The real victims of Rolling Stone’s UVA gang rape story…
…are the brothers of Phi Kappa Psi, and truth.
However, the members of Phi Psi are mouthing the PC message that they don’t consider themselves victims:
Scipione and Fontenot said that the Phi Psi brothers experienced a difficult fall semester but said no one should consider the fraternity members as “victims.”
“We don’t want to take away from the real victims, which are the victims of sexual assault,” Fontenot said. “We think it is incredibly unfair that the Rolling Stone article could in any way take away their credibility and the support they need.”…
University officials said that Phi Psi was the first fraternity to sign the updated agreements, and Phi Psi leaders said the fraternity has instituted a sexual-assault education and awareness program that is mandatory for new members. Spring rush, an annual recruitment period, is scheduled to begin here Thursday night…
“Sexual assault on college campuses is a real problem, and it needs to be addressed. And just because one story from Rolling Stone dropped the ball doesn’t mean we can dismiss it,” Fontenot said.
Dismiss it? Who on earth is dismissing it? I haven’t heard anyone say that sexual assault doesn’t exist, or that it should be ignored when it does. That’s a strawman argument.
However, the questions we should be asking about it are:
(1) How common is sexual assault on campus?
(2) How should it be defined?
(3) How should it be handled, and by what authorities?
(4) What can be done to prevent it?
The issue is not just that the Rolling Stone article was fake. It’s that journalistic standards have generally gone by the wayside. It’s that the police should handle allegations of serious assault. It’s that alleged perpetrators should get a fair hearing. And it’s that the statistic commonly used to answer question #1 is inflated and was arrived at through poor research methods (see this and this).
[Hat tip: Ace.]
[ADDENDUM: And speaking of victims and false allegations, please read about what is happening to Alan Dershowitz. “Kafkaesque” hardly begins to describe it:
I now stand accused of crimes I did not commit, by an unnamed woman who I don’t know and never met. I am also being sued for defaming my accusers. I still have no opportunity to respond in court to the false charges, though I am now seeking to intervene in the lawsuit in which the accusation was filed. I have submitted a sworn statement denying the accusations with great specificity. The court has not yet decided whether to accept my motion.
I feel like a victim of a drive-by shooting or the object of scribbled graffiti on the wall of a bathroom stall. I may never have the opportunity to prove my innocence, or to have my accusers prove the false charges, in any court of law. But because I am relatively well known””a double-edge sword in these situations””I can at least fight back in the court of public opinion, though at the very high cost””in legal fees, loss of insurance coverage and the possibility of a large monetary judgment against me.
Imagine the same thing happening to a person who did not have the resources to fight back.
There is a gaping hole in our legal system that allows lawyers to bring irrelevant accusations against innocent nonparties in court papers that insulate them from any consequences, and to deny the falsely accused any opportunity to respond.]
The lawyer unions obtained power for a reason.
Self criticism sessions will probably be next.
Another accusation has been made against Bill Cosby. This time is is a woman who he alledgedly drugged and raped several years ago at the Hugh Hefner ranch when she was “only” 18. I certainly can’t say Cosby never did anything wrong, but an 18-year-old hanging at Hefner’s was probably looking for a rich guy and willing to do what she could to snag one. I am getting thoroughly sick of this stuff. If you are raped, call the cops. If you went with a guy into a bedroom, you have a signalling problem. Don’t try to get your name in the papers years later. And if a guy grabs you where he shouldn’t, slap him and give him hell very loudly so everyone in the vicinity knows what’s going on.
Ymarsakar, that’s the second or third time you’ve mentioned “lawyer unions” that are supposedly powerful. I ask in sincere curiosity, what are you talking about? I’ve been a lawyer for more than 30 years (dating myself, I know) and have never heard of a “lawyer union” — especially not a powerful one like the Teamsters or SIEU on the scale you seem to be describing.
It would be difficult for most lawyers to unionize, as their “employers” are often themselves, paid by a multitude of private clients. I suppose there may be big law firms where the associate lawyers have unionized to negotiate with the partner lawyers who run the firm, though I’ve never heard of it. There are lawyers employed by large organizations who may belong to generalized employee unions — such as corporate lawyers, or lawyers employed by state governments in union-shop states where state employees must join public sector unions. But those aren’t “lawyer unions,” as most of the members of those unions would be all the other non-lawyer employees. So — what do you mean?
neo, can you split it up rather than cut it at the knees?
I want to blame the fraternity members for being cowards, but they’re too young to know any better. Never capitulate to leftists: it doesn’t placate them, and you’ll be destroyed anyway.
in the Alan Dershowitz incident, he is being broadsided by the changes feminists made to law in which, for women, hearsay is now admissible. you can, if you want, find cases where hearsay evidence is allowed as if it was regular evidence, rather than tossed out… so if she calls her friend and confesses what happened, that hearsay evidence is now evidence, he has no defense against it.
after the oj trial, the laws were changed in terms of evidence in race or gender cases in which the womens testimony that was hearsay was now to be accepted as evidence… (like dershowitz, bill cosby, and prince andrew)
see the books
Battered Women and Feminist Lawmaking
Feminist Perspectives on Criminal Law
Feminism and Evidence
http://law.indiana.edu/lawlibrary/services/bibliography/doc/Orenstein18.pdf
THE PROBLEM OF USING HEARSAY IN
DOMESTIC VIOLENCE CASES: IS A NEW
EXCEPTION THE ANSWER?
http://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1073&context=dlj
Verifiability, truth, and hearsay: feminist point of view on the Geek Feminism wiki
http://geekfeminism.org/2014/09/15/verifiability-truth-and-hearsay-feminist-point-of-view-on-the-geek-feminism-wiki/
the admission of hearsay testimony under the doctrine of forfeiture by wrongdoing in domestic violence cases: advice for prosecutors and courts
http://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1043&context=clb
this is now the law of the land and so, the burden of proof is now to prove your innocent, and its on you, the guy, not the court or the litigant.
this is why dershowitz is not able to halt it or do much about it, and isnt even part of it yet!!!!!!!! given the way evidence works and other favors, there really is no need for him to be there other than sentencing…
the same is true for protection orders. its possible to get a protection order against someone you never met if your a woman…
One day in December of 2005, Colleen Nestler came to Santa Fe County District Court in New Mexico with a bizarre seven-page typed statement and requested a domestic-abuse restraining order against late-night TV host David Letterman.
She stated, under oath, that Letterman seriously abused her by causing her bankruptcy, mental cruelty, and sleep deprivation since 1994. Nestler also alleged that he sent her secret signals “in code words” through his television program for many years and that he “responded to my thoughts of love” by expressing that he wanted to marry her.
Judge Daniel Sanchez issued a restraining order against Letterman based on those allegations. By doing so, it put Letterman on a national list of domestic abusers, gave him a criminal record, took away several of his constitutionally protected rights, and subjected him to criminal prosecution if he contacted Nestler directly or indirectly, or possessed a firearm.
if they can do that to a talk show host you watch on TV, imagine what they can do to a college kid, a father, or average joe!!
“We don’t want to take away from the real victims, which are the victims of sexual assault,” Methinks these boys need a little guidance. Sue both Rolling Stone and the reporter for libel. Anounce that if they win the case, that they will donate all the judgement to a local/national charity that deals specifically rehabilitation of those woman who have been raped. The hoaxsters are defrocked, the boys cleared, the hurting are healed.
Artfldgr,
You want an editor? Pay for one you cheap suit.
I’ve been a lawyer for more than 30 years (dating myself, I know) and have never heard of a “lawyer union” – especially not a powerful one like the Teamsters or SIEU on the scale you seem to be describing.
Logistically, it (unions) is derived from the ability to gather funds, since insurgencies are funding limited, then manpower limited. Thus following the money trail and where their resources are located, is the first clue to finding them and what they are doing.
Mandatory dues are one such example. Factions against tort reform are funded and coordinated by lawyers, whether they call themselves a union or not. That’s because tort reform would at least destroy the ability of lawyers to make 99 million off of every 120 million that victims get in damages. That money is going somewhere, and generally it’s going to the Left’s causes, but in such a way that it disappears off the network. Somebody is getting paid with the money from licensing fees, other “dues”, and such. It makes a difference if it is voluntary or mandatory too. It’s basically a tax, except this tax is paying for a covert intelligence operation that few people are aware of, since it’s not in government and there’s no leakers. The profit from damages in lawsuits, that might be called mercenary looting and rewards. They don’t necessarily go to the Left, but it goes to somebody that is on the Left, at least.
http://lcc.aflcio.org/
The Leftist alliance is an alliance with several thousand different factions in it that work together. It pays to have a more flexible and open minded sense of what they consider a union of themselves, because it’s not what people classically think a labor union is for. Since, after all, labor unions were for low level work that required hands on, not blue collar jobs about paperwork. That once didn’t even include government jobs or transportation, originally speaking.
There are many different ways to research what the Left is doing. The AFL CIO had a sort of bloodless coup during the 1990s, I believe, and that’s when certain unions began changing their views on immigration and other platforms. The leadership became pink (commie) or Social Justice Whores. That means the infiltration work had already been done, and turning the pieces was just going to take some time. It starts with the leadership and the pack goes mad from the top down. Because they let someone in that they shouldn’t have. That is one way to look at the Left’s behind the scenes actions, but certainly not the only one and not even the best one. Whenever it comes to the topic of Leftist organizations and why they look like they don’t exist, their funding tables are non existent, and their membership lists disappear as fast as Journolist, well that’s usually because the Left hides itself in native organizations that aren’t necessarily corrupt to begin with.
It becomes corrupt and evil once the Left activates their sleeper cells. People will have to do the work of collecting information on their peers if they want to know what people are up to. But a lot of people refuse to do that. Police don’t like snitches, informants, and whistle blowers, if the info being leaked is about the police being corrupt. The State Department had loads of defenders saying their family or buddy was a patriot and was in the State Department. I wonder if this was before or after Benghazi. The lawyers or the doctors function on a similar level. Even the doctors and nurses have unions now, or some kind of mandatory due.
Welcome to the legal profession and the contemporary system of American civil laws and civil litigation, Mr. Dershowitz. In the twilight of your years, like other lifelong leftists, you find you have been worshipping a false god.
The case Dershowitz is referring to was filed by a former federal judge who is now a law professor at Utah. He is presumably not a fool. I suspect he has rock solid evidence. If he doesn’t, he could be disbarred. And he should.
Another example is when lawyers ally with the Left on certain issues, due to convenience. I trace them from the manpower perspective. It is strange that so many politicians are lawyers, especially Hillary Clinton’s history defending her rapist clients by attacking the victim. Unusual for a so called feminist. Well, maybe not.
However, there is also Janet Reno’s incident with WACO. The strange thing is that this was connected to the numerous trials concerning “satanic rituals” that she got to power via prosecuting. The satanic rituals were the lawyers picking up on the profit opportunity of the psychologists using conditioning, torture, and hypnotic techniques to implant memories of child rape into their subjects. The lawyers figured out that there was money in there. Which lawyers? The important ones, the ones that got to power and became judges. Reno’s situation is peculiar because she is known for using enhanced interrogation and torture techniques to break a child, so that the child testifies that their parents were engaged in “satanic rituals”. This would then become a case that ups the reputation of these “prosecutors”, which lets them gain political power later on. That is a pattern, because WACO was often about “saving the children”, when in fact it was more like government killing and burning the children since people wanted to get the kids away from the crazy cultists. Ironically, the Left was the craziest death cult in existence at the time, right with Jim Jones.
The Left ties its operations together like this unintentionally, perhaps. They’re just like that. Lawyers provide a key strategic benefit to the Left’s operations, whether they call themselves a union member or not.
‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.’
“if they can do that to a talk show host you watch on TV, imagine what they can do to a college kid, a father, or average joe!!”
Pretty much what Dershowitz said.
I used to think the slogan, “Political Correctness is Stalinism without Stalin” was a bit overheated, but now I’m not so sure. A brief recap of the UVA rape hoax:
1) UVA’s Phi Psi fraternity was falsely accused of a heinous gang-rape in a spectacularly inept and biased Rolling Stone article that spread the libel nationwide.
2) Phi Psi was vilified at UVA, subjected to abuse, its house spray-painted and bricks thrown through the windows. Frat members were forced to stay at hotels because of the obvious dangers.
4) The UVA president piled on, inflicting group punishment on ALL fraternities by suspending all “Greek” activities.
5) After the incident was shown to be hoax and Phi Psi was exonerated by police, the fraternity did NOT complain and assert its rights; it tamely accepted the defamation, vandalism and attack. Then it timidly kowtowed to the demands of political correctness, spouting the PC party line as if afflicted with Stockholm Syndrome.
6) Did the UVA president or administration apologize or admit wrongdoing? Of course not. With the supreme chutzpah of an absolute dictator, they used an acknowledged hoax as the springboard to demand stricter obedience to sex-related PC, insisting that frats sign a “new agreement”–like some kind of PC loyalty oath.
There you have it, a fine example of political correctness at work.
No, there are no murderous purges or gulags of death, but there are PC show trials. Those who defy the imperious, autocratic commissars of political correctness are subjected to character assassination, mob abuse, violence, banishment, job loss and kangaroo trials that can result in jail time, fines and other serious punishments.
Overflowing with smug, self-righteous arrogance based on working from the safety of entrenched, censored bulwarks in academic (and other) institutions combined with the reliable, enthusiastic backing of the MSM, these True Believers are eager to push political correctness to ever-greater levels of propaganda, intimidation, coercion and injustice.
Maybe “Stalinism without Stalin” isn’t so overheated after all.
vanderleun, your sociopathic compassion is showing…
‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.’
Is that a comment about what I wrote?
What do you think union means then and how do you reconcile the original labor unions with government unions and white collar unions?
Besides, a lawyer protesting the different meaning of words? You may practice law, but do you even understand what lawyers do for a living now a days?
Or am I wasting my time because this is a No True Scotsmen and lawyer defense from a lawyer? Is that what’s going on, hrm?
If I’m wasting my time, you should have told me so before you asked me that question, you know. People who don’t want answers really don’t deserve them for free, especially on the net.
If I was a lawyer, I would be legally mandated to charge for my consultation fee too.
Gary, as pointed out in my post, what your referring to is the fact that the accusers never or rather seldom get punished, so there is nothing to lose in being one of the false accusers. crystal magnum got in trouble by her own actions afterwards having nothing to do with her false accusation… tawana brawley only recently was ordered by the court to pay something towards the police officers life she ruined.
in my case, i lost my bright career, family, and what would have been a good future with a home and children. i lost my reputation, and i still have not recovered 25 years later. the person that did it? they have a family, a home, and more… yeah, they served two years in club fed for taking my son and robbing a bank, but hey, we all make mistakes…
(something venderleun with his perfect life would not understand when something gets near and dear to someones life. perhaps he should join the anti charlie muslims and fight for controlled speech since he cant handle free speech protecting that which he does not like!!!!!!)
ultimately, thanks to that person, i learned i have no rights, and am now just waiting to die as i have no future i can do anything about… after all, a background check will come up with the murder that never was, and so, ruins my changing places. and the current place says for the rest of my life i will never have a raise or promotion given i am a white male not a woman or of color.
i was one of the founders of MGTOW back when it was just bs… recently someone i know from that, committed suicide given the unequal treatment that is the norm in things like this… its easier to ruin the life and go on, than it is to be fair with the ‘victim’. now the two kids have no father, and mom has no one to keep taking to court for more and more money…
in my case, i was bankrupted, made homeless, lost my career job out college, lost my home, lost my son, lost my future… i lost most of my friends, most of my family decided not to bother with the murderer…
no punishment for her or her friends helping her…
Artfldgr – a question, if I may.
To the extent to which you can judge, do these legal problems stem from the *letter* of the law – from how the law is actually worded – or from its uneven *application*? I do not quite understand whether you think
(i) that the LAWS THEMSELVES are a problem due to a written bias against men (and if so, can you point out to those current laws worded in such a fashion as to make them necessarily and inherently different for men and women, i.e. not worded in the so-called “gender-neutral” way, with men and women having different legal stands in different contexts of the said laws) – in this case, it would not be that the laws in their entirety are crazy, but specifically in those aspects as concerning men and not in those concerning women;
(ii) that the LAWS THEMSELVES are a problem because they are crazy in their ENTIRETY – worded in such a fashion so as to be equally applicable to men and women alike and to potentially affect women in the same ways as men – but you have a problem with them because *so it happens* (i.e. it is not a necessity stemming FROM the laws, but an accident) that in practice more men are negatively affected due to other variables (e.g. more men being higher earners, and laws being worded *against higher earners*, not against men QUA men), but the POTENTIAL for analogous effects exists for women, too, in the very law – and you would EQUALLY have a problem with that if it started affecting women in the same contexts as men;
(iii) that the laws themselves are reasonably well-written, but that their *application* is demonstrably biased the way it can be reasonably excluded that the application is uneven based on parameters other than sex (e.g. men being judged more strictly for structurally analogous crimes SPECIFICALLY QUA MEN, and NOT, for example, because those structurally analogous crimes were committed in ways to bring about more objective damage, so while the law would classify it as the “same” abstract offense, there would still be an objective difference of degree which plays a part in the sentencing disparity) – in which case you do not have a complaint against the letter of the law at all, only against its uneven application which would presumably spare women and be more stringent with men.
I am sorry to be pedantic, but I think these are important distinctions so I would like to know where exactly you stand.
Another question: how do you define false allegations? I recently realized that this term is being tossed around as irresponsibly as some other terms, so when you speak of false allegations I would like to know whether you speak:
(i) ONLY of allegations the *positive factual falsity* of which has been PROVEN by counter-evidence (NOT a “he said, she said” case whether neither guilt NOR innoncence can be ascertained – the fact alone that no guilt can be ascertained IS NOT an automatic manifestation of the falsity of the accusation itself), and you apply the term ONLY to cases in which a formal complaint to the state authorities has been raised against a specific person (which eliminates the “Jackie” case from the sample – on two grounds);
(ii) Anything else – in which case, what is your definition?
So when you talk of false accusers not getting punished, do you talk of (i) not getting punished? And if so, IS THERE a potential to punish them, in the law, if the ACCUSED, whose innocence has now been proven, files a complaint against them – if so, you are essentially complaining *against the falsely accused who are not using this already existing option*, not against the law itself; if not, what kind of modifications of the law do you propose to allow for that option (or, perhaps, you would like to see an *automatic* process against the accuser if the falsity has been proven? but would that not be inconsistent with the principle that only the directly injured party should complain, as well as reserve the right not to, for whatever reason they wish?)?
The system is such that people have given lawyers, judges, and in lesser instances juries the power to determine what is or isn’t law. Far from how the system was intended to be run, this places overwhelming power on those that interpret the Holy Writ, aka the law itself, and thus control how it is applied and how it is enforced.
If law was a simpler matter that people could learn to read and understand for themselves, it wouldn’t need interpreters or priests to do it for them. Thus it becomes much better to avoid the legal system, since it’s like Somalia’s waters. There’s a high chance of piracy and unless you have firepower in political or legal influence, it’s difficult to beat back so many enemies.
If they were ever beaten back, people would find a different way to con the system, but if they are still looting whomever they wish, things continue given human nature.
Without lawyers making money off of trials, most of the problems would go away, since writing more ambiguous and more corrupt laws wouldn’t be as profitable.
Originally, the system presupposed that lawyers, advocates, would be equal and would be fighting using equal abilities. In current society as it exists, the lawyers are their own organization allied with an evil alliance I call the Left, and thus there’s too much inequality in power.
And like any other inequality in power such as the difference between classes of nobles and classes of peasants, there will be abuses. And if the nobles don’t hold their own to account, those abuses will escalate in situations where power is too unequal. Humans cannot avoid abusing those underneath them. Only a slim percentage of humans have ever reached the qualifications for leadership and standing above others.
ymarsakar, I asked you about “lawyer unions,” since you used that phrase a number of times. Here’s a dictionary definition of a union: “an organized association of workers formed to protect and further their rights and interests; a labor union.” You told me about all kinds of ways that individual lawyers have power and influence over all sorts of people and groups of people, and all kinds of ways that many of them abuse that power when they get the chance. I’m certainly not going to disagree that there are plenty of lawyers who work that way. But you didn’t even try to tell me about any organizations of lawyers joined together to improve their labor conditions or protect and further their rights and interests — which is what I was asking about, since that was the word you used. It seems that you don’t actually know of any “lawyer unions” — you just know of powerful lawyers, which is not the same thing. Thus, the Humpty Dumpty quotation. I asked my question, and I got my answer.