I didn’t totally get the meeting thing either. Although it could potentially fit the narrative of college age males concerned about retaliation…especially the recording piece.
I find the recording very interesting because the accused admitted he didn’t know if the victim consented.
The accused did not know he was recorded.
I wonder if UVA felt the accused was coerced when he said he was too drunk to know if he got consent.
On a different point, when college students are asked what consent is, the answers are all over the place. Schools are not doing a good job teaching students about consent.
@dstark yes I did read your comment but my take on it was different. I just felt the whole meeting as reported seemed “staged.” The questions about consent were quite direct and almost in deposition form:
They made sure that it was on record that he thought she was “on board” and then he offered contritions. I find it interesting that he made no mention of the unwrapping of the condom at that point in time. You would think he would bring that up as a solid reason why he thought she was ok with the interlude.
Absent the recording I might think it was just a meeting. But I find it very hard to believe that these boys would know that Virginia was a “one-party consent” state for recordings. Just seemed to me they were too ready for her. Who knows.
@dsstark I am hypothesizing that perhaps he did know he was being recorded.
@HarvestMoon1, I don’t think the accused knew about the recording. What he said wasn’t good for him.
The meeting did make the older athletes look good.
I do wonder if UVA thought the accused was coerced. Or the meeting was staged.
What I quoted in my post #102 was good for him. Then he confessed to being drunk himself and apologized.
The accused said he was too drunk to know if the victim showed signs of being incoherent.
Under UVA’s rules, where does it say if the a person is too drunk to know if another person is incoherent, he can have sex with her?
The unwrapping of the condom sounds like bs to me. Maybe that is why it wasn’t mentioned at the meeting.
I haven’t spend any time with UVA’s policy but assume it’s like most others - he will be held to the standard of what a reasonable and sober person would have known with regard to her incapacitation. And his own intoxication would not be a defense.
But in the recording when asked specifically about her coherence, I don’t think he ever really answered the question. He simply replied “I mean I was very drunk myself.” And he had already made the earlier statements about her being “on board with it” which implies she was coherent. Then throw in the unwrapping of the condom claim and you have a coherent young woman immediately preceding sex.
The investigators were quite clear about how they arrived at their decision. They stated that they found her claim of memory loss “credible” and thus were left to rely solely on the freshman athlete’s account of events during the time that the two were alone.
So he claims she was “on board”, she unwrapped the condom and then another athlete testifies that she said “give us a minute.” Sounds like coherence to the investigators. She can’t negate that or really offer anything in her own defense, so she lost.
Given the above question, then there should be a couple other 'under UVA’s rules" questions that should be asked:
“Under UVA’s rules,” where does it say one can make up a scenario if one does not like what happened to you because you cannot remember what happened to you? People need to accept the fact the female has not a clue what she did or did not do.
Also, “under UVA’s rules,” where does it state that a female could be so drunk as to blackout, have sex, and then when she cannot remember what really happened before sex took place charge rape, even though when blacked out it is very possible she could have consented not once, but several times? Even worse, it is possible she was the initiator and the aggressor and has not a clue.
Seriously, she really has no grounds to stand on, as she has not a clue what she did or what he did. However, unfortunately for her, she sounded and acted normal to others including the guy she was with. Her charge sounds more like trying to get her reputation back “on the back” of a guy she had drunk sex with and regretted it.
Basically, this is a female who should simply stop drinking because she will find herself in this situation again because once blacked out all bets are off to what she would agree and not agree to.
"Have you ever been at a party where a couple of people decided to have sex in the bathroom, thus leaving the other partygoers in dire need of a place to pee? I have. I have also participated WILLINGLY in drunk sex when I wouldn’t have done so in the sober light of day. Maybe I had a wilder youth than a lot of people here. "
I wanted to come back to Consolation’s post because - no, never have I been at a party where people decided to have sex in the bathroom (well, to my knowledge). I have also never participated in drunk sex when I wouldn’t have done so in the light of day. The most I have ever done was been tipsy and dance with a really good looking gentleman who later wound up in movies and trust me, if anything had happened, it would have been consensual 
I have a low tolerance for drunken debauchery and find nothing “fun” about either getting drunk or being around drunk people. These kinds of parties are my idea of hell. I went a few times in college just for the experience but yuck.
Has anyone on here participated willingly in drunk sex that they regretted? If so, do you remember the event (and remember consenting, even if just in your own head) or are there questions in your head as to whether you consented?
@HarvestMoon1, Yes.
I wonder what UVA thought about what the wrestler and the policeman saw. Why aren’t they part of Lind’s defense?
Sure, a couple of times. But I’ve never felt that I had no control over the situation when it occurred, never so drunk I didn’t at some level know what I was doing nor do I have ‘blocked memories’ nor did these encounters leave me full of anxiety and traumatized or unable to deal with “seeing” the person again even if I had zero interest in having sex with them again and could have lived my life happily not seeing them again. But I am and always have been a pretty emotionally healthy and strong person. I can roll with things. I’ve also stopped someone intent on having sex with me for whom I had zero interest. I shove, a NO and a quick exit takes care of that in many cases. I’ve been groped in college stone cold sober in the library stacks by a stone cold sober football player who was dating a housemate and is now a university attorney ironically. I thought he was a disgusting POS at the time. Such is life. I’d probably enjoy talking to him at a cocktail party these days. For me it was part of the learning process of moving from college and the dating scene during my twenties as well as the process of finding a person I could spend the rest of my life with. And you better believe if I felt that I had been raped my first call (in the era before cell phones) would have been to my parents to tell them what happened and my second call would have been to the police.
dstark, I would guess the wrestler and the cop were part of the process. There is a 96 page document at the college and a police report somewhere. I think the bigger point is this woman had drunk sex for all practical purposes and there was no legitimate evidence or testimony other than her saying she can’t remember to suggest otherwise. I think the more important point that underscores this article is that that of a cautionary tale…that our society doesn’t always protect us from ourselves and we alone have some degree of responsibility for keeping ourselves safe from something we don’t want to have happen. There are some times when it is pointless to try and blame another person for something in your life although that can be a convenient way to deal with it mentally. And yes, a prosecutor would probably never want me on a trial over sexual abuse. They say older women can be the biggest hurdles because our feeling are based on our experiences.
Regarding the Washington case: I am very sad for the girl. She took advantage of someone’s drunkenness to persuade him to have sex with her, when he normally would not. She didn’t physically overpower him, pour booze down his throat, or roofie him.
Of course, guys who do exactly the same thing are now being branded as rapists and expelled. So it was inevitable that at some point it would happen the other way round.
Is she a danger to other students who will coldly calculate to take advantage of drunk guys in the future? I strongly doubt it. I think she comes off rather as a somewhat pathetic figure. Would we find a guy with a crush on the good-looking girl who wouldn’t look at him twice, but suddenly found her drunkenly willing to go to his room and have sex equally pathetic?
momofthreeboys, I am glad that things worked out comparatively well for you.
Your experiences do not cover the range of experiences that young women have (fortunately for you).
On a college campus, I learn about a much broader range of undergraduate experiences, some involving roofies, some involving attack by a stranger, some involving attack by a person who was previously trusted, some involving violence during the encounter. The word “attack” is an appropriate description of many of these circumstances.
When women “blame another person,” in a number of cases, it is because the other person should be blamed, and it is not merely “a convenient way to deal with it mentally.”
@momofthreeboys, there used to be a name for people who behaved like you, a slut, but activists changed that. That’s a good thing because people should be able to have sex with whoever they want.
Drunk sex is ok. Too drunk sex when one person is unable to give consent is not ok.
What QuantMech said in post 113.
I absolutely have! Years ago, of course! I knew what I was doing and was in no way coerced, though. Drunk dialing was a little more of an issue for me, actually!
QuantMech, I totally “get” that everyone’s experience is different and I fully support people who feel they have been violated or attacked. What I can’t support is thinking that in every situation the accused deserves to have the hammer put down on their entire life to satisfy someone’s emotional feelings, especially if they are at no risk to other people on campus or in the high school corridors.
I believe you believe the accuser, but you cannot presume the accused is guilty either. Life is messy. Like Consolation I feel sorry for the girl who was expelled…as sorry as I feel for men who are expelled because of drunk sex. I think we should not be in the business of micro-managing sex lives of young people and I feel that the police with their investigation and subpoena powers are the appropriate people to be balancing bad sex vs. criminal sexual encounters. Sometimes it is obvious as in the Turner case, but sometimes it is not clear and the scrutiny of people involved in the legal system is prudent.
@QuantMech What about the other circumstances when the person shouldn’t be blamed ? Each case needs to be evaluated individually . Unfortunately , rape occurs in a variety of situations, but what happened to innocent before proven guilty .
@QuantMech , don’t you think you are being just a tad condescending? Do you seriously think that we don’t know that some women experience rape and trauma? It seems to me that you are the one who is in danger of refusing to believe the reality that plenty of women have drunk sex, regret it, but are not traumatized by it.
ETA: And plenty of women have drunk sex and enjoy it, too.
@dstark I assume they did consider the testimony of the police officer and the wrestler. I can only guess that they concluded that yes she was very drunk but not incapacitated. Absent any evidence or testimony to refute his claims, they took what the young man told them happened in the bathroom at face value.
I do have some issue with them not putting more credence in the testimony of the wrestler who saw her within minutes of the encounter. And I have a lot of suspicions about the unwrapping of the condom claim and the “can you give us a second” comment. But absent anything being asserted to the contrary they obviously took those things as true.
This types of cases are hard. You really have to dig for answers and I suspect in this case there might have been some “closing of ranks” by the guys. Don’t forget they supplied all that alcohol and were probably thinking their derrieres were on the line as well.