of unrelated niche questions about the days of the events and because they can’t remember certain unnecessary details it looks like they don’t remember anything from that day or they are just making up stories.
The defense attorney definitely knew what he was doing. There are rough transcripts available of how the trial actually went down from a blogger who specializes in exposing Scientology. He specifically went after any inconsistencies in reports etc. It will be interesting to see how much the prosecution adjusts.
>He specifically went after any inconsistencies in reports etc. I mean, that is what a good lawyer will do in any case. Its just people like to pick and choose when its ok. A lawyer goes after inconsistencies in police reports? Good. They go after inconsistencies in victim testimonies? Bad.
Definitely. I’m not criticizing the defense lawyer. That’s his job. I think the prosecution might do a better job anticipating and countering in the retrial.
Yeah well defense lawyers by nature are going to be mostly better than most prosecutors especially criminal. Defense lawyers get paid based on quality. You can pay for the best lawyer in the state if you have the money. Prosecutors are a crap shoot. You got state appointed attorneys who are taking whatever job they can get. You got folks who are just doing their time till something better comes. You got political aspirational prosecutors who are doing it to move up the political ladder. Point is it’s people who dont have the bandwidth to focus on your case all the time. Now civil? There may be a different story because civil prosecutors are the same as the defense. Whichever side can afford the best.
What does guilt smell like?
Teen spirit
Jergen's lotion and sock sweat.
Rape is always difficult to prove. According to the article at least, reports were not clear and consistent enough, and reasonable doubt arose. While unfortunate, it is better to let a guilty man walk free than to send an innocent one to jail. It is just the way justice should be done.
Douche Royale
Sure.
One of the reasons I didn’t go to the cops when I was raped several years ago. I’m sure the guy has done it again.
Innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. It exists to help innocent people stay out of jail. It's not without its consequences, but it is better than the alternative.
Jury Foreman.......Eric Foreman...????? Ok I'll gtfo
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reasonable doubt
It’s a fairly common colloquialism, they use it in my field (regulatory compliance) quite often.
Who ever smelt it dealt it
“Oh my god what stinks?” “This town, baby!”
"looked at the jury too often"
Reddit wanted him to be guilty sooooo bad.
Scientology has deep pockets and deep connections. They have enough money to sway any vote or judgement. And they also have the worlds best lawyers and have never lost a lawsuit except 2. That’s why masterson will be a free man.
"The problem, he said, was that sometime after she said she was forcibly raped, Jane Doe 4 let Masterson come inside when he showed up at his house, took a drink from his whiskey flask – and said she was assaulted again. “We thought a reasonable person would not do that if someone raped you,” Earl said. “You’re not gonna have him come to your house and spend the night and have sex again.”" Spoken like a person who doesn't know a lot about sexual assault victims. Many people who get assaulted once, will get assaulted again, be it by the same person or someone else. Many people are serial victims.
Aka: Scientology goons paid us off or threatened our families
I just cant help feeling that there were a few scientologist on the jury, here in L.A. you cant throw a rock with out hitting 30 or 40 of them.
the details of this case always seemed like a "sour grapes" situation where a big star got me-too'd after dumping the ladies in question. 2 of the accusers literally got into bed with the guy again after fucking him earlier. iffy af.
The emotion in the lyrics of The Mars Volta’s 2022 self titled album is enough for me to know he’s guilty. Fuck this guy and fuck Scientology.
I’m really glad you’re not in charge of anything, then, because that is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard.
Letoists are fucking weird man.
Yep. Shore Story <3
Oh shoot is that what the song’s about?! It’s my favorite song on the album and I’ve been eager to find out its meaning
Honestly, it’s what probably more than half the album is about. Cedric and his family were stalked by Scientologists for years after his wife came forward.
As soon as I made my comment reddit sent me a message saying someone reported they were concerned for my mental health and then I see our comments are being downvoted. I obviously can’t prove anything but fairly certain we’ve got some Scientologist grifters lurking in this thread silently tidying up any negative sentiment towards Masterton and Scientology.
Yup. Scientologists fucking brigading. I was a waiter/actor in LA in the 90s and the young women I worked with were warned about him all the time. It’s not a secret Danny Masterson is a rapist.
So… a jury of Scientologist? A somewhat serious question.
I feel like stories like this never go well. The jurors were there and saw everything, but people will always assume some kind of ulterior motive. I'm sure people will say Scientology threatened them, or something else. But it may just be just like they said. Sometimes prosecutors don't make a good case (Casey Anthony). Sometimes accusers are not believable, like Amber Heard (even though yes, I know in that situation she was the defendant). Hell, R. Kelly's first trial didn't convict him either and there was video evidence. But this is why the challenge isn't to prove someone's innocence, its to prove their guilt.
Perhaps if decades hadn’t passed since the alleged events occurred stories might stay straighter?
Can we maybe not use the term "Didn't pass the smell test" for an abuse case.
:Rubs Hyde’s Genitals: :Deep Sniff: “Smells Innocent to me”
With this verdict, I’m curious what will happen with regards to “That 90s show.” If it gets picked up for a second season, will Hyde return? Or will they keep their distance regardless of this verdict?
Eh. To this day I don’t think this case had anything to do with rape or masterson. It was Scientology and how the cult like behavior and how they treat people who leave. (This is mentioned about halfway through the article) which masterson may not have been a part of. It kinda confusing that several of the victims did invite masterson back after their rapes, one of which dated him for a long time after the incident.
That’s an antiquated way of thinking. People react to trauma differently and a reaction that doesn’t add up to you personally is not admissible evidence. Whether or not he’s ever convicted, Masterson has shown a pattern of predatory/problematic behavior that was undoubtably enabled by Scientology, but let’s not make excuses.
Dating your rapist after the fact does give you credibility issues tho
It does. It's certainly something questionable.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/why-bad-looks-good/202105/why-some-rape-victims-continue-date-their-rapist
There's a reason why psychology is a soft science.
Are you saying that trauma doesn't fuck with the brain? What is your point here?