The investigation is due process.
Believing Chloe Dykstra’s story automatically means not believing Chris Hardwick’s denial nor the accounts of his other three ex-girlfriends. You can’t have it both ways. I would really like to know what form this investigation will take, if there will even be one, because so far it’s just crickets.
No, it doesn’t. Due process is a legal concept. You keep bringing up legal processes. Those are for the courts. There is no due process anywhere else. There is no presumption of innocence. In fact, applying those rules outside of court causes problems, since it allows anyone to refuse to believe someone is guilty, no matter what the evidence.
I’ve said this before. We assume by default that accusers are telling the truth because that is what that actual data says. False accusations are rare. We don’t give any weight to a denial because both the innocent and the guilty will deny.
We then weigh the evidence. I’ve already detailed both. We have the people who have corroborated parts of her story. We have her consistent accusations that have not changed, even back when she was anonymous. We have the story that is internally consistent. And we have the fact that Hardwick still has not called her on the evidence she claims to have, suggesting he’s worried she actually has some hard evidence that would stand up in court.
On his side, we have his denial, his wife and one ex’s non-denials that just say he’s a good person, and one ex who says that he wasn’t like that with her. The non-denials actually hurt his case. Only the one ex has a good one. But she also has the the disadvantage that she didn’t respond right away.
Let me actually explain why that is a problem. It suggests that Hardwick had to contact her to get her to say something. That should not have to happen. If she sees someone she knows being falsely accused, a normal person would jump on that right away. They shouldn’t need someone to ask. That suggests he asked her to say something, which heavily lowers the value. Same with the other ex.
So, we start by believing her. Then we look at the evidence. We conclude that she is most likely telling the truth. None of this involves due process or any other legal concept.
It’s how society has worked since time immemorial. The only difference is that there used to be an exception for claims of rape and abuse. Now we’re fixing that. We don’t automatically assume the accuser is lying.
If any of this comes on too strong, I apologize. But I do see this as basically the rational way of looking at sexual accusations. And I am trying only to match the tone of the forum. I have considered other points of view, but I reject them as being wrong and dangerous. They are what we used to do, and that is, in my opinion, why so many of these rapists and abusers get away with it.
It is, in effect, why #metoo needs to exist.
Except those details do make sense, and such has been pointed out before. There has as of yet been nothing that is inconsistent with her having been abused.
No, not even the exes’ or wife’s comments, which can be entirely true as well. No, not that she contacted him again. There is nothing.
So choosing to continue assuming she is dishonest is an attack on her. Provide evidence she is dishonest. Not evidence that is at best neutral.
Let’s go back. Who’s threatening who, and what’s the threat? Provide cites and links, because Google is saying there’s nothing out there about Dykstra threatening Hardwick with anything.
Also, do Hardwick’s ex-girlfriends have a special insight into the relationship between Dykstra or Hardwick, other than they used to date him?
You go ahead and do that investigation, since you’ve taken such an interest in defending Hardwick that you’ve bounced between a few dozen explanations and attacks on Dykstra. Come back when you have conclusive evidence one way or the other. We’ll eagerly await your report.
I’m unaware of any such contradiction. Cite, please?
Innocent until proven guilty is again, a concept that applies when you are in a court of law. No one involved in this at this point is an officer of the court. There are no policemen, no judges, no jury.
Out in the real world, you can get fired or your contract terminated simply because of optics. People can refuse to hire you because you have a reputation for being difficult - regardless of if that reputation is earned. People can avoid you because you come off as a jerk (asshole/bitch), even if you really aren’t.
If and when this becomes a legal case (which, as I’ve pointed out, I think is highly unlikely - Dykstra is not making a criminal compliant as of this time, and Hardwick is not suing for slander or libel at this point in time), then concepts like proof and evidence come into play. Right now, they don’t need to.
And if he sues her for slander and libel - that’s a civil suit - there is no innocent until proven guilty and the threshold for evidence to make a decision becomes much lower (see the O.J. Simpson civil wrongful death lawsuit vs the criminal murder charge for an example of this).
You seem to be conflating what happens within the legal system with what happens outside it. In the real world, there is no due process. But in the real world, women need to feel free to tell their stories - its part of how we heal, its part of how we warn each other and teach each other to help keep us safe, its part of how we shed the shame that society puts on us because its easier for people to think its “our fault” rather than believe that someone they thought was an OK person really isn’t.
(One of the things that’s really coming through to me in this discussion is that you guys have no idea of your own privilege - how other men use the idea that “if we can’t prove it, it didn’t happen” to grope us in the subway or on the bus, to demean us when no one else is around at work, to undermine us, and keep us “in our place.” That sort of thing is something we put up with ALL THE TIME. And the reason so many men are so shocked by the number of women who can say #MeToo is that we have been silenced. If you don’t know there is a problem, you aren’t very likely to take an interest in fixing it. We have a problem - we’ve known it for a LONG time, and some men have known it for a LONG time, but we need society to see it - and that involves telling stories that happen without proof or witnesses.)
Write AMC a letter in support of Chris Hardwick. Write Comic Con and tell them he’s an important voice and shouldn’t be silenced due to unsubstantiated accusations. Go ahead and add your voice - that is part of the real world process as well. But it really doesn’t do any good here. And don’t judge a women for telling her story - if your problem is with how Hardwick is being treated by AMC and Comic Con - make it about Hardwick/AMC and Comic Com - leave Dykstra out of it, she needs to tell her story as part of her process, and I need her to tell her story so that I can show it to my daughter and say “these are the things to watch for” - I’m not telling my daughter to watch out for Chris Hardwick - he has nothing to do with the story.
(In the interest of full disclosure so someone doesn’t nitpick it - I have an eighteen year old daughter who does cosplay at cons. But she is really really unlikely to get into an abusive relationship of this type - she is asexual. So before some Doper points that out to me, yes, I know, I’m making a point in which I’m not being completely accurate about my own situation. She did, however, get into a similarly abusive friendship when she was a Sophomore in high school - her best friend controlled who she saw, cut her off from her other friends, talked her into doing things that she normally wouldn’t do (getting up at 5am to drive this girl home from her boyfriends so no one’s parents knew), and then when this girl was done with her (about the time she got access to her own car and license), spread nasty rumors about her, told her she’d be better off dead, and basically made sure she was isolated and friendless.)
I’m sorry to hear about your daughter’s experience and I understand why you have such an interest in this case. Young people are often vulnerable, especially to the demands of other young people. As for my part, I have experienced being falsely accused myself many years ago and I know what it’s like trying to defend yourself against phantoms. People believe what they want to believe, which is oftentime not the truth. Neither of us knows the key players here and all of us are coloured by our own frame of reference. What blows my mind is how many people on this forum find it inconceivable that Chloe Dykstra might not be telling the truth. That assumption is no more open-minded than someone assuming Chris Hardwick must be guilty. It is not woke to be closed-minded. I would seriously like to see what kind of investigation would take place by AMC if not the courts to clarify what happened here and who is at fault. Right now it’s all about go with your gut, which is often unreliable.
She may not be telling to truth, but from my point of view, it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference if she is or not - that has absolutely nothing to do with me or anyone I know or care about. What is valuable to me is her story, because even if it isn’t true, it is still a story that happens frequently to women. Its illustrative of how women fall into a abuse trap. And her telling it, without being silenced, helps break the silence and shame that allows violent behavior to women to thrive in our society. And that does have something to do with me and the people I know and care about.
It doesn’t matter if she’s telling the truth?
That’s a silly–and dangerous–attitude.
And its a silly and dangerous attitude that a woman can’t tell her story unless she can prove it.
Everyone gets falsely accused in life - and often takes the knocks for it. It starts - if you have siblings - when you are a fairly young child and you get blamed for something one of your siblings does. Its rampant through your school years. It happens at work, with your relationships. If you are VERY lucky, the consequences with this will be minor, but every day someone is let go from their job because they take the blame for something they didn’t do - or had no control over. Every day someone’s relationship ends because their significant other believes a lie. Life isn’t fair and it isn’t just - and that suddenly this applies even to the way white men treat women is actually fair - because in the past - we took the blame almost all the time. “You asked for it.”
White men? When did this become about race?
The fact that the truth doesn’t seem to matter to you based on what you said is very disturbing to me. People get falsely accused all the time—oh, well. That’s a very strange concept of justice. Ever read about the boy who cried wolf? He soon lost all credibility. That’s the danger of blowing the whistle for someone who falsely accused another.
It’s not that truth doesn’t matter. It’s that opening up the possibility of a man getting unjustly accused is not reason to use social pressure to silence women who cannot offer overwhelming proof before they speak up. No one is saying you have to believe Dykstra. I neither believe nor disbelieve her–because I’m not in any position to draw conclusions here. But I do believe that women need to be able to tell these stories without being called liars, without having people pass judgment on how they should have perceived what happened to him, or Monday Morning Quarterbacking what they coulda shoulda woulda done to avoid the situation.
For generations, women have been told to not ever even tell anyone what happened, because telling a story you couldn’t prove opened you up to horrific abuse. As Dangerosa pointed out, this allowed predators free rein: sexual assault is rarely provable, so gropers and abusers could act with impunity for years–decades. When women come forward with stories like this, they empower other women in similar situations to speak up. They combat the normalization of abuse and assault that is so prevalent in our society. They educate others about warning signs, and advance a national conversation about what is and is not acceptable. These are huge benefits to society, but to get them, we have to allow women to speak without fear of being attacked and marginalized if they don’t produce undeniable proof.
You realize this also increases the possibilities of false accusations coming forward. When one can make an accusation with impunity, what’s to stop people from accusing others falsely? As long as you’re okay with that. I’m not.
They put these in the press to have us draw conclusions. Is that not the whole point of an accusation? ISTM that they want us to pass judgment, just not on them.
And if you can’t, what’s to stop people from groping women all they want? As long as you’re okay with that. I’m not.
No. The point of this article was to share how these things happen, so that others can learn and perhaps avoid such a situation.
In other cases, the point may be to get people to draw a conclusion–but we don’t have to. In many cases, it provides a piece of evidence that can be used to draw a conclusion in the context of other pieces of evidence. In some cases, there’s just not enough evidence to draw any conclusion. So you refrain from passing judgment. There are certainly people in my life that I would not believe an unsubstantiated accusation against–but I wouldn’t order the accuser to “put up or shut up”. I wouldn’t accuse her of lying.
And she didn’t put it in the press - she made a blog post about it. OTHER PEOPLE made it a news story.