The Glade 4.0

http://archive.is/ZTEmM

1. Guy is accused of rape by an anonymous third party who sees them having sex.
2. Alleged victim publicly defends guy, saying it was consensual and even gets her parents involved.
3. Head Title IX investigator does not allow the alleged victim to testify, saying she is too traumatized to give accurate testimony.
4. Head investigator also excludes testimony from the girl's mother, as well as the guy's friends.
5. Guy is expelled after a hearing where he is not allowed to cross examine anyone or even learn the identity of the third party making the accusation.

So, does this mean I can basically get anyone I want expelled from college in the country with just a phone call? Just pick a girl at random from the campus directory and claim she was raped. Her testimony apparently means nothing, nobody that can corroborate the accused's story is allowed in either. Hell, I wouldn't even have to bother with lying at a hearing since they can't question me or even know who I am.

This is exactly what Progressives have been advocating for since the turn of the last century:

Society must protect those it deems "less equal" even against their own will, because they aren't intelligent enough to know what's good for themselves.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

Yes, this is exactly what it means.

I'm waiting for someone to realize that, because of the debt the now-expelled student has accumulated and the money already paid to the school that this either constitutes theft (for private schools) or seizure of property without due process of law (for public schools).

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

First off, I totally agree that the way rape accusations are handled on college campuses is appalling and, at least in the case of public universities, a clear violation of defendants' constitutional rights.

That said, since the general view around here often seems to be that "he said / she said" is almost always "he said / she lied", allow me to offer a counterpoint story about false reporting:

A) This is a stranger-danger scenario, and a particularly bizarre outlier at that.
B) "He said/she lied" is just a way of phrasing "innocent until proven guilty" in a pejorative way. If it's "he said/she said" and nothing else then justice DEMANDS that his story be taken as the credible one. Because if it's "she said/she said" or "he said/he said" that will happen exactly. If it's "she said/he said" not only will he be treated as a liar, it will happen almost REGARDLESS of evidence, and that's if he isn't laughed out the the police station first.

Rape victims are crime victims and should be treated just like any other crime victim. It is no more unacceptable that a rapist beat the rap than anyone else. If the story you cite above were a robbery rather than a rape it would be a pedestrian case of police mismanagement of a crime. The idea that rape victims need ANY special protection or any accommodation in regard to anything even remotely related to burden of proof is appalling and needs to be stomped on hard at any and every opportunity.

False accusations of rape used to be a way to avoid disgrace in the days of more restrictive sexual mores. Today, they're a tool for political victim cred. Lena Dunham and Rolling Stone aren't falsifying rape allegations by accident.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I was on the fence a bit after RD's argument. Which was excellent.

However, this one piece of DE's response is incredibly succinct and all that needs to be said. It is ironclad. "Innocent until proven guilty" is not just a generic principle, it is the fundamental basis of the modern justice system. Now, while school campuses are not part of the justice system, they should really follow the same basis when dealing with these issues. If you cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused is guilty, then they are innocent. End of story.

"He said/She lied" is actually accurate, if what she said is not able to be proven, it should automatically be assumed to be a lie with regard to the guilt of the accused.

(Note that this goes out the window if you try to accuse her of perjury -- then she is the accused. If you cannot prove what she said is a lie, then it is automatically true, so the presumption of innocence goes both ways.)

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Educational institutions should not be trying to deal with felony crimes at all, except insofar as they may have their own police departments that should be trained and proficient in conducting the investigation. Criminal allegations should be handled by courts - not by pompous school administrators more concerned with their institution's reputation and their federal funding than the facts.

Title IX is the problem here; it forces the schools to do so. It needs revision so that the school's only responsibility is to co-operate with the police and the courts.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

And yet even then the cops focused on apparent discrepancies in her story and her reputation for "attention-seeking", leading them to approach the investigation from the perspective that she was lying. How much more likely do you think they'd be to do that if it was a more ambiguous allegation involving date rape and a suspect claiming it was consensual sex?


Innocent until proven guilty is a legal presumption in a trial. Outside of a court room, there should be no presumption either way. Cops in particular absolutely should not be making presumptions in either direction. They should simply go where the evidence takes them.


Rape victims are not the same as any other crime victim because rape is not the same as any other crime. First of all, no other crime so frequently turns on the question of consent. Sure, theoretically you might consent to having someone beat you into unconsciousness in your living room, but I'm guessing cops don't spend a lot of time exploring that hypothetical when an assault allegation is made. For most crimes, the questions are (a) did the event itself happen and (b) was it the suspect who did it, whereas with rape, there's the added question of (c) did the victim consent to it. This automatically means the accusation is harder to prove and more likely to be questioned/doubted. Second, the mental/emotional trauma experienced by rape victims is significantly higher than for most other crime victims, and their recollection of events is often more jumbled and uncertain as a result. Conversely, most people expect trauma victims to be hysterical, even though many victims don't react with outward emotion. These factors can easily lead people who don't know better (and cops who aren't inclined to take them into account) to doubt a rape allegation. That's exactly what happened in the supposed "outlier" of a story I posted.


And this is a perfect example of the hostility people (including cops) often bring to the table when assessing rape allegations. They believe rape allegations are a "tool for political victim cred" and are anxious to ensure that any whiff of special treatment is "stomped hard at any and every opportunity", so they overcompensate in the other direction. Combined with the subjectivity of consent, the often sketchy memory of the victims, and skewed societal expectations of how a victim "should" react, this chip on the shoulder results in the "he said / she lied" dynamic I mentioned. That biased approach then gets wrapped in the cloak of "innocent until proven guilty" to justify it, even though any such presumption is inappropriate and even damaging in the investigative phase.

On this, we're 100% in agreement.

Probably not much more, because there was no DNA in this case. How the suspect accomplished that I don't know, but if you had this set of facts (evidence of penetration but no DNA) that points to using a toy on herself. Based on the evidence available at the time it was reasonable to think she had done it to herself.

You can't use the hindsight of finding out it really was him to complain about that, nor can you generalize from this case to rape cases in general.



Obviously. However, if that evidence never reaches the point where they and the prosecutor feel the burden of proof can be met, then there should be no consequences to the suspect - which include the consequences of having a perpetual cloud hanging over them, or being expelled from school or anything else.

In the case you cited, the evidence never reached that point primarily because of the lack of the DNA. If there were DNA it would be a totally different story.



None of these are reasons why it should be treated differently from any other crime. Your argument essentially amounts to "the issue of consent makes rape a hard crime to prosecute, therefore we should compromise that burden of proof to compensate."

Rape, however, is not the only hard crime to prosecute, or the only crime where an action might or might not be legal depending on the exact circumstances. In theft cases "I had permission to take X/no he didn't" can definitely be an issue. Many other crimes experience practical problems in obtaining proof. We don't compromise on those crimes and there is not a reason to in regard to rape.

As to the victim, their level of trauma is pretty irrelevant. Victim services and concerns should not even enter into it. Furthermore, in falsified cases the victim obviously did not suffer such trauma, but, as UVA illustrates that won't stop them from claiming it. In your example, once again, you are failing to account for the lack of visible evidence of trauma being accompanied by a lack of DNA in a crime where, for obvious reasons, NOT leaving DNA is exceedingly difficult even with condom use.



Except even your cited example fails to do that because the evidence - as you cited it - spoke to a false allegation, and it was only hindsight that revealed otherwise. It relies 100% on hindsight to make it's point, much like The Life of David Gale (unintentionally) made an excellent case that the death penalty system works perfectly and that you have to go out of your way to frame yourself in order to be mistakenly executed. You need to truly be married to the idea that rape complaints are sancrosanct in order to think that example shows anything problematic.

We are not using "innocent until proven guilty" to justify it because there is nothing to justify. That is an ironclad principle fo this country, and can't be tampered with for pretty much anything short of national survival - and if that ever happens, most of the lawyers will be arguing the meaning of the Bill of Rights with the men that wrote it anyhow. That's the correct way to do things. People make false reports to the police all the time, but when you tar someone with allegations of a sex offense they carry a cloud of suspicion pretty much forever, and we've allowed educational institutions to make an end run around the Constitution in seizing from the suspect while following literally no procedural rules.

The fact is that this "beleive the victim!" nonsense is exactly what CAUSES THE PROBLEM you think exists in the first place. By insisting that every rape allegation be "believed" and thinking that EVERY rape allegation must be defended tooth and nail, no matter how absurd it is, any cloud of suspicion is entirely the fault of rape advocates, feminists, and other people that actually believe that if ANY allegation is not found to be 100% true it turns people against other victims.

This makes the advocates look suspect when they do things like "standing with Jackie" and reate these advocacy groups where you have to be a rape survivor to be taken seriously. It's even worse when you tag on laughable statistics like the "1 in 5 on campus are raped" or bewailing that there aren't enough rape convictions. It's patently obvious that there is a significant movement here that is desperate for serious rape problems to exist, and that liberals in general will believe anything that allows them to avoid admitting any problem has actually been dealt with.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Criminal protections do not exist within the Constitution for the purpose of making it easy to prosecute crimes. They exist to protect the innocent from being falsely convicted of a crime. No victim deserves to have the civil liberties of another suspended on her account. It doesn't matter that you were raped, you must the prove accused commit the act just like any other crime.

The fact that college campuses are not police or courts does not grant them license to do as they wish. Rape is a heinous crime, and should be dealt with only by the courts. Until a court renders a guilty verdict, the accused is not guilty. Those who are not guilty of a crime are not to be punished for the crime. Period. No exceptions. That is the law.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

It's also critically important to note here that the "he said/she lied" dichotomy, in addition to being a pejorative for the idea of innocent until proven guilty is also a false dilemma. Most of the time, a meritless claim of rape - or any lesser form of sexual assault - will not be an outright lie.

A far more common circumstance is that the alleged victim actually does believe they were raped, but the facts resulting from investigation or presented at trial simply don't support the allegation. Occasionally this may be because the evidence doesn't support that the events ever occurred, but very often it's a matter of "the facts indicate that the sexual activity in question was consensual at the time it occurred."

The problem for many so-called "victims" is not that they're lying, but that they're wrong, either not understanding what actually constitutes rape or having convinced themselves after the fact that it wasn't consensual, or been talked into that belief by other people who don't approve of what happened. Of late, this is encouraged by the advocacy industry that has popped up and has spent immense amounts of time trying to convince victims, courts, legislatures, and anyone else that consent is something other than what it is.

A "false" rape claim does not necessarily mean perjury, false reporting, or intentionally lying - it can simply mean "unfounded" or "unsubstantiated" and the "false" refers to "insufficient reason to believe a rape occurred" not to the truthfulness of the victim - who may not be a victim at all, even if they genuinely think they are. As Taly pointed out above, once you start accusing the alleged victim of intentional falsehoods, they become accused themselves and you have to prove that they actually did so if you want to charge them with a crime.

The problems arise because for some people it's just too unbearable to tell someone that no, sorry, you are not a victim of a sexual assault no matter how loudly you are wailing in your (real or imagined trauma). This belief is positively pathological. It is not, in fact, better to tell a person a victim when there isn't any good reason to believe they actually are than to bring them to grips with reality, especially not when doing so inherently carries permanent consequences for another person.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I think we pretty much all agree that the current Star Chamber approach to rape investigations/sanctions on college campuses is wrong. Here's a question though: If you found out that your kid's babysitter had been accused of child molestation but hadn't yet been formally convicted (or, if you prefer, hadn't yet been formally charged), would you continue to leave your kid with him/her based on the principle that it's wrong to punish someone (e.g., through loss of employment) unless they've been proven guilty in a court of law? What if you found out the babysitting service they work for knew about the charges and continued to employ them based on that principle? What if you owned the babysitting service - would you continue to employ them? Would you tell parents and give them the option not to hire that babysitter (thus cutting into the alleged molester's wages)?

I'm guessing virtually none of us would hesitate to kick that alleged molester to the curb (or at least suspend them pending resolution of the charges), and we wouldn't even bother with a formal inquiry and preponderance of the evidence standard if the charges seemed at all credible. Hell, given the libertarian leanings of most of us, I'm guessing most folks here wouldn't fault an employer for canning someone for credible allegations of stealing from the company till, let alone child molestation. So how is any of that better than a university kicking faculty and/or students out after a formal inquiry?

Really RD, I don't think I should really need to explain this to you:

A) There is a HUGE difference between taking temporary precautions pending an outcome, especially when it's an uninvolved party protecting itself and people to which it holds a duty of care, and inflicting a permanent consequence.

B) Because it is temporary, and because universities should not be conducting formal inquiries into felony offenses. We already agreed universities should not be doing this, and accusers should not have the option of using a star-chamber university administrative procedure to kick someone out at the cost of thousands in debt and permanent reputational damage while avoiding affording him the normal protections of the criminal justice system. I have a lot less problem with suspending someone with pending felony charges in court, or firing them following conviction of such than doing any such thing based on some university's "formal inquiry" that is primarily designed to protect the university's cash flow and reputation.

I'll give you this for contrast - in the military, there are 2 forms of sexual assault reporting, restricted and unrestricted.

With unrestricted, all aspects of the UCMJ can be implemented as the case and evidence dictate (the military's desire to appease feminists and liberals that will hate it no matter what notwithstanding; it's still FAR less subject to pressure than any university and the accused has a lawyer and rights of appeal all the way to the USSC.)

With unrestricted the report remains entirely confidential - the accuser may be afforded a transfer or other protective action, but the accused remains entirely anonymous, even from the unit commander.

Therefor, when the accuser makes a bullshit complaint to get a transfer, one that will not hold up to investigation, as long as they ask for a restricted report and don't go shooting their mouth off elsewhere, they can get it - but the accused is not branded and made a pariah.

And if you think that young soldiers don't make sexual assault complaints to game the system, think again. Soldiers can, will, and do game the system with any sort of complaint they can make on a very regular basis, and that only scratches the surface. That speaks tot he fundamental problem with attitudes towards rape complaints - people will game ANY system, and the more it is set up to favor them, the more they will do it. Rape advocates want everyone to believe that no one ever tries to do this with sexual assault complaints, unlike literally EVERY other system there is because they have convinced themselves that if ANY rape complaint is not validated, ALL are weakened. In fact, they just make themselves look both agenda-driven and stupid. If the rape advocate/feminist crowd would condemn stunts like the Duke case, Rolling Stone/UVA, and Lena Dunham's little shennannigans, they'd do a lot to repair their credibility. If you're really concerned with genuine cases of rape not being handled properly, you should be one of the loudest voices yelling at these people to shut the **** up because they make your positions look bad.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

These are also the kind of people you hang from a sturdy tree until dead.

Seriously, some people just need a good dying to straighten them out. Ain't no learning for them otherwise.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

No, in fact we don't do things this way. Please by all means give it a shot, though, and let us know how that works out.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

The reason why people are like this is because 'we' don't do things this way enough.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

The reason people feel it's ok to railroad someone through a kangaroo court without due process is because we do not lynch them without due process enough?

Ok, now that you have performed this insightful problem analysis, what is your excuse for not doing more to implement your recommended course of action?

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

When your enemy controls the courts is it rational to appeal to them?

You have no idea what I do or don't do and I'm not about to tell you or anyone else. Either the idea stands on it's merits or it doesn't. Either you stand up and and defend justice or you slink away and bend your knee to those who have power over you. Everyone knows where you stand on the issue.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Did it make your dick hard to type that? You're just blubbering on the internet and trying to pretend you're taking a stand on something. Go on, tough guy. Go for it. Organize your lynching. Please. I'm dying to see this.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Is that your way of saying you refuse to judge the merits? That you take a neutral position on if people should stand up for justice or not? You don't have to be afraid to say it here DE, we all know you well enough to know that you don't care about justice, just authority. Maybe someday you can stop fantasizing about what you believe I do, and about my dick.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville