Even if we take into consideration that 90% (out of 25) could be lying (they aren’t), that’s still ~3 women he assaulted.
Edit: Damn y’all, thanks for that old internet feeling I keep coming back to Lemmy for. Not a girl in sight in these comments.
Is testifying under oath not considered evidence? There have been so many credible lawsuits against this guy for sexual assault. Honestly what are these files going to prove that we don’t already have plenty of evidence for?
And lastly, do you have any idea what going after a rich powerful man for sexually assaulting you does to your life? Why the fuck would anybody put themselves through that if they weren’t absolutely sure they had a credible case? Some of the plaintiffs in these cases had their lives and their family’s lives threatened and disrupted.
Welp, to the bottom with me I suppose.
Ah, yes, ye Olde “just believe them” attitude.
No one would ever lie for personal gain, right?
I don’t “believe” claims that have significant impact - that requires evidence. Which is the basis of our legal system.
Just wait till you’ve been wrongfully accused about something and have to stand before a judge. It’s no fun, and you’ll be grateful then that evidence is required.
This is exactly right. The “believe women” stance is so childish and naive. “Take women seriously” would be just as effective, less dangerous and fit into every just legal system on the planet
The “believe women” stance is so childish and naive.
It’s naive to believe our criminal justice system is reliably investigating and prosecuting instances of sexual assault.
When people have sex, they usually do it in private, without any witnesses. Whatever happens during that time is often difficult to prove afterward, since it typically comes down to one person’s word against the other’s. Unless there’s clear physical evidence of assault, it can be extremely hard to establish that something was done against someone’s will. Most reasonable people would agree that “she said so” alone doesn’t amount to proof - and isn’t, by itself, a valid basis for sending someone to prison.
Whatever happens during that time is often difficult to prove afterward
“Listen, you were in an alley and nobody was around, so how do we know you weren’t handing over the wallet voluntarily?”
What are you suggesting exactly? You have an actual solution here to offer or you just want to be a smart ass?
What are you suggesting exactly?
That police and prosecutors do their fucking jobs.
Well let’s hear some suggestions then.
He wants cops to sit in a cuck chair and observe every sexual encounter to ensure no funny business. He’ll also have a little retail iPad where you do an esignature for consent before starting.
“Maybe you asked them to hit you when you volunteered to hand over your wallet.”
“Hey Pete, this guy is one of those men trying to ruin innocent people’s lives with false mugging claims!”
Hot damn this comment section is a flood of sexist shitheads being perfect example of the culture that assumes women’s accusations are false and trying to ruin men’s lives. So damn disappointing.
I don’t think the current legal systems are perfect, but I do think “believe women” would make them fundamentally worse.
How do you handle the issue of future false accusations? And don’t give me the hand wavy “but there are so few false accusations” because that doesn’t matter to the person being accused.
THE core tenet of most legal systems is effectively “innocent until proven guilty”. “Believe women” utterly breaks that, they cannot exist within the same legal framework.
So, would you rather have the legal system change to better serve women by equally investigating their accusations, or by removing “innocent until proven guilty”?
How do you handle the issue of future false accusations?
The same way you do it with men, presumably. Document the incident, collect forensic evidence, interview suspects, refer the matter to the local DA.
removing “innocent until proven guilty”?
I’m trying to imagine this response for any other crime. “Oh, you want us to investigate your car jacking? How do we know you don’t loan it out voluntarily? I guess we should just convict an innocent person!”
See, this is the problem. “Believe women” implies that women are telling the truth before an investigation has taken place. If you had read my original comment you’d see that I’m not suggesting women should be treated as they currently are, but that “believe women” specifically is a harmful rhetoric.
If we both want women’s accusations to be taken seriously and investigated as any other potential crime would be, then we’re on the same page and want the same thing. The statement “believe women” does not literally or figuratively mean that though, the problem is the wording. Say what you mean instead of this wishy washy language that is detrimental to the cause.
“Believe women” implies that women are telling the truth before an investigation has taken place.
In 2022, at least 25,000 untested rape kits sat in law enforcement agencies and crime labs across the country. This figure only accounts for data reported by 30 states and Washington, DC; the total backlog number is unknown.
Findings from Canadian national policing data indicate that one in five cases (i.e., 20%) of sexual assault reports to police are deemed baseless (Doolittle et al., 2017). However, the high rates of unfounded are inconsistent with findings from a meta-analysis of seven studies of confirmed false reports of sexual assault to police (Ferguson & Malouff, 2016). They reported that the rate of false reports was approximately 5% (0.52 [95% CI .030, .089], which is considerably lower than the Canadian average for unfounded sexual assault classifications. Sexual assault appears to be coded as unfounded with relative regularity and seems to be ubiquitous within law enforcement discourse. High rates of unfounded sexual assaults reveal that dismissing sexual violence has become common practice amongst police in Canada
The explicit goal of the investigations, laid out in one contract with Black Cube, signed in July, was to stop the publication of the abuse allegations against Weinstein that eventually emerged in the New York Times and The New Yorker.
Can you tell me how this is relevant to the point I made? How any of that suggests something other than what I said?
If you want to have a conversation, let’s have a conversation but don’t throw data that is irrelevant to the point I made while dodging the point I made.
If you asked me, I would have guessed a number around there.
That sounds like there’s an exceptionally high amount lying.
I mean I don’t think 25 women would lie about stuff that would be slander or libel when it comes to someone as litigious and thin skinned as Trump.
Not much evidence you can provide when it’s one person’s word over another. Only thing I can say is he never won a libel suit against his accusers as far as I know.
I don’t care who is accused - I refuse to convict anyone on anything just from an accusation.
More people making a similar accusation isn’t evidence, at best that’s a witch hunt.
I also that, but I’m also in support of massively reforging the legal system so that everyone can and will use it appropriately.
Which a large part of that will be changing how it is funded and expanding it all that appearing before a court to have your case heard is as easy as possible.
Any issue before a court shouldn’t be swayed so easily by how much money you can spend on it, or how long you can tie up the issue to delay and it avoid resolution.
It’s a weird situation where I think more is better
You have no idea what you’re talking about.
Witness testimony in court is not “just an accusation”. It’s corroborated by cross examination.
You have no idea what you’re talking about.
This is pretty ironic.
Witness testimony in court is not “just an accusation”. It’s corroborated by cross examination.
Cross examination is where the opposing council questions the witness in an attempt to poke holes in their testimony, point out inconsistencies and otherwise discredit the witness.
While corroboration means:
To strengthen or support with other evidence; make more certain. synonym: confirm.
Cross examination, be definition, is the exact opposite of corroboration.
And like a good scientist, I don’t give a shit what you think. Give me evidence.
People can’t argue that Donald Trump’s assault on due process is wrong and then turn around and argue that any individual should not get due process, even that scum himself. The gender of the witness is irrelevant, witness testimony is unreliable as it is subject to intimidation, coercion, deception, or even the plain old fallibility of human memory.
I absolutely think there is evidence out there. This man has said so many awful things and I don’t believe all 25 accusers are lying. But I do believe every case should be prosecuted to the fullest extent that the evidence allows.
Donald Trump’s crimes must be laid bare and proven beyond a doubt because even then the MAGA cult will do their mental gymnastics but he will truly have been dethroned as the populist leader of the right that he’s been since 2016.
A-fucking-men
“Maybe she wanted it”
“Maybe she injured herself”
“Maybe she is just jealous”
Hard to get evidence to trial when the police and prosecutors ignore evidence of rape like bruises, torn clothing, etc.
Yeah? You got any proof of bruises, torn clothing or et cetera? Please, let’s nail him to the wall together!
I’m not constantly asking for evidence you dunce. I’m arguing the original point. Fuck Trump, he’s a cunt for 1000 reasons and I BELIEVE in my heart of hearts he molested girls.
We stand on a system that requires evidence for those claims for a reason, and I believe in those protections when you or I end up under fire.
Sealioning (also sea-lioning and sea lioning) is a type of trolling or harassment that consists of pursuing people with relentless requests for evidence, often tangential or previously addressed, while maintaining a pretense of civility and sincerity (“I’m just trying to have a debate”),
So after reading this linked wiki article I find a couple interesting points of the above description.
1 relentless requests
2 pretense of civility and sincerity
So I’ll ask you a couple questions, if you don’t mind answering (and much thanks to you if you do answer them)
As I don’t observe either of the points in your comment in this thread, if I were to go look at your comment history, and I wont because I don’t care to spend any effort to do so, will I find a history of you asking for evidence on this specific topic, as if you were looking for opportunities to do so, Cherry picking as one might call it?
And also how often would you say someone accuses you of sea lioning beer on Lemmy?
I’m asking because I’m betting the answers are no and hardly ever
It’s frustrating when people try to eject to from a discussion because they ascribe motives you don’t possess, at least in my experience if it does
Behaviour of sealion is only right course of action if someone just accused it of something that would destroy its life and reputation.
“Just believe them” is shorthand for “Believe them long enough to actually press charges and hold a trial instead of dismissing them by default”.
Yeah, I think a lot of people are completely missing the point. Very similar to how saying “black lives matter” doesn’t imply that non-black lives do not matter, or that black lives must somehow be considered more important than any other life, the phrase “believe women” doesn’t imply that we should start doubting men, or that a woman’s testimony should be held as a higher form of evidence than anything else. It’s pointing out the clear systemic bias against women in a system controlled and dominated mostly by men who do not want to cede their power and authority.
One of the many flaws of the English language is how difficult it is to condense a very complex sociopolitical message down into a catchy one-liner without losing a ton of the context that got people there in the first place.
I’m not sure how you square that definition with what the OP wrote in the headline.
They said that we wouldn’t need the Epstein files (the evidence collected by the FBI in order to prosecute this child sex trafficking ring) to prove DJT’s guilt if we just believed women.
I hope you can, at least, see how that appears to be saying that “the evidence isn’t needed if we believe women.” and not “we should take womens claims seriously.”
You’re right that there are two vastly different interpretations of that statement: (1). Take women seriously and (2). A woman’s accusation is a higher form of evidence.
OP’s headline is, at best, poorly written but it’s very easy to understand why it appears to be using (2).
Wasn’t BLM just a scam to extract money for its operators?
No.
Between charges and a trial is a criminal investigation. If that doesn’t give enough reason to proceed to trial, charges are dropped.
A better stat would be %age of accusations that result in an investigation. That should be a lot higher, but police shouldn’t be trying to prosecute cases that have nothing but an accusation to court.
They aren’t processing evidence, so what else can they prosecute with? Vibes?
https://www.endthebacklog.org/what-is-the-backlog/
Look up statistics for your area.
More capacity to process rape kits is something I can get behind. More evidence is good. It would stop people clamouring for convictions based on accusations alone.
So if you are assaulted with no witnesses then having bruises, stab wounds, and other injuries shouldn’t be enough for the police to take any action?
Because that is the physical evidence that the police routinely dismiss.
That’s because they’re not looking for evidence that shows a crime was committed, they’re looking for evidence of who committed the crime
Your injuries are evidence of a crime, but not necessarily evidence of a specific perpetrator
Wait, which do you think happens more often: a false accusation, or an uninvestigated sex crime? Because false allegations happen, but statistically it’s like saying you shouldn’t go to restaurants because occasionally chefs murder people with knives. It’ll probably make the news, but only because it’s so fucking rare.
I said neither of the above. Don’t put words in my mouth.
People are falsely accused of crimes all the time, which is why the legal system requires evidence.
What I said is wait until you stand before a judge falsely accused. I didn’t say of what crime, you assumed.
All the time? Like once a week? Or like every day? Or maybe like roughly every minute of every day of the year?
Can you think of an answer to your question would justify the removal of due process or need for proof beyond a reasonable doubt?
The legal system errs on the side of letting some guilty people go free in order to try to protect against innocent people being unfairly punished.
That’s why the standard for criminal conviction is that the accused is innocent if you have any reasonable doubt.
We just had to believe him when he bragged about it!
So you’ll believe the guy, but not the women.
And that’s exactly what’s wrong with most of these comments.
Im pointing out that its not a matter of “believing men over women”, but rather believing whatever we want to believe.
When youre a hammer everything looks like a nail
They said you don’t need victim testimony because the rapist is bragging about it, and your interpretation is that said don’t believe women.
You’re the sexest one, even if you don’t realize it.
Trial by socia media? Fuck outta here.
All these scummy shitbags are certainly guilty, but this needs to be proven.
The motto I get behind is “trust, but verify”.
That is what ‘believe women’ means, because women’s claims of sexual violence are frequently not believed to the point that the police come up with excuses to not even look into the claims. Then if they do, the prosecutors come up with reasons why they shouldn’t ‘waste time’ prosecuting when there is as much evidence in a rape case as there is in a murder case.
“If we just trusted women”
We don’t trust people based on their gender. We trust them based on credibility and evidence. If there’s even the tiniest amount of doubt then it better to let the guilty walk free rather than put an innocent person in jail. And I’m speaking broadly here - not about Trump specifically.
That is not OP’s point. Their point is the opposite, namely that a lot of people automatically distrust people (women) based on their gender. Lots of women have provided credible evidence under oath:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_sexual_misconduct_allegations
Yeah, and inoccent until proven guilty. We should not believe absolutely anyone, regardless of gender, making any accusation.
Every accusation should be thoroughly investigated, though.
It happened with Neil Gaiman recently. Many accusations, no sentence for him (at least as of yet), he denies the claims.
Yet, massive lost to reputation, projects cancelled, etc.
If he’s found guilty, all the shame and consecuences to him, but society should stop acting like people talking or a “hyper graphical article” makes things true.
We live in the age of quick opinions, echo chambers, and the like.
Another example is Luigi Mangione, everyone already thinks he did it, when there’s no evidence and only “evidence” it was him
[…] We should not believe absolutely anyone, regardless of gender, making any accusation. […]
Do you make a distinction between “accusation” and “testimony”?
[…] We trust [people] based on credibility and evidence. […]
I don’t think this is necessarily the case. For example, one could choose to give someone a chance despite their past wrongs.
Is this a showerthought or just wrong? Someone just learned that anecdotal evidence < material evidence by a lot
Innocent until proven guilty (I say that as a woman AND a survivor of SA).
Then again he was proven guilty in other cases. Seeing as those weren’t enough to remove him from power permanently I am not sure what this would do. If I had to bet on if he assaulted minors I’d go for heck yes. I’d bet nearly everything I have on that. So I’d be a pretty bad jury member of this case ;) anyway: the more evidence there is, the harder it is to ignore. Victim statements are pretty good evidence, but more is better.
Believing women dosnt mean just acting blindly on a womans word and nothing more.
Believing women means intiating proper procedures, starting investigations, and gathering the facts and evidence, impartially and without prejudice.
So yes, We need the epstein files, even if we believe women, because they are evidence that, in all likelyhood, supports their claims.
These files should have been handled a decade ago, but the fact that they’ve spent so much time and energy trying to alter and hide them shows how damning they really are, that even after having months of time to alter and remove Trumps name, that they still were not able to and had to emergency switch to “Epstein files? What files? No such files exist!”
Convicting based upon words sworn under oath and with no facts to back it up but feelings and outage has lead to a lot of overturned verdicts and innocent lives ruined.
This can still ruin someone’s life though. As soon as there are whispers of an accusation that are official it’s over. There needs to be a better way.
What way is better than investigating allegations impartially? Do you know of something better that wouldn’t require someone to be psychic, or require everyone coming to some nigh impossible position where no one lies?
I agree with your first sentence but then you went off on a mocking-tangent instead of promoting an actual conversation that’s important. We see investigations used both politically and socially (perp-walks are one way law enforcement berates during an investigation, also giving press releases/public announcements before all the facts are collected). There are ways which police act respectfully during an investigation when it’s someone they like, a more neutral way for EVERYONE can be achieved.
Um… I’m a girl, and I totally believe these women were assaulted because we’re talking about rich assholes who literally feel like they can do anything.
But you have to present evidence no matter what. That’s literally how the court works. If all we have is he-said-she-said, then there’s not much we can do to reach a verdict. There have been regular people who have been incorrectly deemed assaulters/rapists due to lack of evidence. We have seen women who lie about this. You NEED to have proof, to ensure that it’s an undeniable fact that the accused is officially recognized as a shit person.
This is an unrealistic ideal, I’m gonna be real. I want these women to win and be acknowledged. I want all who interacted with Epstein to rot in prison and hell. But we need evidence. That’s just the truth.
Having the evidence needed to convict is different than evidence to no longer trust and shun.
With 20+ woman making accusations, being friends with a known pedophile and literally having recordings of him bragging about sexually assaulting women and bragging about going backstage with undressed teen girls the world shouldn’t need any more evidence. The honest and rational world doesn’t in fact.
Convictions are important going up against the rich and powerful. They live lives where they don’t have to care what us plebians think.
No one should be “just believed”. Everyone’s claims should be taken seriously and looked into. But no one should be believed automatically.
In this thread, so many people who misunderstand the meaning of “Believe women”.
Brett Kavanaugh raped a woman in high school, and had three additional accusations of sexual assault, yet all of that was ignored to put him on the Supreme Court. Donald Trump has a 67-page Wikipedia article on all the sexual assault claims against him, yet he was still a reality tv star, a popular media figure, and now president. Allegations and rumors against Kevin Spacey and Harvey Weinstein circulated for years before anyone took things seriously enough to bother doing something about it. Brock Turner raped an unconscious woman and was let off with six months because the judge didn’t want to “ruin such a promising future” (or similar words), served it in county jail, and was released after 3 months.
“Believe women” means taking each allegation seriously instead of doubting women with questions like “are you sure you want to report this”, “are you sure it wasn’t just a misunderstanding”, “are you sure you weren’t drunk”, etc. “Believe women” means stop trying to dismiss or downplay behavior with things like “why would he do that” (Trump’s assault on the plane), or “she’s not that pretty”, or “she was asking for it”, and actually investigating the crime instead of brushing it off as a college prank, or the casting couch, or someone trying to get 15 minutes of game by accusing someone famous.
“Believe women” doesn’t mean automatically accepting every claim, but believing it enough to accept that it might have happened and conducting a thorough investigation of the alleged incident.
In this thread, so many people who misunderstand the meaning of “Believe women”.
Including OP who said “We wouldn’t need the Epstein files to prove DJT’s guilt if society just trusted women in the first place.”
According to OP, there’s no need to know what the Epstein files say because these women’s accusations are enough to convict him on their own. People are reacting to that absurd phrasing, not to the idea that women’s accusations should be taken seriously and investigated.
No, the problem is the saying itself. It literally just says “believe women”. There’s no room for interpretation in there. The problem is the phrase itself. If you want a phrase that means take women’s allegations seriously, then the phrase you should use is “take women’s allegations seriously”
You’re missing the actual issue at play.
That has literally nothing to do with not believing women, and everything to do with buying into a cult.thagvis not an instance of people not believing women, thats a case of people politically othering those women (or men, or whoever) so much that they would always defend their teammate.
Every non-ideologue believed those women, including conservatives in other countries that aren’t in a trump cult.
Everyone’s claims should be taken seriously and looked into.
That is what “believe women” means. It means actually looking into the claims instead of dismissing them out of hand because they were made by a woman.
No, that may be what you WANT it to mean, but this is a very clear two-word phrase that can only mean one thing by any english speaker. Words mean things, you can’t just use alternative definitions any more than Republicans can use alternative facts. Words are words, and facts are facts.
Yes, the Epstein files are important, but not for proving guilt.
Honestly, guilt doesn’t matter in this case, because nobody who matters cares. His fanbase, his voters, his politicians and even his supreme court don’t care. He’s been convicted of felonies, and it just didn’t matter.
But the Epstein files are something different. It’s one of the core things his conspiracy manic fan base are sworn in on. It’s part of their core narrative and beliefs. Him being in there could really shake things up.
“not a girl in sight in these comments”
lmao you just assume if anyone disagrees with you we’re not women.
Most women, even those who have been accused of sexual assault, have experience being assaulted.
evidence needs to be present to determine guilt.
nice try though. release the files.
Whitness testimony under oath isn’t just evidence, it’s admissable evidence in a court of law.
Nice try tho.
Not true.
Not all witness testimony under oath is admissible.
Just because someone is under oath doesn’t mean their testimony is automatically allowed in court. There are rules of evidence (like hearsay, relevance, competence, etc.) that still apply.
Testimony under oath can be evidence, but it’s not automatically admissible. Courts have strict filters for what testimony gets presented to a jury. Being under oath isn’t a magic pass.
Stop litigating definitions to avoid confronting your misogyny. I’m not talking about hypothetical scenarios. I’m talking about real court cases in which the judge accepted women’s testimony as admissible.
When a woman claims to have been assaulted, I automatically believe her in regards to how I treat her.
As far as the person she’s accused goes, though, I think it’s pretty easy to understand that nobody should be convicted on the sole evidence of their accuser’s testimony, and I think that should apply to the court of public opinion as well.
It’s a situation where either one person is guilty of a horrible crime, or the other is making false allegations of said crime. In order for both to be “innocent until proven guilty”, you need to assume the allegations are true when interacting with the woman, and assume they’re false while interacting with the accused. It’s really counterintuitive and maybe impossible to do
assume the allegations are true when interacting with the woman, and assume they’re false while interacting with the accused
id also add to assume they’re at least somewhat plausible when interacting with people around them who may be effected in the future
putting people on guard, as long as it doesn’t negatively effect anyone involved is useful: it’s not a good outcome to have information, keep it to yourself to protect people, and then for someone new to get hurt
it’s incredibly tricky, and imo false reports are just as bad as true reports: false reports hurt real, and future victims significantly
That’s an excellent point
Wikipedia has a 67-page article on sexual assault allegations against Trump.
It’s weird to talk about Wikipedia entries having a length in “pages”.
It would help if there weren’t millions of dollars, entire organizations, and even the government that is trying to silence them and cover this up. This isn’t an issue of people not believing the women as I’m sure the average person has been sceptical with this from the beginning. The problem is that the guilty are rich and powerful enough that they can make their problems disappear. The problem isn’t that the people want to know who’s guilty (I’m sure most of the names won’t even be that surprising) it’s that they want to know why the guilty are getting away with it and why the government is actively protecting these monsters. Its the fact that they can get away with whatever the fuck they want, even raping children, and still get to live their lives like nothing ever happened. It’s why everyone on both sides of politics don’t really care who’s on the list, they just want some actual fucking consequences.
The rich and the elites already get away with so much bullshit, and if we let them get away with something as awful as this we might as well give up on calling ourselves civilized.
