Going into this I do want to re-emphasize one thing.
The issue is not whether of not one or the other ends up being completely labelled truthteller or liar.
The issue whether or not we the people can have confidence beyond any reasonable shadow of doubt that Judge Kavanaugh is a person of sufficient integrity to be appointed to a seat on the SCOTUS. If there is a lack of complete confidence that he is a truthtelling individual of high integrity (and people with politics very different than mine can certainly be that), then he should not be confirmed for this particular position.
That is the standard that needs to apply. For this position we the people cannot afford to grant any benefit of the doubt.
I have a relative who said she was drugged and assaulted at a party when she was in college. Not once, but twice. One would think that after the first time, she would have called that the end of the drinking and partying, but that’s looking at it through my prism of old age and lack of social urges.
So two men have come forward to say that they are the ones who assaulted Dr. Ford? Of course, this is from Fox, who have every reason to muddy the waters. But it is apparently from a timeline that Chuck Grassley released.
Tomorrow is going to be a circus of epic proportions.
Let’s get these guys out in public and hear what they have to say. What kind of guy takes admits to attempted rate to help another dude in a job interview? It’s fascinating if he’s lying, and it might be even more fascinating if he’s telling the truth.
Presumably the men are saying that they had either consensual sex with Miss Blasey (as she then was) and or fooled around with her. While friendship unto death is a great ideal, taking the fall (in a rape allegation) is well…fuck :eek:
Or the ‘Pubs are saying to Prof Ford “back down, or we’ll unveil your entire teenage sexual history”. Which would be despicable. Even if strictly speaking relevant.
From my vast law enforcement experience (watching every episode of every one of the Law & Orders that ever aired), there are people who routinely confess to crimes they didn’t commit-- murders, even. Apparently they do it for the notoriety. <shrug>
Y’know what? I would be willing to consider giving him a pass regarding SCOTUS if he had come out with an apology when the story broke with a sincere declaration that he was a hormone laden idiot at 17, (although the age would appear to need to be bumped as more stories have come to light from his college years). However, he has chosen to double down and declare that nothing happened, despite increasing testimony from multiple people. This indicates to me that he believes he never did anything wrong and also that he does not have the judgment to realize that his yearbook was there to be found and that multiple people of that time had not died and would be available to provide testimony. Those are both seriously disqualifying aspects of his life and career.
It’s NOT relevant. We have moved past this as a country. We do not try rape or assault cases on this basis any longer. The sexual history of the victim is not relevant.
I said “even if”. That is even if it’s found to be relevant not that it is.
As for the second part; that’s incorrect. Sexual history, while restricted, may be admissible under certain circumstances. For instance in Maryland (the State in question).
Which incidentally is probably one of the most permissive shield statute I have seen.:eek:
But she didn’t say, in her sworn statement, that she “realized later” that rapes must have occurred. She said she saw it happening. Listening to Avenati on CNN and elsewhere, he’s saying more or less the same thing. Except he said something more like she was confused about what was going on. If that is the case, then I’m wondering how an attorney could allow his client to state that she was a witness to something that she was not. Something is not right here. I’d be interested in what our resident legal experts have to say. She claimed she saw women raped. What must she have seen and understood about what she saw in order for that claim to be considered credible in a sworn statement like this.
I agree that if he has lied about what happened he is disqualified to be sitting on the Supreme Court, both from an integrity standpoint and, as you say, for being so stupid as to not realize his past behavior via school yearbooks and fellow student revelations would bring his true behavior to light.
But while you may have been willing to give him a pass, based on his age and the amount of time that has gone by since had he confessed his role in Ford’s experience, I suspect that the hue and cry against him would have been even worse than it has been already.
But it appears that Kavanaugh was quite the heavy drinking party boy in his youth and much different than the wholesome image of a man of impeccable character that we were initially presented with. My feeling now, should he be proven a liar too, is that his life as an adult may not have been of such impeccable character either. So, and once again this is if he should prove to be guilty as charged, it appears the country may have dodged a bullet by having his true nature brought to light and preventing his being seated on the Supreme Court.
Here is the result of a study, taken at a single university, asked once a year over 8 years, asking 1,882 men (anonymously) about any rape-like activities that they engaged in. (I say “rape-like” because they don’t use the term “rape”. Instead they describing the activities so that the respondents don’t realize that they’re admitting to a crime.)
Questions:
Results:
My presumption would be that the study was conducted on the students at the university of the professor overseeing it, the University of Massachusetts, Boston. It currently has a total student body size of ~17k.
Based on this site, and comparing school sizes, it seems relatively like that if UMass Boston was listed that it would have somewhere between 10-25 reports in a year, at a guess. And yet, by self-report from men 20 years earlier when the school body was probably smaller than it is now, we would expect the yearly reporting rate to be at least 60 (483 rapes over 8 years).
As the beginning of the report says, “It is estimated that between 64% and 96% percent of all rapes are never reported”.
Personally, I would expect that rape reports are more common now than they were back in the 90s, and if we assume that not much has changed in terms of how frequently rapes occur on campuses, then we’re still only at 17-41% reporting rate.
More importantly, 6.4% of the men polled admitted to rape. I’m pretty damn sure that the average incarceration rate of male college students is not 6.4% of the student body. How many college students do you think go to jail every year?
Clearly, this is all just happening and continuing to happen, and I don’t think it’s a secret so much as that, for the groups involved, it’s just sort of expected and unexceptional. I think I’ll have to write a full OP to really explain, so apologies for ending this post here.
I don’t think this an accurate read of what she said. She said she saw guys lined up outside of closed doors, waiting for their turn with girls. Since she also claims to have seen Kav spike the punch bowls and conduct himself in a sexually aggressive manner, it is obvious to me she’s making a (very reasonable) leap about the purpose of the queue at the door. And I’m sure what ultimately happened to her has informed her surmise. But she never says she saw rape occurring.
I can easily imagine that in all the parties she attended (previous to the one in which she was raped), she believed that the guys were waiting for their turn with willing participants. There always seems to be that one girl who everyone has (mentally or outwardly) labeled as the “slut” in any given social setting (especially in the 1980s “Jane, you ignorant slut” youth culture). I could see how a female party attendee would just roll her eyes at the line at the door and try not to give it too much thought because to do otherwise would require excluding yourself from all “cool” social activities. Because remember, as we’ve been told repeatedly, Times Were Different Then[sup]TM[/sup]. Back in those days, rape only happened behind bushes or in seedy back alleys and was only committed by thugs wearing ski-masks. If Kav gets a variance for not understanding what he did was so wrong (which is the argument many of his defenders keep using), then so should the witnesses to what he did (or is speculated to have done).
All three cable news networks trying to demonstrate their sense of dignity (lol) by only displaying regular bugs advertising the 10:00am start instead of countdown clocks. FoxNews advertising their pre-game starts at 9:00am.
Avenatti client Swetnick’s interview teaser. Full interview to air Sunday. Looks like it took place in the middle of an airport. It’s fairly underwhelming in light of her allegations.