Crystal Magnum finds "God"

[Derec]

Evidence requires investigation which requires initial belief.

No, it doesn't. It requires being open to evidence, not believing one side a priori. Believing the woman automatically may blind the investigators to exculpatory evidence and lead to wrongful prosecution and even conviction.

“Trust but verify”.

That is not a motto of criminal investigations. And neither should it be.

Some rapists lie about rape. That’s why we should not automatically believe rapists, but instead apportion judgment to the evidence.

Exactly. There should not be "trust but verify" there either. Rather, an investigator should be impartial.

 

[Derec]

"See therefore all some women lie about rape" -certain people on this forum probably

FIFY.

 

[laughing dog]

Crystal Mangum lied. Some women lie about rape. That's why we should not automatically believe women, but instead apportion belief to the evidence.

Evidence requires investigation which requires initial belief. “Trust but verify”.

Some rapists lie about rape. That’s why we should not automatically believe rapists, but instead apportion judgment to the evidence.

There's no need for trust, it's simply a matter of verify. Unless someone is caught in the act there should be no arrest or the like until it has been determined that they probably did it. Arrest should not be a weapon.

Do you think the police put in the same effort in verification in claims they don’t believe as in ones they do?

 

[Derec]

The police have to believe they should look into the report before they will initiate an investigation.

Believing that they should look into a report is very different than believing the woman automatically.

If they simply disbelieve the reports, they won't look for evidence or other witnesses, or do anything, really.

Nobody is saying that they should automatically disbelieve the report either.
Yours is the fallacy of the excluded middle.

I'm going to repeat this so the hard-of-learning might make some progress here: No one is suggesting police officers getting reports from alleged victims should switch off their brains and simply 'have faith like a little child' that what they are being told is Absolute Truth, or that victims and/or witnesses cannot be mistaken, or that we can just go straight from accusation to conviction without a good faith effort to investigate the allegations.

But that's exactly what the radfems want. This is a thread about the Duke Lacrosse case. So many in academia and media, as well as this forum, automatically believed the woman and were convinced that the players must be guilty.
Remember the infamous "Group of 88"?

In Mangum's case, the cops did make a good faith effort to investigate and found insufficient cause to charge anyone with a crime. It was Mike Nifong who kept making inflammatory accusations and concealed exculpatory evidence in order to persuade people to vote for him, who turned the case into a shitshow. The cops did their jobs.

Mike Nifong carries a great deal of blame.
But so do the media and Duke University itself. They jumped to conclusions based on the ideology of "believe all women".

 

[Derec]

Do you think the police put in the same effort in verification in claims they don’t believe as in ones they do?

Verification goes both ways. If they a priori believe the woman, do you think they put in the same effort in scrutinizing her claims vs. when they keep an open mind about a case?

 

[laughing dog]

Evidence requires investigation which requires initial belief.

No, it doesn't. It requires being open to evidence, not believing one side a priori. Believing the woman automatically may blind the investigators to exculpatory evidence and lead to wrongful prosecution and even conviction.

Investigation requires effort. The amount of effort requires professionalism and belief. Police are human and are more likely to put in more effort into allegations they believe to more likely to be true than those they don’t.

 

[laughing dog]

Do you think the police put in the same effort in verification in claims they don’t believe as in ones they do?

Verification goes both ways. If they a priori believe the woman, do you think they put in the same effort in scrutinizing her claims vs. when they keep an open mind about a case?

Yes, because they need to make the case.

 

[Arctish]

The police have to believe they should look into the report before they will initiate an investigation.

Believing that they should look into a report is very different than believing the woman automatically.

My point exactly.

If they simply disbelieve the reports, they won't look for evidence or other witnesses, or do anything, really.

Nobody is saying that they should automatically disbelieve the report either.

Indeed.

It's wrong for the police to do that.

Yours is the fallacy of the excluded middle.

What middle is being excluded?

I'm going to repeat this so the hard-of-learning might make some progress here: No one is suggesting police officers getting reports from alleged victims should switch off their brains and simply 'have faith like a little child' that what they are being told is Absolute Truth, or that victims and/or witnesses cannot be mistaken, or that we can just go straight from accusation to conviction without a good faith effort to investigate the allegations.

But that's exactly what the radfems want. This is a thread about the Duke Lacrosse case. So many in academia and media, as well as this forum, automatically believed the woman and were convinced that the players must be guilty.
Remember the infamous "Group of 88"?

I have no idea what radfems want. I've never talked to any or read their books.

The last time we talked about feminist writers you flat-out refused to read their works, not even to verify if the mined quotes used in the memes you sometimes post were correctly attributed and complete. Did you change your mind?

In Mangum's case, the cops did make a good faith effort to investigate and found insufficient cause to charge anyone with a crime. It was Mike Nifong who kept making inflammatory accusations and concealed exculpatory evidence in order to persuade people to vote for him, who turned the case into a shitshow. The cops did their jobs.

Mike Nifong carries a great deal of blame.
But so do the media and Duke University itself. They jumped to conclusions based on the ideology of "believe all women".

Mike Nifong used the media to convey a "tough on crime" political message in multiple interviews where he basically accused the Duke students of being monsters, and then hid exculpatory evidence that showed his statements to be inflammatory, fear-mongering bullshit. He carries all of the blame for that shitshow.

IMO the media and audiences jumped to conclusions based on the ideology of "believe prosecuting District Attorneys".

 

[Derec]

What middle is being excluded?

When the argument is advanced that either the accuser is believed or disbelieved, the middle of impartial neutrality is being excluded.

I'm going to repeat this so the hard-of-learning might make some progress here: No one is suggesting police officers getting reports from alleged victims should switch off their brains and simply 'have faith like a little child' that what they are being told is Absolute Truth, or that victims and/or witnesses cannot be mistaken, or that we can just go straight from accusation to conviction without a good faith effort to investigate the allegations.

Maybe not you, but that is indeed the argument being made in some feminist circles.
We see this here also in threads about high profile rape cases that have little to no evidence. The guilt is assumed, especially when the cases (like the Duke Lacrosse) can be in seen through a fauxgressive identity politics lens - "privileged white men" are automatically guilty, and the "poor black woman" should be believed.
Of course there are limits to this. Accusers of Brett Kavanaugh or Donald Trump were believed implicitly, even as the alleged incidents were decades in the past and the accusers claimed they could not recall particulars. Accusers of Joe Biden and Bill Clinton did not get similar deference.
There are also borderline cases. Al Franken was the "live by believe women, die by believe women" type of person. Having embraced the feminist slogan in the past, it made it difficult to deny allegations. And the knives came out by his own Democratic colleagues - most notably Kristen Gillebrand. She also notoriously invited the false rape accuser Emma "Mattress Girl" Sulkowicz to a SOTU. Gillebrand believed her despite evidence to the contrary.

I have no idea what radfems want. I've never talked to any or read their books.

You don't need to read a long-form book to know their misandrist ideology.

The last time we talked about feminist writers you flat-out refused to read their works, not even to verify if the mined quotes used in the memes you sometimes post were correctly attributed and complete. Did you change your mind?

Who in particular did you have in mind? Note, I don't have time nor inclination to read whole book-length drivel, but I have read articles by and about radfems.

Mike Nifong used the media to convey a "tough on crime" political message in multiple interviews where he basically accused the Duke students of being monsters, and then hid exculpatory evidence that showed his statements to be inflammatory, fear-mongering bullshit.

It's worse than that. It wasn't general "tough on crime". He played racial politics. He welcomed Crystal Mangum's false allegations not just because a heinous crime was alleged and he could prove himself as a strong prosecutor. No, he welcomed Crystal Mangum specifically because she was a black woman accusing white men of raping her. That way he could win the Democratic primary for the DA seat.

He carries all of the blame for that shitshow.

He carries a lot of the blame. But not all of it. The shitshow[sic] started with Crystal Mangum, not Mike Nifong. We should not give her a pass. And the flames were fanned by the Duke University and the "Group of 88" faculty members, as well as the media figures like Nancy Disgrace who were sure these white boys must be guilty.

IMO the media and audiences jumped to conclusions based on the ideology of "believe prosecuting District Attorneys".

That is too simplistic. The media figures who jumped to conclusions did so for the same reason Duke faculty did and for the same reason so many posters on old IIDB did - racial and gender politics, specifically prejudice on the fauxgressive left against white men.

 

[Arctish]

What middle is being excluded?

When the argument is advanced that either the accuser is believed or disbelieved, the middle of impartial neutrality is being excluded.

I don't do that.

I am not an extremist. I do not ascribe to the mentality that 'you're either with us or you're against us', or that one must unquestioningly accept the statements of one party and utterly reject the statements of others.

I have repeatedly said that witnesses might be mistaken. I have also said that some people lie to the police and/or file false reports. That's why I wrote:

"I'm going to repeat this so the hard-of-learning might make some progress here: No one is suggesting police officers getting reports from alleged victims should switch off their brains and simply 'have faith like a little child' that what they are being told is Absolute Truth, or that victims and/or witnesses cannot be mistaken, or that we can just go straight from accusation to conviction without a good faith effort to investigate the allegations."

You even quoted that part of my post.

I'm going to repeat this so the hard-of-learning might make some progress here: No one is suggesting police officers getting reports from alleged victims should switch off their brains and simply 'have faith like a little child' that what they are being told is Absolute Truth, or that victims and/or witnesses cannot be mistaken, or that we can just go straight from accusation to conviction without a good faith effort to investigate the allegations.

Maybe not you, but that is indeed the argument being made in some feminist circles.

I would like to see your sources. I doubt you have ever spent time in feminist circles. I suspect you are relying on reports from others, and that they're where you get the cherry-picked quotes that distort the authors' meaning, even when a quote is accurately transcribed.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

IMO the media and audiences jumped to conclusions based on the ideology of "believe prosecuting District Attorneys".

That is too simplistic. The media figures who jumped to conclusions did so for the same reason Duke faculty did and for the same reason so many posters on old IIDB did - racial and gender politics, specifically prejudice on the fauxgressive left against white men.

That'd be your racial based and political bias speaking, not the people that had the temerity to take a prosecutor's word for it. A prosecutor that so boldly violated the public's trust, that he was disbarred.