asked me what I thought, and I decided to learn more. What I found was disturbing -- but the worst part was watching the witch hunt taking place here on DU.


https://www.democraticunderground.com/10027677928#post18

I remember when you fell for a 4chan rumor saying a mass shooter was a 'communist Hillary supporter.'

You completely fell for it and even posted the kid's photo here. You were 100% wrong.

Remember?

to be so certain about any particular thing. I remember believing with total conviction that Michael Avenatti was what he said he was--this Eliott Ness type prosecutor who was going to save us all from Trump, sink Kavanaugh's confirmation, and expose the Trump administration completely before running for president in 2020. Then he turned out to be a complete con man and crook.

We live and we learn.

When I searched this site this is all I got:

along with the link to 4chan

The lacrosse house was once "Mrs Tyree's" house. My husband was inside that house many times as a child, as was his mother throughout her childhood and youth. My mother in law grew up in that neighborhood, her family lived on Watts St., the street behind the lacrosse house.
The first and main point of contention that I remember them discussing is that she said the whole team was there, but the house is way too small; the whole team could never have fit in that house.
The second point I remember is that she said they were yelling stuff at her as she left, but that house faces Buchanan Blvd (which is also Guess Rd) right across from the Duke East Campus (a park area with a lovely low stone wall that has a popular running/walking path) it's a very busy road and the park area is used a lot in the day and evening. I didn't believe that because it's just not quiet around there until late evening.

There were a lot of people here who were adamant she was telling the truth. I never believed her, because of the details that were not believable.

It was left abandoned after 2006.

(You probably knew that.)

How many people have had their careers and lives ruined because of mere allegations or accusations that have no evidence?

It’s a terrible thing to do to someone and there should be serious consequences.

The woman made the accusation for the most basic of reasons.

Money.

She admitted it later in a taped phone call.

Good Lord!



Hey everybody, just as an aside, the distance between 2006 and 2024 is the same as that between 1972 and 1990. Just information.

Tue May 28, 2024: On this day in 585 BC, the eclipse of Thales, the earliest event of which the precise date is known, occurred.

Thanks for writing, and good morning.

I was called a lot of things for casting doubts in certain states.

I never trolled but because I kept saying Harris was not the clear favorite, and was new here, I was concern trolling.

I even had two people here make bets that turnout would exceed 2020 (it did not) and that Harris would win the popular vote by at least 11 million (she did not). Obviously, I see no reason to collect on the bets but it's whatever.

publicly flogged based on the accusation alone due to rape culture and "men feeling they can do this to women any time they want."

I got my ass handed to me when I said innocent until proven guilty and let's wait for evidence to come out before convicting. I was told "women need to be believed" because "men do this all the time and get away with it." I was told I was a misogynist for not jumping onto the "hang them by their balls" bandwagon.

Same thing when NFL punter Matt Arazia was accused at SDSU for the same thing.

Both were fabrications.

I'm sure now I will be told I am wrong in my thinking because I "will never believe an accusation of rape" because "men need things like to to make themselves feel good about themselves."

I also believe those that attacked me (when I was right all along) will never, in public of PM, admit their mistake and atone by moving the goalposts and say "this was was fabricated, but thousands of other unreported one aren't" and "men need to clean up their actions around women."

We do with sexual assault cases when Trump did to the Central Park Five. . .convict upon accusation. Hell, in most countries (here included), the attitude is "you must be guilty if you were arrested."

I remember some pretty deranged threads.

we have seen many who find due process optional.

and I'm not a rape victim but a female. I hate hearing this shit. I remember that girl at UVA who told her similar story to Rolling Stone. I remember reading it and when she was telling how her friends all reacted I started thinking it didn't sound quite right. I couldn't imagine friends making any of those comments. Turned out they didn't. This just makes real rape victims have more trouble being believed.

They worry it'll discourage real victims from coming forward for fear of not being believed.

I actually understand this logic, though one should also consider the ruinous damage such false allegations cause. Falsely accused men usually lose their jobs; their friends and family may turn against them; they have to pay a lot of money defending themselves; and their reputations are permanently stained.

while attending college.

The warden cautioned him that he believed about 30% of the men in his prison for rape were innocent - so my father should avoid situations where accusations could be made.

is the near certainty that those young men would have been gang raped had they gone to prison. In essence this woman attempted to have these men raped.

They did not all come from wealthy families.

David Evans went to Landon, a private school in Montgomery County, Maryland. His father was a lawyer. Mike Nifong definitely picked the wrong person to mess with there.

Reade Seligmann went to Delbarton in New Jersey. Collin Finnerty went to Chaminade on Long Island. I got the impression he did not come from a famiy with lots of money.

...is that some of the faculty at Duke who were publicly calling for these students' heads refused to apologize when it became clear the students were innocent. They simply found other reasons to hate them.

But in front of the student body, apologise to those men they defamed and explain why what they did was wrong.

I kinda wish some of the more rabid DUers from that time step up as well.

Several Duke faculty, including some of those who wrote the original letter, later released another letter claiming that they were only calling out racism and sexism on campus, that they weren't attacking these students per se, and that they accepted the principle of due process. I do agree that racism and sexism must be confronted, but this particular letter came across as disingenuous.

Meanwhile, one of the loudest of these professors was contacted by the mother of a lacrosse player after the exoneration. He responded to the effect that she'd evidently raised a barnyard animal.

The lack of self-reflection was stunning.

It was kinda trigger thing for me

My college roommate was falsely accused. I was witness to his innocence. ( It was a morning after regret thing for the woman, but it was a consensual hook up) He is Jewish and it was a Catholic U. Things got ugly for both of us and we had to leave the school.

I learned a lesson tho, I was a virgin at the time as I was considering becoming a priest. One was the danger of lust

Another was: do not allow oneself or female companions to get in potentially compromising situations, or one that may be construed a such.

Last edited Sat Dec 14, 2024, 04:24 PM - Edit history (1)

because there had been such a focus on rape awareness with an emphasis on violence by men — here was a case involving two women (shocking)! They were engaging in consensual sex and at one point, the girlfriend asked my friend to stop. My friend said because of her position, she could NOT (edited) hear the request. I was interviewed as I was in the suite at the time and didn’t hear any kind of disturbance/argument/etc.

There was a disciplinary hearing, and I think they basically decided it was unintentional — I don’t believe there was any action taken. I still wonder if it would have been handled differently if my friend or the girlfriend had been male.

Even before gamer gate, "social justice warriors", and well before DEI and woke hit the mainstream we had the Duke lacrosse case.

There was a rush to judgement and a political persecution. When the case fell apart, there were no apologies. There was a lot of "the details of this case don't matter because we were right about society in general" types of responses.The failure to adhere to liberal values of due process and civil rights was swept under the rug.

I believe you can draw a line from this right to Trump 2. That's why I reject the idea of letting "harmless" ideas fester in left leaning spaces. No, I don't think political assassinations on the streets of New York should be condoned (or worse, celebrated). No, assassins do not have a point. Creating anti-liberal enclaves at universities decades ago has blown back onto today. Science denialism against vaccines, pharmaceuticals, and agriculture that went mostly unchallenged in left leaning spaces for decades has yielded RFK jr and MAHA. Indulging and promoting anti-immigrant and protectionist nativism in the mistaken belief that it's "pro-worker" has doomed Democrat's actual pro-worker policies to failure at the ballot box.

And this can go on and on. People say Democrats have a messaging problem. They do. The problem is that they don't call out the messages on the left that, if spread, undermine the goals of the Democratic party.

That's the truth of the matter. People really wanted them to be guilty because of their economic status and race. People were so eager to believe these three guilty that they discounted evidence. Any questioning of the case led to cries of "believe all women!"

These three guys are lucky that they had excellent legal representation. Unfortunately for those who aren't as affluent, they're not lucky enough to have equal access to competent legal representation. It makes you wonder how many innocent people there are in jail.

Earlier this year, I had comments removed because I said that Fanni Willis completely fucked up, and that was the end of the case before the election.

Let her continue to rot in prison.

Even after the case was thrown out.

should be the same as the SOL for the accused. Meaming none at all, like they do in some states.

I have learned to be way more skeptical than I used to be. It was unfortunate that the lacrosse players came across as rather unlikeable. A lot of people didn't want to believe them, and so I guess some reverse prejudice set in. The media was also rather breathless about the privilege the lacrosse team enjoyed on campus.

I can't remember if I commented at the time. What I mostly remember was that it seemed like a strange kind of party, rich kids clubbing together money to hire a stripper. It was yucky.

Hat tip, The Cavalier Daily

News
10 years later — student journalists discuss retracted “Rolling Stone” article
How an unsubstantiated story shifted views on campus culture, gender violence and journalism itself


Thrown into the center of this journalistic implosion and activism on Grounds were student editors, writers and other staffers at The Cavalier Daily.

Photo by Sarah St. John | The Cavalier Daily
By Merrill Hart
November 24, 2024

Mairead Crotty, news writer during The Cavalier Daily’s 2014-15 term and Class of 2017 alumna, remembers reading the “horrifying” article in Clark library. The news made its way across Grounds, spreading between glowing screens as students passed the link to Facebook friends. ... Another former Cavalier Daily staffer’s first reaction was visceral: “Holy s—, that’s really intense.”

Ten years ago, “Rolling Stone” published its shock-inducing and now-retracted article, “A Rape on Campus” by Sabrina Erdely. The report featured a University student named Jackie who claimed she was violently gang-raped at a Phi Kappa Psi fraternity party during her first year. But what happens when a story so consequential is proven untrue?

The graphic narrative ignited protests both on Grounds and at a national level. It also stoked fears of toxic University culture, as Jackie alleged that her friends discouraged her from reporting the assault. Jackie also shared her experience navigating the sexual misconduct reporting process, overseen at the time by Assoc. Dean of Students Nicole Eramo, whose competence Erdely questioned in her article. In response, protestors demanded better treatment for sexual assault survivors along with structural change in the University’s case reporting process.

After receiving national attention and scrutiny, further investigations and fact checking caused Jackie’s testimony to unravel. “Rolling Stone” partially retracted the article Dec. 5, 2014, then issued a full retraction April 5, 2015, citing a loss of faith in its main source. The Columbia Journalism Review condemned the reporting as some of the year’s worst journalism.

{snip}

A Rape on Campus



Author: Sabrina Rubin Erdely
Subject: An alleged gang rape at a college fraternity
Set in: University of Virginia
Publisher: Rolling Stone
Publication date: November 19, 2014
Retracted: April 5, 2015

"A Rape on Campus" is a retracted, defamatory Rolling Stone magazine article written by Sabrina Erdely and originally published on November 19, 2014, that describes a purported group sexual assault at the University of Virginia (UVA) in Charlottesville, Virginia. Rolling Stone retracted the story in its entirety on April 5, 2015. The article claimed that UVA student Jackie Coakley had been taken to a party hosted by UVA's Phi Kappa Psi fraternity by a fellow student and led to a bedroom to be gang raped by several fraternity members as part of a fraternity initiation ritual.

Jackie's account generated much media attention, and UVA President Teresa Sullivan suspended all fraternities. After other journalists investigated the article's claims and found significant discrepancies, Rolling Stone issued multiple apologies for the story. It has since been reported that Jackie may have invented portions of the story in an unsuccessful attempt to win the affections of a fellow student in whom she had a romantic interest. In a deposition given in 2016, Jackie stated that she believed her story at the time.

On January 12, 2015, Charlottesville Police officials told UVA that an investigation had failed to find any evidence confirming the events in the Rolling Stone article. UVA President Teresa Sullivan acknowledged that the story was discredited. Charlottesville Police officially suspended their four-month investigation on March 23, 2015, based on lack of credible evidence. The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism audited the editorial processes that culminated in the article being published. On April 5, 2015, Rolling Stone retracted the article and published the independent report on the publication's history.

UVA associate dean Nicole Eramo, the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity, and several fraternity members later filed lawsuits against Erdely and Rolling Stone. Eramo was awarded $3 million by a jury who concluded that Rolling Stone defamed her with actual malice, and Rolling Stone settled the lawsuit with the fraternity for $1.65 million.

{snip}

thx

Especially nowadays where even video can be fake.

A thing to remember on jury duty, hold close to the beyond a shadow of any doubt. Our Founding Fathers, wanted 9 killers to go free to protect the innocent tenth person.

2024 has been a nonstop yearlong victory parade for white folks 😅

askes for forgiveness?

I would sue her ass for deformation.

It’s not like she has any money to pay a settlement. Hopefully the men have moved on with their lives.

She is in prison for killing her boyfriend. I don't think she has any assets.

And I was wrong -- very, very wrong.

murder in regards to how it's been brought out in public re social media, interviews the rage people are feeling against Health Insurance Companies.
Hear me out. (wasn't here on DU then)

Because rape is too far common (speaking only about male to female), still not taken seriously enough by enough LOEs, and people, people often still blaming the victims, and women getting angry about it is still considered "unladylike" by too many...
...that there could be hidden rage felt by women bc of these reasons above. Rage, then, could have "blinded" people to ?inconsistencies, to "blanketly "believing women" bcthe opposite has been true for too, too long, etc.
So that's why (wrongly) the team members weren't believed.

If rape was very rare, women usually believed, taken serious by almost all LOE, and people - there might have been a more cautious review of who actually did the crime. Just mho.