[Hyperion]

Very disturbing if this is only he said she said.

[Spike]

Ever thought of the shamefactor? Most rape victims keep it to themselves for years. Some longer than others.

The older you get the more resentful you get towards yourself and others and the more you're willing to speak up about it, especially if life didn't turn out the way you imagined. That goes for bitter men-hating women (radical feminists) as well as women-hating men. (radical manosphere)

Just because they kept quiet and are not too pleasing on the eyes, doesn't mean they can't speak the truth. Child abuse was fairy common in the 70's and 80's and most of the stories are just coming out now.

In this case there's just no way of finding out who speaks the truth.

[Sp5]

(03-23-2015 06:57 PM)iknowexactly Wrote:  

So just someone's word, without any corroborating physical evidence, is adequate to convict of a serious crime?
Are you saying that is how it works and you agree, or just how it works whether it's fair or not?

What if he didn't recommend her for a team she wanted to be on and she holds a grudge, what if....ANYTHING?

Yes, eyewitness or complainant testimony is adequate to convict in many cases, not just rape but robberies, for example. This is something I emphasized in my thread on how to guard against false rape and domestic violence charges.

Didn't you meet any guys in prison who were rounded up on the street after a robbery and identified in a "show up" or later on in a line-up identification? They might have actually been innocent. All you need is the victim to say "he robbed me" or a witness to say "that's him." It's pretty fucked up when you consider the studies on the unreliability of cross-racial identification ("they all look the same") or eyewitness identification in general.

In a case like this South Africa one, identification is not the issue, the main issues are reliability of memories (mental illness?) and motive to lie (revenge for other things, attention, $$$).

(03-23-2015 08:37 PM)Atticus Wrote:  

Indeed why would she lie? That question is a two edged sword. In a "word on word" scenario such as this, the jury are most likely to come down on the side of the complainant, because one needs to ask, why would she go through all of this if she wasn't telling the truth? In NSW, The questions "why would she lie" is deemed to be so prejudicial that no one is allowed to ask it without some evidence to corroborate a motive for lying. Think about it, if the defence was compelled to answer that question, it would shift the entire onus of proof onto the accused.

It is improper argument in a lot of places for a prosecutor to ask "Why would she lie?" The prosecution can't state a personal opinion on witness credibility or endorse it. But it's still a question that has to be answered by the defense in some way, because you can be sure that a jury or judge will be asking it.

An aggressive defense will dig for evidence of unreliability, including mental health records, failures of memory, past instances of lying, and motives to lie like shakedowns, threats, financial problems and debts.

The flip side of this is the prosecution will dig into the defendant's past. In this case, letters which Hewett wrote to a complainant were damning.

http://www.iol.co.za/news/crime-courts/h...REjovmUeLY

Quote:

In another letter to her, Hewitt wrote: “I can only assume you think of me as a sex maniac.”

There are things like contemporaneous complaints to friends, behavior changes, sudden aversion to the alleged perpetrator which can be introduced.

The fact that there were three complainants bolstered the evidence. We know women can collude on evidence to sink a guy (see Mattress Girl's case at Columbia, Assange's Swedish "rape" cases), but the circumstances of each case can show that. Some kind of crazy mental state often shines through the bullshit.

In the Catholic priest cases, it turned out that there were a lot of contemporaneous red flags, like a priest who was a founding member of NAMBLA, complaints from parents, warning letters to the priests, transfers.

[aphelion]

To be fair, this is a lot more than 'he said she said'.

[magicone]

(03-24-2015 04:21 AM)Sp5 Wrote:  

Didn't you meet any guys who were rounded up on the street after a robbery and identified in a "show up" or later on in a line-up identification? They might have actually been innocent. All you need is the victim to say "he robbed me" or a witness to say "that's him." It's pretty fucked up when you consider the studies on the unreliability of cross-racial identification ("they all look the same") or eyewitness identification in general.

In a case like this South Africa one, identification is not the issue, the main issues are reliability of memories (mental illness?) and motive to lie (revenge for other things, attention, $$$).

Actually there were a lot of studies and experiments made,
even a famous one by National Geographic channel,
where actors were simulating a real life robbery in the street
in the middle of over 50 real passers by.

Just some time after the robbery, the passers by
were invited separately to identify who was the thief.

Almost all of them had shown the wrong person,
usually they pointed to another passer
by that was only present there,
and what´s more disturbing is that almost everyone
who indicated the wrong person,
was saying that she/he is very sure about it...