A 23-year-old woman has told police she lied about her father raping her when she was 11 - accusations that put him behind bars for nine years. But Cassandra Kennedy, from Longview, Washington, will not be charged as prosecutors fear it could stop others from reporting sexual assaults.And women wonder why men don't respect them or consider them their equals. It's not because men hate them, but because so many women insist on acting and being treated like children.
Kennedy said guilt forced her to tell police she had lied about Thomas Edward Kennedy raping her at least three times in 2001.
'I did a horrible thing,' Kennedy told detectives in January, according to a police report reported in The Daily News. 'It's not OK.'
She added that she was bitter following her parents' divorce in 1991, and that she made up the rape story as her father had disappointing her....
Of the false conviction, prosecutor Sue Baur said: 'This is the kind of thing that shouldn't happen.' But she said that charging Kennedy might discourage victims from coming forward. She added that it was not an indictment of the system, but simply a case of a person withdrawing their story.
Wednesday, July 16, 2014
Unaccountable children
We see it time and time and time again, how the legal system repeatedly makes it eminently clear that women are to be regarded as little more than children, unaccountable for their actions:
84 comments:
Schopenhauer wrote a long essay as to why women are big children.
And then people wonder why increasing numbers of young men are refusing to marry and produce wicked little monsters like this. Simply incredible.
Warren Farrell reported once that a man is 25 times more likely to go to prison for fondling a child than a woman is for killing or maiming one.
Frustrating how we simultaneously hold that women are 1) smarter, more mature, and more ethical and 2) less culpable for their actions than men.
Queue the excused from our misandric apologists....
Eh, I agree in principle, but this isn't the best example. At 11 years old she WAS an unaccountable child regardless of her sex. At 23 she has behaved like an adult and owned up to her lie.
When determining whether or not women are superior or inferior in any situation, here is a good rule if thumb: they are to be regarded as superior when it empowers them, and inferior when it let's them off the hook.
Reminds me of when Illana Wexler, then 12, spoke at the Democratic National Convention and publicly mocked the vice president. When I criticized this, I incurred wrath from people telling me I should be ashamed for "attacking" a 12 year old girl. Amusing standard: we cannot criticize her, yet she has the stature to speak at a national convention and we are expected to take her words (spoon fed to her my immature adults) seriously. She was regarded as wise to empower her, and regarded as a child when it shielded her. Such is liberalism.
But Cassandra Kennedy, from Longview, Washington, will not be charged as prosecutors fear it could stop others from reporting sexual assaults.
The fundamental premise in one sentence.
@ JAU said... Eh, I agree in principle, but this isn't the best example. At 11 years old she WAS an unaccountable child regardless of her sex. At 23 she has behaved like an adult and owned up to her lie.
________
And what about the several years past her 18th birthday that he sat in prison, while this adult didn't bother owning up?
I think it is a great example because she was both child and adult, but treated the same in both phases, meaning her words were taken as Gospel truth while her while her crimes are disregarded.
There is a small excuse in that the girl was a minor when she made the initial lie, but if he's been in jail nine years, she made the lie at age 14, not 11, and so for five years of adulthood stood by that lie. Moreover, if the law will not prosecute perjurers in egregious cases like this, we are going to see cases from time to time where the victims of perjury decide to take things into their own hands.
For her own protection, this girl needs to spend some time in the graybar hotel to contemplate exactly why perjury is a felony.
@ Trust, what about it? Lying about being raped is a crime, committed when she was 11. Being silent is not a crime, committed 18-23. Do not confuse moral accountability with legal accountability.
This is why I was horrified in law school when I discovered they were changing the standards for evidence in these cases. This is why we need to re-institute the principle of requiring two to three witnesses to establish a thing. And we need to remember that it is better that one hundred guilty men go free than to have one innocent man punished.
I think it's fair to hold an eleven year old girl accountable for lying.
@ tactical toolbox, I agree that its fair, but that's not the point. The law distinguishes between adults and children. The law also (tacitly) distinguishes between adults and women. My only point is that in this case, the latter distinction is moot because the former applies.
But the prosecutors are not charging her because she was a minor at the time of the accusation. She is not being charged because the state doesn't want to discourage others from coming forward. In other words, she is being protected for completely political reasons.
@ Edward King, No argument there.
@ JAU I am not disagreeing on what the law is, I am stating why I am horrified by it and how it flies in the face of 400 years of common law and the whole premise of justice from the common law perspective as well as basically the whole rest of history's justice systems. It has been correctly stated that the law distinguishing between children and adults is an entirely political move (as are ALL prisons political institutions), as the instant case tends to show. And that is why I take every opportunity these days to smash the idea some sort of magical age where someone is not accountable one day and accountable the next due to passing over some arbitrarily decided age line.
In their attempt to "not discourage others from coming forward" they also fail discourage others from false accusations. People need to see 1) harsh punishment for causing a false imprisonment coupled with 2) leniency but not immunity for those who come forward. Best not to do it, better ti own up once you have.
Remember, those who have made false accusations are not the only ones watching. Those who may considered false accusations are watching too. We have to balance the incentives to both.
If someone else was convicted of a murder I committed, would anyone even dream of letting me off the hook if I came forward?
Interesting that most times some injustice like this comes up, we have a lawyer (or someone sounding like one) making it a point to explain why "the law" doesn't hold someone accountable for their injurious behavior. I'm glad Edward King cut JAU off at the knees on that and reminded everyone this isn't a case of prosecutors lamenting that reasonable safeguards force us to let something go. This is a case of the justice system intentionally choosing to favor injustice.
I don't know if it's an inherent personality trait that draws them to the profession, or if it's the result of a peculiar sort of training that treats "justice" as a label rather than a concept, but lawyers as a class are spectacularly bad at real justice.
So no justice for a man who was wrongly imprisoned for 9 years?
'MERICA!!!!
Wonder if this man was on the hook for child support during his "dad hurt my feelings" rape incarceration.
The story said this woman had felony convictions for burglary. Would this have been a third strike?
Well if I was this man's lawyer I'd be suing the State of Washington for refusing to prosecute this girl for perjury. I don't know if that has any precedent and I'm not a lawyer so maybe I'm just living out some mild gamma-like revenge scenario.
It's no act, but I think it is an around the block sort of insistence. Men aren't stepping up to the plate, but then, they are being barred from jobs, and sanely constructed careers, due to the inclusion of women and laws that make marriage, as an institution, unfathomable. Even for the faithful, marriage doesn't work well.
Until men decide to change everything, nothing will change. Women will abide. Now, if men don't do it, the world will. Western Civ, democratic governance (in the old/real meaning), even Christianity, are held in the balance. Women lose their emancipation or those things are lost. And, actually, when those things are lost, feminism will still be lost. It's just a matter of the price men are willing to pay for trying to live a fiction. An economic collapse, if it can be constrained to the economy, might be just what the doctor ordered. Good luck with that, though.
I agree with the policy of not prosecuting women for coming clean about lying about rape. We WANT them to come clean. That won't happen if there is any punishment attached to it. In cases like this when the only real evidence against the man is her word, the man has no chance of getting out of prison unless she recants the story.
If it is discovered that she lied without her first coming forward and admitting it, then the penalties should be severe.
The prosecutor is wrong in thinking that you don't want a chilling effect on other witnesses testifying. The chilling effect of punishing false accusers will be to ensure they clam up and never tell the truth after they lie.
It speaks volume that nobody has entertained the idea that these cases should be avoided and, hence, there must be enough evidence to condemn a guy. Everybody says: "It's a mistake. Move on".
But she said that charging Kennedy might discourage victims from coming forward.
There is a reason to entertain the idea prosecuting false rape accusers is bad policy - they're less likely to own up to the lie and thus innocent men are more likely to spend time in jail.
But the idea women won't come forward with legitimate complaints because the liars are prosecuted is downright idiotic.
OT:
Daddy's little princess? The lengths to which Beta-boys and Gammas will go...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/28308329
Wonder if this man was on the hook for child support during his "dad hurt my feelings" rape incarceration.
I dunno, but it would absolutely par for the course if, now that he's a "free" man, he gets slapped with a lien/court order demanding 12 years of back child support for the little monster cunt who destroyed his life. Matter o' fact, I'd say only a fool would bet on it NOT happening.
Looking further at the story, it strikes me that if the life story is indeed true, especially the "sex in 2nd grade" part, somebody does belong in jail, just not her father. We are talking about a very, very messed up little girl here.....
And here I was doing my child sex abuse prevention certification at church and they said that children don't lie about this stuff.
Figures I was being fed lies.
"I agree with the policy of not prosecuting women for coming clean about lying about rape. We WANT them to come clean. That won't happen if there is any punishment attached to it"
You have the horse before the apple. The whole reason to punish is to stop false accusations. You stop false accusations and there's no reason to "come clean".
"I agree with the policy of not prosecuting women for coming clean about lying about rape. We WANT them to come clean. That won't happen if there is any punishment attached to it"
The number of false accusations where the woman does not come clean is much greater than the number of false accusations where the woman DOES come clean.
So a man was sent to jail based on the one witness who had reason to be angry with him and was only 11 years old. she said that "it was not an indictment of the system" . Good God
It incarcerated a male on the whim of a female until she saw fit to let him out. SOunds like a feminist success story, so long as the accused isn't a womanizing president who supports the feminist agenda then the female must be believed.
"She added that it was not an indictment of the system, but simply a case of a person withdrawing their story."
No, we really do need to indict the system, and to demolish it completely. I have watched them absolutely brutalize children to get a false sexual assault accusation and to terrify and intimidate wives until they are so disoriented they don't know which end is up anymore. Meanwhile they'll give a known and convicted child abuser a foster care license without blinking an eye. But a word of warning, speak out against these people at your own peril, because they don't play nice.
Until you've been to prison or even jail for even a week you have no idea how f'ed up it is. Especially for a white guy. This is pure evil and warrants like punishment if not more. However, considering she was eleven what can you do? It is the responsibility of a sane society from top to bottom to safeguard guilty beyond a reasonable doubt at all costs. God will sort out the sinners, whether caught here or not.
As if this isnt bad enough, we have lawmakers pushing for govt. $$$ to be given to women who "come forward" about rape and abuse theyve (allegedly) suffered at the hands of men.
Gee, pay women to accuse men of crimes while at the same time refusing to prosecute women who are caught lying about being the victims of crime. What could possibly go wrong?
For the Fathers or anyone with an idea:
How in God's name does someone prevent something like this from happening to them?
-Theflyerinblack
"How in God's name does someone prevent something like this from happening to them?"
If you can remain a cohesive family unit, it's far more difficult to attack a united front. Also teaching your daughters their rights and making sure they know the system is not their friend, helps. That way if they're ever locked in a room with a couple of cops and a psychologist very skilled at brainwashing, they'll have a fighting chance and so will you.
The Child and Family Court system deliberately targets children they perceive as vulnerable, easily exploited and manipulated. They're often identified through public school as being "at risk" or "potentially inbound" and lists are actually handed over to DCFS. The social workers that work for DCFS hold all the cards, all the power, and they are often breathtakingly stupid and on an emotionally driven crusade.
One of my former neighbors was living with a woman who had two elementary school-aged children from her prior marriage. She had a baby with him, and was pregnant with their 2nd child, when she called me in tears one night and said he'd been arrested on charges of sexually abusing her 9 year-old daughter. She did not believe he was guilty, and neither did I - as far as I've heard, there was no physical evidence of rape, and the girl's grandmother hated his guts and probably put the girl up to it. But the poor woman confided that CPS had taken custody of her three children, and were going to take her baby after she delivered it, and she'd never see them again unless she testified against him.
That's the last time I remember speaking with her. I was subpoenaed testify as a character witness on his behalf and shuffled into some sort of preliminary family court hearing for about 10 minutes before I was dismissed. The mother avoided eye contact when I saw her in the hallway, but she did get her kids back.
My buddy rotted in an overcrowded county jail for about 6 months, losing 30 pounds, without seeing fresh air or the inside of a courtroom during that time. When he finally did get his day in court, I guess the girl changed her story so much that the prosecutor offered him a plea bargain- release for time served, in exchange for pleading guilty to some of the charges, probation, and registering as a sex offender. I wish he hadn't accepted the "deal", but I guess he was facing up to 20 years and had seen enough of jail. By an other measure, that would be considered severe extortion.
Doorstep, f that. He did it or he's a punk. It doesn't matter how much it sucks what happened to him. I might take a plea if I was facing a stacked deck in say man 2 versus fighting man 1, but admitting in public and for all time that I raped my 9 year old step daughter? When I didn't do it. You're going to have to try me and then I'll sit and wait and pray for justice, patience, and forgiveness.
And GG's recommendation is too simplistic. A friend of mine had a druggie ex-wife and a hippy mother concoct a plan to take their kids and endless alimony (he was very well-off through his family). They basically said he looked at child porn, etc. etc. If she hadn't been such a loser and he didn't have access to very good lawyers to fight her for years, who knows what would have happened. The point is you can't simply hope and trust. You need to be a man. Your wife should no in no uncertain terms in her bones that if she manipulates the law in a sick way like that to steal your kids, you will end her and very probably her friends and family too if they are in on it. This does not mean if she divorces you,xyz. Heck just let her go. This also isn't a custody battle conducted reasonably fairly. This is flat out lies on a biblical scale. Fake rape claims, child rape, made up abuse ruin a man for his whole life and take his kids' minds and souls away from his care and protection.
And for those who still continue to be so dim as to ask "well how do I tell her that without getting in trouble?", I hope one day you grasp reality before its too late. You're wife/woman should know all she needs to know without direct communication on the most serious topics. One night my wife and I were watching a ID show about a heavy adultress who was taking her ex to the cleaners and flagrantly banging other guys or she would take his kids. She got murdered by her husband and my wife told me point blank that she knew I would kill a guy that was knowingly having an affair with my wife. It was merely understood what would happen to her. We then made love and went to bed.
I have never once had to physically or verbally threaten my wife.
Good for you, Vincent. As for my (now former) buddy (mostly a drinking buddy from my late 20's), he clearly wasn't of high moral fiber or he would've never been in that situation to begin with. After he got out, he played several other insecure single moms to have a places to stay, and eventually tried manipulating me for money, and that was the end of that. While I don't think he deserves to be a registered sex offender, and I'm a lot more cynical about the system then I was back then, in many ways it was only a matter of time before he got bitten.
That guy Doorstop is talking about may not be a punk at all. DCFS and the court system will back you into a corner and leave you few other options. Also, it wouldn't surprise me if that man sacrificed himself to try and keep those kids out of the foster care system. "Confess or it will go bad for the kids," is standard operating procedure.
The only problem with what Vincent says, is that your wife doesn't have to be the instigator or a participant at all, it can come from a school official, a social worker, a disgruntled neighbor. Sexual abuse is a crime against the state, not a crime against an individual. Nobody can orchestrate a false prosecution without a whole team of evilness coordinating itself.
As a criminal defense attorney once explained to me, sheriffs and prosecutors get re-elected based on arrests and convictions, not on the number of innocent people that go free. And Child Protective Services/Foster Care workers don't get a paycheck unless there are children to take away from their parents. A number of them are social justice crusaders on a power trip, who have never (and will never) raise kids of their own, and they're that much worse because of it.
Vox complained: **We see it time and time and time again, how the legal system repeatedly makes it eminently clear that women are to be regarded as little more than children, unaccountable for their actions**
Vox, I might point out that you yourself have advocated firstly that women are to have only the rights of unborn children (who are normally not accountable for their actions), and secondly, supposedly have no moral wherewithal, whereby to contradict anything told to them by a man. So exactly on what grounds are you complaining? That this is a 'heads I win, tails you lose' game, where the feminists want women to have rights but no accountability? You yourself want pretty much the same sort of 'head I win tails you lose' game, where women have accountability but no rights. I don't really see what make your 'heads I win tails you lose' game any more rational than that of the feminists.
Trust wrote: **When determining whether or not women are superior or inferior in any situation, here is a good rule if thumb: they are to be regarded as superior when it empowers them, and inferior when it let's them off the hook.**
I'm not sure what you mean. That would be a handwaving game (which seems to be what you are objecting to) only if they were regarded in fairly quick succession as alternately superior and inferior - depending on what was most convenient at the time - regarding the same quality. And this assumes that nothing has actually happened to alter that quality in the person. But it would be perfectly legitimate to regard a person as superior in intellect, so to put them in charge of something requiring brainpower, but inferior in strength, so to 'let them off the hook' regarding something requiring lifting very heavy objects. Also, a person's physical strength can increase or decrease over time due to lifting weights, exercise, illness, growing up, or growing old.
Trust wrote: ** Amusing standard: we cannot criticize her, yet she has the stature to speak at a national convention and we are expected to take her words (spoon fed to her my immature adults) seriously. She was regarded as wise to empower her, and regarded as a child when it shielded her. Such is liberalism.**
Trust - if your neighbor attached a nasty or stupid note to his dog's collar and sent the dog over to your house to deliver the note to you, you don't even respond to the dog. It's not the dog's fault, and bitching about how the dog should be taken seriously yet sheilded simply proves that you are too stupid to understand who is responsible for what. Go respond to the neighbor like an adult.
** This is why we need to re-institute the principle of requiring two to three witnesses to establish a thing.**
Care to tell me exactly which criminals are in the habit of raping women in front of two or three other people, who do not interfere, but simply stand by and observe carefully while taking notes so that they can act as 'witnesses'?
Vincent wrote: **She got murdered by her husband and my wife told me point blank that she knew I would kill a guy that was knowingly having an affair with my wife. It was merely understood what would happen to her. We then made love and went to bed.**
Vincent, bear in mind that the world is a big place, and a lot of complicated things go on in it. I know a couple where the husband specifically gave his wife permission to have an affair, although he didn't want to know with whom. The reason why is that he had a genetic disorder (retinitis pigmentosa) that was causing him to slowly go blind and had made a decision that he didn't want to risk passing that on to a child. So he told his wife that if she wanted a child, to find another father, and not to tell him who it was.
@Ann Morgan: " too stupid to understand who is responsible for what"
________
Amusing to be called stupid by someone who completely missed the point. I guess you are too stupid to get it. Not surprised, you were also stupid enough to argue one cannot value unborn life unless they are a vegetarian.
Stupid, self righteous, babbling bitch.
The Troll Ann Morgan just compared a female child to a dog.
She also just beat me up and stole my wallet. There are no other witnesses, including any DNA evidence or anything to show I didn't intentionally drop my wallet or give it away to someone else. I realize that the notion of a female beating-up a male of my height and weight is hard to believe, as is the notion that a man would rape a pre-pubescent girl, let alone his daughter. But I have interacted with Ann before, and I'm younger and have a lower IQ and would clearly never lie about such a thing, so please send her to jail
/s
@Doorstop:
Yup. She also completely missed the point where I wasn't so much criticizing Wexler as I was the use of her. She didn't invite herself to speak, and she wasn't the one saying she should be taken seriously but too young or too female to be criticized. But even if I was criticizing her directly, so what? It is kind of hypothetical to say a child should be immune from adult criticism, especially at the precise moment that child is ridiculing an adult who is the sitting vice president none the less.
Backwards liberal thinking
Hypocritical not hypothetical. Apologies.
Did anyone question all of the actors? The mother? If she helped concoct the story, supported a lie, she should be held criminally responsible. It's not unknown that women try to push such things on their children.
I know a couple where the husband specifically gave his wife permission to have an affair, although he didn't want to know with whom. The reason why is that he had a genetic disorder (retinitis pigmentosa) that was causing him to slowly go blind and had made a decision that he didn't want to risk passing that on to a child. So he told his wife that if she wanted a child, to find another father, and not to tell him who it was.
I hope you're no where near Seattle Ann. We're in a heat wave here and it's no place for snowflakes.
Trust wrote: **you were also stupid enough to argue one cannot value unborn life unless they are a vegetarian.**
Apparently YOU'RE too stupid to get the point, because you continue to resort to snide remarks, rather than explaining (other than by hand and bible waving) on exactly what grounds one should value human life over animal life, and whether these ground would apply to an embryo, and if so, why they would not apply to sperm, cancer, or brain dead motorcycle accident victims.
Doorstop wrote: **She also just beat me up and stole my wallet. There are no other witnesses, including any DNA evidence or anything to show I didn't intentionally drop my wallet or give it away to someone else.**
Hypothetical scenario here, Doorstop. Since the people here want to toss out physical, forensic, and DNA evidence in favor of requiring 3 witnesses to the rape, would you be ok if I accused you of raping me? The DNA evidence shows that the sperm inside me is most certainly not from you, but I have 3 witnesses (who I paid $1000 each to lie, btw) who claim they saw you raping me at knife point just last night. Oh yeah, after you're done with your jail sentence, I'm going to sue you for child support. I'm sure you'll be fine with that, even though the DNA evidence says the child isn't yours. After all - witnesses!
@ Trust
Whenever you see a post by Ann, it might help to imagine a feminist Apsie spinster trying to sing "Anything You Can Do". Except in her case, there's no classic nostalgia associated with the lyrics, nor anything like the charm and grace embodied by Claire Danes.
Jack Amok wrote: **
I hope you're no where near Seattle Ann. We're in a heat wave here and it's no place for snowflakes.**
As usual, the people here display their lack of reading comprehension. My point was not that Vincent's particular point of view wasn't valid for him and his wife. My point was that it would be a mistake to biblewave, and try to claim that it should be applied to everybody, in every situation.
**Whenever you see a post by Ann, it might help to imagine a feminist Apsie spinster trying to sing "Anything You Can Do"**
Either that, or imagine Albert Einstein trying to explain the theory of relativity to Koko the gorilla.
The Bible can't be applied to everyone in every situation?
Hey we're all gorillas! Rise of the Planet of the Apes, bitch!
I think that Albert Einstein, had he been alive today and cared enough to comment, would have used 0.01% percent of his effort and intellect to utilize HTML tags...didn't even Koko learn how to paint? But now I'm just sounding petty and female. Goodnight, ladies and gentleman..,and Ann.
**Hey we're all gorillas! Rise of the Planet of the Apes, bitch!**
I'd vastly prefer to be Zira than Weena.
"She added that she was bitter following her parents' divorce in 1991, and that she made up the rape story as her father had disappointing her."
In the midst of an acrimonious divorce? Hint hint.
Is it possible that an eleven year old would concoct a story of rape by her father all on her own?
The girl would have been still with the mother until age 18, a year 'out with' the influence of her mother to consider her actions and come forward to the police?
"Either that, or imagine Albert Einstein trying to explain the theory of relativity to Koko the gorilla. "
I am assuming Anne is finally seeing reason and realizing she is Koko.
Seriously for the last time, she gets off on this stuff. The board gives here 20 posts per comment. It's simply take a contrarian position to ANYTHING said. Pretend to be a little nice and receptive to argument, but passive aggressively pick at nits for a whole post while just having to share the super life experience story she had that explains it all to her!
Just skip it EVERYTIME or you just might be a retard.
Anne Morgan: on exactly what grounds one should value human life over animal life,"
Us and them, simple as that. You can recognise humans? Can you distinguish one from (say) an mouse?
Anne Morgan: "and whether these ground would apply to an embryo,"
If left to term, will the embryo develop into something resembling a human? Or will the woman deliver a Toyota 4WD, or a potato?
Anne Morgan: " and if so, why they would not apply to sperm,"
If a woman collects her menses in a jar, and leaves the jar on the window sill for nine months, will a human baby hop out of the mug at the end of that period? ( there is an egg in that mess somewhere?
Anne Morgan: "cancer,"
Has the cancer tumour **any** of the characteristics our group (humans) recognise as human?
Anne Morgan: "or brain dead motorcycle accident victims. "
Before the accident, did the accident victim exhibit any of the characteristics of our group ( humans )?
Does the society the victim belonged to, extend any leeway to an unconscious individual?
A sperm or an egg cell is the same as a zygote?
Who the f@#k taught you biology?
There's only one solution.... for good women to start using this system against the very same men in government who have given us this system, defend it, perpetuate it, or make excuses for it. Once all of these scumbag men start paying (in the form of false rape allegations) for their HORRENDOUS sin of erecting/perpetuating/defending/excusing this sort of system which INVITES false allegations, only then will they seek to abolish this nonsense of protecting and coddling false accusers.
Being silent is not a crime
It is when what you're being silent about is your own purjurious, false accusation.
@ Ann Morgan
"Care to tell me exactly which criminals are in the habit of raping women in front of two or three other people, who do not interfere, but simply stand by and observe carefully while taking notes so that they can act as 'witnesses'? "
First off, way to go in illustrating Vox's point for needing to coddle women like children. I feel like explaining to you the concept of how society changes to adapt to the law concerning witnesses and the punishments of perjury/bearing false witness is very much like explaining to my two year old that the stove is hot.
I hope you can understand this, so I will try to explain it clearly for you (as it is obvious, the other commenters deduced the effects of a change in the law) and without using too many big words.
Requiring two to three witnesses has the effect of minimizing perjury as people would be required to have eyes on a crime and assembling two or three witnesses who are liars is harder than paying one liar. This minimizes people being punished for acts they did not commit. The old law adage about justice and preferring one hundred guilty men to go free instead of one innocent being punished comes from deducing this from the witness requirement.
The effect this rule has on society is that people would remain in places where favorable witnesses are about. This actually would minimize crime as bad people fear being found out. This encourages women to cry out when attacked so that others (from whom she has not strayed too far) can come to both witness the attack and to interfere. Your response will be: "how dare you suggest I restrict my behavior because bad people might hurt me!" This is typical woman behavior, because you have no problem with restricting men's behavior (dirty jokes, leering eyes, existing while being creepy or not sexy, not standing to close to you, etc.).
Finally, the standard for perjury since time immemorial has been to punish the liar (if proved) with the exact same punishment as the accused was in danger of being punished. This will further reduce the instances of people perjuring for money as you are intimating would be so easy.
I believe for the above reasons, it is pretty clear that evidentiary rules being changed has a huge effect on whether justice is being done.
I agree with the policy of not prosecuting women for coming clean about lying about rape. We WANT them to come clean.
How about this: What if we had a system they don't come clean because they never made a false police report in the first place, (due to being terrified of the lie getting discovered in the process of the police investigation, getting charged with making a false police report and perjury, and then being prosecuted and getting 20-to-life for making a blatantly false accusation of a 20-to-life crime.... while the man suffers no prosecution at all).
You do realize that according to a FEMALE DA in New York, over 50% of all rape accusations are later recanted, and according to the FBI, over 50% of rape accusations are PROVABLY false.
There is NO OTHER CRIME that has so many false accusations. Almost all other crimes have uniformly false reporting rates of around 4%. Rape is somewhere in the range of 50% <= False Rape Accusation Rate < 100%.
Whether the rate of false accusations is 50%, 75% or 99%, we do not know but it's somewhere in that range.
Which means, that if a woman alleges rape, changes are GREATER than 1/2 that she's lying. And there is nothing new about this... even old movies from the 1930's abd 40's, we see that it is common for women to coerce men into doing things under the threat of non-compliance with her malevolent idea being met with a false rape charge (Variations on "Do it or I'll scream rape." occurs so frequently in movies of that period, it is almost a cliche'. This is why the feminists propagandized incessently that "women don't lie about rape." ... because it was COMMON KNOWLEDGE THAT MANY DO AND MANY MORE ARE WILLING TO DO SO.)
A little off topic, but I do believe that the Hebrew word for "witness" does not specifically refer to an eyewitness--it's just a one syllable word--so the requirement for witnesses could be met by circumstantial evidence as long as those collecting it and analyzing it could be cross examined by the defendant. Agreed fully that most perps are not going to do their crime in front of an audience, and those that do are rightly seen as rather uniquely perverse.
But back to the topic, the requirement for multiple witnesses (including circumstantial evidence IMO) would then tend to work against situations like this, as would real punishment for perjury.
@Bike Bubba, the issue in rape, most of the time, is consent. What other evidence could there be to show consent other than testimony? With rape that is prosecuted as statutory, where consent is not at issue, there could be physical evidence, but that is not at issue in this case at all. This man went to jail based exclusively on the testimony of a false witness. None of what you said changes the fact that civilization has more justice when the biblical standard of witnesses is observed. It is not "unjust" per se for a person not to be convicted of a crime. No one escapes the justice of God. It is always unjust for an innocent man to be convicted.
Subject, you can infer force used to obtain sex (the original meaning of the word "rape" is "force", actually) from injuries to the victim, especially around the vaginal area, as well as injuries to the perpetrator. One can also infer it from the comments of counselors often offered for rape victims--whether the response of the victim is consistent with the crime alleged--and other observations at the crime scene like torn clothing, broken doors/windows, etc.. One can of course infer the act itself by hairs/fluids left "at the scene."
And no, I don't argue that I've changed the parameters of Biblical justice, except to note that good circumstantial evidence can be harder to fake than eyewitness testimony. Agreed fully that perjurers ought to be punished harshly. The thing that would argue for leniency in this girl's case is not the "need to encourage victims to come forward", but rather "the girl is already spending a lot of time in jail and she flat out needs help."
Maybe an extended probation time with a requirement for counseling?
To those of you discussing the parameters of justice, I believe that the current system is so broken, even if you had solid evidence of a sexual assault, I would not report it. In all honesty, the best thing you could do for a child or a genuine rape victim, is to keep them out of the system.
The system is well aware of the fact that no decent person with the least bit of compassion for children would ever turn them over to DCFS or to the criminal justice system. Naturally the State responded with force by passing mandatory reporting laws, so you can now be prosecuted if you don't report it.
How does a man handle that kind of situation? What the hell is a man supposed to do if his own daughter has him locked up for 12 years on charges of raping his own kid? You know what he probably went through in there ... what the fuck does a man do when he gets out? Forgive her? I wouldn't blame him if he tore her to pieces because of this.
They say the Russian communists created a program to encourage children to rat out their parents, it was some "young pioneers" shit. Anyway, those children were housed in special orphanages, a nurse who worked there testified that the children would wail for their parents constantly.
This is the same thing. They have set up the system so that real pedophilia is untouchable and children are encouraged to destroy innocent fathers. This situation is sick and evil.
tactical toolbox wrote: **Requiring two to three witnesses has the effect of minimizing perjury as people would be required to have eyes on a crime and assembling two or three witnesses who are liars is harder than paying one liar**
I hope you can understand this, so I will try to explain it clearly for you and without using too many big words. Criminals generally do not commit their crimes in front of several witnesses. Requiring 2-3 witnesses to prosecute a crime is generally carte blanche for the criminals to do as they please. Which is probably your actual goal.
BubbaMike wrote: **And no, I don't argue that I've changed the parameters of Biblical justice, except to note that good circumstantial evidence can be harder to fake than eyewitness testimony. Agreed fully that perjurers ought to be punished harshly. The thing that would argue for leniency in this girl's case is not the "need to encourage victims to come forward", but rather "the girl is already spending a lot of time in jail and she flat out needs help."**
I agree with BubbaMike. Forensic evidence is actually considered far more conclusive, most of the time, than 'witness' testimony. Even if all your witnesses are actually trying to tell the truth as they see it, if you have 4 witnesses, you are likely to get 4 different stories.
**The effect this rule has on society is that people would remain in places where favorable witnesses are about. This actually would minimize crime as bad people fear being found out. This encourages women to cry out when attacked so that others (from whom she has not strayed too far) can come to both witness the attack and to interfere. Your response will be: "how dare you suggest I restrict my behavior because bad people might hurt me!"**
So basically you're saying that you have an issue with my going into isolated areas to go fishing, look for snakes, and pick black raspberries. Also, regarding your 'crying for help' scenario, you're handwaving away the very strong likelihood that a criminal will put a gun to the victims head and tell her to remain silent.
**This is typical woman behavior, because you have no problem with restricting men's behavior (dirty jokes, leering eyes, existing while being creepy or not sexy, not standing to close to you, etc.)**
As a matter of fact, I don't give a damn about any of the above. IYou're projecting false nonsense into my behavior. Stop it. In fact, I don't care about pornography or adult stores. If you want to know my main impression of an 'adult' store (I went into one a while back out of curiousity) it's that most of the stuff there is of very poor quality, it's cheap plastic junk worth about 5% of what the store was charging for it, and quite honestly lacks imagination.
Ann Morgan, you really are child-like in your ability to analyze anything. Also, solipsistic. No one is projecting anything onto YOUR behavior, what is happening is that people are trying to answer the question, "How can we have a more just civilization where people are not falsely convicted?" Regardless of your proclivities to go off on your own to places where you are unable to protect yourself and where the presence of other people could serve as a deterrent to criminal behavior, you don't have the right to demand that the rest of the civilization create a legal system that encourages that stupid behavior by making false accusations easy to bring and without recrimination. No one is saying you can't pick blackberries by yourself or hang out in dark alleys at 3:00 a.m., but you can't avoid the consequences of that behavior. Choices have consequences. It is unjust to have a system whereby a person can be convicted of a rape based upon the testimony of one person, because the very nature of such a system makes it prone to abuse as has proven to be the case. Therefore, for the cause of justice, our system should require more evidence. What happened to this man could have been prevented by following the Biblical requirement of 2 or more witnesses. The current system, which would allow a conviction based upon the testimony of only one witness does nothing to prevent a lone woman picking blackberries from being raped. Criminals don't change their behavior based upon the rules of evidence. But women have the opportunity to bring the cases of rape to nearly zero by changing their behavior. Being the victim of rape is nearly always preventable.
@ Ann Morgan
"Criminals generally do not commit their crimes in front of several witnesses." Which illustrates my point.
Whether you decide to go somewhere alone is up to you. You bear the consequences if you cannot prove that some crime happened to you. What is unjust is putting the power to convict into the testimony of one witness, as it is rather conclusive that power is quite abused, even by little girls and on a regular basis as asserted by other contributors on this thread. Making the whole of society pay for your "freedom" because you waaaant to do something and should not have to pay the risks involved is the very height of solipsism and lack of accountability Vox has so clearly outlined in the OP. As others have said in nearly countless threads before, you perfectly illustrate each point of the woman's prerogative. And then women demand respect which is so clearly not due them.
"I agree with BubbaMike. Forensic evidence is actually considered far more conclusive, most of the time, than 'witness' testimony. Even if all your witnesses are actually trying to tell the truth as they see it, if you have 4 witnesses, you are likely to get 4 different stories. "
The importance placed on physical evidence these days is another issue which illustrates the science worship within the forensic community. Not only is forensic evidence not tamper proof, agents of the state are in control of all "evidence" and are the people primarily testifying... no bias here, folks. Also, I've never known a bruise to testify. Testifying as to how a bruise got somewhere is not conclusive, nor is it likely to be beyond a reasonable doubt. It just defies logic most of the time.
**"How can we have a more just civilization where people are not falsely convicted?"**
Deliberately creating a condition where it is impossible to convict someone at all, because you have handwaved away forensic evidence, and the fact that a criminal can threaten his victim into remaining silent is not a good solution to this.
** What happened to this man could have been prevented by following the Biblical requirement of 2 or more witnesses.**
And how about the opposite? I was repeatedly sexually molested in school, and the teachers simply wrung their hands and claimed that they couldn't do anything because they didn't see it happen. It seems to me that what you want to do is to trade the suffering of one class of people (those falsely accused of crimes) for the suffering of another class of people (those who were actually victims of crimes). Not really a very good trade.
**It is unjust to have a system whereby a person can be convicted of a rape based upon the testimony of one person, because the very nature of such a system makes it prone to abuse as has proven to be the case.**
Requiring and admitting physical evidence would make the system much less prone to abuse. The fact that you don't want to admit physical evidence is proof that your real goal is to let criminals commit their acts with impunity.
**But women have the opportunity to bring the cases of rape to nearly zero by changing their behavior. Being the victim of rape is nearly always preventable.**
Oh, you can eliminate almost all crime, and all other forms of harm by eliminating freedom. If you lay in bed all day and get fed by intravenous tubing, you won't stub your toe, get a hangnail from that, and die of subsequent infection. But that's a pretty sucky way to live. If your real goal was really protecting women from crime, rather than a combination of protecting criminals and using said criminals as a means of terrifying women into accepting slavery, what you would really be advocating would be a combination of better forensic methods and Vermont Carry.
I'm also curious as to why rape is singled out for this biblical requirement of two witnesses. Why don't you want to require two witnesses for conviction of armed robbery, or grand theft auto, and refuse to admit physical evidence such as fingerprints or the possession of the stolen auto into court for THOSE crimes? After all, a man can 'cry for help' when a mugger is stealing his wallet, and get his head shot off, can't he?
As for perjury, Barry Longyear had a much better solution to that than refusing to admit testimony. I imagine that deliberate perjury would become remarkably unpopular under his system. As would rape.
Nice ad hominem fallacy, btw, defining picking berries and looking for snakes as 'stupid behavior', and conflating the right to be safe, regardless of where you are, with the ability to make false accusations with impunity.
Actually, after thinking it over, I'm now really very puzzled by the implications of what you have said, tactical. The other posters here have been clamoring over the need for 'intelligent' women to reproduce, so as to produce the brilliant, brave, groundcutting male doctors, scientists and soldiers of future generations. Now, according to you, since you have designated my various activities as 'stupid', you are thereby defining as 'intelligent' those women with no curiousity to go out looking at things and find out things for themselves, who are satisfied with the minimal amount of intellectual stimulation provided by TV reruns and the home shopping network, and who crouch behind locked doors and crowds of people rather than take responsibility for their own defense. Now, it's not quite clear to me how such traits, when inherited by a man, will add up to being a brilliant scientist or courageous soldier, but perhaps I'm simply old fashioned.
"Now, according to you, since you have designated my various activities as 'stupid', you are thereby defining as 'intelligent' those women with no curiousity to go out looking at things and find out things for themselves, who are satisfied with the minimal amount of intellectual stimulation provided by TV reruns and the home shopping network, and who crouch behind locked doors and crowds of people rather than take responsibility for their own defense"
Ann, that's actually YOU in there, projecting. YOU are reducing women to nothing more then intellectually uncurious TV viewers. You are perceiving wifedom and motherhood as if it were a rather pathetic pastime pursued by the intellectually uncurious, women too fearful to experience the world in a more politically correct way. You are implying that women must chose to be either intelligent or to get married and have children, as if the two are mutually exclusive. That's a false choice and it's offensive.
The truth is Ann, the prosecution of pedophiles both justly and falsely under our currently corrupt and broken system, has done nothing to protect women and children, in fact it's made us less safe. I suspect we will soon simply declare pedophilia to be a lifestyle choice and be done with it, which appears to have been the goal all along. This is appalling all by itself, but doubly so because women will be cheering it on, somehow believing it is directly related to our own protection.
I am all for people taking responsibility for their own defense. I freaking teach it to women all the time, empowering them to defend themselves (never mind it almost always takes them until they are alone and 60 to realize it -- when they are in their twenties, I cannot convince them of the need to take responsibility). What I am outlining is that I have to make sure there are witnesses around ME as a man, all the time and especially spend no time with any woman alone. Why is it that women are entitled to be alone with men and not be in fear of evidentiary issues, but men should be? This is why Vox did the OP, to point out that women are coddled like children. I am pointing out the evidentiary inequalities which underline the legal system being quite broken. You, as normal, miss the points entirely.
tactical wrote: **never mind it almost always takes them until they are alone and 60 to realize it -- when they are in their twenties, I cannot convince them of the need to take responsibility**
I figured it out by myself around age 30. The pro-gun people had, by far, much more logic and facts on their side. Mind you, I find women ninja movies entertaining, and perhaps barely possible for a very highly trained woman, but applying it to myself is absurd. If a machine does something far better than I personally can do, and it's important that it be done well, I'm going to use the machine.
**. Why is it that women are entitled to be alone with men and not be in fear of evidentiary issues, but men should be?**
Neither one should be. It should not automatically be assumed that a woman is telling the truth about being raped - with no other evidence. Neither, however, should it be automatically assumed that she is not telling the truth, along with any or all forensic evidence being dismissed, unless she can produce a magical biblical 2 witnesses. Not unless you're willing to apply the same standards to all other crimes, and to those crimes against men as well as women. Which means you'd have to be prepared to accept the following:
1. You 8 year old son claims the creepy old man down the road touched his penis. He claims you coached your son to say that because you're jealous of his new lawn tractor. Don't have 2 witnesses who were in his house at the time? Too bad.
2. Your 18 year old son claims a gay motorcycle gang dragged him into an alley when he was walking to work early one morning and anally raped him. They claim he was bi-curious, and is now trying to project his guilt afterwards onto them. Don't have 2 witnesses in the alley? Too bad.
3. I just stole your car. The police found me with the car, partially disassembled. My story is that you told me you were GIVING me your car, which was very generous of you, but since I have no use for it, I'm parting it out to get extra money. Don't have 2 witnesses who saw me steal your car at 3 am? Too bad.
The thing here is, one major thing that makes both civilization and freedom possible is that there is a 3rd party of justice in place which most people trust to get justice for crimes committed against them, most of the time. When that breaks down, which included either not having such a system at all, or making the rules of evidence so complex or conditional that it's difficult to prove any crime, or the opposite (automatically assuming someone is guilty based on very little evidence) or making the rules of evidence different for different people, then your civilization eventually breaks down and what you have are little tribes that engage in lynch mobbery against eachother.
At any rate, if I myself were inclined to falsely accuse men of rape, I probably would have done so to my two previous boyfriends, as they made me very angry. Among other things, they were guilty against me of theft, lying, insulting me, and obtaining sex on false pretenses. But not rape. Mind you, it's actually probably harder on me personally (though apparently this isn't true for most other women) to deal with a man getting sex from me on false pretenses than actual rape, but that still doesn't make the two synonymous.
Post a Comment
NO ANONYMOUS COMMENTS.