Celebrity Allegations, #MeToo etc

adexkola said:
3 women saying, "I saw Jeremy Piven come on this woman's cardigan" is significantly different from 3 women saying, "Jeremy Piven raped me". The first is multiple witnesses corroborating a single event, which is stronger evidence.

The latter is 3 women speaking about 3 different events. This may be used to suspect Piven is a serial rapist, but in no court is another allegation admitted as proof someone commited a seperate crime.

The justice system is held to a higher standard, which is why extrajudicial punishment is universally frowned upon. It allows for defendants, witnesses and victims to be cross-examined, for evidence to be vetted, and so on. Trial by numbers is a more convenient path, but cue "dark times"...
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I understand that testimony from other 'victims' may not be admissible in court, but it's regarded by police as strong evidence that they're on the right track. As, I think, it should.

In fairness, my first post did start with 'Outside of a court of law'.
 
adexkola said:
You can't say "balance of probabilities" and ignore the normally very low probability that one person assaulted many women, and not a single one filed a police report. Probability is just a substitute for, "here's my default position and that's it", which is fair enough. Just don't dress it up as the logical conclusion.
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I've known someone that was raped and refused to go to the police about it (knew the guy, no evidence, didn't want to go through people saying she was a liar), so I don't find it hard to believe at all to be honest.

And I'm not even coming to a judgement on Piven's case here, I'm saying his statement about other cases and "dark times" was bullshit and self-serving.
 
adexkola said:
You can't say "balance of probabilities" and ignore the normally very low probability that one person assaulted many women, and not a single one filed a police report. Probability is just a substitute for, "here's my default position and that's it", which is fair enough. Just don't dress it up as the logical conclusion.
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Tbf I would suspect that several totally unconnected women falsely accusing the same random guy is statistically even less likely. Especially given the sort of behaviour we're describing isn't something a guy is likely to do once and never again.
 
Fergies Gum said:
Big mistake for Piven to double down and say these women are lying.

This statement from him will hopefully give courage to other women he's targeted to speak out and tell their story.
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Unless he’s fecking innocent? Christ. If he did it he’s a grub and I’m so sorry for the women, but coming out with an official statement like that denying wrongdoing has to be at least acknowledged.
 
Borden said:
What if they're lying though? Imagine being falsely accused of something like that in this climate, it must be horrific. What would you do if you were accused of something like this that you knew to be false? I'd be fecking furious.

Piven has always struck me as a bit of a twat, so I wouldn't be surprised if these allegations are true, but the simple fact is that I have no way to know if they are. Nor does anyone else except Piven and these women. "Innocent until proven guilty" should extend to the court of public opinion.
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100% this.

What has gone on/is going in Hollywood is of course terrible, but you can’t just judge someone because they have been accused. I bet there are quite a few fake allegations that have latched on after the first wave.
 
It’s more than likely that there are cases of false accusations. Given the type of sociopaths in Hollywood, I’m sure there are a few actors who use this to get back into relevance. I wouldn’t be surprised if this happened a lot
 
Ubik said:
Well this is the kind of argument that's allowed men to get away with sexually assaulting and harassing women for time immemorial, yes.

Many of these cases wouldn't pass through a court of law because of the lack of proof beyond reasonable doubt, fine. A woman cannot easily prove, for example, that a man followed her into an empty public toilet, shoved her up against a wall and stuck his hand into her underwear against her will. Not unless she's clairvoyant and stuck a camera in the room beforehand. But does that happen? Of course it does. How often do you reckon the guy faces repercussions of any sort?

Due process will be gone through, that's about being dealt with under the law. In public opinion however, these things tend to come down to the balance of probabilities. If the public believe the women, then they believe them. Not much else you can say.

I mean ffs, even GOPers are cutting their ties with one of their own candidates over allegations (which he fulsomely denies, of course). Men are not the victims here.
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I'm sorry to say but when it comes to victims, the truth is the last we want to sacrifice. I'm honestly a little baffled at the first sentence.

Women will never be 100% safe and neither will men ( for different reasons) - not your home, not at the airport, nowhere is fully secure. This being said, making women more comfortable and safe by trading in the right of people to be innocent until proven otherwise is just not the way. Blanket punishment based on someone's word will only lead to more sectarianism and further issues.
 
Halftrack said:
Making them liable for damages would be a great way of ensuring that victims never come forward.

In a lot of cases of sexual assault and rape there aren't really any physical evidence or witnesses, so even if it's reported, it's unlikely to result in anything. In that case, victims would now have to pay restitution to the person that violated them, in addition to seeing them go unpunished for it.
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I suppose i didn't explore my thought fully. One thing is to tweet something or give interview and come out against someone. Another, i guess, is to press charges or something without proof. If you get an investigation going into someone and it turns out that someone is innocent, why wouldn't you bare the responsibility? Otherwise, everyone can do whatever they want.
 
walkinhop said:
I suppose i didn't explore my thought fully. One thing is to tweet something or give interview and come out against someone. Another, i guess, is to press charges or something without proof. If you get an investigation going into someone and it turns out that someone is innocent, why wouldn't you bare the responsibility? Otherwise, everyone can do whatever they want.
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In your first post you asked if people should be liable when their accusations aren't proven. In this post you're asking if they should liable if the accused is found to be innocent. Those are two massively different scenarios that warrant equally different responses.
 
Whilst i personally can believe pretty much all of these allegations that have come out and will continue to come out, as there has very clearly been massive issues routed in any industries like hollywood where men control the positions of power and the ease of abuse thereof, i feel very uneasy about how simple it is to accuse somebody on social media and they are judged instantly to be guilty.

People cant rush to judgement on issues like these until the facts come out as hard as that may seem, to remain emotionally unattached on a subject matter that is perhaps one of the most aweful things human beings can do to each other in the form of sexual assault and abuse. But the principle remains that you have to be presumed innocent until proven guilty.
 
Takei has been moralising online for the past God-knows-how-long about decent behaviour.

It's funny how pretty much all of the accused have been the same, isn't it?
 
Oo0AahCantona said:
Whilst i personally can believe pretty much all of these allegations that have come out and will continue to come out, as there has very clearly been massive issues routed in any industries like hollywood where men control the positions of power and the ease of abuse thereof, i feel very uneasy about how simple it is to accuse somebody on social media and they are judged instantly to be guilty.

People cant rush to judgement on issues like these until the facts come out as hard as that may seem, to remain emotionally unattached on a subject matter that is perhaps one of the most aweful things human beings can do to each other in the form of sexual assault and abuse. But the principle remains that you have to be presumed innocent until proven guilty.
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I agree with you. Someone comes forward and says "So-and-so groped me in 1985 at a opening-night party/so-and-so put his hand on my thigh in 1990". What should be the sensible reaction?

It seems that this sort of thing is getting mixed-up with the very serious allegations of rape and of repeat, significant offending. I could make similar "groping" allegations about one or two people over the years, but no-one would be interested because those men aren't celebrities. The one who really should have been investigated by the police is now long dead, and when he was grabbing and molesting young girls it was the 1970s and quite frankly, no-one really cared much, even though he was well-known in our town.

I did smile when I read in the local paper that someone had desecrated his grave, mind you.
 
Buchan said:
Takei has been moralising online for the past God-knows-how-long about decent behaviour.

It's funny how pretty much all of the accused have been the same, isn't it?
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Tekai is a raging homosexual. He is a Howard Stern regular and often participates in their gay antics. I'm least surprised by this accusation than any other.
 
Penna said:
I agree with you. Someone comes forward and says "So-and-so groped me in 1985 at a opening-night party/so-and-so put his hand on my thigh in 1990". What should be the sensible reaction?

It seems that this sort of thing is getting mixed-up with the very serious allegations of rape and of repeat, significant offending. I
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I agree. Media and on line activists are cobbling up different levels of abuse and harassment in the same basket. Louie CK is now listed alongside Weinstein and Spacey when his offences are far less serious than theirs. He is getting his just comeuppance now since he refused to publicly acknowledge these rumours when he had ample chance to do so. Also to make jokes, tv episodes and a whole movie surrounding similar subject points to an unbelievable hubris. But his actions are not comparable to that of Weinistein's.
Similarly I saw Matthew Weiner named mentioned alongside others when only allegation against him is that he remarked to a junior writer about his right to see her naked. That's gross misconduct and in a perfect world, he would have been reprimanded for it but it does not touch the level of heinous acts Spacy is alleged to have committed.
 
crappycraperson said:
I agree. Media and on line activists are cobbling up different levels of abuse and harassment in the same basket. Louie CK is now listed alongside Weinstein and Spacey when his offences are far less serious than theirs. He is getting his just comeuppance now since he refused to publicly acknowledge these rumours when he had ample chance to do so. Also to make jokes, tv episodes and a whole movie surrounding similar subject points to an unbelievable hubris. But his actions are not comparable to that of Weinistein's.
Similarly I saw Matthew Weiner named mentioned alongside others when only allegation against him is that he remarked to a junior writer about his right to see her naked. That's gross misconduct and in a perfect world, he would have been reprimanded for it but it does not touch the level of heinous acts Spacy is alleged to have committed.
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That was the problem with the #MeToo movement a fortnight or so back, too.
 
Silva said:
The list is about allegations that came after Weinstein, hence you don't see Woody Allen and Donald Trump there but you do see Roman Polanski who has had new allegations made about him.
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Ah, makes sense (although everyone has known about Louis CK wanking at people for years and not given a shit).

It's utterly bananas to me that anyone, anywhere works with Polansk by the way.
 
The Piven thing concerns me in the way people are just taking it for granted that he's guilty.

I mean, if he is then he's a scumbag and deserves the full weight of justice, but it's wrong to just say that because he's been accused he's definitely done it. The idea that coming out to deny it is automatically a mistake is ridiculous, what if he actually is innocent?

There was a case in my local area where a scout leader (iirc) was accused by 3 women of having molested them way back in the day. Each of them giving detailed accounts of what had happened and where in this old building he'd taken them. It was only found to be bullshit because they screwed up and gave the same account of this room he'd taken them to that it turned out was part of an extension to the building that didn't exist until many years after they'd claimed the incidents had happened. He was obviously cleared but those accusations don't go away and people ignorantly still trot out stuff like "no smoke without fire".

Obviously I'm not saying for one minute that we should dismiss allegations out of hand but we should also be careful about assuming guilt and we need to be careful about tarring people with the Weinstein brush too easily.

@adexkola has made a lot of good posts this last few pages.
 
crappycraperson said:
I agree. Media and on line activists are cobbling up different levels of abuse and harassment in the same basket. Louie CK is now listed alongside Weinstein and Spacey when his offences are far less serious than theirs. He is getting his just comeuppance now since he refused to publicly acknowledge these rumours when he had ample chance to do so. Also to make jokes, tv episodes and a whole movie surrounding similar subject points to an unbelievable hubris. But his actions are not comparable to that of Weinistein's.
Similarly I saw Matthew Weiner named mentioned alongside others when only allegation against him is that he remarked to a junior writer about his right to see her naked. That's gross misconduct and in a perfect world, he would have been reprimanded for it but it does not touch the level of heinous acts Spacy is alleged to have committed.
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That's only half of the truth imo, because these incidents aren't unrelated, they are different symptoms of the same culture. Abusive male power over women and children is a continuum with many different manifestations, it's not a collection of unconnected singular instances. The accusations have to be dealt with seperately by the law, but the public is right to notice that these individual deeds share a common basis.

So in this sense, "cobbling up different levels of abuse and harassment in the same basket" is not only justified, but necessary, which doesn't mean declaring all of these things equal.
 
Out_Of_1000_Rapes%20122016.png

That's the context for this.
 
duffer said:
Ah, makes sense (although everyone has known about Louis CK wanking at people for years and not given a shit).

It's utterly bananas to me that anyone, anywhere works with Polansk by the way.
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Yeah, not to mention the letter of support to him that was signed by a long list of Hollywood giants a few years back.
 
Ubik said:
Out_Of_1000_Rapes%20122016.png

That's the context for this.
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Hopefully recent events mean more are able to come forward, but even by that logic it would only lead to 18 doing time instead of 6. It's such a hard crime to prove I guess.
 
Ubik said:
Out_Of_1000_Rapes%20122016.png

That's the context for this.
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Out of every 1000 alleged rapes? It’s the same thing some of the earlier posters are saying. It’s tragic that it’s difficult to prove, but one cannot simply assume guilt.
 
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