@carolinamom2boys I just skimmed through this entire thread. I didn’t notice one person say this kid is a rapist. He was the only one accused of committing a crime. I mostly see people saying they understand why this case resulted in no charges.
@Consolation she could offer nothing in her defense to refute his claims that she was “on board” or that she unwrapped the condom.
Please do not speak for me - I do not see anywhere in my posts here where I have commented on anything Lind said. The fact of the matter is that she said nothing - she had no recollection. She was on a quest to find out what happened to her that evening. I take no issue with that in the least, I would want to know myself if I were in her shoes.
And let’s not forget it was not her that made the decision to escalate the matter and make an accusation. That decision was taken out of her hands by a mandatory reporter.
And as someone who has been a mandatory reporter, I want to just point out that that person has a responsibility to report if there is a possibility that the crime has occurred. It would not have been that mandatory reporter’s job to investigate or to decide whether it happened before reporting. That person would have heard that a student had a sexual encounter while blacked out. That she remembers none of it and is having trouble reconciling that. The mandatory reporter would then have reported what was said for those whose job it actually is to investigate.
If you see it (or hear it, I would argue) say something isn’t just for terrorism.
@mom2twogirls While no one explicitly called the male a rapist, there was quite a bit of discussion that the female was unable to consent because of her inebriated and possible " blackout" state. Is sex without consent not rape?
Again, this has nothing to do with “defense.” There would be nothing wrong with her being “on board” or unwrapping the condom, or choosing to have sex with him. There is nothing to “defend” herself against. If all she actually wanted was to find out what happened, she could believe the many witnesses who saw her making out with him at the party, going upstairs, the people who knocked on the door, the guy who climbed on the roof, and him. Instead of insisting, apparently, that each and every one of them is a liar.
But clearly that isn’t all she wants at this point. She wants to believe that she didn’t drunkenly pursue a sexual encounter with a guy she just met. She wants to believe that it was somehow all his 'fault."
I am extremely sorry that she feels badly about the whole affair, and that it has become public. But I would suggest as I said earlier that she come to terms with what she did, and resolve to change her drinking habits if she is disturbed by what happened, rather than trying to shift ALL of the “blame” for this ill-considered encounter onto this freshman.
@carolinamom2boys didn’t he say himself that he was too drunk to be able to say if she consented?
I’m pretty sure the discussions were either that people aren’t all willing to say for sure she consented to something she doesn’t remember consenting to OR they were drawing comparisons to another case (where Brock Turner was convicted of sexual assault) and saying they didn’t see significant differences based on the girl’s state.
@consolation where in the article linked in the OP did it say anyone knocked on the door?
So how is drawing comparisons to another case where the accused was convicted of sexual assault and saying that they didn’t see significant differences based on the girls state not implying that the male was a rapist. There were some similarities , but the significant difference between the two is in the Stanford rape case, the victim was passed out cold, in this circumstance there is no evidence that the girl was unconscious .
@Consolation I do not want to belabor the point but my understanding of the way most of these Title IX hearings work is that both sides present their version of events either in writing or in person. Then they each have some opportunity to “refute” the other’s version. I used the word “defense” or in other words “defend against” in that context. Substitute the word refute if it works better for you.
@HarvestMoon1 If someone came forward saying that they believed someone had entered their house without their permission and accused a person what would the outcome of the case be if the following information were provided.
Accuser: I went out with friends and had 7 drinks. At the bar that we were at there were a lot of other people from my school. I do not really remember what happened after my seventh drink but I woke up today in my living room feeling like someone had been in my house without my permission.
Accused: I went out with friends and had 5 drinks. At the bar that we were at there were a lot of other people from my school. I started talking to this girl and she was really friendly. At 1 pm it started to get late so she offered that we go across the street to watch a movie. I said that we could go to my apartment but she said that we should go to hers instead. I accepted and we went there. We began to watch Frozen when someone knocked on our apartment saying that we were too loud and that they were trying to sleep. She laughed it off and said that we should keep watching but it sorta creeped me out. Later they started singing when the neighbors looked through the window and started telling us to stop. I couldn’t take it anymore so I left.
Neighbor 1: I went to their window and told them to stop the movie because it was too loud. I saw them watching a movie.
In this scenario, it would be bizarre to say that the accused had intruded into the house of the accuser. The accuser is known to have blacked out and the accused is providing a reasonable story. Just because the accuser “feels like” something went wrong and she didn’t invite the accused into her house DOES NOT mean that he went in uninvited. If this case were like this (I know some details may have been left out but this is the majority of the case) then it would’ve been simple. But notice how in this case he is innocent until proven guilty and how the accuser’s poor accusation holds no legal ground. We cannot simply say that the accused’s story is fabricated along with the neighbor when the accuser has NO STORY. In the Lind case, it seems that we are assuming that he is guilty until proven innocent even though he at least has his story(which could be a lie) and she does not. Does it matter much that she had 7 drinks and he had 5? Not really. What I am trying to say is that she has the burden of providing evidence as she is the one accusing him of rape! And later notice how she says that she feels he should not live a normal life for what he has done even though she has no proof that he has even done anything. I feel like this is a case with a huge lack of evidence which results in an overall difficult case.
Right see my post #107 where I wrote:
If you have the time it helps to read the most recent posts in their entirety. That way you know what each individual poster is actually arguing rather than relying on what other posters think they said.
OK, people are starting to go to far with this identification of a possible blackout state.
No one, not even a professional, can determine that someone is in a blackout state, while in the blackout state. It is impossible because one can only ascertain this state AFTER the person recovers and shows to have no memory of events hours or days before. It is an after-the-fact diagnosis.
A doctor or trained person can assess that the person seems to not be consistent in behavioral patterns, and can also assess that some functions are delayed and out-of-synch with normal behavior, while smelling heavily of alcohol. In that case, the professional determines that person is overly intoxicated, yet acting normally, with the remote possibility of a blackout situation. High alcohol tolerance would be the first thought coupled with extreme intoxication. The person is held over to watch for alcohol poisoning, which is the biggest danger here. Or, if a policeman, arrests the person for driving under the influence and puts them in a holding cell.
However, it is not until some HOURS, sometimes many hours later, can the blackout state be determined to have even existed. It is common practice to test EVERY extreme drunk for blackout after they “come to,” but that is not a preliminary diagnosis of any sort because there is no data to go on, as the person is acting normal and may just have a high alcohol tolerance and drunk as heck.
In the mom3 legal example post, it is important to note that a guy with a female in blackout state cannot in any way ascertain the female is in a blackout state - it is scientifically impossible when the person is up and talking normally because only SHORT-TERM memory is at play and that is not affected by blackout state.
Also important to note in a blackout state that known and habitual behavior are unaffected and muscle memory is unaffected as well. For example, the female in the UVA case may not have wanted to have sex, but when asked about sex or presented a sexual situation and upon seeing a condom, she reflexively unwraps it herself and preps for sex (might even take off her own clothes) because she has done it before. It is basically habit and muscle memory at play in this scenario if she has that muscle memory from sexual situations in the past. However, it is impossible to distinguish in the blackout state whether these actions are voluntary or involuntary, as the action appears identical and normal under both conditions.
@awcntdb I agree with the habitual behavior thing. And that would also explain (what I find to be bizarre otherwise) her responding “just a minute” to the banging on the window. That is a habitual response a person has when they are in the bathroom and someone bangs on a door.
I think it’s possible that both main possible viewpoints are right in that this girl was too drunk to know what she was even consenting to (assuming her actions were as described and implied consent) and that because this guy didn’t know her/ didn’t understand her behavior/ was too drunk himself that he thought she was consenting.
It’s a terrible situation.
@carolinamom2boys I’m not arguing with you that these are different cases. I didn’t bring up the comparison and agree that lots of people have brought up cases that are different in some ways to this case and tried to equate them. I’m pretty sure only one poster equated this one with the Brock Turner case.
Scary stuff for anyone!
I do not mean to get too technical, but to be accurate, you do not have memory loss - you never formed a long-term memory to begin with, so it was not there to lose. What happened is your Explicit Memory (no pun intended that is the proper term) which is dependent on conscious thought to remember episodes long-term and form associations with those episodes stopped functioning.
What was functioning is your short-term memory and your Implicit Memory, which your long-term memory function that allows you to do things by rote and which allows you to answer questions you already know the answer to.
However, in your situation, you were not fully conscious in the cognitive sense (physically conscious, yes) and thus you never transferred any of your short-term episodic memories to your Explicit Memory. Short and long-term memory are different, so just because you had short-term has no bearing on long-term; they are formed differently and called up differently.
In fact, your husband might have sensed this if he waited a few hours and then asked you specifically what you did when you got home earlier - he might have found that you could not remember even changing your clothes 6 hours before, but you could remember something clearly from 3 or 4 hours before. Thus, just having normal conversations in the present would totally mask the condition you were in.
I agree with your post, but there is one nagging detail - unfortunately, according to her brain she was consenting and that is why she went through with the sex. There was no different behavior for the guy to understand; she most likely consented just as a normal female would do. That is what makes this a difficult situation; there is no way to stop the scenario other than do not drink at all.
It is improper to even assign meaning to her consent/actions because she was not conscious in the truest sense, but her brain was acting like it was in a sexual situation and was on autopilot so-to-speak.
No human can distinguish between an Implicit Memory response (see my above post) and a short-term memory fully conscious response. It cuts both ways like you said - the guy had no way of knowing her consent was not a fully conscious short-term memory one, and she had no way of knowing her consent was an Implicit Memory rote reaction to a sexual situation. They were both essentially doomed to have sex given her condition.
And this has nothing to do with the guy drinking either - this could easily happen and has happened to totally sober guys and the girl wakes up and asks “Who are you?” Same for guys who wakes up with a female he has no clue that he even met the night before, yet she seems to know everything about him and his friends.
@mom2twogirls My statement regarding the comparison’s between other rape cases was not meant to be directed at you specifically, but a statement regarding what was going on on the thread. One poster earlier went so far to say that they were sure that if they left, it would’ve turned into another Vanderbilt or Brock Turner situation , but then quickly edited their post .
@awcntdb let’s be clear that I am only agreeing that this guy could have believed at the time (for various reasons) that she was able to consent. I am not agreeing that she did consent. We actually don’t have evidence that she did, IMO, and simply a lack of evidence that she did not. I get that the burden of proof would be that she did not consent, which was why they didn’t bring charges and why he likely would not have been found guilty if they had. I do not agree that it’s clear she consented. I agree that it’s possible that she unwrapped the condom as it was a habit and she wasn’t even aware she did it, it’s also possible that she didn’t unwrap it at all.
I think this thread has shown a multitude of times just how unreliable even the memory of a sober person can be. How many people read the article and then stated over and over that there were people banging on the bathroom door? Someone said that the guy who banged on the bathroom window also banged on the bathroom door first. It’s been stated by more than one person that the girl pressed charges and/or was the one to begin the legal process. Some people have said she made up a story because she didn’t remember what happened. Some people said a lot of others at the party didn’t think she seemed that drunk. Someone said the wrestler was her friend. Someone called her repeatedly by a completely different name for more than one post (her name isn’t Amy!)
I don’t think one poster who said those things was lying. And maybe even some of those things were true but they weren’t stated in the story. I think people make assumptions and I think memories are often not whole and people fill in the blanks without realizing it. I think people are also not always good at judging other people’s behaviors and labeling them (drunk, sober, sick, angry, sad) as well as they think they are.
@carolinamom2boys no I knew it wasn’t directed at me. You had said most posters though and I was saying that I disagree. Most of the posters IMO (and definitely at the beginning of the thread) were only critical of the girl and not of the guy. I believe I only saw one poster state that the two cases were more similar than different, not most posters.
Good point, but some posters may have information from other articles, or hearsay, or first person accounts. Maybe factual or maybe not.