Even if we take into consideration that 90% (out of 25) could be lying (they aren’t), that’s still ~3 women he assaulted.
Edit: Damn y’all, thanks for that old internet feeling I keep coming back to Lemmy for. Not a girl in sight in these comments.
Is testifying under oath not considered evidence? There have been so many credible lawsuits against this guy for sexual assault. Honestly what are these files going to prove that we don’t already have plenty of evidence for?
And lastly, do you have any idea what going after a rich powerful man for sexually assaulting you does to your life? Why the fuck would anybody put themselves through that if they weren’t absolutely sure they had a credible case? Some of the plaintiffs in these cases had their lives and their family’s lives threatened and disrupted.
Welp, to the bottom with me I suppose.
Yes, the Epstein files are important, but not for proving guilt.
Honestly, guilt doesn’t matter in this case, because nobody who matters cares. His fanbase, his voters, his politicians and even his supreme court don’t care. He’s been convicted of felonies, and it just didn’t matter.
But the Epstein files are something different. It’s one of the core things his conspiracy manic fan base are sworn in on. It’s part of their core narrative and beliefs. Him being in there could really shake things up.
Innocent until proven guilty (I say that as a woman AND a survivor of SA).
Then again he was proven guilty in other cases. Seeing as those weren’t enough to remove him from power permanently I am not sure what this would do. If I had to bet on if he assaulted minors I’d go for heck yes. I’d bet nearly everything I have on that. So I’d be a pretty bad jury member of this case ;) anyway: the more evidence there is, the harder it is to ignore. Victim statements are pretty good evidence, but more is better.
Just an important detail here: victims have been dying by suicide. So even if you survived without : support for victims is important.
More generally speaking: Of course support for people calling themselves victims is important. If they got victimized the reason is obvious. If they are only claiming to be victimized there is probably still something wrong and they likely need support regardless. Innocent until proven guilty can very much go hand in hand with supporting the (presumed) victims.
In this particular case though I’m suspecting the best support might be some witness protection program combined with mental health support. I’m personally of the opinion that these women continue to be in danger from their abusers.
Surely there’s a middle ground in between locking people up for a false accusation and harassing victims into committing suicide. Like, maybe, some form of due process
Fuck off Amber Heard.
I’m old, so I’m more familiar with before me too than after. I believe a piece of what she is trying to say is the doubt that permeates any initial accusation. Doubt was the standard approach to any mention of rape or assault for decades.
Back in college, in the 90s, a good friend was followed home from a party. She made it home, thought she was safe. While she was showering in her basement (house) apartment, she looked up to see hands and a nose pressed to the frosted glass of the window, trying to see in. She called the police. A pair of cops showed up and the first thing they asked wasn’t: are you ok. Or. Did you get a good look at the guy. No. They asked her if she’d been drinking tonight. Then: Well, what were you wearing when you walked home from this party?
Footprints and knee prints in the dirt consistent with someone tramping into the flower bed to kneel down by her bathroom window. Hand prints and a nose grease smear on the glass. No attempt to investigate further. Chastised to drink less. She was not drunk, yet this was the takeaway message of that encounter instead of her safety. Encounters like these regarding the sexual safety of women were so common in the 90s.
The salient point here is this post likely is not about flipping the innocent until proven guilty narrative. This is about the preliminary circumstances that would lead into a case and taking the woman’s safety seriously instead of ignoring perpetrators who leave evidence behind.
If no one listens to you or takes you seriously, or avoids asking the relevant questions, that is a problem. Worse it’s a problem that was the status quo for decades.
So, when OP says maybe we should listen to trumps accusers that’s what it likely means. To listen. Not to flip the innocent until proven guilty narrative.
Just gonna start out by saying I’m a woman.
I appreciate the premise of what you’re saying, but the unfortunate reality is that people often aren’t trust worthy and there are people that would lie about something as serious as SA.
Our justice system is broken in many ways, but I don’t think this is one of them. It makes sense that we should have to prove any claims we make against somebody else - especially if that claim can ruin their life.
Wikipedia has a 67-page article on sexual assault allegations against Trump.
It’s weird to talk about Wikipedia entries having a length in “pages”.
The truth status of accusations is probably correlated. If 90% of accusations against someone are definitely false, the remaining 10% are likely to be false too.
None of the accusations have been proven false though. (As far as I know)
So, by that logic, if you lose 3 major cases, there are 27 more to look for cuz he guilty:
I’m not saying he’s innocent.
I would love to see every single accusation investigated and prosecuted to the fullest extent. Of course since we are in the darkest timeline the Cheeto Benito will abuse his power to suppress, quash, and delay as much as he can…
No one should be “just believed”. Everyone’s claims should be taken seriously and looked into. But no one should be believed automatically.
Agreed. Even when an alleged rapist says he didnt rape. Shouldn’t be believed on word alone.
In this thread, so many people who misunderstand the meaning of “Believe women”.
Brett Kavanaugh raped a woman in high school, and had three additional accusations of sexual assault, yet all of that was ignored to put him on the Supreme Court. Donald Trump has a 67-page Wikipedia article on all the sexual assault claims against him, yet he was still a reality tv star, a popular media figure, and now president. Allegations and rumors against Kevin Spacey and Harvey Weinstein circulated for years before anyone took things seriously enough to bother doing something about it. Brock Turner raped an unconscious woman and was let off with six months because the judge didn’t want to “ruin such a promising future” (or similar words), served it in county jail, and was released after 3 months.
“Believe women” means taking each allegation seriously instead of doubting women with questions like “are you sure you want to report this”, “are you sure it wasn’t just a misunderstanding”, “are you sure you weren’t drunk”, etc. “Believe women” means stop trying to dismiss or downplay behavior with things like “why would he do that” (Trump’s assault on the plane), or “she’s not that pretty”, or “she was asking for it”, and actually investigating the crime instead of brushing it off as a college prank, or the casting couch, or someone trying to get 15 minutes of game by accusing someone famous.
“Believe women” doesn’t mean automatically accepting every claim, but believing it enough to accept that it might have happened and conducting a thorough investigation of the alleged incident.
You’re missing the actual issue at play.
That has literally nothing to do with not believing women, and everything to do with buying into a cult.thagvis not an instance of people not believing women, thats a case of people politically othering those women (or men, or whoever) so much that they would always defend their teammate.
Every non-ideologue believed those women, including conservatives in other countries that aren’t in a trump cult.
No, the problem is the saying itself. It literally just says “believe women”. There’s no room for interpretation in there. The problem is the phrase itself. And you can see that most people read it as exactly what it says, because that’s literally what OP is doing right in their title and post! If you want a phrase that means take women’s allegations seriously, then the phrase you should use is “take women’s allegations seriously”
In this thread, so many people who misunderstand the meaning of “Believe women”.
Including OP who said “We wouldn’t need the Epstein files to prove DJT’s guilt if society just trusted women in the first place.”
According to OP, there’s no need to know what the Epstein files say because these women’s accusations are enough to convict him on their own. People are reacting to that absurd phrasing, not to the idea that women’s accusations should be taken seriously and investigated.
Everyone’s claims should be taken seriously and looked into.
That is what “believe women” means. It means actually looking into the claims instead of dismissing them out of hand.
No, that may be what you WANT it to mean, but this is a very clear two-word phrase that can only mean one thing by any english speaker. Words mean things, you can’t just use alternative definitions any more than Republicans can use alternative facts. Words are words, and facts are facts.
You haven’t actually proven anything, you’ve just modelled a possible scenario.
Gee I wonder who this guy(male) voted for
OMG stop. I voted for Harris. I VOLUNTEERED for Harris. After looking into the claims against Trump i believe the women’s accusations are absolutely true. And i also know that no one’s claims should just be believed automatically without doing further looking into the facts first
Oh you voted Kamala, well there’s your claim. Me I don’t like when propaganda teams try to discredit a simple opinion.
I don’t think you understand how proof works
I also saw this Reddit thread
I didn’t 😎
Unironically, nobody believes PB.
Peanut Butter?
You jelly?
Hi, I’m bread
hibred
Is this a showerthought or just wrong? Someone just learned that anecdotal evidence < material evidence by a lot
That’s not how evidence works but I appreciate the thought
It is tho, whiteness testimony is admissable evidence in a court of law.
Hm, while a witness’s testimony may be evidence, iiuc, it would only be one piece of evidence. I think what’s important is whether the evidence in question can be considered sufficient.
Yes but they’re WOMEN so their words don’t count and/or they’re lying /whores/gold diggers
It would help if there weren’t millions of dollars, entire organizations, and even the government that is trying to silence them and cover this up. This isn’t an issue of people not believing the women as I’m sure the average person has been sceptical with this from the beginning. The problem is that the guilty are rich and powerful enough that they can make their problems disappear. The problem isn’t that the people want to know who’s guilty (I’m sure most of the names won’t even be that surprising) it’s that they want to know why the guilty are getting away with it and why the government is actively protecting these monsters. Its the fact that they can get away with whatever the fuck they want, even raping children, and still get to live their lives like nothing ever happened. It’s why everyone on both sides of politics don’t really care who’s on the list, they just want some actual fucking consequences.
The rich and the elites already get away with so much bullshit, and if we let them get away with something as awful as this we might as well give up on calling ourselves civilized.
