Even The Wolf likely can't clean up Harvey Weinstein's pending troubles

If all I had was you saying you’d been mugged, yes, I would.

 

That would be my default to begin the investigation. In fact, criminal justice is weighted toward the accused. The accuser carries the burden of proof.

 

Predators intentionally take advantage of the knowledge that people will find their denials equally credible by default. They even stack the deck by targeting people less likely to be believed.

 

That question makes no sense. The court is not an adversarial contest between accuser and accused.

 

Would you be willing to place the burden of proof on the accused to prove his or her innocence in the case of sex crimes?

 

We honestly differ there. I would naturally believe the accuser, because I wouldn't understand the motivation of a false accusation. (I mean, unless it was against an ex or whatever. But a stranger? Why would you do that?)

 

I don't care.

 

I’ll add for emphasis, @typefitter, is that is what is especially troubling to me about these hypothetical sexual assault cases. Two people who are the only people in the world who know what happened — shit, if even they know it — and what they say is completely in conflict. If we’re going to routinely simply “believer her,” then @Dick Whitman’s question is entirely appropriate: Why even bother with the trial at all?

 

That’s noble.

How would you change the criminal justice system to institutionalize your default?

 

I think the trial is necessary. What's happened all too often in the past is that we haven't even had the trial. The disbelief of women has been so pervasive, cops, DAs, lawyers... the system is set up against the accuser in a way that it isn't for any other crime. And compounding the tragedy is that the crime in question—rape—is pretty much the cruellest violation imaginable.

 

Am I willing to rewrite one of the bedrock pillars of our criminal justice system but only for a specific type of crime?

What a weird question

 

I'm going to try to put this another way.

There is film of Buzz Aldrin, second man on the moon, being confronted by a conspiracy theorist in public somewhere. The guy is yelling at Buzz, saying he never went to the moon. Buzz, who at this point is older than the rock he once retrieved, hauls off and punches the guy. Of course he does. Can you imagine doing something as dangerous and fucking crazy as riding a rocket to the moon, coming home, living to tell the tale, and then having some guy tell you to your face that you're a liar and you never actually went through any of that?

That's what countless women have experienced when they've said that someone raped them. Look at the women in the Roy Moore case. Do you believe them? I sure do. But they have to turn on their TVs every night and watch people say that they're full of shit. They have to contemplate the very real prospect that their violator will become a United States Senator and hear time and again that God is on his side. And it's not like they're looking for adulation or medals of bravery. It's not their moon landing that's in question. It's whether they were sexually violated as teenagers.

Can you imagine? All I'm saying is that receiving these women with compassion as a first response rather than doubt seems like the least we could do for them.