Thanks for sharing your perspective. It was a helpful counterpoint to the PP. Not a rape situation, but I was asked by a friend years ago to speak on her behalf against her husband in a divorce/child custody case. She said he had been abusive to her, and I saw bruises. I told her I could speak to her character and honesty, but I could not say that I knew he abused her because I had not witnessed it. Our friendship was never the same after that, and I often wondered if I should have handled it differently. |
Imagine how it feels as a child, or as an adult coming to terms with how their childish trust and weakness were exploited. Over the years that I have posted here I have often been called a misandrist for my jaded views. But as a former prosecutor who handled far too many sexual assault cases both adult and child victims, I have good reason for my feelings. There are so many monsters out there, walking around with the masks of grandfathers, fathers, uncles brothers sons and friends. Teacher troop leader coach clergy neighbor. Everybody wants to think the monster is in somebody else’s closet or under somebody else’s bad, but the monster is just as likely in your house, no matter how much you refuse to see. And that’s how monsters thrive. |
I was so glad to see this. It's an indictment against scientology too, which I abhor. The outrage isn't this sentence as compared to Brock Turner; the outrage was always Brock Turner. And, IIRC, that judge wasn't just not re-elected, he was recalled. Finally someone got it right. He ruined these women's lives in so many ways and he's going to rot in prison now. |
I don’t really understand all of the comparisons to Mike Tyson and Brock Turner. Danny Masterson is a serial rapist and his sentence is not really out of the ordinary for a serial rapist. He has been accused of 4 or 5 rapes and was convicted of 2. Brock’s situation was a news story because it was unjust and Mike Tyson was a different jurisdiction 30 years ago. |
Brock Turner is going by Allen Turner now. There's a Reddit thread about how he's living in Dayton and women there are telling each other to be on the lookout for him at the local bars. No peace for Brock Allen Turner! |
Good. Rape survivors live with the consequences of those rapes for their entire lives. Rapists shouldn't get to escape that fate. |
These are such good points and won’t penetrate the lead-lined brain of the Mila and Ashton apologist. To hell with them. |
PP here. I had to think about your comment a bit because it definitely triggered some things for me. But here are my thoughts. I think it's reasonable to tell someone that you can't testify to things you didn't see. But to tell someone who has shown you their bruises that you don't "know" they were abused is going to sound, to them, like "I think you might be lying about this." Even if you don't mean it that way. I went through this with being sexually assaulted. There were people who were friends with both me and the person who assaulted me. I told two of them who I considered close friends about what had happened, because I thought they could offers support for me within that community. Their responses were very confusing to me. On the one hand they behaved in a very supportive way, telling me they were so sorry that had happened to me and offering to "be there for me" however I needed. But they continued to maintain a normal friendship with the person who assaulted me, including one on one time with that person, as though it had not happened. When I asked them about this, they said that while they loved me and supported me, they couldn't "know" what had happened and therefore couldn't change their behavior towards the other person. But from my perspective, they did know, because I had told them what happened. To say they couldn't know what had happened because they hadn't been there indicated that they either thought I was mistaken or that I was lying. Neither of those felt like a reasonable position to take (if they believed I was mistaken, then their support had been condescension, and if they thought I was lying, then their support had also been a lie). Since I did know what had happened, I couldn't maintain a friendship with someone who was unwilling to take my word about something so serious, especially when I very clearly needed and had asked for help in getting through it. And that was the end of the friendship. I'm not saying you were wrong -- only you can decide what the right thing to do in that situation is. But I think your friend's decision to pull away after you told her you couldn't know for certain her husband had abused her (when she'd shown you the bruises and told you that's what had happened) was probably the right choice for her. In that situation, you need people around you who are willing to accept the hard things you are telling them as truth. |
You handled it horribly, and your friend should ghost you. |
She has $$$. She'll be fine. |
I assume she'll lose it all in a civil case. |
She also has the machine of a cult behind her. She'll be "fine" there too. |
You are being unreasonable. The PP could truthfully (under oath, remember) say that she saw the bruises, that her friend told her she was abused, and that she believes her friend is honest and telling the truth. But she cannot say that her friend was abused as she did not witness it. |
Why? What did she do outside the scope of defending her husband? |
This was about testifying in court—she had to tell the truth. She had not witnessed her friend being abused. I can understand the friendship suffering, but I don’t think she did anything wrong. You can’t just walk into a court and say things because your friend wants you to. “Your friend should ghost you,” is such a childish thing to say. I’m so sick of grown women acting like 13 year olds. |