A 40 year old memory is totally worthless.
This is why increasing the SOL will do nothing but cause grief.
My guess is a “recovered memory”, which usually means- “implanted memory”.
Of course she should be respectfully listened to, but the story so far doesn’t seem terribly convincing in terms of his guilt. I don’t know how many Dopers have actually spent time with paranoid schizophrenics and other seriously mentally ill people, but I have, and they can have some extremely delusional beliefs. (I used to play chess with a guy who thought he was pregnant by Jesus Christ. He actually tried to give himself a Caesarian section.)
Second, even if he’s guilty - if he started horribly abusing his sister at age 9, the real culprit is whoever or whatever was fucking up a 9-year-old to the point of raping his sister. Kids who are themselves the target of sexual abuse may react with anxiety and oversexualized behavior. They are victims too. If her story is true, he stopped by the time he was 12, meaning he got his shit together later.
Unfortunately, in a situation like this one there will be no conclusive evidence one way or the other (unless Savage continued to abuse other females and her story is corroborated by additional survivors). All people can do is talk to family and friends, review any relevant medical records, and make our best guess at the truth.
Even in the unlikely event Savage is guilty of precisely what his sister accuses him of (and nothing more), it is beyond absurd to say he should get the death penalty for something he did between the ages of 9 and 12, followed by a clean record.
Of course, as an alternate and easier approach, we could find out Adam Savage’s political leanings and assign him guilt or innocence based on whether he votes the same way we do. I’m gonna go with that approach, myself. Does anyone know how he votes?
Not if he was 9 years old it didn’t.
It’s possible that it was either 4th or 5th grade. He is very bright and it’s entirely possible that he was allowed to skip a grade.
The story sounds utterly loopy to me. When I was nine, I was preoccupied with spending my allowance on comic books from the 7-Eleven and getting to the next Cub Scout badge. But nine-year-old Adam Savage called himself “the raping blob”? Come on.
Sounds like you’ve made up your mind (your obligatory “if he did it” disclaimers notwithstanding).
No one wants to believe that it’s possible that he did it. Obviously none of us know but wouldn’t the post Cosby and post Weinstein thing to do is wait to see if more evidence comes out?
As to young kids committing horrible crimes, it’s very rare but not unknown.
Wow, that’s a lot of effort for a “financial bonanza” from a person that’s allegedly suffering from “mental health challenges”. She’s a licensed social worker, that’s at least a couple years of school and a couple more years of supervised practice. She supposedly first called him out on this 20 years ago. Mental health challenges come in many forms, but she’s hard to dismiss so quickly.
Looks like it’s being reported now because she can sue under a new law (New York Child Victims Act - NYC Statute of Limitations | NYC Bar)?
I am too.
BTW, if it DID happen, 9-year-olds just don’t do things like that unless somebody did it to them.
^^^ Yeah this was my thinking too.
I think you vastly underestimate the ability for cancel culture and the uglier aspects of #metoo to whip up a shit storm of righteous outrage on little more than a rumor. In this case, there’s a lot more than a rumor. Whether he’s innocent or guilty, his career is basically over.
“A lot more” seems to consist of repeated charges from a woman who has made her life’s work out of being a victim of alleged childhood sexual abuse, and repeated and forthright denials from the alleged child-aged rapist, backed up by their mother. The only “evidence” offered is the charge itself and her alleged memories of the alleged events. I think of it this way: if the law changed allowing her to file these charges and she failed to file them, what would that say to her current family about her sincerity, and what would it say to her colleagues and clients about the validity of her life’s work, based as it is on these allegations?
Unfortunately for the truth, whatever that is, there is almost no way that anyone convinced of his guilt will be dissuaded, and almost no way that people who doubt his guilt will be convinced of it. Due to the sensational nature of the claims and allegations, I believe most people will fall in the second camp.
As for the end of his career, what is his career now? Isn’t it mostly on the internet, where lots of people with a lot more questionable backgrounds than Savage’s thrive? Unless he breaks down and confesses, I think he’ll be fine.
If she does indeed have a written apology from him, then his sin isn’t just what he did at 9, but also his attempt at smearing and character assassinating her right now where he is very much an adult.
It’s not uncommon for people to get into mental health professions due to having mental health issues. My oldest sister was one such - she had a 17 year history of clinical depression at the time of her death, and a list of phobias as long as your arm, by which I mean beyond “does not like this thing” but either full panic attack or crippling inability to function level of phobia. Also a masters in psychology and a career in counseling young, troubled college students. Also had some ideas about our family that were flat out not true but she continued to repeat to others. Despite all that, she was a highly functional mentally ill person. I think that’s something a lot of folks don’t understand about mental illness, you can be functional, even successful by many criteria, and still have a mental illness.
None of us know what really happened. Both sides deserve a hearing.
The thing that’s really bad is that schizophrenic people often genuinely believe things happened to them that didn’t–that were part of their delusions. Becoming functional doesn’t erase false memories.
With him being 9 years old at the time, I would have a hard time even saying he committed rape, even if he did do it. It would be hard enough to call him a predator then, as it would be more likely he was a victim, and it would be even harder to assume he is one as an adult.
If it did happen, then we most likely have two child victims here, not just one.
I do also have a possible answer to any written apology, but I’m not sure I should make it, per my policy on not helping people by giving excuses they haven’t yet claimed. But there is an fairly obvious reason why someone might apologize for something they never did.
^ This.
9 year old rapists do exist, but when you find one I’d ask who gave the 9 year old the idea and what did that person do to the 9 year old?
IF there is mental illness in Miranda it will both make people question the truth of anything she says, and also lead to questions of false memories. A damned if you do damned if you don’t situation. But mentally ill people are victims of crimes and aren’t automatically unreliable witnesses.
IF there is a written apology we have no idea what’s in it - if it’s a flat out admission of guilt or more like “I’m sorry you feel that this was the situation when it wasn’t, and for whatever I did that made you think that when it wasn’t true”.
There might be a decades-long pattern of Miranda accusing Adam of terrible things and the family denying it - but was that because those things didn’t happen or because the family is in denial/grouping around Adam?
I do think Miranda dragging this into the public sphere is a mistake for her as well as for anyone else, but people do that sort of thing. The best thing for everyone concerned, including bystanders, is to let those involved sort it out as best can be done under the law, in court, and in counseling, but of course that’s not what’s going to happen. Everyone involved will be dragged through the mud, reputations tarnished if not destroyed, and possibly the careers of both in shambles.
I mean, we had the OP open with calling for the death penalty for something that, if true, was done by a minor child. That’s not a rational response.
If she has a written apology from him, I think we’d have to wait and see what it says before we make any judgement calls. There’s a lot of space between “I’m sorry I forced you to have sexual intercourse with me every day for 3 years” and “I’m sorry I hid in the closet a few times to scare you when you got out of the shower”.
I don’t know the facts of what actually happened in this case. But it sounds a lot like something a friend of mine from high school went through. His sister, who also had serious mental health issues, accused him of sexual abuse, which he of course denied. Their parents mostly believed him, but thought it prudent for him to move out into an apartment which they paid for. And even when he wasn’t under the same roof any more, and even when he was off at college hundreds of miles away, his sister claimed that the abuse was still ongoing.
In that case, the sister wasn’t in it for the money: I think she genuinely believed that it was true. But it simply wasn’t physically possible.
This. Sexual assault is such a broad term that unless specifics are released, there’s no way to judge. Especially between children. Especially so many years ago.
Sorry, but Adam is innocent until proven guilty. And that won’t happen here.
I long ago stopped expecting rationality on the internet.
Fifth grade isn’t the cutoff either. It’s preposterous to want to punish a 50-year-old person from something they did when they were a child.
If this happened at all, it cannot be helped now. The universe doesn’t balance itself. The time to fix this was four decades ago (you’d think their PARENTS are the guilty parties here, surely - assuming it happened) but I absolutely will not, ever, support punishing children into adulthood. It’s madness.