Occam’s razor to me says not that he didn’t realize that it was fucked up, but that he didn’t care that it was fucked up.

That’s all totally fair, but for the average person, them having told multiple people the same story over a period of years still makes it more likely that that thing occurred than if they were saying it for the first time to a newspaper.

Right? “I’m going to send my child to this day care even though I’ve seen reviews online saying they abuse the children in their care because that hasn’t yet been proven beyond a reasonable doubt so to refuse them my business would be immoral!” Bonkers.

Yes because so many of the recent accusations have been brought by children seven years old or younger and the people corroborating George Takei’s story were children younger than seven.

I just saw your edit to this - at least in the US you aren’t exposing yourself to criminal liability at all or civil liability just because you haven’t pressed charges. There is no criminal liability for libel or slander, and the accused would need to prove in court you’re lying to hold you civilly liable - so unless…

Sorry, in my experience people who claim to be allies but who act predatory at times are far more common than false sexual assault allegations. He may not have done it, but to me it seems pretty unlikely that this out gay driftwood artist from Portland has been lying to his friends for years about this encounter with…

Absolutely - I didn’t mean to imply that it does, was just focused on acquaintance rape since that’s been the focus of most of the allegations coming out.

Roy Moore has had only one accuser for sexual abuse - the others were able to legally consent under Alabama law and only alleged kissing. Creepy, but not sexual abuse.

Lololol civil cases are “fucked up” and “wrong” yeah okay. There is absolutely nothing morally wrong with using a preponderance of the evidence as the burden of proof when only financial losses are on the line. Does it suck to publicly be found liable and lose all your money? Yes. Is it the equivalent of being…

Yes, I’m aware of that? Not sure what your point is. I was just saying that the claim against Takei, even before these recordings, was corroborated in the same manner as other recent reports of sexual abuse/assault/harassment.

Respect for making that decision - I know it’s a difficult one, regardless of what you decide.

I genuinely don’t think there’s any moral problem with me saying “based on what I know about the risks of coming forward with something like this and how uncommon false accusations in this arena are, I think it’s more likely this happened than not and will act accordingly.”

To me the DA deciding not to prosecute or an acquittal would have a much larger impact on perceived legitimacy than deciding not to file a report in the first place, given it’s well-known how hard it is to get a conviction and that victims tend to be treated terribly and revictimized during the process.

I personally wouldn’t. I wouldn’t want to prosecute it given (1) how much the DA’s office sucks in my area (seriously they bungled a case I was involved in so badly) and (2) that an acquittal (which is super common in these cases because of they tend to be he-said-she-said given the nature of consent and the burden of…

But when we make choices about who we respect and who we patronize and who we follow, it’s also totally okay to say “I’m not going to patronize this person because I think they probably did do this thing,” even if we’re not sure. Any alleged perpetrator is entitled to be presumed innocent in the eyes of the law, but…

First, when I was mugged literalllllly no one responded to the article in the newspaper by suggesting that I must’ve just given my purse to someone and regretted or by saying I must’ve lost it somewhere and was embarrassed so I pretended to be mugged. Instead, people believed me. Crazy!

Yes, I understand basic logic, thanks. But the fact that someone has been telling his friends for years about a particular encounter makes it more likely that it’s true than if, post-Weinstein, the first person he tells the story to is a journalist.

Of course it lends credence to the claim. It’s corroborating evidence.

As we all know Roy Moore is very well known for his socially conservative views. It wouldn’t surprise me if liberals used this opportunity to falsely accuse a high profile conservative, and one running for senate at that.

This. The original article cited four people who confirmed the accuser had been talking about the encounter for years. How is that different from how WaPo corroborated Roy Moore’s accuser who was 14 at the time?