Quote:
Originally Posted by hildea
For those who write about "innocent until proven guilty": If Gaiman is innocent of wrongdoing, then the women who accuse them are guilty of gross slander. Do you also consider them innocent until proven guilty? How does that work -- do you just suspend judgement about the whole situation?
"Innocent until proven guilty" is a legal principle:
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I do suspend judgement.
Both sides are innocent until proven guilty. If you hold that Neil Gaiman is innocent until proven guilty, it follows that his accusers are also innocent until proven guilty. That's what the courts are there to decide.
There have more than enough cases of sexual, child, whatever abuse where the accusations lacked enough evidence to be supported in court and/or were proven to have been made with malicious intent that hopping on there's no smoke without fire bandwagon is risible. You do remember the time period where accusations of child sexual abuse were overly common in divorce cases? Perhaps you may even remember the "recovered memory" scandal?
Quote:
Originally Posted by hildea
But in everyday life, where most of us don't wield a government sanctioned monopoly on violence, that principle is hardly appropriate or useful. If a babysitter shows up acting like they are high, you're not going to presume that they are innocent and leave them alone with your children, you'll cancel your plans, send the babysitter home, and never engage them again.
If you are planning a party, and a friend tells you that one of the people you were planning to invite got terribly drunk at a party last week, started a fight, and threw up in the living room, you'll not think "Better that ten guilty people ruin my party than that one innocent person gets unfairly excluded."
In most aspects of life, we consider the information we have, and act based on what we deem most likely.
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Oddly, my spouse and I ran into that once. The babysitter showed up with blown pupils, giggling and an odd speech pattern. We did tell her that we had our plans fall through and would not need her that evening. We also called her parents and let them know about the situation.
We did not suggest on social media or any communication medium that she had shown up flying high on drugs.
As for the person fighting at a party? Been there, done that. We (my spouse and I) did invite the person to our next party but we monitored her drinking and sent her home in a taxi when we felt that she was drinking too heavily. We already knew that she was not a nice drunk especially when she was on the outs with her male companionship.
One common thread is that those were people I had personal contact with and first hand knowledge of the situation. Something which neither you nor I can claim about Neil Gaiman or his accusers. Or are you claiming to have been present on several of those occasions and so able to give an eyewitness account?
As for your statement about "a government sanctioned monopoly on violence", what relevance does that have to this discussion? Just a phrase that you felt would add gavitas to your post?
Though it does make me wonder why you are claiming that there is no right to self-defence? If you go out for the evening and someone attacks you, you are claiming that you are not permitted to defend yourself?
Seems a bit strange since in at least one case in Norway back in the 1980s, a woman was found not guilty of murdering her abusive husband on the basis of self-defence. This seems in line with the Norwegian permissive attitude towards acts of self-defence as long as they are proportional to the threat and contrary to your statement that the government has a monopoly on violence.