<p>JC, I wonder if you are channeling another poster. Taylor described typical. That’s all. It does NOT [amount] to a claim that in principle a woman’s tears are sufficient to establish a man’s guilt.</p>
<p>What’s with the constant redirecting us to answer your loopy questions? Don’t assume you can twist this and one or more of us will get the vapors. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>As far as I can tell, the maximum category for a Clery act report is murder.</p>
<p>These are the Clery act sex offense categories:
</p>
<p>To me these all seem like serious offenses. Forcible Fondling sounds like the least bad, but all the others sound equally bad. Are you saying that none of the alleged offenses were rape, sodomy or sexual assault with an object?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>At this point, I think you’re just being argumentative. </p>
<p>Further deponent sayeth not.</p>
<p>I have a question regarding the “He said, She said” argument.</p>
<p>Example 1
A woman living in a dorm shoots a man living in the same dorm and kills him. Her defense is that she did kill him, but she acted in self-defense. She says that he said he was going to rape her, and as he moved toward her, she shot him in self defense. No one else was in the room.</p>
<p>Example 2
A store owner says that a woman stole an item from the store. The woman agrees that she took the item, but says that the store owner said she could have the item. Apparently, the store owner regretted it later. </p>
<p>Do posters here agree that if He said, She said is not an acceptable standard, then the accused should be acquitted in all of these cases?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>She should be cross-examined. I’d let her do it by video so she didn’t have to be in the same room as the accused person. I don’t have a position right now on who should do the questioning. Possibly a list of questions should be submitted, and then asked by someone other than the accuser’s badgering attorney. </p>
<p>I’d want a balance between her not having to be badgered and assaulted by a hostile attorney, which I think is unnecessary, and her having to answer the relevant questions, which is necessary. If TV and the podcast “Serial” are accurate, defense attorneys too often play the game of asking a hostile irrelevant question and then getting the question shut down by the judge. </p>
<p>From LF’s Dartmouth link:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I wonder what happened to them after they left. I assume they were able to eventually transfer to another college because their records were clean. </p>
<p>Point of interest, W&M use the term “sexual exploitation.” Makes some sense.</p>
<p>Love you, too, Dstark. Knew you’d read the Dart link. </p>
<p>OK, sorry about the murder thing, but I’m trying to understand the gravity of the alleged offenses, and what they were not. Truly, looking at the Clery Act sexual offenses, three of them look equally serious, and the other one, the forcible fondling, could vary in severity between a butt grab on the non-serious level and removal of an unconscious woman’s clothes and prolonged fondling, with pictures, on the serious level.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Excuse me? When have I ever expressed such sentiments? When have I ever said we should believe the victim without further investigation because she wouldn’t lie? When have I ever said that our interest in discovering the truth ought to be overridden by our desire not to cause further trauma to a possible victim?</p>
<p>Never. I have never said such things because I don’t believe them.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I assume you mean cops grilling women who have just made a report of a sexual assault? I’m upset because I think it’s a bad strategy to grill the victim when she makes the initial report. If her accusation is true, grilling her is not going to be a good way to get the facts as she experienced them. The alleged victim should be questioned, of course, but I don’t think she should be grilled in an adversarial way. The cops may be skeptical, but they shouldn’t act skeptical. They should act as if they believe her, and let her tell her story. Then, at the time and in future sessions, they should question her to get details. </p>
<p>If she has just been assaulted, that’s probably the worst thing that has ever happened to her, something that she won’t be able to get over for a long time. An in-your-face cop is just making things worse. If we want women who are true rape survivors to report, we can’t make the reporting process into a police interrogation.</p>
<p>I once reported a burglary to the police. They didn’t grill me. They just let me tell the story, and asked questions. The story was a little strange and I think they were skeptical, because we’d left the door unlocked, and also I didn’t notice that the things were gone for a while- it may have been the next day when I discovered we’d been burglarized. They stole my purse among other things, but I’m so spacey I’m always misplacing my purse around the house. At first I thought I must have left it somewhere, around. But they never grilled me as if I were lying. That’s the way rape accusers ought to be questioned.</p>
<p>I’m not upset when cops don’t bring charges, if they have investigated first and concluded that there’s not enough evidence. I’m upset when cops blow off the accuser without investigating. In the Jameis Winston case, there was video and photo evidence that would have shed light on the accusations, but the cops didn’t bother to find it.</p>
<p>2831 We’ve already been though this baiting tactic. </p>
<p>How much does it cost in legal fees if a sexual assault case goes to civil court?</p>
<p>Each side?</p>
<p>Just a range. This is a college website. Maybe the 25/75 percentiles. :)</p>
<p>JohnCristos – I really have no expertise of my own to offer you. I can’t discuss any legal advice that I may have received.</p>
<p>I don’t think it’s fair to characterize the thought processes as primarily centered around economics, though no one can put the institution at existential risk or violate the law. The administrators I’ve worked with are mostly motivated by trying to do the right thing by their students, with three caveats – fear of lawsuits, the drive to avoid bad public perception and protect the institution, and some slip into an advocate role themselves (NOT the ones making these determinations). Most of these cut both ways, but that’s part of the role of oversight. Certainly not perfect.</p>
<p>No idea what the OCR thinks, but I’m sure they’re quite aware of their authority. </p>
<p>My best pragmatic advice is as follows – assuming you’re single, male, and heterosexual, have fun, try to find a great girl, and monitor your own behavior. Treat a woman like you’d want your future wife to be treated. Assuming this isn’t your full-time job, put this into the mix of things you evaluate when you decide who to vote for. To be perfectly honest, despite my interest in these issues it wouldn’t make my own top 20 compared to say nuclear proliferation. Men and women have argued about sexual mores for 10,000+ years (with men almost always dictating the rules). Sexual etiquette has successfully evolved with the end of polygamy, the arrival of the pill, AIDS, the bikini, etc. Young people will figure it out. Maybe someone will make an app that combines a can of mace, a portable breathalyzer, and a notary public 
Sexual assault is a real problem and I really don’t have any fears that males will be persecuted. As for me, my worries come from some notational Hippocratic Oath that makes me require that any change is at worst 3 steps forward and 1 step back, and I worry that the current changes are the reverse. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Example 1 happens, but it’s usually self-defense against being killed. Shooting to prevent rape, well, you’d have to show that the person was clearly going to do something (or at least have her say that he was in the act.) Or if they’re someone that the person didn’t know and there weren’t any viable reasons for the person to be in their room, it might be easier to win acquittal. If she was on a date, and she kills him because he was coming “across the room” to rape her, well, how would she know that already? Did he say it out loud? Why would she have a gun in her hand already? Does she always have one on the nightstand just in case? I guess there are other cases I can’t imagine now (e.g., they said good night but he forces himself into the room, etc.)</p>
<p>But in terms of the more common self-defense against being killed, the court typically looks at whether there was a pattern of domestic abuse, whether there was marital strife (which could impact both parties), whether there were possible financial motives, whether one person was cheating on the other, and also whether forensics supports their story. In he-said she-said cases, even if other evidence can’t prove one way or the other, it hurts a lot if evidence contradicts even unimportant details in the story. If there is no other circumstantial evidence supporting or disputing self-defense, it could go either way, and sometimes it depends on whether the jury finds them believable. Unfortunately, sometimes it comes down to how well the defendant emotes while telling their story. </p>
<p>Example 2: I would think it would be a tough sell that the store owner gave an item to the person for free. Do they have any special relationship where this would be a likely scenario? </p>
<p>So what we’re hearing is that in other he-said she-said situations, we look at the totality of the situation. Sometimes we believe the accused person, sometimes not. We should apply the same standard to cases of alleged assault: look at what he says, look at what she says, consider the totality of other evidence, make a determination, instead of just throwing up our hands and saying it’s he-said, she-said, we can’t possibly determine that she is telling the truth. </p>
<p>It upsets me that it’s a tough sell that a store owner would give an item to a person, but not a tough sell that a woman would agree to have sex with a bunch of guys in the presence of other guys. If we presume that a store owner typically doesn’t give a customer something for free, we should also presume that a woman typically doesn’t agree to what looks like a gang-rape.</p>
<p>Are you talking about Jackie because that looks like a total fantasy, now. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>good one, dstark!</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I think that would be a tough sell also. </p>
<p>The issue with the UVa story is that it looks like the ringleader of the crime isn’t a real person.</p>
<p>If you want to discuss a similar case that might have actually happened, you could talk about the (FSU football player) Jameis Winston case. </p>
<p>I was thinking of cases where the accuser says she was gang-raped, and the accused say the sex was consensual, but everyone agrees penetration took place. Like the William Paterson case.</p>