Current Events > How did it get to the point where being accused of sexual assault means guilty

(+) Yeah! (+)

Whatever happened to innocent until guilty.
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#metoo happened
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No one wants to protect a pedo/rapist. So once you get associated with it or accused it is over.
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The court of public opinion is far from a new thing.
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When it comes to public opinion, we've never had in innocent until proven guilty. At least not to the extent where "hard solid" proof was needed.
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Won't some PLEASE think of the poor molesters?!
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emblem boy posted...

When it comes to public opinion, we've never had in innocent until proven guilty. At least not to the extent where "hard solid" proof was needed.

This, for one.

Another aspect is how often these things were ignored by those with power. Now that those with power are the accused you have some pushing for real investigations and some pushing as retribution.
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See Duke Lacrosse 2006 when a group of players were falsely accused by a stripper who happened to also be attending Duke. Their season was ended and it was about a year later before their good names were returned to them.

Is there a prominent figure other than Roy Moore and Donald Trump who has even denied the allegations against him?

Edit: Conyers too, I think.
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It always leaves seed of doubt in the mind, and stigma that won't go away
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Someone's eventually bound to sue and win big time.
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fenderbender321 posted...

This is exactly why I always give everyone the benefit of the doubt. I would rather see 100 guilty people be assumed innocent than one single innocent person assumed guilty. An innocent person who is assumed guilty by the public (or courts) is just the worst thing I can possibly imagine.

While that's good and all, there are cases where you just plain won't have concrete solid proof. What burden of proof is needed in public opinion? The only time we have such high burden of proofs are in criminal cases. Even civil cases don't.

I myself do not like how people are so quick to fire others for their views, especially when they hold no actual power in their job to impact others negatively. But there still needs to be a line we draw and what amount of proof we are fine with. And it's never been this high bar some people seem to think it's been
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Kinda seems like everyone who suffered consequences from their job got punished after investigations from their workplace.
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I think the same sentiment expressed in the topic title applies to literally everything now. Look at police shootings. Yeah the cops do some really shady shit but there are also highly publicized cases that people riot about as soon as they read "cop shoots someone", and then come to find out the cop was actually in the right.
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Uh since when was it ever not that way? There have been plenty of cases where rape claims were false in the past and yet a lot of lives ruined because of them.
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LightHawKnight posted...

Uh since when was it ever not that way? There have been plenty of cases where rape claims were false in the past and yet a lot of lives ruined because of them.

Duke, UVA come to mind.

UVA actually had feminists claim, after the claim was proven false, that the accused should be punished by the school anyway.
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Only way such an accused could be seen as innocent is if proof surfaces that it was all made up (a recording of her gloating about it to a friend, for example).
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Look up Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle. He was an old silent film actor accused of drugging and raping a girl, yet he wasn't just found not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, but completely innocent, the charges being trumped up by politics and yellow journalism. Yet his whole career was destroyed as a result. We haven't evolved as a species in a century.
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Laserion posted...

Only way such an accused could be seen as innocent is if proof surfaces that it was all made up (a recording of her gloating about it to a friend, for example).

Not even then. UVA proves it.
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