My ex-girlfriend wrote a blog post similar to this one, accusing me of sexual assault. I volunteered to take a police polygraph test, hired a lawyer and initiated a libel suit. Fortunately, I didn’t need to go further because she suddenly changed my name & her story. But the experience was still stressful and scary. Many commenters vilified me because they assumed her information was true.
Prior to being falsely accused, I didn’t believe in false accusations. I couldn’t believe that anyone would tell a lie so insulting to victims. I still do believe that the vast majority of accusations are true, but I always reserve judgement because I know how it feels to be vilified in a blog post.
I applaud the author for sharing her experiences. This post is eloquent and courageous. Having said that, a blog post is not the right place to seek justice. In fact, the information here may interfere with a trial. I encourage her to delete this post and initiate a criminal trial in order to hold the perpetrator accountable.
> I applaud the author for sharing her experiences. This post is eloquent and courageous. Having said that, a blog post is not the right place to seek justice. In fact, the information here may interfere with a trial. I encourage her to delete this post and initiate a criminal trial in order to hold the perpetrator accountable.
It's pretty clear to me that the author is not interested in seeking justice and is more interested in letting people know what the heck happened to her. She's not obligated to press charges, no matter how much you think she should. It is absolutely not your call.
> I volunteered to take a police polygraph test, hired a lawyer and initiated a libel suit.
Unless the woman involved was lying about having two supportive eyewitnesses (and those guys are lying about BEING eyewitnesses on their blogs) this is woefully beside the point. I'm sorry for what happened to you but I wonder why you brought it up.
> It's pretty clear to me that the author is not interested in seeking justice and is more interested in letting people know what the heck happened to her.
For those playing along at home, Justine raised this issue almost two weeks ago, but the deluge of people saying "I need more details before I believe you" forced her to actually post this. She didn't even want to be this explicit about it, but the community made her.
She refers to this at the end of the post:
> I’m extremely upset I had to write this post. That it wasn’t simply enough to finally, after 10 months have the courage to say Joe O’Brien sexually assaulted me. But if this is what has to happen this is what happens.
She has pressed charges via the internet. Many of the people on here have accepted judgement and this will stick with Joe for ever. Yes Joe made a very bad choice and was he being malicious by moving forward in his advance KNOWING Justine did not want any part of it. The looks to be a hard argument to honestly make. I am not convinced by her own account. Intent matters and I doubt Joe intended to sexually assault one of his own employees in front of his other employees in a bar. That is the real question here.
posting your personal account of someone's crimes against you in a blog is not a fair or reasonable way to deal with what is clearly a very serious matter. it sounds like what happened was awful and these types of incidents are common in many predominantly male professions, e.g. law, finance.
i was recently seriously harassed and more-or-less sexually assaulted by an acquaintance's wife at a wedding in a swimming pool. as a man, i doubt that any police department would take me seriously if i wanted to press charges. this does not mean that i am going to take to the internet and post my account of it. nobody wins by doing this.
this trend of women posting their account of a sexual assault online is alarming because of what hawkharris describes: it could be false and then is plastered all over the net, irrevocably damaging the reputation of the accused.
> this trend of women posting their account of a sexual assault online is alarming because of what hawkharris describes: it could be false and then is plastered all over the net, irrevocably damaging the reputation of the accused.
Here is something I find curious: you are one of many commenters here literally ignoring the fact that Justine has witnesses to what happened and bringing up the hypothetical, irrelevant possibility that such an accusation could be made falsely. What gives?
Both of the witnesses' testimonies seem to be subjective: "It was getting creepy, but Justine didn't move, or slap him. She was laughing..."[1]; "The executive's posture and actions aggressive; "no" was not a possibility."[2]
Their stories also don't corroborate: "Fast forward to (from what I remember), around 1am. "[1]; "It was slightly before midnight..."[2]
I think it is good that there are witnesses but it is not as simple as saying that because there are, Justine's version of events is correct. We don't know exactly what they saw and heard, how much of their versions are based on actual events or the aftermath or their relationships with the involved. That is why it is still important to maintain innocence of the accused until proven guilty.
"Here is something I find curious: you are one of many commenters here...bringing up the hypothetical, irrelevant possibility that such an accusation could be made falsely"
It certainly isn't irrelevant to the accused. His reputation and in fact his entire life is at stake. A few blog posts do not constitute proof.
Testimony from a witness is always subjective, and this isn't a criminal trial.
Given the amount of alcohol consumed I expect that the more detailed an account one demanded of Justine or some of the others, the less accurate it would be. That doesn't lead to some kind of Rashomon outcome where we'll never know the nature of what happened. That 1am / midnight shit... really?
"Testimony from a witness is always subjective..."
I guess what i am trying to say is that they are drawing conclusions of what they saw, not just stating the facts of what they saw.
"...this isn't a criminal trial"
This is my point, we have no right to judge his guilt or innocence without a proper investigation and a trial based on this investigation.
"That 1am / midnight shit... really?"
I think it just shows that witnesses aren't necessarily a reliable form of evidence.
My point is that presumed innocence until proven otherwise is important. These kind of blog posts can help create awareness and allow us to discuss such situations but with regards to the actual event, we should refrain from judgment, as difficult as that is, because anything could have happened or not happened. Trial by social media is not okay.
> we have no right to judge his guilt or innocence
We have no real standing to judge, no need to judge, but I have the right to do whatever I want, thank you. :)
> because anything could have happened or not happened
This is a little silly if read literally. I think you can tease out a couple of things that very certainly happened by reading the three available accounts.
> Trial by social media is not okay.
So much could be said about that topic. It's fairly horrifying in some instances. On the other hand, if this was cathartic or necessary for this woman, good for her.
Some people live their lives online, others don't.
I won't comment on how much benefit of the doubt he deserves, but whether he defends himself on the internet or not should be totally irrelevant to that decision. 99.9% of us are by-standers who have no right to demand any justifications from any participants.
"Women who are assaulted should keep quiet about it because I can't tell if they're lying or not." Is that about right?
Instead of saying she shouldn't post because "it could be false," how about you recognize that she knows whether it's true or not? For God's sake, the fact that some people are liars does not mean that truth-tellers should keep their mouths shut.
I don't know about you but I'm a believer in innocent until proven guilty. In fact, I really don't care about the gender of the actors in this story at all. Every story has three sides, my side, your side and the facts. Right now, we have a blog post that describe a retroactive account of what happened to the author a long time ago and all the misfortunes of their life since then, attributed to that one incident long ago. This is hardly a balanced account. We don't have the side of the counter-party to this incident nor do we have eye witness accounts of what happened. So insofar as you, I and the rest of the Internet are concerned, none of us have any business passing judgement on the author, the counter-party or those present at the incident. As such I'd say, that the author shouldn't post this publicly, unless they are open to and comfortable with the idea that the counter-party and all others involved may now post additional details about what happened that evening in an effort to help us, the audience, ascertain the facts. That is hardly the path towards psychological healing.
I for one am pretty certain that there are elements of truthiness and untruthiness in the original posting. I'd expect similar elements of truthiness and untruthiness in a rebuttal by the counter-party as well. Both were drinking and both will be advocates of their recollection of what happened. Such is the nature of points of view and interpretation of past events
> the fact that some people are liars does not mean that truth-tellers should keep their mouths shut.
He's not saying that. He's lamenting the fact that in the mind of those like him that have been abused, the idea of posting stuff to a blog rather than going through official channels to get results is disturbing.
If anything, he's saying "truth-tellers" shouldn't have to resort to feelings as if blogs are their only realistic option. That if that does become the accepted venue, everyone suffers.
>how about you recognize that she knows whether it's true or not
In this case, yes, sounds very clear. But there are cases where it's not clear. The waters get so muddy that there are rapists that don't even know they've raped anyone. And lack of clarity only serves to compound the other problems.
Basically I'm trying to say that it's not as simple as truth vs. lies in many cases.
Posting the truth is never problematic. If what she wrote is indeed true then I cannot for the life of me see why writing that is in any way wrong.
If you want to say what she did is problematic then you have to argue that she is lying. Plain and simple. Do you do that?
It is obviously not an option to demand of victims to shut up about what happened to them. But that is in essence what you are demanding. Sure, if what she is telling is not the truth it’s quite obvious and kind of self-evident that she shouldn’t have posted it but if she is indeed a victim you would apparently tell her exactly the same. That seems quite insane to me.
> If you want to say what she did is problematic then you have to argue that she is lying. Plain and simple. Do you do that?
Can we stop having these black or white discussions?
After more then half a year, there is no such thing as the truth. Even if the whole thing was on tape we cannot piece together what was going on in their heads at the time.
It seems that every time some case of harassment hits the news people partaking in the discussion are either branded as blaming the victim or branded as destroying someone's life by defaming the accused. Can't we find some middle ground?
As dissatisfying as it may be, by the very nature of the topic there will never be the one truth to the story, but at least as many views as people were there during the event. We need to find a way to accept this ambiguity lest we will never stop shouting at each other.
So, you are saying she is supposed to shut up or what? Or what is the point you are trying to make? You want to muffle her voice? That’s your point, right?
Please calm down. Neither have I said that, nor do I believe it.
For unrelated reasons - namely that I don't believe naming and shaming is a working justice system and that it diverts from the underlying social issues - I would prefer to leave names out of such blog entries.
But the reason for my post is that I found the quoted passage to be one of the many oversimplifications that crop up again and again in these discussions.
[Edit: Rewording and fixing stupid grammar mistakes]
Naming and shaming? What the hell are you on about? You want victims of crime to shut up. That’s what this boils down to. Plain and simple. Very black and white.
I'm sorry, but do you actually read what I am writing?
"For unrelated reasons [...] I would prefer to leave names out of such blog entries"
First of all, I did not say anything about shutting up in that sentence. Second, even if you interpret "leaving out names" as "shutting up" I wrote "prefer" and not "must" or "have to".
> posting your personal account of someone's crimes against you in a blog is not a fair or reasonable way to deal with what is clearly a very serious matter.
Publishing the truth is always fair and appropriate.
Unfortunately, private citizens cannot initiate criminal trials, and most police do not take reports of sexual assault very seriously, if indeed they do anything at all.
That's right. I didn't mean to imply that citizens can initiate it on their own, but the author should at least try to press charges. The definition of sexual assault / rape varies by state.
In any case, I don't think vigilante justice by blog post is an appropriate solution.
steveklabnik, When someone publishes your name in a blog post concerning sexual assault, scores of people harass you in comments, emails and sometimes phone calls.
They take it into their own hands to administer justice. You become concerned that employers, friends and family members will see the accusation if they search for your name.
So, if you're angry at someone, you can achieve a form of vigilante justice by publishing negative information about them and sharing it with many people - even if your account appears to be factual and not sensational.
You'll see people attempting to take justice into their own hands if you look at the comments below the author's post.
Those who have been long-time HN news commentators may remember that I myself was on the receiving end of a Hacker News and Reddit 'lynch mob' for a mistake I made. It was terrible for me. Yet, I also made someone else feel terrible. Mistakes get made. I have to deal with remembering that for the rest of my life. I think about it often.
Yet, equivocating "harass you in comments, emails, and sometimes phone calls" with being sexually assaulted is... yeah.
Note that Joe has specifically said that he's radio silence on this issue. No apologies, no rebuttal, no his side of the story.
I think ideally the community as a whole should simply ignore stories like this until they are proven or disproved in a court of law. All they do is get the community in an uproar and don't actually solve anything except making the life of both people worse. Until that both people should be given the benefit of the doubt
The post accuses someone by name with some fairly emotive acts. Enough to have repurcussions on the other person's life. That seems like an attempt at amateur justice to me. In my country, the post would be grounds for libel if she can't prove it in court.
In mine, it would be grounds for libel most likely even if she can prove it in court, as far as I understand law. Or rather, the point is that she can't prove it fast enough for it not be libel (proof has to be produced within ten days, and in this case, proof would be a judgement against the guy).
And I have to say that seems perfectly reasonable to me, as public accusations outside the justice system are something I really disapprove of.
Imagine if the United States adopted the legal structure around the reporting of accusations in Britain. Nancy Grace would be out of a job overnight, and perhaps we'd see more successful libel verdicts.
To explain: the media cannot report on an accusation until the accused is convicted, as I understand it, though I'm not British and not familiar with the very probable nuances that exist.
Factual, are we 100% certain? If you are going to attached these type of title to this person, we had better be damn certain. This is why we have a legal system and not mob rule based on emotions. If he is guilty then so be it but until we know for sure, we should hold judgement. Also she mentions at the beginning that she is just writing this to get it out there, sounds rushed.
And yet frighteningly effective; here's an anecdote that includes a thought exercise to consider, and let me preface the thought exercise by making clear that I am not accusing anyone of lying in the situation linked here and intentionally have no opinion on it, for reasons that shall become clear. (In fact, I wish I hadn't read it.)
Let's introduce Bob (not his real name). Bob is a mid-level engineering manager. Single, handsome, mid-30s. Bob is a friend of mine from school and I've known him for 17 years. At work, he has a handful of direct reports, all developers. One of these reports is Ashley (not her real name). The entire time Ashley has reported to Bob, she never made any display of personal affectation, never so much as having a cigarette with Bob on a break.
Early this year, Ashley and Bob represented the company at a conference. Bob was having a drink at the hotel bar when Ashley materialized and asked to join him. Bob agreed, and they were alone in a dark corner of the bar for more than a couple hours. Bob tells me that the conversation was light, cheerful, and fun. At the end of the evening, Bob walked Ashley back to her room, said good night, and went back to his room. That's what Bob told me happened. I pressed him; "are you being truthful with me?" He indicated that he was, and I believe him because I've known him for the better part of my adult life. If he needed to maintain a lie publicly, he would have confided it to me. He has no reason to lie to me and I can safely say that he never has.
Ashley isn't the best employee and knew it. Bob was, in fact, preparing to hit Ashley with negative performance, which would have prevented transfer and a bunch of whole other terrible things. It just so happens that this conference was two weeks before her annual review, which is salient because Ashley attempted to blackmail Bob. She showed him a Tumblr draft that claimed that Bob had attempted to rape her when he walked her back to her hotel room, in enough detail to sell the story. The implication was clear: be good to me on my review or I publish this.
Bob confided this to me because he had no fucking idea of what to do. He had no proof either way, and as the alleged victim would be a report, things would look bad if he attempted to terminate her. And then, if he did, she'd potentially revise the draft to make it look like Bob fired her to cover up his alleged misdeeds. This happened in the last six months, and I am legally prohibited from knowing how it resolved. Bob cannot tell me, but he still has his job and a career, so the shoe hasn't dropped yet.
Clearly, Ashley is quite aware that when stories like this are published on Hacker News or other media, a sweeping majority of the audience will immediately interpret what is presented as hard fact. In this case, there are two witnesses, but in others there have not been. Bob's ordeal gave me a thought exercise and made me think of all the times I've been alone with people at conferences: if someone wrote this exact post and substituted all the details for me, instead, what recourse would I have as the accused? The answer is none. Even walking away with the lesson of "don't be alone with someone" doesn't really help, because by the time witnesses step forward to defend you and say a blog post is completely fabricated, it's already bounced off the moon and come back.
And yes, I realize sociopaths like Ashley are rare. But given how demonstrably effective blogging like this is, do you really think they will remain rare in the long-term?
The only solution to this is to be suspicious of everything you read that is one-sided. Be suspicious of my anecdote, even; I could be making it up, for all you know. The thought underlying it, that the Internet's talent for rushing to conclusions on one side of a story is extremely dangerous (Sunil Tripathi, anyone?), is the important part of the story that I want to convey. Imagine if this blog post appeared on the Internet with your name and a conference you've been to substituted in. As Twain said, how long would it take you to get your boots on? Would you ever recover from that kind of damage?
We can't foster this environment in our industry, and I'm saddened that it just continues to get worse. It's going to get worse because time after time after time, the Internet makes clear that understanding both sides of a story is a historical artifact, and events of the future will be determined by who blogs about them first. Scary shit. Imagine sharing a name with the accused, even! My mom just got denied an apartment because a woman of a different race shares her name and has a felony conviction. And that's a government system, not a social network.
A pile of folks have made clear, too, especially some well-known names in the industry that are already all over this thread, that if you express the opinion that I just did you are enabling rapists to completely gut our industry, blaming and/or silencing victims, and so forth. I made the mistake once of sharing this opinion in another high-visibility disclosure similar to this one, the thrust of which was "let's not blog about someone's guilt or innocence on any topic until they've been convicted of something regardless of gender or offense," and I was directly accused of being a rape apologist because of the context. The only reason I'm even sharing this opinion is because I'm on a throwaway, but my identity is fairly deducible if you follow my history. Another commenter was right: there is really no talking about this. It really chills me on the industry, to be entirely honest, and I've had exiting the industry on my mind since the PyCon incident involving dongles.
There is a lot of conflicting research on this, but many reports show that false rape accusations are no more common than false accusations of any other kind of crime.
There are many reports showing that false rape accusations to the police are no more common than false accusations of any other kind of crime. She didn't go to the police. There could be a vast number of accusations of rape like hers that are, in fact, totally made up and they wouldn't count as accusations for the purposes of those reports.
Which still wouldn't be worth worrying about, especially compared to all the actual rape that is happening, except there's a lot of pressure from certain groups to shun any man who's accused of rape regardless of the merits of the accusation. There's a very vocal school of thought that says if you employ or are friends with one of those men you're a rape apologist.
Though in this case it does sound very much like she was raped and can prove it.
Rape creates victims. False accusations create victims. Before you say "not the same!" they both often end in suicide.
So, knowing that and knowing how difficult of a topic false accusations are to study and how little we know about the bad side of human beings, I would hope that anybody who is reasonable would read "rape is a bigger deal than false accusations of rape" and say whoa, nelly, partner, do you know something that the rest of us don't or are you acting on your gut feeling? Or are rape victims just the team you happen to root for in the "victims I need to give a shit about" World Series?
The fact that you don't think it's bold reinforces my entire point about concluding things too soon. And I'm intentionally discussing this on a deliberate action that demonstrates that false accusations are easier than ever, given the Internet's (a) reach, (b) accessibility, and (c) slow erosion of doubt in most folks, who make up their minds rather readily on the first thing they see.
And yet I worry about both because I realize that all victims deserve my sympathy and attention, regardless of how they were made a victim or whether there is enough of them to justify me giving them a second thought. And I'm saying that the blogging response to the one you do care about might be having unintentional consequences for the other that you don't care about, and advising caution on an obviously explosive subject for the sake of both problems.
Look, it's your prerogative to dismiss victims of false accusation. It's even your prerogative to condescendingly dismiss me from the discussion as you are doing here. It's my prerogative to care about the things you don't, and by dismissing a problem due to frequency, you are no better than the people that dismiss rape in the industry. Can you really not see that?
I already made clear that I do not want to argue about this. I'm simply uninterested in your opinion on false accusation victimhood because based on how dismissive you are of it, you haven't been paying attention and you haven't had it hit close to home. I've been in a similar situation that resulted in my life being threatened at a conference. I know how victims of rape feel, having to sit on HN and keep reminding people that rape really is a problem and shouldn't be dismissed, because here I am debating false accusation victimhood with some random on HN.
In what you are arguing, you fail to realize that there is only one victim. And while that might be the accused, in this case where we have 3 accounts supporting the accuser... well... it's not wrong to side with either of them, but you can't really call out supporting her side as biased in any way.
You missed the part where I said I had no opinion on the specific incident that resulted in my comment. Go back and read that part; I read someone's entire comment before replying and hope for the same respect in return.
In particular, I lamented that I was aware of this incident at all and pivoted into my larger point.
I've floated this question in two other places, but I'll try again here.
> False accusations create victims.
This is almost certainly not a false accusation since Justine has multiple eyewitnesses, two of whom have confirmed her story on their blogs.
Why are you bringing up the problem of false accusations?
edit: I really am interested in your answer, more so now that you responded but failed to answer. Rereading the post I think you're referring to didn't really help.
I can count on one hand the number of times you need to click "parent" to read my original thesis that made this point. I didn't make the point until the latter half, and I appreciate that it is revealing the folks that pick what they want out of a comment.
Imagine sharing a name with the accused, even! My mom just
got denied an apartment because a woman of a different
race shares her name and has a felony conviction. And
that's a government system, not a social network.
Strangely, I can completely relate because something like this happened tonight. This evening I checked my Twitter mentions and came across this tweet with a racist remark and a hyphen and my twitter handle at the end, so it appeared as if he was quoting me:
I was like "WTF?" because I don't know the guy who tweeted it and while perusing his followers list I realized what happened. He has a friend who is also named Andrew J de Andrade, but uses a different handle, @ajayyd, which is totally odd because there are probably only a half dozen or so Andrew de Andrade's in the world.
The only way is to wear GoPro-alike all the time while interacting with other people or record everything on your cellphone (at least audio). Equivalent to Russian dash cams. Perhaps some use for the glass.
Prior to being falsely accused, I didn’t believe in false accusations. I couldn’t believe that anyone would tell a lie so insulting to victims. I still do believe that the vast majority of accusations are true, but I always reserve judgement because I know how it feels to be vilified in a blog post.
I applaud the author for sharing her experiences. This post is eloquent and courageous. Having said that, a blog post is not the right place to seek justice. In fact, the information here may interfere with a trial. I encourage her to delete this post and initiate a criminal trial in order to hold the perpetrator accountable.