All people accused of child abuse are Guilty

[cthulu2016]

If all accusers are reliable then all the accused are guilty. QED.

But for some reason nobody ever states their righteous cause as "accused people are guilty," or, "I stand against the accused."

Because that sounds insane.

So instead it is, "I stand with accusers," and, "accusers are reliable." But it's the same statement. Just framed so as to not sound as insane.

In the real world there are reliable and unreliable accusations, and guilty and innocent accused.

There is nothing to be proud of in taking a prejudiced stance on these matters. For instance, a cop who tends to distrust rape claims is doing the same thing. Same. Thing. There is nothing any cooler about, "I believe accusers," than there is about, "I believe the accused."

So this all really turns into, "I am standing-on-a-chair proud to be exactly the same as my worst enemies, except turned 180 degrees."

Is one supposed to be proud to be an unreasoning bigot, but for good causes? Because the whole, "I know who's guilty based on their class, station, age, race, gender..." thing is kind of the motto of the unreasoning bigot.

The problem with categorical distrust of accusers is not repaired with categorical distrust of the accused. It is repaired by trying to purge one's mind of that sort of corrupt thinking.

[Vinnie From Indy]

1. Anyone with any experience in the criminal justice system

knows that the idea that "all accusers" are credible is fantasy. Lying is part of the human condition.

[Igel]

22. Lying.

And being fallible.

The video demonstration I watched on how accurate eyewitness testimony is was valuable. I wouldn't have believed it.

A law-school class on testimony and such was set up. Without warning, a man ran in from the back door. He did something--I forget what--and then ran to the front of the room. He stopped, faced the audience of law-school students, said a couple of things and then just stood there. He was well lit, he was clearly visible from all parts of the room, and he must have been told to do something like count to 10 slowly. Watching the video it seemed like he stood there for a long, long time.

Then he turned and ran out of the room by a side door.

The instructor quickly started taking statements. Sex? Race? Color of hair? Clothing? Height? What did he say? What did he do?

The guy was simultaneously brown and blue-eyed, blond and brunet and graying, had a beard and was clean shaven, wore a variety of clothes--all visible, it would seem. They agreed he was a he.

Then, after he questioned them, he was able to lead the witnesses to change their testimony and come to a sort of consensus that didn't bear much resemblance to the guy.

The students weren't lying. They were just wrong.

And that was the instructor's point. It's what he was saying when the guy ran in. Eyewitness testimony is error-prone, even 5 minutes after the event. When the students had trouble believing the instructor, he had the guy walk back in. He ran out and waited to be called back. The consensus testimony was wrong. A small number of people had a good description and stuck with it. Most had bad descriptions; some with good descriptions changed their stories. But it's hard to think that something we clearly remember is wrong. We are our memories.

[pipi_k]

29. And, being led to giving false testimony...

by crazy people.

One such case happened 30+ years ago here in Mass.

Whatever happened, or didn't happen, it just went to absolute insanity...


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fells_Acres_Day_Care_Center_preschool_trial


A tragedy for all involved. Especially the kids, who more than likely suffered all these years with "memories" of things that probably never happened.

[Jim Lane]

36. I was in just such a class in law school.

The conditions for observing were as good as you could get. It was an amphitheater classroom, with each row higher than the one in front of it, so no one had an obscured view. It was well-lit. No one (AFAIK) was drunk.

During the class, a woman burst into the room and started arguing with the professor. I had heard about such demonstrations, so I immediately knew what was going on. I knew that I'd be asked to recount what I saw, so I was paying close attention. I also knew that the whole thing was staged, so even when the intruder pulled out a gun, I knew there was absolutely no danger of any violence, so there was no emotion to color my observations.

Nevertheless, the results were exactly as you describe. On key points, my classmates' statements were all over the map. I was feeling superior to them -- until my own error came to light. I remembered it one way, but the professor stated it a different way, and the woman (the actress who had returned to the room) didn't contradict him, so it's virtually certain that I was wrong. Yet, it would have been quite possible for my false testimony to make the difference between acquittal and conviction.

The conclusion the professor drew was: "The truth left the scene at 186,000 miles per second, and all we have left is the evidence."

[HERVEPA]

2. Thanks for this.

[Mr.Bill]

3. K&R

You know, that's gonna put you on someone's ignore list.

[rhett o rick]

4. It's usually the conservative mind set that likes to get retribution more than justice.

As long as someone pays the price the conservatives feel safer. That's why the tendency for considering the accused guilty.

[Glassunion]

34. I think it is a 50/50 split.

How many times do us democrats demand "justice", and that "justice" is what we want, not what may be the truth.

[rhett o rick]

37. Disagree. It's the conservatives that want retribution and not liberals. It isnt a R vs. D issue.

[Glassunion]

38. We will have to agree to disagree.

[Bonx]

42. Goes both ways

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024435213

[Voice for Peace]

5. We rush to the defense of the accusers in cases of child sexual abuse, because they have had

no voice for much too long. We err on the side of believing and protecting them.

Those who were abused sexually as children, and silenced, are especially
protective of those who speak out.

Stories like this push trauma buttons for many. Our own anger and strangulation
resurfaces -- then gets projected onto a situation about which we really don't,
and never will, know the truth.

[Agschmid]

7. Agree with this part...

Stories like this push trauma buttons for many. Our own anger and strangulation
resurfaces -- then gets projected onto a situation about which we really don't,
and never will, know the truth.

We never really know... And that cuts both ways.

[G_j]

10. so true

thanks for that

[sabrina 1]

11. When two nannies resign because they were pressured to

go along with the accusations, among other things, tape of child edited, law enforcement found no evidence, psychological evaluations of the accuser show mental disturbance and so many other things, not to mention no charges ever being filed, seems to me that is all we need to know.

I presume you are talking about Woody Allen.


That case was closed years ago. And yes, people do lie, even about molestation, especially when they are in the middle of divorce and custody proceedings.

[pnwmom]

33. I'd like to see a link about the resignations. The nanny I read about it actually worked

for someone else, not Mia Farrow. She was visiting with her employer.

Also, where did you get that "law enforcement found no evidence"? The prosecutor had a press conference in which he announced that he had the evidence to prosecute but he had decided not to put the young girl through a trial, for the sake of her well being.

The family court judge thought the charges were substantiated enough that he ended visitation with Dylan and required Ronan's visits to be supervised.

There have been two different Vanity Fair articles over the years, in which the writer reports details of interviews related to the accusations.

A seven year old is old enough to know what happened to her, and to have retained those memories over the years.

http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2013/11/mia-farrow-frank-sinatra-ronan-farrow

In a 1997 Connecticut Magazine article, investigative reporter Andy Thibault quoted a deposition given in April 1993 by Leventhal: “Regardless of what the Connecticut police wanted from us, we weren’t necessarily beholden to them. We did not assess whether she’d be a good witness in court. That’s what Mr. Maco may have been interested in, but that’s not necessarily what we were interested in.”
The clinic cited Dylan’s “loose associations” and her active imagination as thought disorder. Dylan, for example, had told them she had seen “dead heads” in a trunk in the attic. When he was informed that Mia “had a trunk in her attic in which she kept wigs from her movies on wig blocks,” Thibault wrote, “Leventhal acknowledged this was not evidence of a fantasy problem or thought disorder.”

Thibault cited a litany of practices employed by the Yale–New Haven clinic that at least one expert put into question. Based on an examination of court documents and the report, he wrote, “The Yale team used psychologists on Allen’s payroll to make mental health conclusions.” He reported that the team had destroyed all of its notes, and that Leventhal did not interview Dylan, although she was called in nine times for questioning. They did not interview anyone who would corroborate her molestation claims. Judge Elliott Wilk, who presided over the custody hearing brought by Allen, wrote in his decision that he had “reservations about the reliability of the report.”

vanityfair.com/magazine/archive/1992/11/farrow199211

That day, August 5, Casey called Mia to report something the baby-sitter had told her. The day before, Casey’s baby-sitter had been in the house looking for one of the three Pascal children and had been startled when she walked into the TV room. Dylan was on the sofa, wearing a dress, and Woody was kneeling on the floor holding her, with his face in her lap. The baby-sitter did not consider it “a fatherly pose,” but more like something you’d say “Oops, excuse me” to if both had been adults. She told police later that she was shocked. “It just seemed very intimate. He seemed very comfortable.”

[El_Johns]

35. She was a babysitter, not a nanny. And she worked for Mia Farrow's childhood friend.

Allen sure was busy in that unaccounted-for 15 minutes: upstairs in the attic with Dylan, downstairs in the TV room with Dylan...

[pnwmom]

39. Some people say babysitter and some say nanny. Who cares? And she worked for Farrow's friend,

but that doesn't make her a liar.

Dylan's nanny -- whose job depended on keeping a careful eye on her -- has more of a reason to lie about how much time was unaccounted for, but 15 minutes is plenty long enough for something to have happened. How much time does it take to grope a child? Not much time at all. Five minutes could seem like forever -- and be extremely damaging -- to the victim of an assault. One minute or less of molesting could be damaging. It's the act that matters, not just how long it takes.

[uppityperson]

6. I don't do "all" either way, but tend to stand with the victims, try to get more to speak out

about their abuse because too many for too long have not been able to.

But indeed. "All" does not work.

[Agschmid]

8. Agree...

[El_Johns]

9. Ida Griggs is going to put you on ignore. That's Ida GRIGGS!!!

[BlancheSplanchnik]

12. what, I. wonder, would be the reaction if we were talking about memoirs of a black man

About his childhood experience of assault at the hands of white perpetrators?


Would there be this bandwagon response to defend the white and imply the black man is lying? Because it hadn't been followed through in a court of law?

I just wonder if there would be *anyone* jumping to the defence of the white person. Opining that the black man is accusing based on "false memories".
.
.
.
.
I just wonder.

[CSStrowbridge]

13. In this hypothetical...

In this hypothetical, was there evidence that the black man was coached to lie about the white man?

[BlancheSplanchnik]

14. lets say that there were conflicting rumors of such.

Just for the sake of this thought experiment.

[CBGLuthier]

23. Seems kind of racist to say their color matters

Lame hypothetical.

If the black person was coached by a vindictive person and there was never anything else the white person did similar, DESPITE SOME PEOPLE"S BELIEFS, then hell yes I would not believe the black man.

but WTF race has to do with this is beyond me.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

40. may I respectfully say that my point was not about race, per se.

It was an attempt to encourage people to THINK about how they react to different scenarios.

The idea is to ask oneself if one reacts differently to racial issues than to gender issues, all other factors being equal.





I notice you feel a need to accuse me of being lame, and to curse at me.


Doesn't seem the way to encourage mature discussion.

[Igel]

25. Ideally, there'd be no difference.

In reality, as soon as race (or, in some cases, sex) is involved it's no longer just a question of truth.

There was a thread on a race riot/pogrom a while back. The facts in the historical narrative are fairly clear. Some could be mentioned and be supportive of equal rights; the mention of some facts was prima facie evidence of being a racist. Some facts made the wronged truly innocent and purely victims to be mourned and made the bad guys as evil as possible; these were good facts. Other facts diluted the guilt and innocent, so that even the guilty weren't purely evil and the innocent weren't purely sinless; these were bad, unmentionable facts. We like morality plays, esp. when we are Christ and the "Christ killers" are our current hated foes. We need to have right and wrong clearly defined, with no ambiguity; and we need to be always on the side of right. We're humans.

As soon as charges of racism entered the conversation it was no longer about the historical events. It was about current morality, alerts, feelings of hurt and (in)justice. Even though not a person alive today was involved in that event.

This is IG's underpinning. It's emotional. It's traumatic. Disinterested thinking is slow thinking, where you control your emotions and don't rush to judgment. Emotional, traumatic thinking is fast, where you get to the answer that feels right and, once there, firmly and fervently believe it must be right and all others wrong. And, once you've reached a conclusion, any argumentation makes you defend that conclusion even if at some point you start to realize that your conclusion may be flawed; you just fight to defend it all the harder. Again, we're human.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

45. a very good post.

What's interesting in this case is that it seems that there is a huge a rift between two camps of emotional thinkers.

One camp is insisting that the female victim be believed. One camp is insisting that the female victim be disbelieved.
Both are citing "evidence" to support their view.

The disturbing thing is that each side views their sources as the final say; the "female is lying" camp seems to be disregarding well known statistics showing that sexual assaults on women are very common. Perhaps there is truth to this woman's tale.

The details of her story, as well as her affect are quite familiar to many women here, because we have lived similar experiences. Including being disbelieved in the face of desperate bias in favor of the male perpetrator.

As pwmom said in this thread,

The prosecutor announced at the time that he had enough evidence to prosecute, but that he had decided not to do so out of concern for the child's well being. Allen's people are saying now that he was reprimanded for that. The truth is that Allen lodged a complaint with the Bar Association, and their ethics committee ruled that the prosecutor had NOT violated the ethics code.

I don't believe every case of abuse. But I find Dylan to be credible, especially in light of the family court judge's decision at the time. There's probably never going to be a trial, but I think that given the support of her case by the prosecutor and the judge, we should take her statement now very seriously.

I don't understand why people are disregarding these points.

[riderinthestorm]

47. I don't think chthulu is saying that Dylan isn't believable

I think she is believable myself. However, that still doesn't make every accusation of sexual assault credible.

That's what chthulu is saying if I can presume to speak for her/him. This thread is different than Ida's thread, because it isn't zeroed in on Dylan Farrow and Woody Allen specifically.

[snooper2]

30. Not finding that exact episode,

Results at 13:00 minutes in--


14:30 you see the sick stupid liar--

"You would have to believe your son if he really told you that story"

"how did that happen! You lied"

[BlancheSplanchnik]

46. um,

ok.

not seeing a whole lot of parallel here.

[Archae]

15. This whole Woody allen thing reminds me of the 80's "Satanic Ritual Abuse."

There are still people in jails for crimes that never happened.

And even one of our "heroes" was very gung-ho in prosecuting these cases.
(Janet Reno)

From the evidence available, it was investigated.
And Mia Farrow did come across as a vindictive liar.

This Dylan Farrow could have been coached, a lot.
And now refuses to admit it may be a lie.

Or she may be telling the truth.

None of us know, and that's why this automatic reaction bothers me.

[hobbit709]

26. Like this one here in Austin.

http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/texas/article/Fran-Keller-freed-in-satanic-abuse-case-5038352.php

Someone I know had her kid at that daycare and she jumped right on that "Satanic" bandwagon.
Her son, who is now grown up, says BS about the whole thing.

[LostOne4Ever]

16. K&R

I agree completely.

One should always approach things openmindedly and willing to listen to the evidence no matter how emotional.

I don't care if this causes a certain closed minded poster to put me on ignore or not.

[Douglas Carpenter]

17. Remember how all the brain dead misogynist smeared Kathleen Willey and Paula Jones?

Okay tis wasn't child sex abuse being alleged - but the same principle applies that they must have been accurately describing what happened. No nuances to their accounts - no reports that might cast doubt on the accuracy of their story are acceptable. Anyone who doubts their words - I'm putting on ignore.

[TheMathieu]

18. In the real world, wealthy Caucasian males get away with a lot of sick shit.

And enlist mindless drones that like their overrated work to defend them, pro bono, in the court of public opinion.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

21. And sometimes also get falsely accused of things. N.T.

[last1standing]

19. Thanks for posting this.

I've been repeatedly attacked in another thread about this subject and called a pedophile protector, child rape proponent, sick, etc... pretty much every hateful, disgusting thing a warped mind can think up.

All for arguing that a person is presumed innocent until proved guilty.

Some so-called "progressives" are no better then their counterparts. They just direct their irrational hatred at different targets.

[defacto7]

20. This is a fine summary and analogy

of a very difficult media event. The difficulty is not in realizing that it's not ours to decide the actions of other people, the difficulty is digging though all the pain of those who choose to judge based on their own personal experiences, tragedies and prejudices. There's a lot of pain out there and pain is not the best judge of character or events but it is a strong promoter of accusation whether fact or fiction. Vitriol is a killer of facts. It empowers the most ancient structures of our minds toward self preservation instead of drawing on the subtleties of wise counsel and open minded civility.

There is no question that we know nothing of the accused because we are not associated with them. The only association we have is with electrons dancing on our computer screen offered us by Internet media that creates whatever subtext that's necessary, and a world of other angry pain oriented people looking for something to eradicate their misery by way of the laughing stock or whipping post. That will never heal them. That will not produce justice. It only replicates the misery they want the world to feel as a punishment for their own misfortunes in life.

I hope the angry among us find their way back to reasonable facts and the benefit of the doubt. I hope they can release themselves from self flagellation that does no more than hurt themselves and other possibly innocent people... who ever they are.

[cali]

24. Ah, the refreshing breeze of logical thought.

[riqster]

27. Everyone deserves their day in court. Accusers and accused.

And without such days in court, resolution is very hard to come by.

[djean111]

28. My sister and I had a horrific childhood - mental and physical abuse, not sexual.

We remember it in almost completely different detail. And, over the years, details have shifted as to what actually happened to which one of us. I tend to shrug and say okay, so what, it happened - or not - but hey! Here I am today!
Also, I understand that people tend to be very affected by their own upbringing, but how far back does that go - at some point, for me, just blame Adam and Eve or a maladjusted Neanderthal, and move on and don't use up the rest of my life looking backwards.
But then I am kinda pragmatic. I figure I made it out alive. Unless I can move to a different theoretical universe string, I can only change or affect what happens next. Or something like that. The moving finger has writ, etc.

[pnwmom]

32. But I'm assuming you remember who abused you, right?

And generally what happened?

There are people who seem to think this girl might have been molested by someone else, or that her mother brainwashed her.

I'm very sorry to hear what happened to you, djean111. I wish there was a way to protect all children from that kind of harm.

[pnwmom]

31. Some people here are forgetting that there was a substantial amount of evidence

at the time this happened, and Woody and others are pushing some misinformation.

The prosecutor announced at the time that he had enough evidence to prosecute, but that he had decided not to do so out of concern for the child's well being. Allen's people are saying now that he was reprimanded for that. The truth is that Allen lodged a complaint with the Bar Association, and their ethics committee ruled that the prosecutor had NOT violated the ethics code.

I don't believe every case of abuse. But I find Dylan to be credible, especially in light of the family court judge's decision at the time. There's probably never going to be a trial, but I think that given the support of her case by the prosecutor and the judge, we should take her statement now very seriously.

And that's without even considering all the interviews conducted by the Vanity Fair writer in the 90's and in 2013.

[1000words]

41. I don't agree with some things in your OP

You're going on ignore.

[riderinthestorm]

43. I'm wondering if Ida is simply looking at the people who "recced" your OP chthulu

and putting all of us on ignore.



It would be easier for her to do it that way then having a big long denunciation thread...

[1000words]

44. But then there is no drama

The very reason for the post.