I've never heard of that before. That's a truly terrible policy.

Yeah, I definitely wouldn't recommend it (even in Canada, where the calculus is much more forgiving) if you aren't genuinely interested in actually doing the job. Or I guess if you're super morally flexible and don't mind doing boring terrible work for vast paycheques. But I can't say that the lawyers I know who've…

Those are my two fields! Crim's easier emotionally. Family's a bit more of an ethical minefield. Both are difficult in both regards. Family pays much better, albeit still no better than average for law.

Oh, fuck, not Gilliam too. That's super disappointing.

People change. Particularly when drugs are involved. Different relationships have different pressures. Past behaviour can be significant but is hardly a perfect predictor.

I'd like to imagine that she donated it because she genuinely doesn't need the money and felt better passing it along to some worthy causes. Though certainly I wish her luck regardless.

I have a couple of friends in the area of child protection, and while it's about the best and most important work a human being can do, I have no idea sometimes how they even get through the day. I consider myself relatively emotionally tough (I work in criminal law where there's also a lot of heartbreak), but I don't…

I agree!

It's tough, though, because often there's a strong rationale behind dropping the charges too - people, especially mothers of small children, balancing their own needs and safety against financial security and maintaining the support of their extended families and all that stuff. You also definitely encounter the…

Sure, but that doesn't mean she wasn't entitled to a settlement.

I think it varies a lot by jurisdiction, but where I am at least it's not required for victims to press charges, but it might be a practical necessity, and it's certainly a significant factor in whether police and then prosecutors choose to proceed with charges.

Yeah. Obviously it's her call to settle and donate, hopefully it was the right decision for her personal needs, those are worthy causes, and presumably she'll be comfortable financially for the rest of her life no matter what, but I kinda wish she'd fought it out and kept the money? That's a selfish impulse, but I…

I happen to agree that, under my limited understanding of the situation, it seems likely that reports to the police will or already have been made - again, though, you're misunderstanding the process if you think it's up to victims to press charges - because there are so many victims and a number of their accounts…

It's not social media - it's the organizations and communities he preys on taking steps to protect their members from him.

Obviously it's preferable for victims of sexual assault to report to law enforcement (victims don't "file charges", btw, that's either police or prosecution's call), and hopefully some of the ones in this situation have been able to, but I think it's pretty messed up to call them shitheads for not doing so. Reporting…

I'm sorry to hear that you went through tough times. I don't know how old you are but norms have certainly changed in the last 20 years, plus there's still lots of region variance. And of course police forces in particular can be slow to update their practices.

Reasonable doubt being a really really easy bar to cross in a sexual assault case (partially because people are the worst, partially because it's legitimately easy to have reasonable doubts when it's just one person's version of the events against another's).

Not knowing the case law I can't say for sure, but to my eye a belief "that the offender will cause imminent physical harm" could catch a pretty wide range of behaviour. A reason, say, smashing dishes can be coercive is because it carries an implicit threat that you might be the next thing to get smashed, and a spouse…

If you're in Ohio, as you appear to be, you omitted (C), which is a broader catch-all:

That's… not how family violence works. People get caught in cycles of violence and reconciliation, or are just plain too intimidated to leave even if they want to. So you're missing the basic mechanism at work here - you can't just leave because your partner, who on some level you love and with whom your life is…