And moving on from Cosby, now Hybels....

You're preaching to the choir here, it's utterly absurd to think that a change of mind after the fact means an entirely innocent person can find themselves facing life-ruining allegations. The trouble is when things that are clearly absurd are presented as if they were not.

 

Anyone remember the early 90s, and then the mid 2000's, when all a parent had to do was say "I think that [teacher/priest/daycare worker/musician] sexually abused my child" and that person's life was over???

 

The issue of being drunk is certainly a very ugly matter. The idea that a drunk woman cannot consent to sex while a drunk man can is pretty much a textbook example of sexism. At least in that regard a man who is so drunk he doesn't even know what he is doing is less likely to be able to - er - rise to the occasion and so has a moderate level of protection courtesy of natural limitations.

The fundamental problem is that people expect to be able to live however they want and not face any consequences for poor decisions. A woman who walks alone after dark wearing clothing so tight as to make escape impractical can't be questioned about her decisions because apparently that's "victim blaming" but the person who goes to work leaving their front door wide open can be considered to be asking to be robbed. Someone who goes out and gets so drunk they doesn't know what they are doing have to face the consequences of their decisions, regardless of gender. If that means a young woman goes home with a guy she would normally find repulsive, so be it. She gets to live with the regret.

The only exception to the issues of drunkenness should be when drinks are spiked. The problem there is that so many chemicals that are used to drug unwitting victims are filtered out by the body within such a short time it's all but impossible to prove anything once a few days have elapsed. A major problem there is if a woman was so badly drugged she didn't even know what had happened - if she wakes up in her own bed on her own she may not even realise that she had company for part of the night, company that ordinarily would not have been made quite so welcome.

 

The trouble with child molestation is that it still needs to be subject to the normal process of gathering and testing evidence. The needs of the alleged victim obviously need to be considered, as with any case of alleged sexual assault, but how is it fair to allow allegations to suddenly surface after several decades? At some point, distasteful as it is, we have to accept that there is no way the accused can receive a fair trial and there is no way any useful evidence can be found. Otherwise we get the kind of thing today with much screaming and finger pointing, much trial by media, and much made of the fact that an accused man genuinely can't demonstrate just what he was doing for every single night of March 1976.

Support services for victims of sexual assault, even if the allegations can never be proven, obviously don't need to be subject to time limitations. But, however distasteful it is to think of rapists getting away with their crimes, at some point the risk to the reputations and freedom of untold numbers of innocent men has to be considered.

 

Same for a significant number of men, as well (especially those who are incarcerated). But no one is disputing that rapes happen, only that there's been an extreme shift in the opposite direction (guilt assumed rather than demonstrated) that's just as destructive as its opposite has been in the past, and that the definition of what constitutes rape has changed to include anything from what we'd consider historical rape, to mere regret (to say nothing of false reports, which can and do still happen).

Title IX concerns aren't gender-specific, and neither the men nor women who raise concerns are doing so to 'pooh [them] away'. Their concern is that 'actual' rape victims (there's a messy word) are being looked over because so many other men and women are filing complaints that aren't sexual assault, but are, for example, mere regret about what happened the night before.

 

There are certainly differences when it comes to taking advantage of children. The trouble remains that guilt has to be demonstrated rather than merely alleged. How long after the fact does it become all but impossible, if not outright impossible, to provide evidence to prove the guilt of the accused? How long after the fact does it become impossible for the accused to have any reasonable chance of mounting a solid defense, however outrageous the allegations?

I don't know about you but if someone in their 20s claimed that I molested them over the course of 1991 I can easily imagine having an impossible job trying to prove my innocence. I honestly couldn't tell you what I was doing on any given day in 1991. If it came to it I could probably figure out where I was within a day or two (if what town I was in was enough detail for "where I was") but the way allegations these days refer to "some time between March 15 and July 21" render it all but impossible to mount a defense. If I could prove I was nowhere near the site of the alleged attack for the whole of July, that still leaves March 15 - June 30 to cover.

Don't get me wrong, I'm no happier at the thought of child molesters escaping justice than anyone else. I'm just struggling to see how we can leave the door open for them to face justice without creating an impossible situation for those who are falsely accused.

 

Having defended a man falsely accused of child sexual abuse, I can tell you that much of our memory is reinforced fantasy, eye witnesses are horrid, and bringing a claim 30 years after the supposed event is ridiculous.

Also, regardless of innocent until,proven guilty, at least in the eyes of the media, the advocacy groups, and much of the general public, the accused is guilty until,they prove otherwise.

You can't imagine the hate mail I got and the accusation made against me as his legal counsel. 60 Minutes was the worst.

 

The trouble with this approach is that sooner or later it is likely to be twisted to suit a specific purpose, either for political or business reasons, and the standards for bringing a claim end up lowered. Is there a reason why a predator who molests young adult women, or women too infirm to defend themselves, should enjoy any more comfort from a statute of limitations than a child predator? What about people who inflict extreme physical violence upon others with no sexual aspect to their attacks?

The simple reality is that there comes a point after which there is no realistic chance of gathering any evidence over and above eyewitness testimonies and even those eyewitness testimonies will be of little to no value because of the sheer amount of time that has passed. Eyewitness testimonies are often unreliable at the best of times (as a number of psychological studies have shown, and as our resident lawyer has commented).

I can't imagine anybody is happy at the thought that particularly nasty criminals have the chance to get away with their crimes simply because of the passage of time but when do we figure that the accused has no realistic chance of a fair trial? What evidence that would conclusively affirm guilt or innocence of such a crime would still exist after 5 years, let alone 30 years? And how do we balance justice for the genuine victims with justice for those who might be falsely accused, when so much time has passed that it's hard to imagine any useful evidence still existing?

 

Our system is intentionally weighted toward liberty, not justice. That's a choice the founders made, and a choice that our constitution and 250 years of jurisprudence has upheld. As has been famously stated, we would rather see 100 criminals go free rather that see one innocent man's liberty taken away.

The opposite approach is a danger for anyone that weighs more than a duck.

 

I think this is the key here. There needs to be help for victims regardless of the time elapsed since whatever happened to them. That's a very different proposition to a statute of limitations wtih regard to seeking justice through the legal system.

Someone with a made-up allegation of childhood abuse may waste time and resources if they choose to visit a support center but at least they have no potential to ruin an innocent man's life in the process. And in the meantime the genuine victims of crimes more horrific than most of us would even want to think about can receive the support they need, the counselling they need, to move forward with their lives even if their abuser never the legal system.