There’s always a downside. It’s frustrating when some people respond, “so a few innocent men get falsely accused. Big deal. Do you know how many women never get justice?” as though this were a team sport as opposed to a multitude of individual cases, each with their own set of circumstances and people involved.
No, it’s not weird at all that people continue to believe her who believed her before. The information hasn’t changed. Not finding anything doesn’t mean that nothing happened. It’s simply often the result even if something did happen. All we have is AMC’s word that they made an investigation–they didn’t even release the actual findings or what was done. And, sorry, companies doing their own internal investigation are suspect because of past history. Transparency is needed.
Presuming innocence is a concept in court for the reason that the court system would rather have 10 guilty people go free than convict one innocent person. But that’s not the standard outside of court. What we care about is simply whether or not it actually happened. If there is 51% likelihood that it happened, that’s enough. Not the 95% required required in a court of law.
What I notice is that the investigation did not give me any reason to doubt what Dykstra said. That’s what I needed. Without that, I lean towards Hardwick doing what is described. The only saving grace is that he may have not realized how badly it was bothering her, since it seems she never really communicated the issue.
I’m not really all that interested in whether this one rich guy (who many argue is an asshole even before this hit) has to go back to doing normal jobs. What I’m interested in is the message this sends. Will people realize that such things are bad and try not to do them, since they could result in a temporary loss of work? Or will they feel vindicated and think they can keep on being abusive as long as they make sure there is no external evidence?
I’m hoping for the former, but the rhetoric around the situation suggests the latter. And I am not okay with that. Hardwick can do or not do whatever.
And you’d feel exactly the same way if you were the accused and lost your job and reputation, amirite?
Nor did anyone try to claim such a thing. The investigation apparently determined that the fair thing to do, when Dykstra’s claims were viewed dispassionately and in context, was to restore Hardwick to the positions from which he had been preemptively suspended. This may have been because the true/false distinction is not the only standard that applies; there is also what fact-checkers like to call “partly true”, or “true, but not the way it was described” or “true but with mitigating circumstances”. The trouble with mob justice is not only that it can promulgate complete falsehoods, but also that it lacks such critical nuance.
“Keep on being abusive?” Hardwick has been married to Lydia Hearst for some time now and she describes his behaviour in a far more favourable light than Chloe “the ex” did. How exactly does he “keep on being abusive” in your mind?
You surely must realize that the result of this policy of yours is that once accused, a person loses his livelihood. With a former sexual partner, there are many things that happened behind closed doors that there will never be any verification of one way or the other.
How can a person protect him or herself from false allegations?
Well that opening couple of minutes of Talking Dead seemed pretty heartfelt from Chris Hardwick. One almost gets the sense of how much pain he has gone through waiting for justice to come.
People will believe what they wish to believe. It doesn’t make it right to ruin a person’s life based merely on an unproven assertion. Anyone can assert anything. You think that’s legitimate cause for ruin?
Who’s this so-called “we?” And who is this “we” to decide that some arbitrary metric is sufficient to ruin people’s lives? There’s a reason the real we have court systems and trials and not vigilantes to determine justice.
What you and many are missing, even after it’s been pointed out in the simplest terms possible, is that modern global communications and the ease in which a mob can be whipped into a frenzy is a dangerous weapon. Would you be willing to have your real name, photo, and address associated with every post or comment you’ve ever made on the internet or in real life in this climate?
This is an example of the sort or nut that has anger control issues. Many more examples of the same sort of nut can be found in our very own Pit. It’s a dangerous world now.
Please point to the numbers of how many people whose lives were ruined by false accusations. Check it against the statistics of how many people’s lives were ruined by an abuser who got away with it and went on to abuse others.
Is God compiling these statistics? Since almost all of these allegations are based solely upon uncorroborated alleged victim testimony, who judges the outcome? Juries? The public?
You seem to be preoccupied with statistical analysis as opposed to the actual specifics of the case. This isn’t about meeting quotas. It’s about people and the consequences of their actions.
Show me proof this actually happens first. I’ve seen no evidence that Hardwick’s life is “ruined”. He’s still a millionaire living in a mansion, he still has his beautiful wife, and he now still has his job.
We know. Everyone knows. This side has been used to dismiss lots and lots of legitimate claims. When false accusations become even a little bit common, we can worry about this. Until then, lots of lives have been destroyed by predatory male behavior. The benefit of the doubt should fall towards the accusers.
I don’t worry much about the life or career of someone in the stratosphere of Hardwick being ruined. I worry from the standpoint of attempting to treat others with respect, much in the way we would want to be treated ourselves. Famous people may be wont in privileges they enjoy. At the same time they are still human beings and most of them are familiar with dealing with have been harassed in ways from the general public that are just wrong. Speaking ill of someone who didn’t deserve it is inevitable unfortunately, unless one always withholds judgment. I’m just saying the public should attempt to improve, should balance a goal of mitigating unnecessary errors in judgment with an understanding of why victims commonly haven’t come forward or been heard.
I notice that the detractors here are engaging in the time-honored practice of demanding cites and statistics in an area where they know that no such cites and statistics exist and never can exist. But the Hardwick case alone is evidence that accusations with serious consequences can be based simply on the unverified and unverifiable claims of a single person, often a person predisposed to feelings of malice towards a former partner. Even a person of reasonable integrity might be inclined to embellish their story here and there as they embark on their one-sided social justice crusade; imagine what a vengeful person of lesser integrity might do.
If you want a cite for a wide net being cast, just look around right here on this board. After the Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein stories hit the news, we’ve had a whole series of “And now …” threads, implying that an apparently endless series of men were exactly like those two, criminal sexual predators. I realize that posters were just saying, well, here’s another one that’s been accused, but it’s hard to shake the idea of equivalence, which is indeed exactly what “#MeToo” is supposed to mean. And that’s just what happened to Hardwick, who was fortunately prominent enough and well established enough that he was exonerated instead of being thrown under the bus as most of us would be. And whatever his faults, he does seem to be in a good relationship at the moment. We’ll never know the real story of whatever the hell his problems with Dykstra were, and that’s kind of the point. Yet for most of us, it could have been a career ender.