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MySpace Verdict a Danger To Depressed Kids
Since a jury convicted Lori Drew of three misdemeanors for harassing Megan Meier on MySpace and causing her to commit suicide, most of the debate has focused on the question of whether proper legal procedure was followed in an attempt to punish someone for their obviously evil actions, when it wasn't clear that an actual crime had been committed. Emily Bazelon has argued that the rule of law is too important to convict someone for a crime for what was essentially a violation of the MySpace Terms of Service. Anne Mitchell has argued that the slippery slope is nowhere near as dangerous as the backlash is making it sound, because the doctrine of prosecuting people for violating a site's TOS is almost certainly only going to be used against people who commit horrific acts in the process, as Lori Drew did.
I'm more inclined toward the rule of law argument, but hang on — both sides seem to be assuming that it was a desirable outcome to punish Lori Drew publicly and severely. Hell yes she deserved it, but there is more at stake here. What about the consequences for kids who are current victims of harassment and who hear about the case and the verdict?
When anti-cyber-bullying laws were proposed in response to the original news of Megan Meier's suicide, I argued that the laws would be a terrible idea, especially if the criminal provisions of the law were conditional on the bullying victim harming themselves — because then you've created told victims of harassment: You can have your tormentors publicly vilified and even arrested, but only if you make it look like you tried to injure or kill yourself (and at which you might succeed in the process, intentionally or not).
What would be true of a cyber-bulling law is also true for the pseudo-caselaw created by the verdict. Surely there are other Megan Meiers out there who should not be led to believe that they can ruin their harasser's lives by committing suicide.
Now you might argue that by my reasoning, existing harassment laws which are contingent on the victim showing signs of emotional distress, could lead to the same problem — victims either consciously faking distress, or trying to fake distress so convincingly that they actually harm themselves, or subconsciously absorbing the fact that they can only get justice if they actually show harm. I had actually assumed that existing harassment laws governed only the conduct of the harasser, and did not depend on how the victim felt, but I was wrong — here in Washington State for example, RCW 10.14 states that harassing conduct is conduct that
"shall be such as would cause a reasonable person to suffer substantial emotional distress,
and shall actually cause substantial emotional distress to the petitioner." [emphasis added]
Reading that literally means that no matter how bad the harassment is, you still have to feel distressed in order to have them prosecuted, and the more distressed you "act," the more likely you are to succeed! But hang on — in order for that law to create incentives for victims of harassment to fake distress in order to have their personal enemies prosecuted, they would have to actually know that the law says that. I doubt that most people walking around Washington know the exact wording of the harassment law. More likely, they already realize that if they were to ever try and have someone prosecuted for harassment who didn't actually deserve it, a little tears and shaking would probably influence the judge, whether or not their feelings had any technical relevance under the law. And even if they were to exaggerate the effects of the harassment, all they would have to do would be to claim that they threw up or lost sleep from anxiety — they wouldn't have to show evidence of trying to harm or kill themselves.
On the other hand, everybody has heard about the Lori Drew and Megan Meier case, and it seems likely that the fact that Megan killed herself did contribute to the conviction. (At one point Judge George H. Wu had said that he would probably exclude evidence from the trial that Megan Meier had committed suicide as a result of the harassment, but later changed his mind and did allow it to be mentioned, saying "It's impossible to get a jury that doesn't know.") If Megan Meier had merely lost sleep, or suffered from panic attacks, or cut herself as a result of the harassment she endured from Lori Drew, would Drew have been convicted? Or even arrested?
These perverse incentives — "rewarding" Megan Meier for her suicide by vicariously exacting her revenge on Lori Drew — have been present ever since the wall-to-wall coverage of the case first started. Many news outlets have a policy of not publishing the names of suicide victims, not only to protect the privacy of grieving families but to avoid "rewarding" suicides by giving them the attention they may have wanted. The Associated Press Statement of News Values and Principles does not list any policy against printing the names of suicides. Maybe they should. (They do have a policy against printing the names of sexual assault victims, for example.) But it's a slippery journalistic slope to go down once you start deciding not to publish certain elements of a story, even for what seem to be compelling reasons. For example, take the policy of not publishing the names of alleged rape victims. If the rationale is that the AP doesn't want to cause unfair embarrassment to the alleged victims in case their story is true, why wouldn't the AP also avoid publishing the name of the defendant, to avoid causing them vastly greater unfair embarrassment in case the victim's story is false? So any decision to leave someone's name out of a story can lead to sticky "but-then-what-about" scenarios.
Perhaps the story should not have been covered at all, or anywhere near as much as it was. (I realize I may be contributing to the problem here, but my penance is that I'm calling for less coverage in the future, and I would never be writing about this if the mainstream media hadn't covered it so extensively.) What about all the other people who committed suicide during the same year, also as a result of vicious harassment, but with the only difference being that their suicides did not involve the Internet? Don't they deserve the same justice, and don't their tormentors deserve the same vilification?
Defenders of Internet civil liberties have for years been disgusted with the fact that crimes involving the Internet — from simple identity theft to rape and murder — have always gotten disproportionately more attention than the same or similar crimes committed without the aid of a computer. In the Megan Meier case, the effect of the coverage is even worse: Leading potential suicides to believe that they can have the sympathy they always wanted, and revenge on those they hate, if they kill themselves.
I mean, I was raped on the Internet. My Karma went from Excellent to Terrible due to one post.
But I'd hardly call it a crime. Travesty, maybe...
Suicidal people, by the very nature of being suicidal, aren't really in a position to make rational judgements regarding what may or may not happen should they top themselves. Suicidal people have, since time began, justified wilfully idiotic acts with spurious reasoning that only makes sense in their own heads. Whatever the outcome of this people will continue to think suicide is their best option - either for their own sake or because they misguidedly believe it'll make someone else feel bad, or even get punished. That isn't some new and exciting insight. It's just been made a little more concrete by this particular case. Using Megan's suicide as a rallying cry of "oh how terrible, everyone will be bumping themselves off for revenge now!" is pretty small minded and it devalues the good that came from Megan's too short life in my opinion. Shame on you.
http://twitter.com/onion2k
Since I have insurance I have every motivation to leave the keys in the ignition of my car when I go into a supermarket shopping, right?
Just replace the diodes on his left side.
Don't blame the parents or doctors for putting the girl on dangerous SSRI and anti-psychotic drugs.
From the third grade Megan had been under the care of a psychiatrist. She had been prescribed Celexa, Concerta and Geodon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megan_Meier
The FDA and other bodies have found that SSRI medications cause increased suicide and agression in people under the age of 24.
http://www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/ac/06/briefing/2006-4272b1-01-FDA.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ssri#Adverse_effects
http://ssristories.com/
Blame someone else, its the [new] American way!
If you have something that you dont want anyone to know, maybe you shouldnt be doing it in the first place -Eric Schmidt
Defenders of Internet civil liberties have for years been disgusted with the fact that crimes involving the Internet â" from simple identity theft ... have always gotten disproportionately more attention than the same or similar crimes committed without the aid of a computer.
I am a big civil libertarian and I have to disagree with them on this one. Then again, I don't see how civil liberties are directly affected when things are publicized other than the over-reaction by policy makers and the hysterical members of the public who enable them.
When internet identity theft scams are publicized, it puts its cause into the public's mind; such as phishing schemes. I don't know of anyone who trusts emails from their bank or eBay anymore asking to "verify personal information" or anything like that. Phishing schemes have become much less successful because of the publicity.
when a crime is committed, it is just that: a crime
it doesn't matter if it occurs in the brick and mortar world, or in cyberspace
once you get your head around that, you're well on your way to understanding how to deal with Internet crime
prosecute people for the crime they commit, no matter where it occurs. Theft is theft, harassment is harassment, fraud is fraud.
I don't agree with most of this. Harassment is and should be a crime. People don't typically go "omg, if I just do XY, then I could get back at this person!" Even if that WERE the intentions of the person, doesn't it speak to the level of harassment that someone is willing to harm themselves in order to get justice for it?
The whole, sexual assault victim to suicide victim bs is totally out of line... the interest in the suicide situation is that they don't want to make suicide sound glamorous so people don't do it.
Seriously, what kind of ASSHOLE CHAUVINISTIC PIG would say that the person alleged of sexual assault should it not be true would be WORSE off than the victim were it true?
Seriously, have you been sexually assaulted? I have. You feel like shit, and it took me more than a week to even TRUST any man. I had to take a whole week off of work to just sit there and compose myself.
Yeah, those rape allegations certainly cause people to sit in their showers trying to get themselves clean...
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What if Drew had a son who agreed to seduce Megan, and who then told her to kill herself? The onlly difference would have been that if it was in person, there would be no evidence - but there would have been no crime, either.
If so, my friend's Annie's boyfriend is guilty of the same thing. Annie is on Zoloft for clinical depression, and one night when she was in a bad way and talking suicide, he told her everyone would be better off if she did. I wound up taking her to the hospital, where she was admitted to the nut ward.
Contemptable, but is it legal? Lots of contemptable things are legal. BTW that crazy Annie's back with her boyfriend. I hope she gives him the clap.
Free Martian Whores!
Life isn't fair. And the internet isn't life. So therefore the internet REALLY isn't fair.
Brought to you by the letters F and U.
At every turn, it seems, people would like to cushion, candy-coat or otherwise render harmless the world we live in. It would be easier to "air condition the planet" than it would be to make everything in the world "safe." The fact is, no matter what is done, some people can handle it and others will not be able to handle it. There will always be people with emotional problems -- it can't be eliminated without extreme and unpleasant measures. [read: extermination] So if we shouldn't go to one extreme [extermination of unfit people] to solve the problem and we can't reasonably go to the other [make the world out of marshmallows so no one gets hurt], then it stands to reason that we have to accept that some problems cannot be "solved." They have to be managed and accepted. Regrettable and tragic things will happen. It is okay to feel sad about it or take some sort of lesson from it -- whatever enables you to deal with it. But there is no escaping it. All of life is suffering.
It is a difficult situation. Someone coming out and saying that Lori Drew should not be credited for the death of Megan Meier usually gets vilified. But the truth is, as you say, what of the countless others who have committed suicide after being bullied? What of the other people in their lives that should have seen that they were depressed and try to help?
You have a subscription and the story wasn't posted yet.
Free Martian Whores!
> You feel like shit, and it took me more than a week to even TRUST any man Wow, you mean a whole week? I've known adult women who, being sexually assaulted as children, still refuse to trust men.
It's not a lie. It's the truth with lossy compression.
This isn't about myspace, or terms of service, or teenage suicide. This is about guilt. Even when it's "only" online, we're still talking to other people. We're communicating. And communications form the basis of relationships and through relationships we can effect changes to a person's mood, behavior, life circumstances, and more. The issue is trust, and how some people abuse trust. And all of our criminal codes come down to this. I'll say it again, it's about trust. So people feel naturally betrayed and angry when trust is violated (even accidentally).
But the law is not about trust. The law is about balancing personal freedoms (which includes the right to mistrust and also to betray trust) with society's so-called "best interests", which is mostly about avoiding and minimizing harm. Anyone can throw up a terms of service, and you can't tell me most of you wouldn't wipe your bottoms with the lot of them. I also think I'd find very few people here that would say that talking is a crime; Even when the matter under discussion is about illegal things (like drugs, or underage sex) -- or things we find morally objectionable. Speech in and of itself is not a crime; Actions are criminal.
Yes, she manipulated the hell out of someone who was vulnerable. But how is that different than commercials on TV, selling us crap we don't need? How is it different than the mormons coming over every sunday to try and convert you? It's not, except for intent. And we all want to punish her, not for violating some TOS crap, but because she violated the trust relationship between a child and adult. "It's all for the children" and we rush in stupidly, blindly, reflexively, to protect them. And that is what happened here. The very thing the justice system is supposed to prevent: Linking emotive thinking to punishment.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
"Yeah, those rape allegations certainly cause people to sit in their showers trying to get themselves clean."
Actually, yes.
Yeah, those rape allegations certainly cause people to sit in their showers trying to get themselves clean...
No, it takes them the rest of their lives to remove the stigma, that a moment's pique on the part of the person making the accusation, caused.
Are they worse off? Physically? no Emotionally? Not in the same way, but almost as bad. Reputation? Permanently damaged - because a lot of people will believe it was true regardless...
I've known adult women who, being sexually assaulted as children, still refuse to trust men.
More specifically, it was a week before I trusted them even enough to be in the same room as a guy without someone there to watch them.
Also, childhood scars are bound to be much deeper... I suppose in that way, I'm fortunate. :(
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
i don't have a subscription. i don't even have an account
Seriously, what kind of ASSHOLE CHAUVINISTIC PIG would say that the person alleged of sexual assault should it not be true would be WORSE off than the victim were it true?
Read it again. He didn't say that at all. He said that the embarrassment of being publicly identified as a victim of sexual assault is less than the embarrassment of being publicly accused of being the assaulter. He was comparing the results of publication, not of the crime itself.
However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results. -- Winston Churchill
A suicidal person on the brink of killing themselves is - indeed as you write, and I paraphrase - not really in a position to make a rational judgement.
However (and I speak from personal experience and 25 years of on-and-off "being there", for which I have professional help), such a person is not necessarily as you suggest.
Sometimes the pain is too much.
Sincerely,
-dspart
... punish someone for their obviously evil actions, when it wasn't clear that an actual crime had been committed.
This is what I call an "ASSHOLE LAW", where someone obviously evil to most people, but clearly within the confines of what is "legal".
In the old days ... people like this would get their asses kicked, and the law would look away. The assholes would end up being isolated away from the rest of the community.
Bad cases make worse laws. This case is just another example of ASSHOLE justice, which is really bad for defining what is legal or not legal.
Assholes always skirt around the edges of what is legal, which is my definition of what an asshole is. Assholes ruin it for everyone else.
Next Asshole on the list ... Blago.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
I would not have said "less than a false allegation" but I think you understate the magnitude of what happens to someone who is accused of such a crime. Many people accused of sexual assaults lose their jobs (as they are unable to attend their workplace), and most will spend months suspended from their job while the police and prosecutors decide whether to proceed. In addition they will normally be publicly named (and have the allegation against them permanently recorded in newspapers etc), and there are many people out there who will then choose to believe the worst about them for the rest of their lives.
In many cases there is simply not enough evidence to either successfully prosecute one party for sexual assault or the other for making false reports. However only one person in that situation ever gets publicly named, only one person is likely to have lost their job and have their neighbors refuse to speak to them etc. Believe it or not, that sort of thing can cause a loss of trust as well...
Mis-assignment of responsibility, undermines the idea of responsibility.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Me neither!
Slashdot must be taking design cues from MySpace, or something...
Increasing litigation to cover these cases opens the door for reverse persecution exactly as outlined in the article. So do we then write more laws to counteract false accusations and apparent suicides??? Where does that cycle stop. It's callous, but there are going to be victims and there are going to be predators - it just depends which side we land on. Don't get me wrong Drew deserved what she got but I agree with the article, over exposure is going to turn this into a cycle. I think the question becomes how do I keep my daughter from living and (hopefully not) dying on myspace??
When a teenager in a community commits suicide, it is rarely publicized - mostly it gets around the high schools through rumors. The reason is because people worry about "copycats" - kids who kill themselves to gain some sort of notoriety in their deaths, especially if they lack attention in their lives.
So I think that's the bigger problem with this case - Megan's suicide was so heavily reported, that it might push some kids over the edge.
Suicidal people aren't 100% irrational zombies or something. They seize on things and overemphasize them, downplay contrary evidence, etc., but they do still have thought processes that take into account the external world.
One of the (many) ways of trying to convince people who are in particular suicidal because of a desire to "get back" at someone is that suicide is not a particularly effective way of getting back at people. Providing a very concrete way in which it arguably actually is a good way of getting back at someone is not very helpful from that perspective.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I believe he was saying that the damage from the press coverage, not from the actual incident, is a problem for the alleged offender, damaging reputations and employment prospects if nothing else. If the incident is only alleged, the press coverage damage is the main object of the false allegation and should perhaps be discouraged.
Seriously, what kind of ASSHOLE CHAUVINISTIC PIG would say that the person alleged of sexual assault should it not be true would be WORSE off than the victim were it true?
Read it again. He didn't say that at all. He said that the embarrassment of being publicly identified as a victim of sexual assault is less than the embarrassment of being publicly accused of being the assaulter. He was comparing the results of publication, not of the crime itself.
I stand by my position, and refuse to alter it. I don't care what he was talking about, to me it says that my pain is less than something else.
BTW, when arresting someone we're REQUIRED to identify their name and crime, it's called DUE PROCESS.
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
Seriously, what kind of ASSHOLE CHAUVINISTIC PIG would say that the person alleged of sexual assault should it not be true would be WORSE off than the victim were it true?
Sorry to knock you off of your self-righteous soapbox, but read that article again before you fly off the handle. The author was pointing out that in the event of the allegation being false, the printing of names would be far more detrimental to the person falsely accused than to the "fake victim". Not, unfortunately for your crusade, that being accused of rape is worse than being raped.
The problem with any law in which criminality is dependent upon the feelings of the victims is that it allows for arbitrary and capricious prosecution. Unlike most criminal laws, which criminalize specific acts (such as robbery, for example), this law allows any exchange of opinions between two people to be turned into a criminal matter should one person feel slighted.
You might think this is extreme, but when a Canadian printer refused to print a flyer because of his moral objections to the content, he was brought before the human rights commission, and fined. How long before:
This law is a godsend for any geek who wants to get back at that girl who won't have anything to do with him. Or anyone with a vindictive mindset, for that matter.
The legitimacy of the law is suspect when based upon the mere *feelings* of the victim, rather than the actual actions of the perpetrator, are sufficient to induce criminality.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
I would not have said "less than a false allegation" but I think you understate the magnitude of what happens to someone who is accused of such a crime. Many people accused of sexual assaults lose their jobs (as they are unable to attend their workplace), and most will spend months suspended from their job while the police and prosecutors decide whether to proceed. In addition they will normally be publicly named (and have the allegation against them permanently recorded in newspapers etc), and there are many people out there who will then choose to believe the worst about them for the rest of their lives.
In many cases there is simply not enough evidence to either successfully prosecute one party for sexual assault or the other for making false reports. However only one person in that situation ever gets publicly named, only one person is likely to have lost their job and have their neighbors refuse to speak to them etc. Believe it or not, that sort of thing can cause a loss of trust as well...
Many people accused of sexual assaults don't even get anything at all. The police go over talk to them, decide that there isn't enough evidence, and they blow it off.
Fame and infamy don't last as long as you presume.
And honestly? DAMN RIGHT they should have that happen. Speaking as a victim. After all, nothing happened to my rapist. A little anxiety in his life wouldn't be too much to ask for, just so that he would accept what he did to me.
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
Emotionally? Not in the same way, but almost as bad.
Of course... they totally need to receive therapy and counseling for it.
Here's a hint to guys in general... STOP RAPING WOMEN, and no one will take it credibly when you're accused of it.
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
If you pretend that you are being cursed by a witch, the whole village will break out their pitchtorches and burning forks to burn the witch. Get the mob to side with you, and you win, regardless of whether or not the so-called witch was actually guilty of witchcraft.
That's the basic principle in this essay. I'm not saying that I agree with all of the finer points of the essay, but it makes a good argument overall. So far in my short lifespan, I have heard several cases involving harassment which were attempts by the harasser to cover up what they were doing by claiming the victim was the harasser.
The biggest danger to depressed kids is the depressed kids themselves. Personally, I think Lori Drew's conduct calls for a civil, not criminal case against her. Misdemeanor convictions against her help in that case. The last thing you want when you are suing somebody for half their earnings for the rest of their life is for them to be spending several years in jail, earning nothing. And of course, violation of terms of service is a contractual breach, which is entirely a civil matter, and has no business whatsoever being discussing in criminal court. If anything, the Lori Drew case help at-risk kids by making it clear that you shouldn't believe anything people claim online, especially if you've never met them in real life. Anybody can create an online account, and any 2-bit script kiddie can forge an originating email address. Kids _should_ assume that anybody who takes an inordinate interest in them online means to do them harm, even though 99% of them do not. Yeah, it sucks to live in a world that works that way just like it sucks that I can't be trusted around little girls (or boys) due to the fact that I'm an adult male, but that is the world we live in -- get used to it.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
So are sharp corners.
A unique way to learn a language: http://languageloom.com
because I am a Christian or that I am mentally or physically ill. It is really hard to hide either of the two but mostly my mental illness causes a writing style that has cyberbullies pick on me.
I've attempted suicide a few times as a result of the cyberbullying esp when they find my home number and harass me at 3am my time using anonymous calls like 012-345-6789 as the Caller ID spoofed. Try to ignore them and they call Anonymous with no number and we cannot tell if it is my wife's family members in Thailand calling for an emergency or the harassers calling again, so we had to get our number changed. Police reports got filed, but they hardly ever catch the person doing the bullying and harassment.
Yes I live in Missouri.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
This verdict is just another sad example of making an overly-broad law under the guise that it will never be abused, and will only be used when "necessary". Laws are not meant to be used this way, and the old standby comes immediately into play, "that which can be abused, will be abused." Laws open to interpretation will be misinterpreted, or interpreted in a manner that would horrify those that created and supported the overly-broad law.
Say NO to catch-all laws every chance you get. If they can't define the law in such a way that it cannot be abused/misinterpreted, it's not a good law, I don't care what you're trying to prevent. Find an airtight way to word it or don't put it on the books.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Seriously, what kind of ASSHOLE CHAUVINISTIC PIG would say that the person alleged of sexual assault should it not be true would be WORSE off than the victim were it true?
Sorry to knock you off of your self-righteous soapbox, but read that article again before you fly off the handle. The author was pointing out that in the event of the allegation being false, the printing of names would be far more detrimental to the person falsely accused than to the "fake victim". Not, unfortunately for your crusade, that being accused of rape is worse than being raped.
No, you read it again:
For example, take the policy of not publishing the names of alleged rape victims. If the rationale is that the AP doesn't want to cause unfair embarrassment to the alleged victims in case their story is true, why wouldn't the AP also avoid publishing the name of the defendant, to avoid causing them vastly greater unfair embarrassment in case the victim's story is false?
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
I'd like to suggest that:
I'm not saying it's a good verdict; it's not. I'm just saying your particular concern about creating incentive for bullied kids to harm themselves seems a little exaggerated when you consider that they would have to know the bully was violating the terms of service before harming themselves in order to bring punishment on the bully.
It seems like you've put a lot of thought into this article. Unfortunately the thought that politicians and their electors put into such issues is trivial and ideological. I would imagine that the likelihood of any thoughtful and logical consideration towards laws and behaviours would be as likely as a politician or judge is to read this article; statistically unlikely.
Best regards,
UTW
I believe he was saying that the damage from the press coverage, not from the actual incident, is a problem for the alleged offender, damaging reputations and employment prospects if nothing else. If the incident is only alleged, the press coverage damage is the main object of the false allegation and should perhaps be discouraged.
So, should we not report on alleged murders? Who doesn't think that OJ didn't do it, even if a jury said so?
He has to live with the embarrassment of being called a murderer on every comedy show in the world anytime he comes back into the news.
Due process requires that alleged criminals have their crimes PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE. That way there are no secret courts, and no secret punishments.
Imagine the pain and suffering to a victim of sexual assault, in the event of "secret courts"... he's found guilty, but no one knows about it. So what if it's published after the fact... it's two or three years old by that time usually.
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
Harassment/bullying via computer should be a crime. As should falsely accusing someone of harassment.
Look at this case this way: if I know someone that is clinically depressed and on medication and I physically hand them a gun, tell them the world's better without them and they kill themselves, should I not be guilty of a crime? The computer's out of the equation, but the same act occurs.
Was this prosecution a stretch of the Myspace TOS? Possibly. But in no way should she have gotten off scot-free...no matter how much she claims she technically did nothing wrong.
A whole week? You poor thing. Ever been falsely convicted of a felony? How long do you think it takes to get over that?
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
So, because you're a woman, and you've been hurt, it's ok to destroy an innocent man's life?
All men are pigs right?
I'm not making light of sexual assault, my best friend was raped and it didn't take her a week to recover, it took her years. About two before she was comfortable hugging close male friends, and another year after that before she could handle dating. Her first boyfriend after that had a tough time, because she had several panic attacks that would be triggered by seemingly benign events, but went back to the rape.
However, her reputation was not harmed in any way, and since she has healed she can live a normal, and very happy life. A man charged with rape, brought to trial, and then aquitted has no such hope if his name and crime are not protected before a conviction. His reputation is permanently ruined, there will be jobs he cannot get, relationships he cannot have, communities he cannot join, all because he was accused of something he did not do. This is multiplied ten-fold in high-profile cases or small town cases.
You seem to think the only person who can possibly be severly damaged is the female, apparently men's lives don't matter, innocent or no.
Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
"shall be such as would cause a reasonable person to suffer substantial emotional distress,
and shall actually cause substantial emotional distress to the petitioner."
A reasonable person and a suicidal person can hardly be the same person.
This entire situation is the stupidest thing I've seen happen since the Information Age began. Everything else aside, it boils down to one very simple premise: human beings are contemptible, self-absorbed, petty assholes who've actually regressed since we climbed down from the trees and started walking upright. There have always been unmitigated cunts like Lori Drew, and there always will. Likewise, there have always been melodramatic, angsty teenagers on the edge between stupid and dead, and there always will. I don't have any sympathy for either side. The fact that they had to use irrelevant technicalities in order to make up a crime and actually punish someone just shows how truly pathetic our society is.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Evelyn Beatrice Hall, re Voltaire
I have never raped a woman, but under certain circumstances it is possible that people would take it credibly if a woman accused me of it. I don't have any control over the actions of other men.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
The real crime here is one that nearly everybody seems to recognize intuitivly; Lori Drew was guilty of Child Abuse. An adult emotionally harmed a minor child over alleged junior-high gossip. Had the Drew's daughter been solely responsible, I doubt we'd be looking at little more than a short stint in juvie and couseling. Kids do crappy things to each other all the time, and their underdeveloped frontal lobe is part of why they do it.
(from Wikipedia: The executive functions of the frontal lobes involve the ability to recognize future consequences resulting from current actions, to choose between good and bad actions (or better and best), override and suppress unacceptable social responses, and determine similarities and differences between things or events.)
However, an adult who emotionally torments a child, and encourages her suicide, that's some sick, sick $#!+ Lori Drew deserves to rot for the rest of her life for abusing a child. We recognize different levels of culpability for kids (juvenile vs. adult justice systems) and we tolerate behavior from kids that would be considered criminal in adults because kids are physiologically predisposed to acting like assholes. I don't mean to imply it would be less tragic, it is just be more in keeping with social norms if a child is tormented by her age peers as opposed to an adult who A) should know better and B) enjoys a societally enforced position of power over said child. If Lori Drew wanted to deal with "Gossip," she should have approached Megan Meiers and her parents and acted like an adult. Instead, she deserves the same fate as all other child abusers.
vastly greater unfair embarrassment in case the victim's story is false?
This is how I see it:
If an alleged victim's name is published, letting everyone know they may have been raped - the detriment to the victim is that everyone will then know that they'd been raped, which understandably causes a great deal of embarrassment and additional psychological damage to the victim.
If an alleged attacker's name is published, letting everyone know they may have raped someone - the detriment to the attacker is that they are also embarrassed and publicly humiliated (though not at all to the same extent), BUT, they also typically lose their jobs, their families, their friends, and are presumed guilty of the crime and treated as such (innocent or not). In most countries it stays on their record whether they were convicted or not, and typically they have to live with that shame the rest of their lives - whether they did it or not.
Do you see the difference?
Just disrupt the deflector shield with a tachyon burst.
I have never raped a woman, but under certain circumstances it is possible that people would take it credibly if a woman accused me of it. I don't have any control over the actions of other men.
Right... because social pressure never caused anyone to do anything.
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
Is this guy on drugs?
I do have to say you did catch the main disagreement to be had with this essay. Everyone else (myself included) got caught up in the small details, but you are right.. the precedent in the case really wouldn't apply to the situation the author raises
I don't mean to belittle your suffering; deep inside I believe that anyone that commits a sexual assault should be killed as quickly as possible in order to make certain they do not cause anyone to suffer. However, I submit that you are handling your assault much better than Mr. Nikolai, committed suicide based on a single 7-year old girls report of inappropriate touching and no physical evidence. I don't think those accused of touching little girls fare very well in prison and I'm sure they have a short life expectancy, regardless of whether the allegations are true or not. I'm not even saying Mr. Nikolai didn't deserve his fate; I'm just saying it is very difficult to strike a balance between always believing the victim and giving too much power to those few unbalanced individuals who would deliberately make false allegations in order to seek twisted vengeance against somebody who has slighted them. Everybody suffers, and everybody feels the psychological scars of injustice for years. I sincerely wish you all the best in healing the pain that was inflicted on you.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
10 someone gets harassed online
./getverdict ./x: Permission denied ./getverdict ./getverdict
....... out of memory
20 feels depressed
30 blows himself up along with his harasser
40 give verdict
50 end
legal overlord> run
-bash:
legal overlord> chmod 755
legal overlord> run
This is a parenting problem.
When a child commits suicide, clearly there is something lacking at home. It may be as clear cut as a complete parental failure or as complex as some sort of chemical imbalance going untreated. In either case, the child *should* have been taken to a shrink long before it got to that point. That the parents failed to ensure that their child was cared for and treated suggests to me neither more nor less than that they were totally lacking in parental ability. For pity sake, parents MUST pay attention to their kids!
Perhaps Lori Drew was the catalyst, but I guarantee there was an underlying problem before her. Going after the Lori Drew's of the world only enables parents to claim "it's not my fault!" I'm not saying that we should tolerate this sort of behavior (particularly in adults). I am saying that placing all the blame on Lori Drew is preposterous.
Bottom line is, parents MUST take responsibility for their children. When parents fail to do so, the results range from maladjusted adults to suicidal youth.
"Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup."
to go up to her in person and tell her the world would be better off without her? If yes, it should be legal over the internet.
I have to agree with your comments. You cannot take the worst case scenario and use it to make case law.
Laws should help to protect people from invasions and unreasonable treatment.
The problem here, is Myspace is something you go to voluntarily -- it isn't like school.
The world cannot be responsible, for the acts of the most fragile people.
If I teased someone, in a light hearted manner, and they take their own lives. A jury will have to then conclude what my intent was, and if I had a history of teasing. On the other hand, cannot we say that there is a certain mental fortitude that a person should be required to have.
On the other hand, a group of people could hound someone, no matter where they went. And cast aspersions on their character. Making threats and harsh comments that affects their business. The target, might never cry or be driven into depression. But, has harm been done?
We need to look at the severity of actions committed -- not based upon the reactions of people. I'm sure most of us know how hard it can be to work in a place, where there is a person so sensitive, that any curse, wicked thought, or slightly amusing joke can send them into a tizzy. Should we all be held hostage to the highest bar and offend anyone? I can tell you, that the one thing that offends me is when there aren't dirty jokes, a little teasing, and people worried about not saying anything interesting.
What about kids who are shunned and never have anyone talking to them -- is there a measure of "harmful neglect?"
>> This was a bad thing that happened, and the people were jerks. But they should not be responsible for another human being's actions -- but I can only say that up to a point. The real test would be "could the victim have avoided the teasing, and would the teasing, harm the average person." In neither instance of this case, is that true.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
Sorry, your capriciousness in lumping the innocent in with the guilty totally compromises your argument.
The guilty deserve whatever they get (and in many cases, far more than they get), but what do the falsely accused deserve? In your view, it would seem they deserve the same. So much for "due process"....
Well... at least she's better than Katz...
Furry cows moo and decompress.
I disagree with what you say, for the reasons that others have said.
But troll? Seriously? Mods, what's wrong with you?
> I stand by my position, and refuse to alter it. I don't care what he was talking about, to me it says that my pain is less than something else.
Your position is irrelevant, then, if you refuse to even consider that what he said is not at all what you think he said.
> BTW, when arresting someone we're REQUIRED to identify their name and crime, it's called DUE PROCESS.
You really don't have any idea what we're talking about, do you? News outlets routinely protect the identities of victims/accusers to save them from embarrassment. Those accused, however, are granted so much protection, and the media knows that simply publishing a man's name in the context of "was arrested for [insert sensational sex crime here]" will irrevocably destroy that man's name in his community, whether the accusations are true or not. This is a double standard which is unfair.
Yes, rape is evil. Yes, being a rape victim is very difficult. That's not what we're talking about though, so when you feel like joining the actual conversation at hand, by all means do so.
It's not a lie. It's the truth with lossy compression.
Many people accused of sexual assaults don't even get anything at all. The police go over talk to them, decide that there isn't enough evidence, and they blow it off.
Fame and infamy don't last as long as you presume.
That will whole depend on how much you are portrayed in the media and for how long. I know too people (friends of my father) that were falsely accused of been rapist. One stayed in jail 1 week before been released. And he killed himself 2 months later because of all the shit throw to him.
You seriously understimate what a FALSE acusation can make to the life of an INNOCENT man. The moment a girl comes to Local TV and says: "He was the one that raped me.", even if some time later he comes to TV and says: "It was not him sorry". The damage is done, and if the time between those 2 is big enough, it can be permanent. I will not even touch with what happens to people accused of been a rapist in prison, there are a bunch of tatoos to mark those in the prisons here for a reason.
So be careful of saying that the name of person ACCUSED, not convicted, must known. Because he may be innocent and you would devastate another life. And if you really believe that you should take the life of an innocent person, just because someone destroyed yours raping you, I'm really glad I don't live close to you.
And honestly? DAMN RIGHT they should have that happen. Speaking as a victim. After all, nothing happened to my rapist. A little anxiety in his life wouldn't be too much to ask for, just so that he would accept what he did to me.
Look, what happened to you suck, badly. My ex was raped, and I know how those memories and scars last forever. I hope your rapist have an unnecessary slow and painfull death as all of them deserver, but that is no justification to falsely accuse someone.
--- "When you gotta do something wrong. You gotta do it right. (Fighter)"
I think a lot of people are missing something very important in this case, lots of things are crimes if and only if lying is involved. There is no such thing as slander, liable, false advertisement and fraud (for example) that involves only true and wholly accurate statements. So yes, we can't and shouldn't make people "play nice" all the time, but things don't work well if you let people lie and harm others. So the truth really DOES matter (duh).
Are you kidding me?
1st - anyone who holds it against a rape victim is probably not someone a rape victim distance themselves from as quickly as possible. This is not one of the warm, compassionate people that a rape victim should have around to help them to heal.
2nd - for some reason, people don't seem to believe that someone accused of rape, even after acquittal, can be truly innocent (or else they wouldn't have been accused, right?).
Finally, to claim that a false accusation of such a serious VIOLENT crime is a mere "embarrassment" is utterly ridiculous! Like a rape victim, such an individual will be subjected to public humiliation. Unlike a rape victim, they will probably be shunned by some family members and friends, lose employment opportunities and may even be subjected to violence as a result of those accusations.
snowgirl, I do not mean to imply that the crime commited against you is trivial. To the contrary, to be violated in such a way (rest assured, this is not beyond my comprehension) is one of the most demeaning things which can happen in your life. I would suggest, however, that to claim that the social rape of an individual with such a false accusation does NOT pale in comparison. With a rape victim, the body will heal and in time, so too will the mind. For those falsely accused of rape, the stigma will never relent.
"Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup."
This is a conversation stopper.
Nobody bother trying to talk to snowgirl. Based on her own words, she is clearly not capable or willing to consider other arguments.
If you really think that what you're saying is true, please look up 1963 Buddhist monk self-immolation.
What happened to the comment you're replying to? I feel like I'm missing something here...
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
I stand by my position, and refuse to alter it.
A person who refuses to ever change their position is a person who refuses to learn.
I don't care what he was talking about, to me it says that my pain is less than something else.
In other words, he hurt your feelings, and damn any logic involved.
I acknowledge your pain. I acknowledge that, since I am not a rape victim myself, I cannot truly appreciate how much you have been hurt.
However, the fact that you were hurt is not a get-out-of-debate free card. I will not abandon logic to comfort you, and the point stands.
Any pain caused by this being pointed out, publicly, is less than that caused by the act itself. But being publicly identified as a victim gives you sympathy. Being publicly identified as a perp makes him hated -- in a small enough town, might even drive him out.
Certainly, you could make a case that it's deserved -- if he actually did it. So, yes, in your case -- but not every woman who cries rape has actually been raped. And people won't forget he was accused, whether or not he's actually convicted.
If you still believe anyone accused deserves that, fine -- but I hope, at least, you don't think anyone is automatically a chauvinist pig for daring to suggest it.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
n/t
Most law is dependent on the actual consequences of actions.
1) The difference between battery and murder is how much damage you did.
2) The difference between vehicular homicide, reckless endangerment and DWI has to do with effect.
There is nothing unusual here. You tease someone and they suck it up you get off. You tease someone and they become severely distressed and you have problems. You tease someone and they die because of it, its homicide.
I think the suggestion is that we not publish the names of "alleged" criminals. By all means, people convicted of a crime should have their names brought to public attention.
"Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup."
Good job looking at a small corner of the victim's incentive scheme while ignoring the rest.
"shall be such as would cause a reasonable person to suffer substantial emotional distress,
and shall actually cause substantial emotional distress to the petitioner." [emphasis added]
Reading that literally means that no matter how bad the harassment is, you still have to feel distressed in order to have them prosecuted, and the more distressed you "act," the more likely you are to succeed!
A couple of points here ->
To some extent, distress is an effect of harassment. In that a specific kind of behavior may or may not be harassment depending on the circumstances. E.G., if I'm chasing my wife around the house, and she's giggling and laughing (this actually happens - we get silly), that is quite different that if I were chasing her around the house and she was screaming for me to stop (this has never happened). So if there's actually harassment, you would expect to see distress.
The second point is, the law here talks about "would cause a reasonable person". Under this law, if I'm walking down the street, and someone happens to be walking a block in front of me, I am not harassing that person even if they feel completely and horrendously violated by the fact that I'm walking a block behind them ... because no reasonable person would feel such just because a stranger happened to be walking a block behind them down the street in a fairly well populated area.
And I don't think people harming themselves would meet a 'reasonable person' standard, either. Although, it may be hard to show motive on the side of the self-harming person.
Code or be coded.
So let me see if I understand you... you're blaming him, and me... people who have never raped a woman because we feel its wrong and highly immoral... for the crimes of other men, because somehow we pressured them into raping women? If this is correct, then you are fucked up. Seek help. Same goes if you are seriously suggesting that its ok that lives are destroyed from false accusations because rape is bad. What happened to you was a tragedy, but that does not excuse such ignorant, selfish, and pig-headed remarks.
Statutory rape? Of a 17 year old? I am glad I live in a country where it is legal to have sex with 15 year old girls and it is up to the girl to decide if it was rape or conceptual sex. I am glad that there is no such thing as statutory rape in this country.
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
Just curious since this is a "true story" of yours (not saying it's not), but what state did it happen in? 32 states in the US have the age of consent at 16, and another 7 have it at 17. Odds are for most people that you live in a state where they don't have to be 18 to be legal. Depending on what state your friend lived in, he could sue the Sheriff.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
The police go over talk to them, decide that there isn't enough evidence, and they blow it off.
People are innocent until proven guilty. Even the scum of the earth deserve a fair trial, and to be proven guilty of the crimes they are accused of. If the evidence wasn't there, then what else can the police do? The fact that rape is horrible does not justify us becoming monsters ourselves.
The word of one person is simply not good enough to convict a person of a crime, especially when the consequences of even being accused of it are so serious.
Seriously, what kind of ASSHOLE CHAUVINISTIC PIG would say that the person alleged of sexual assault should it not be true would be WORSE off than the victim were it true?
He didn't say that. They were discussing only the embarrassment portion. While a true victim does get a lot of psychological damage and what not, they're still seen as victims and people are, in general, more gentle to them. Whereas if you're accused of sexual assault and cleared, people will stay the hell away from you.
I understand that its an odd notion to say that one will be embarrassed more than the other while ignoring everything else, but its still somewhat true.
Substantial emotional distress is cause for concern. If someone is simply unhappy because they got into an argument with someone, that's not harassment. Harassment is systematic, unwanted, and bothersome attention paid to someone.
A flame war can go on for months between two people, but that negative attention isn't harassment. Person A can repeatedly call person B and be told to go hump a dead coyote, but if person A is initiating the contact then person B isn't harassing person A (possibly the opposite, in fact).
If there's no distress, there's no harassment. That part of the laws is correct. If you make it about whether the perpetrator "intended to cause" some "substantial distress" in another person, then you'll never be able to convict anyone. "I only meant to cause minor emotional distress" would be a valid defense.
And leave us not forget that men can be raped too... either by other men or by women. True, it's not as common, but it does indeed occur.
Does this then mean that a woman being falsely accused of raping a man feels nothing?
Planet Zebeth - Metroid with a twist
The ludacriousness of the subject says it all. No one caused that girl to kill herself, but herself. Sure it was an evil thing to do an karma will catchup with her, but there were obvious signs that were ignored by her parents and if anyone is at fault it is them...
[blockquote]Seriously, what kind of ASSHOLE CHAUVINISTIC PIG would say that the person alleged of sexual assault should it not be true would be WORSE off than the victim were it true?[/blockquote] I knew someone who took his own life after being falsely accused of rape. He didn't seem to be to be particularly mentally fragile but he lived in a small community which turned against him and after a year or so he couldn't take any more. I think this is a rare example of what you are saying isn't true, and I don't consider myself an asshole, chauvinistic or a pig for saying it.
Its not what she said but how she said it. The amount of vitriol is almost palpable, and she has been steadily making it worse as the thread wears on.
Okay, so let's assume the bullied kid misunderstands the case. Are we then going to say: "Don't publicize far-reaching cases that might influence an unstable person who misunderstands the facts to act in a way that harms themselves?"
That seems like a fairly big trade-off to me. There's been a legal precedent set that could affect countless Americans, but we shouldn't warn them about this because someone might misunderstand the facts and act irrationally?
There was also the big child porn sting in England. Turns out that some of the accused had simply had their credit cards stolen. I think 7 or so of these innocent people killed themselves as a result of being accused. Being accused of rape is no laughing matter. It is an accusation that will come up in a google search, and it will haunt you for life.
We can do very little legally to protect our children from this kind of thing. That's just the way it is.
If someone tells you to kill yourself...and you DO IT...why should the first party come under legal consequences? Even if the person truly wanted you to kill yourself, The receiving party is still the one in whole who exercises their own will to do so. Nevermind the fact that most people are only suicidal for attention, making it a LAW that if someone tells you to kill yourself that they would go to jail is just...ridiculous Then again ive always said arguing on the internet is for losers [at least when the arguments are as asinine as resorting to telling each other to kill yourself] Mass Mail: *.myspace.com Subj: I LOVE YOU body: KILL YOURSELF!
nigelt.wordpress.com
So you're saying that we shouldn't punish bullies because it gives incentive to the bullied to have the bullies punished? Am I crazy or does this not make any sense at all?
Here's a hint to guys in general... STOP RAPING WOMEN, and no one will take it credibly when you're accused of it.
I have never raped a woman, but under certain circumstances it is possible that people would take it credibly if a woman accused me of it. I don't have any control over the actions of other men.
Right... because social pressure never caused anyone to do anything.
Would you consider it fair if Attila Dimedici had responded with "Here's a hint to women in general... STOP FALSELY ACCUSING MEN OF RAPE, and no one will arbitrarily dismiss your accusations" and then implied that you have a responsibility to exert the appropriate social pressure on other women? I commend his restraint. Perhaps due to your description of your own history on this subject, you've received a number of well-reasoned responses from those who disagree with your expressed opinions, instead of the coarse responses one might expect on slashdot.
I have no background in psychology or any related field, but I'll go out on a limb: You're still not over it. If you're not currently talking to anyone about this, please consider seeking the help you obviously need, if not from a professional counselor, then at least some kind of "survivor" group or a very trusted friend or two. If you had already done this and stopped, I urge you to resume counseling.
You have no reason to take my advice, especially as an AC, but since you've shared a bit of your history, I'll do the same. I've had several long-term, deeply loving relationships with women, all of whom had been victims of some kind of sexual abuse, including forcible rape, date rape, "minor" child sexual abuse (single incident, no penetration, fondling only), and severe childhood sexual abuse (multiple abusers from age 5 through teen years, including blood relatives, frequent vaginal & oral penetration, cumulative physical damage leading to inability to have children). Maybe that set of relationships was just the roll of the dice, or maybe it says something about me, but that's not relevant here. The point is, I've seen the emotional toll, and although you might be able to heal without outside help (many do, simply from shame), in my experience that takes much, much longer if it happens at all. Depending on how we define being "over it", it's reasonable to say you might never be completely over it, but most women do find that they can progress to a point where a topic like this doesn't expose a raw wound. I genuinely wish you the best of luck.
And it seems I cannot get nested quotes to work properly.
- T
tl;dr BAWWWWW
I am glad I live in a country where it is legal to have sex with 15 year old girls and it is up to the girl to decide if it was rape or conceptual sex.
Do you mean sex that results in pregnancy, or just sex that they think about but don't actually do?
Conceptual sex? Is that what I'm having when I theorize about what sex might be like?
If fate makes you a motorcycle, you become a motorcycle.
The amount of vitrol in the post I would say is minimal; about the only thing remotely close to the line is "ASSHOLE CHAUVINISTIC PIG". Posts get +5 around here with far more than that on a somewhat regular basis.
"These suicidal fucks are no different than the retards that shoot up schools - they're cowards and should be labelled as such."
I think the real cowards are the ones who spew their hatred and say "just suck it up" without any kind of scientific understanding into why people do the things they do. They accept mediocre hostility towards others as the status quo in a world full of war and barbary. Maybe people are depressed because it has somethign to do with the ass backward culture of selfishness, greed, hypercompetitiveness, bigotry and hostile all against all political-economic culture of the times?
...the AP doesn't want to cause unfair embarrassment to the alleged victims in case their story is true...
Doesn't even touch on the subject of rape being worse than being accused of rape. Specifically refers to hiding the identity of alleged victims to prevent unfair embarassment.
why wouldn't the AP also avoid publishing the name of the defendant, to avoid causing them vastly greater unfair embarrassment in case the victim's story is false?
Also does not make any hardship comparison between the act of rape itself and false accusation thereof; Again, it specifically refers to the hardship associated with public knowledge of the events.
I personally know a number of victims of sexual assault- among them my younger brother, by one of our cousins, who attempted the same with me as well. And you know what? It's rather presumptuous of you to put so much weight on the embarassment of the victims. From my experience, embarassment is the LEAST of their concerns. Even if nobody knows what happened to the victim, the victim still knows, and the victim still lived through it. Putting so much weight on their public embarassment serves only to trivialize the actual crime itself, and is a great disservice to the victims.
On the other hand, a person falsely accused of sexual assault is a victim as well. I wholeheartedly agree that the act of falsely accusing someone of sexual assault is not as disgusting or grave an offense as actually sexually assaulting someone. However, The falsely accused has to bear that scarlet letter for the rest of his or her life. The lifelong hardships faced by a sexual assault victim, on the other hand, aren't lessened in the least by hiding the act from public knowledge.
I'm not entirely certain how you can claim that public embarassment of a sexual assault victim is anywhere near a measurable percentage of the hardships he or she deals with. But as I said previously, it rather trivializes the hardships that sexual assault victims go through, and doing so does them a great disservice.
Your pain is less than being burned alive
Your pain is less than having your skin peeled and salted
Your pain is less than watching your family be dismembered
Your pain is less than being tortured
Your pain is less than genocide
Your pain is less than drowning in concentrated hydrochloric acid
Your pain is less than being stretched on the rack
Your pain is less than being publicly and falsely accused of rape, losing your job, your car taken apart with a sledge hammer, your house burned down, having your family taken away, and then beaten within an inch of your life on multiple occaisions by the friends and relatives of real rape victims, even after proven innocent by being in another state and the accuser admitting to lying(and getting no punishment for it).
Suffer
Laws are laws, and if you disagree with a law, work to get it overturned or changed.
But to argue that a prosecution of a law is bad because it might or could or may lead to someone thinking they might or could or possibly get someone prosecuted if they are bullied online and then kill themselves relies on a lot of "what-ifs" and assumptions.
Really? Do you really think there's this huge morass of online people just waiting for a verdict like this so they can go and say, "Wow, now all I have to do is get someone to impersonate someone else, get them to bully me on MySpace, and then make sure lots of people know about it, and then take my own life, and I'll get my revenge!"
Agree or disagree with TOSs, but they are there for a reason. And if you don't like the fact that if you violate one, you can face prosecution (or even criminal prosecution if your actions lead to someone's harm or death), well, that's your choice not to visit that site then. There are millions of websites, and the nice thing is, nobody's forcing anyone to visit a particular one.
Decisions like this one are not bad, nor are they likely to lead to some sort of strange epidemic of people who work hard to try and commit suicide while implicating someone else for causing it. They are reasonable interpretations of law and proper repercussions for people acting in an unlawful manner. And people who are suicidal aren't going to start changing their entire set of behaviors to conform to this decision, to try and implicate another person.
It's a long term solution to a short term problem. Idiotic, although it is, is an overly simplistic way to put it. But I'd settle for selfish.
And FTR no, I am not a zombie, I was just lucky enough not to be particularly good at it.
Quack, quack.
Mod parent up, seriously. If the poster is going to lump people together that way, then she should also accept the "Here's a hint to women, stop falsely accusing men of rape" line as well.
So because someone else has had it worse no one having it any better can claim to be depressed or be suicidal? HungSoLow, meet logical fallacies.
Megan Meier was not trying to get back at Lori Drew. Nor could she possible have been. She died *not knowing* that Drew was her harasser. Indeed, the verdict against Drew hinged on her *falsifying* her identity. If she had really been that boy she pretended to be, that boy would have committed no crime and gotten off scott-free. The simple fact was, Megan killed herself because she thought the boy of her dreams had turned on her, and Lori Drew is guilty of creating the delusion that drove her to it. It has nothing to do with getting back at anybody.
Only in the absurd case that someone is suicidal, being harassed by an imaginary person, KNOWS that their harasser is imaginary, yet simultaneously still believes in the fake person, can this verdict ever provide an incentive to suicide. The only incentive this verdict gives anyone is the incentive NOT to pretend to be someone else in order to push people into killing themselves.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
Your position is based on a faulty presumption; it simply doesn't work.
No one is saying that someone who is actually raped suffers less than someone publicly identified as their rapist.
People are saying that someone who falsely accuses rape (which happens very, very frequently) doesn't suffer as much as the victim, who has done nothing legally wrong and just wants to go back to their life.
Unfortunately, they cannot.
As an undergraduate at RIT, I have a friend who was in a relationship with a woman. As relationships sometimes do in college, it died away after they had sex a few times; my friend had decided that he wanted something more than just sex, and since she didn't want to be in that kind of relationship, she left him.
The next morning, he was walking back from the bookstore; public safety showed up with three officers and a police car. They said his name, and he responded with a groan (he was the RA, and there had been some drinking the last week that he had to break up) and a "what's up". He was taken to a room and asked where he was on a given date (incidentally, he had been at the hospital on that date for an injury that had happened during robotics club). He was then told that he was being accused of rape.
Before he was even *charged* with the act, he had to start defending himself to the college immediately. A student conduct hearing was scheduled, he had to move off campus immediately (as in, that night; he had to come back to his room under police and campus safety escort and get a small number of his belongings to take to a hotel which he had to pay for for 4 weeks until the hearing), and he was removed from his job, all classes and student activities, and his position as the RA pending the hearing.
Mind you, this is all BEFORE he has been charged.
The police verified that he was, in fact, at the hospital at the time (two days before they broke up); she quickly changed her story 7 or 8 times as this went on, to the point where the police told her not only that this wouldn't fly in court and that it was pretty obvious that she was lying. At his request, they filed their recommendation that the school that they find in the same fashion.
They didn't; they decided that "no conclusion could be found". He was kicked out of school. If you search for his name on Google (he has a rather unique name), the first thing you see is a bit in his home town paper saying that he was under arrest for rape.
If you think that his suffering was less than the suffering of the woman who put him through that, please, tell me how.
Any pain caused by this being pointed out, publicly, is less than that caused by the act itself. But being publicly identified as a victim gives you sympathy. Being publicly identified as a perp makes him hated -- in a small enough town, might even drive him out.
Being publicly identified as a rape victim rarely brings sympathy. Talk to some rape victims about it some time and you'll find that for most it brings further embarrassment, questioning glances, people talking behind their backs about whether they "were asking for it" or are "sluts". Especially in a small town. In many cases the first thing the police ask is what she was wearing. As if it's just assumed it was her fault. And "in a small enough town," the perp might get high-fives from his buddies and a slap on the wrist from the law. I say these things not as someone who has been raped, but someone who has talked to many rape victims and listened to their stories.
I'm not saying the post you're responding to is right, just that you need to check your assumptions if you're going to appeal to "logic".
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
One thing that the author didn't discuss was the 'reasonable person' standard, which in law is not the same as American English's "general" definition of such a phrase.
But it's a slippery journalistic slope to go down once you start deciding not to publish certain elements of a story, even for what seem to be compelling reasons.
When it comes to names, I have the perfect solution. Similarly to the system for reading hash values over the phone, come up with a list of 2^n first names and 2^m last names.
Take the sha256 of the involved parties' names, and for each sum use n+m bits to invent a new pseudo-random name which is uniquely determined per input name.
Only on slashdot? ;)
Ah yes, the classic excuse: "X has it worse, therefore you should not complain about Y."
Your post is less than useless, it is harmful and is ignorant beyond reason.
Conceptual sex? Is that what I'm having when I theorize about what sex might be like?
Shit, at least you're getting some ;)
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
If I were him, I'd strongly consider legal action against the school. In addition, the story should be shouted from the rooftops, as to give the school a bad name.
All I can say is boo-fucking-hoo. Everyone in Western society is so utterly spoiled. Anyone wanting to committ suicide in a Western country, save a very minute number of cases, should just get it over with because we don't need your cowardly influence any longer. Let me explain.
This post is either a troll or genuinely ignorant. Either way, it's certainly not "insightful."
People who are suicidal typically suffer from depression or other mental illness. Even in affluent civilizations, they aren't cowards or somehow morally deficient. They just have a disease which warps all of their perceptions in such a way that suicide appears to be the best alternative. Bullying might act as a catalyst, but the underlying phenomenon is usually illness and almost never a moral failing.
As for people who are bullied, sure they don't suffer as much as someone being raped, tortured, etc. But they do suffer, and not in a trivial sort of way. "Shut up about X, because at least you're not getting Y like those other people" is morally repulsive when X and Y both involve the victim suffering significantly---even if X is no where near as bad as Y.
I would, but I've already posted. Our society is disgusting in its double standard for men and women when it comes to sex crimes.
It ain't rape if you yell surprise first! ;)
You have an interesting point, although your post is borderline flamebait. Western society is at its very core violent. The culture is obsessed with violence, tormenting others, and winning. Western culture is sustained by conquest abroad and repression at home. Your friend was a victim of this conquest as are many 'others' in colonized countries. But as I said, at home, there is repression. This repression causes much of the violence to internalized. Fear and mistrust run rampant. Bullying in schools is the norm. Some people are unable to cope with all that psychological trauma and either shoot up schools or commit suicide.
Often I see studies blaming the media or video games on $age_group violence and I laugh my ass off. (How long have we have been at war?) The various media violence in question is an expression of that violence that is already in us, and has always been there. Look at the history of civilization. It's ridiculous. Indigenous (outside) people get their lands and bodies raped while those inside the culture get their minds raped.
I'm sure this girl who committed suicide already had many things wrong with her before she went through with it. She was likely bipolar and this simulated heartbreaking relationship pushed her over the edge. Love and sex are very powerful feelings at that age. I'm sure you remember.
Of course, bullying and lying are not against the law in the culture. Or if they are (harassment?), no expects anyone to do anything about it - or for it to stop. It's just the way things are. And thats why they had to prosecute on the basis of violating the terms of service.
Although I'd easily agree Western Society is spoiled with material goods, I'd say that it also psychologically tormented, morally bankrupt, and cause of pain for millions worldwide.
The primary function of the criminal law is to take revenge out of the picture.
When the law looks away, matters like this aren't resolved by an ass-kicking, they are resolved by a 12 gauge or ten feet of hemp:
There is nothing you can imagine that has not been done.
Without Sanctuary - Lynching Photography in America
I urge you strongly to take a look at these photographs - and not for one second forget that they are postcards - produced and sold like any other.
The point is you're innocent until proven guilty. Think about the Duke Lacrosse team; their Lacrosse season was disbanded for a year and their names dragged through the mud, and in the end they were innocent. They weren't angels by any means, but they did not rape someone. Reputation is hard to gain back.
Actually, we tried to get the student-run newspaper to run a story about it. They decided that to do that would be in bad taste. The most interesting reaction, though, was when some of us called the local paper; we figured this would be "Wow, holy shit" news, but the reporter we ended up talking with answered "That's not really newsworthy, that happens all the time." I had one of those moments where one of the foundations of your philosophy gets blown apart and your entire way of thinking just stops and tries to rebuild itself.
He considered legal action against the school, but he was told by counsel that he couldn't do anything about it, and that even if the court did find in his favor, he would have to reapply, and they would probably just screen him out during application.
He has coped with it EXTREMELY well; despite being very intelligent, he hasn't been able to get into any other 'reputable' schools, so he had to attend a state university.
For more information, at the end of the quarter, he was going to go intern at IBM. He was sent an e-mail by HR about two weeks after this all started and was told that it would be against policy to accept interns with a criminal record, so he lost his co-op for that quarter, which was something he was really looking forward to at the time. Now, every time he applies to an internship, it gets brought up quietly, he always tells his story, and he never gets accepted (although he always gets selected quickly for an interview).
If "secret courts" where there's no press is the only way to solve these kinds of problems for people who are supposed to be innocent until proven guilty, then I'm all for it. If they're found guilty, great; publish it all over the place. Until then, there's no need to ruin people's lives like this whenever some vindictive woman gets mad because she lost her boytoy.
Listen to yourself ... there's so much anger and bitterness showing in your post, you might want to reconsider your position that you are somehow that morally superior to those that felt suicidal, as those beatings probably affected you more than you think ... "all it ever did", I don't think so. I'm not even sure it's normal to feel that strongly about something that really has nothing to do with you if things are as you purport them to be - those suicidal people did nothing to you. It sounds more to me as though positing your status as being higher than those "weak losers" (in your mind) helps you see yourself as stronger or better (an imagined position you're clearly fighting hard to maintain, suggesting maybe it is in doubt in your mind) --- in fact, what you are ultimately doing is very much akin to bullying those 'losers'. It's all about maintaining a position in the social status hierarchy; your not being suicidal doesn't make you 'better than' those people. You're holding a lot of anger and bitterness down and it's very obvious from every other sentence; your attacking people you perceive as weak (who might be a lot stronger than you in fact, you DON'T know what else they go through) is probably doing harm to the people around you.
He was sent an e-mail by HR about two weeks after this all started and was told that it would be against policy to accept interns with a criminal record
Sorry, Freudian slip. Obviously, he doesn't actually have a criminal record per se, and that's not what was exactly said--I don't recall the exact wording, but you understand what I mean.
Did he entertain suing the woman for slander? She knowingly made false statements about him that had material impact upon him. Its the textbook definition. The woman definitely deserves to be hit hard for what she did. I'm guessing that the authorities would have viewed that as blaming the victim though.
From another angle: My impression is simply, you're clearly spitting venom, and I think it's because you're still in pain.
The only person responsible for a suicide is the person who committed it. She had a choice. She chose to kill herself. It's her fault.
LOL, and mental illnesses aren't real, right? People should just get over it, right?
Or chronic pain? How about that? Imagine searing pain every day, all day, all night, you can't sleep, the medications do nothing. Now tell me why these people should just get over it?
You speak as someone who had never experienced anything like that. Good for you but you have much to learn. Actually, now that I think about it, you speak as if you have thought a whole lot about suicide. You remind me of the super-anti-gay people who are actually mad at their inability to control their own thoughts.
As much as it seems like you control everything, you are in fact a slave of your physical body.
If you search Google or Google Scholar for "teen brain development" you will find some relevant information. Like this or this or if you've got access, stuff like this.
A lot of scientific attention has focused on charting the ongoing physical maturation of the frontal lobes through adolescence and even into early adulthood. The frontal lobes are involved in executive functioning, which includes things like self-regulation and impulse control. The frontal lobes are also involved in self-monitoring, which interestingly ties back to the grandparent poster's statement:
I mean fuck, I was beat up daily in high school, and all it ever did was make me certain that I would never reciprocate it to others. These suicidal fucks are no different than the retards that shoot up schools - they're cowards and should be labelled as such.
I think it affected you more than you admit. It sucks that you had to deal with that just as it sucks that people have to deal with fucked up brain chemistry. I don't know the solution, but I'm pretty sure compelling people to kill themselves is not helpful.
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
Anyone wanting to committ suicide... should just get it over...
as long as they do so in a responsible manner so that it does not harm anyone else physically. Jumping off a building for example, could hurt others which overdosing would hurt only yourself (and possibly spare the body's discoverer some mental trauma due to any sort of mess). Laws should protect people from physical harm inflicted by other people, but should not protect people from themselves. If you cannot handle the inherent psychological difficulties that come with being born, you should seek help on your own. People can (and will) be assholes, but you're still responsible for your response to other peoples' actions. I signed no form of consent to be born, can I sue my parents for bringing me into a world which causes me pain from time to time? Warning, cold hearted social darwinist statement coming up: The developed countries of the world have overcome the traditional forces of natural selection. Instead we face predators like aids, cancer and, well, ourselves. We no longer have to be physically fit to catch our own food, instead our minds have to be able to rationally process the emotions that we have evolved to possess. NOTE, this is all obviously my opinion, and I recognize that most of you will disagree with me, but let's keep the discussion civil.
I'm sorry, but I really do have to disagree with you on several points.
First of all, why is it that this is suddenly a crime when it's done online, but if you're being harassed at school, no one cares? I spent 4 years being picked on every fucking day for no reason. I'd get hit, I had my glasses and possessions broken or thrown into the water, etc. When I went to the cops, do you know what they said? "Maybe you should see a counselor or take up karate" Really? It's not like I'd taken karate for 5 years already, and was trying to avoid fighting on principle. School officials did nothing. The authorities did nothing. And when my parents went to talk to their parents, they found them to be even bigger assholes than their kids. And when I did fight back, _I_ was the one who was punished, or sent to detention. And it kept going until one day, 3 of them decided to pick on me outside of school on the way home from the bus. My expensive new glasses got broken, I snapped, and left all 3 of them crying on the floor. And then it stopped.
There are thousands of kids who live through that every day, who can't fight back the way I was able to, and no one does anything. At best, if you're lucky, they'll send them to the school counselor, who will then proceed to do absolutely nothing. So please enlighten me as to why this is perfectly ok, even though there are a multitude of suicides and self-abuse cases over similar situations, but "cyber-bullying" is somehow so much worse.
As for the rape story, first of all, you seem to be equivocating statutory rape with assault/rape. This is not the case. A very close friend of mine was assaulted and raped when going home one evening and she's still trying to get over it more than 8 years later. To somehow claim that this act is the same as statutory rape is completely absurd. Why do I feel this way, you might ask. The reason being that statutory rape depends on what the state believes the victim's ability to understand the situation and make a valid decision. The problem is that each state can decide this. Why is this a problem? Because, for example, when I was a senior in high school I began seeing a freshman (an age difference of 3 years). The age of consent in New York State is 17. The age of consent in New Jersey, which was a 5 minute drive away, is 16. How, I wonder, does she magically gain maturity and the ability to make a rational decision if we drive a few miles, and then mysteriously lose it when we go home?
Don't get me wrong, I didn't sleep with her until she was of age (which had less to do with the law and more to do with when she was comfortable with it), but that doesn't mean that the law is any less idiotic in that situation. Yes, the GP's friend is an idiot, and he did in fact commit a crime, but the way in which it played out just goes to show how stupid the law is. In another state, likely just a few miles away, it would've been perfectly legal! At least in NY, we make an effort to make some distinction (it's only a misdemeanor if the perp is under 21, and the victim is over 15), and the severity of the charges increases the younger the victim is, but other states have no such provisions, and make little distinction between a 50 year old man who slept with a 10 year old, and an 18 year old boy who slept with his 17 year old girlfriend. And lest we forget that the latter case goes into the sex offender database as well, making it difficult to find work, a house, etc. I know one guy who married the girl who was the "victim" and later couldn't find a job because he was a registered sex offender.
I'm beginning to stray off-topic, but my main point is that equivocating assault/rape to statutory rape, regardless of the circumstances, is an injustice to both victims of rape/assault, and both parties involved in a statutory rape case. Just because they both have the word "rape" in the name does not make them the same thing.
As for the main point of the article, the most sensible solution is to keep both perpetrator and victim's names private, because both are entitled to due process. Too often, society judges us to be guilty regardless of what a court of law has to say, and the media rarely prints retractions on accusations they make.
Time for a CAR analogy:
If I buy a car, and start messing around under the hood, I just voided my warantee. If I then pull up next to someone & rev up my engine, and as a result they peel off, crash & die, can I then be prosecuted for MURDER because I used the car in a fashion not approved by the manufacturor?
Or should the cops say "well, maybe you provoked the racing through reving your engine, but since that's not really illegal we aren't prosecuting you because you didn't break any laws".
This case is the same thing. She didn't break any laws. None. Not one law was broken.
Did she do something "wrong"? Well, that's a matter of morality & religion, and has no place in a courtroom. Is she a Bitch? Yes. But a hacker? Give me a fucking break.
About your comments regarding not publishing the names of rape defendants ("in case it turns out not to be true"): of all sexual assaults, only about 1 in 10 are even reported. Of those reported, only about 1 of 10 are prosecuted. That means that only 1 in 100 cases end up in court (these are rough statistics and taken from around 1999 when last I checked).
The reason so few are prosecuted is because the prosecution needs to have enough evidence to be confident of a conviction (you know, so as not to waste taxpayer money on losing prosecutions, regardless of the other merits of the case). So the ones that get prosecuted are the ones that there is generally a lot of evidence to support the victim's case. So when you see a report in the news about a trial regarding sexual assault, you can bet there's a lot of evidence to show the defendant is indeed guilty. Now, not all the time, mind you, but... you see what I mean.
So I don't worry too much when I see a defendant's name published in rape cases. Coz he's very likely to be guilty.
As strange as it is to say so on Slashdot of all places, you're probably right. Thanks for your comments - I do have some thinking to do.
If I treat a person badly, in real life, and somehow that makes her take her own life, is it a crime as well? I don't think it is in my country, is it in yours? I am feeling the internet is getting over protective...
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
You sound like a very reasonable person. More people should listen to you and take your views seriously. You express yourself clearly and everything you say makes perfect sense. My fairy godmother cast a spell on a frog and turned it into a prince.
They're not necessarily cowards - or irrational. If you don't believe there is a God who will judge your actions then the decision to kill yourself is simply whether the net long term joy in your life seems likely to outweigh the net pain, mental or physical. No point in comparing to someone else's situation, it's your perception/judgment that matters. Seems rational to me to stop existing if one does not want to exist - provided one does not believe in a life after this one.
Yah. I second that with a similar story in a similar college with a similar friend and a similar crazy ex-girlfriend.
I know colleges aren't courts of law, but the amount of deference given to the accuser makes it inevitable that false accusations will be common.
We all told my friend to sue the girl. He decided not to do that.
It's the same at all schools, so that wouldn't work. Also, because going to school is a privilege, not a right, there is very little legal standing to sue in order to be re-admitted (not zero, but very little).
Lori Drew's case holds a lot of lessons for a lot of people. It is about cyberbullying, which is behavior for which society has little tolerance. Cyberbullying is poison for anyone it touches. An institution like Myspace -- or a library or a school, which provides patrons, students or guests access to the Internet -- has plentiful incentive to stamp out cyberbullying within its system and its PCs. Regardless of how the law says it (through a misdemeanor criminal conviction or otherwise), the law has made clear it wants to find a way to punish anyone involved with cyberbullying. --Ben
Benjamin Wright, Dallas, Texas, benjaminwright.us
I think this is a side effect of the current legal culture of victimhood.
It's very much the same if you're a livestock producer and get falsely accused of "abuse" or "neglect" -- your animals and often your other property are confiscated (and often *profitably* disposed of by the "rescuer") before you're even formally charged, and chances are you'll never be allowed to face your accuser in court.
In this scenario, the "helpless animals" are cast in the same role as the "rape victim" and in the eyes of the legal and social lynch mob, the accused is guilty by definition, with absolutely no recourse to facts nor to the accuser's motivations.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Agree. The existing laws we have will work fine, too. If the victim would not have suicided without defendant's act, and the jury thinks defendant had reason to forsee the suicide by reason of a knowledge of the victim's susceptibility, then the defendant can be found liable in the jury's discretion. (IAAL)
Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.
The world is a danger to depressed kids. It's not fair to condemn each and every thing in the world, randomly in knee jerk reactions, to protect the children.
You have no reason to take my advice, especially as an AC, but since you've shared a bit of your history, I'll do the same. I've had several long-term, deeply loving relationships with women, all of whom had been victims of some kind of sexual abuse, including forcible rape, date rape, "minor" child sexual abuse (single incident, no penetration, fondling only), and severe childhood sexual abuse (multiple abusers from age 5 through teen years, including blood relatives, frequent vaginal & oral penetration, cumulative physical damage leading to inability to have children).
According to RAINN One in six women are victims of sexual assault, and you appear to understand this. The statistics against falsely accusing rape are not that overwhelming.
My statement is, when one in six women are sexually assaulted, those charges are more likely to be presumed to be true at first. If it were not the case where one in six women are sexually assaulted, say, more like six in 100,000 for murder, then it would be a situation where presuming it to be true at face value wouldn't make sense.
To put this in perspective, in order to produce the same number of false accusations of sexual assault as actual occurrences of sexual assault, we would need one in six women to falsely accuse a man of sexual assault. To do the same for murder, we would need just six people in 100,000... I think I could find six people in 100,000 willing to falsely accuse someone of murder (or just "mistakenly"). Meanwhile, convincing one out of every six women to falsely accuse someone of sexual assault? I'm sorry, but I think the morals of even our society are too high for that one to be tractable.
So, let me put this into perspective for you. False accusations of rape are horrible, and they are wrong, and if they're done maliciously people need to be held accountable. However, I doubt very much so that one in sex men are falsely accused of rape. I find that HIGHLY unlikely.
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
I think the suggestion is that we not publish the names of "alleged" criminals. By all means, people convicted of a crime should have their names brought to public attention.
Right, but the 6th Amendment guarantees a public trial. So, should we step on the rights of people to have it publicly known that they are on trial, so that police can't just secretly prosecute them, or do we follow the same rights of free speech that the requirement that a criminal trial be public is so paramount, that in order to protect those who might be falsely accused, we should remove public scrutiny of the justice system?
Also, "convicted" criminals are not always actually guilty of their crimes... should we protect their identities as well just in case a later court of appeals finds that they were wrongfully convicted?
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
You still refuse to read the bits that are inconvenient to you. Such as the fact that not everyone who is accused of being a rapist is actually a rapist; in fact, according to some measures at least, most aren't.
Or do you believe that their suffering as a result of being falsely accused somehow "atones" for what happened to you? Spread the pain around, so to speak?
Disgusting. Your words and attitude make me seriously doubt whether there was even any rape, to be honest, or whether it's one of those "he did something I didn't like on the date" cases. You can sleep well knowing that, if I ever end up in a jury for a rape trial, I would be very, very, very careful and conservative in determining the guilt of the accused - thanks to you.
Keep walking west dude - until your hat floats.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Maybe you should, you know, ask the guy on trial if he wants it to be publicized or not, before the end of it? If he wants to use his 6th Amendment rights, then sure; if not, then why should he be forced to screw his life by doing so?
Actually, that's a pretty good idea - I don't see why anyone, except for the victim, and close relatives and friends of the convict (as designated by himself) should be aware of the conviction. The word could still get around, of course - but personally, I think that publishing convictions in any mass media outlets is, at best, useless, and usually harmful (even when conviction is just), and should be banned.
Even so, it's not nearly as bad, because wrongful conviction happens much, much rarer than acquittal in court. So if we protect the privacy until either conviction or acquittal happens, this covers vast majority of cases.
Maybe you should, you know, ask the guy on trial if he wants it to be publicized or not, before the end of it? If he wants to use his 6th Amendment rights, then sure; if not, then why should he be forced to screw his life by doing so?
People obtaining a new trial with definitive evidence that they are innocent that will be presented to the jury still have to openly and willfully waive their right of protection against double jeopardy.
The right to a public trial is not a protection for the individual itself, but for the public against the government.
That being said, someone accused of a crime has the right to ask the courts to keep the privacy of the individual if there are extreme circumstances. However, by far and in large, the rights of the people to know and understand what it is that their government is doing should always be paramount, even at the cost of the privacy of an individual.
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
Actually, from what I've read, there's at least some chance she was trying to get back at her mother, who had been unsympathetic to her troubles and more interested in punishing her for using the internet when she wasn't supposed to.
People are saying that someone who falsely accuses rape (which happens very, very frequently) doesn't suffer as much as the victim, who has done nothing legally wrong and just wants to go back to their life.
http://barcc.org/information/facts/stats
"Nearly 60% of rape/sexual assault victims did not report their victimization to the police in 2006, according to National Crime Victimization Survey data."
"95 percent of sexual assaults that were reported were determined to be substantiated with sound evidence." - this according to the FBI
Before you make claims about how often false reporting actually happens, it's worth looking at the statistics. Talk to somebody who works at a rape crisis center or DV shelter, and you'll see that, while they typically agree with you that false reporting spoils our justice system for the VAST MAJORITY of legitimate victims (men and women), they'll also cite the above statistics and many more which prove that it's a rapist's world, not a victim's world.
Your friend's story is moving, and the institution involved acted very prematurely in kicking him out. They likely did this because they're so afraid to talk about assault openly that they'd rather stigmatize it using him as an example in the hope that it will all just go away and they'll never have to think about it again.
Here's a newsflash - assault won't go away until we don't allow it any more as a society. Go visit the link above. Think about those statistics, and then think about your behavior and how it might be enabling for potential perpetrators. Have you ever stood by and done nothing while somebody you know, or somebody at a frat party you were standing next to, made plans to get a girl drunk and "nail" her? You just allowed a potential rape to happen, and you're at fault for not informing the fellow that he was planning a rape.
It's time to stop blaming victims, and start talking about these issues openly and calmly instead of with the irrational bias of fear and uncertainty.
Umm - you missed the entire point of the article, which is that since Megan Meier's death, people have proposed anti-cyber-bullying laws - basically making it illegal to do what "the boy" had done, even if he were an actual person.
If his life is going to be wrecked anyway, he might consider publishing every last detail (incuding the name of the bitch concerned, with an easily recognized photo) and going on the offensive.A website with the police reports and other relevant information could be a great weapon. The bitch deserves to be exposed, for the rest of her life, for trying to ruin this man.
If it were me, I'd make damn sure not only that I didn't hide (hiding = fail) but that she never could. My new hobby would be preofessional vengeance.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
7.5 Heroic White Knight "Zordak" comes to the (very public) rescue of Snogirl. Zordak hasn't been getting much female attention lately and is hoping this seemingly altruistic gesture will result in the karmic payback of sex from some unrelated girl he's been pestering on Facebook.
In a court of law you are REQUIRED to say who the plaintiff is, which in this case would the person who decides to press criminal charges - i.e. the victim.
I specifically remember at the Athlete's Orientation in college that they iterated and reiterated that an accusation of sexual assault harms the person named no matter what, so do not put yourself in a situation where it will happen.
None of this in anyway takes away from actual victims. If anything, it would help remove the doubts that people feel when allegations are made. It would lend validity to the judicial process.
Also, not to be rude, but cut out the "it says my pain is less than something else". It is a very childish way to view the world and will never let you regain composure. Having worked with women who have been repeatedly raped and beaten (both by husbands and by "militia") and seen their sons murdered, I think that you can admit that other people have valid pain -- not to say that what you experienced was not awful. Other people have valid points. Refusing to consider other viewpoints and sticking to your guns... I have the feeling that you expect better of yourself than that.
If Megan Meier had merely lost sleep, or suffered from panic attacks, or cut herself as a result of the harassment she endured from Lori Drew, would Drew have been convicted? Or even arrested?
Quiz: How long can you go without sleep, before going clinically, permanently insane? Sleep is an absolutely necessary biological function, and one can die from its lack, as sure as one can die without food, hydration or adequate ambient temperature. People also die from cuts, and the fact that some people survive them or perform them so frequently under distress that to you the activity appears "recreational" does not excuse or mitigate the intentional inflicting of suffering on another: torture.
These perverse incentives -- "rewarding" Megan Meier for her suicide by vicariously exacting her revenge on Lori Drew...
What an utterly despicable, fatuous excuse for ethical reasoning! If Megan Meier considered "These perverse incentives" even comparable to the incentive of life as a direct result of Lori Drew's actions, which is indisputable and Lori Drew's self-stated intent, Lori Drew had at that time deprived Megan Meier of the unalienable, Constitutional right to pursuit of her own happiness, and Lori Drew is from that moment forward guilty of a felony. Her accomplices are her ISP and the social networking site, who were unwitting and, until proven guilty, presumed unwilling, thus they are not prosecutable but still an indispensable accessory to the conspiracy, satisfying the condition "two or more persons" in the Civil Rights Statutes, without putting the ISP or social networking site in moral or legal jeopardy.
Perhaps the story should not have been covered at all, or anywhere near as much as it was. (I realize I may be contributing to the problem here, but my penance is that I'm calling for less coverage in the future, and I would never be writing about this if the mainstream media hadn't covered it so extensively.) What about all the other people who committed suicide during the same year, also as a result of vicious harassment, but with the only difference being that their suicides did not involve the Internet?
That is your only remotely interesting point, and it so closely mimics the Slashdot meme about patents, "add 'with a computer' to a pompous description of any obvious and non-novel device, idea, or process, and you have yourself a shiny new patent!" as to render even that interest nearly imperceptible. Yes, Internet-related stories obviously get disproportionate coverage. You noticed, want a cookie? More importantly, which you completely missed or ignored, crimes committed using the Internet are seen as necessitating their own statutes rather than prosecution under existing ones, which are generally written in platform-independent language. Lori Drew misrepresented herself. She forged her identity, and initiated romantic relations with a minor under that false identity, and prosecutors had trouble finding an applicable statute to successfully prosecute her. That's the real "WTF" story here, not your macabre question of whether people so viciously harassed that the prospect of revenge rivals or exceeds their will to live, have a bit more or less legal standing, posthumously.
Drop dead.
"I can't imagine how things could get any worse!" (some guy) "That could just be failure of imaginatioÂn on your p
Normal 14 year old girls don't kill themselves when they receive nasty break-up letters from their boyfriends, real or imagined; quite to the contrary: it's part of growing up. What Lori Drew did was mean, but mean shouldn't be illegal. The fact that she faked an identity didn't change anything: if Josh had been real, Megan would still have committed suicide.
Megan was likely because she was depressed, on anti-depressants and ADHD medication, and possibly because she was fighting with her mother. That's the mother's responsibility, nobody else's.
So, I'd say the way this verdict is dangerous is even more immediate: it lets the mother off the hook and tries to shift the blame to others. Of course, that's nothing new. Keeping kids away from pornography, drugs, guns, violence, etc. is the responsibility of the parents, but they are so technically incompetent and have so little time for their children that they want to shift the burden on everybody else.
I don't want to live in a kid-safe society.
Here's a hint... parental consent to statutory rape does not make it any less illegal.
Legally, perhaps. The logic behind that is bizarre, though. In some states, kids as young as 14 (perhaps even younger) can be married off by their parents, but they can't have sex even with parental consent, let alone without it.
Seems to me that anybody old enough to marry is old enough to have sex, with or without parental consent.
I think we need a uniform age of consent.
and the jury thinks defendant had reason to forsee the suicide by reason of a knowledge of the victim's susceptibility, then the defendant can be found liable in the jury's discretion. (IAAL)
So, on every E-mail and discussion contribution, I now have to try to diagnose the mental state of my reader? Whether they are a suicide risk?
Sorry, that's a bad verdict. What Lori Drew did was mean, but you couldn't expect her to diagnose Megan as suicidal. If anybody should have known that Megan was suicidal and done something about it, it's her mother.
The beauty of the jury system is that some members of the jury might view matters exactly as you do.
Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.
I remember growing up that people who were victims of domestic abuse or even rape could rarely count on justice unless they showed signs of distress. Case in point, a woman was not considered a rape victim if she was married to the man who raped her in most states until the 1980's. While conviction rates are very low still for cases of rape where the victim knows her attacker, we have at least made strides in recognizing the fact that abuse and rape can happen whether or not the victim seems distressed or whether or not he or she knows the accused.
I also remember that victims of domestic violence could rarely count on their abusers facing criminal prosecution if he or she kept "going back" for some reason. It took Nicole Brown Simpson's murder for California to finally change its laws concerning how domestic violence is prosecuted.
Something is either a crime or it's not. We don't prosecute car thieves based on whether or not the person who lost their car was upset or inconvenienced somehow. So it should be with harassment or stalking on the Internet. Either it's a crime, regardless of the victims level of distress or inconvenience, or it's not. However, if and when we create consistent laws for Internet harassment there needs to be clear distinction what constitutes harassment and what doesn't. I still do not believe what Lori Drew "did" would constitute harassment in the traditional sense.
Creating laws that only criminalize behavior dependent on the outward signs of supposed victims' distress creates this false idea that if certain acts are carried out but no one gets "hurt" it's not a crime and therefore is nothing to worry about. Furthermore, you are right in that someone who feels helpless due to harassment on the Internet may take matters too far in attempting to show distress in order to get justice.
You know, that was the case when it came to harassment and stalking in real life. It literally took people dying either at their own hands or at the hands of their stalkers before laws were put into effect protecting people from that sort of behavior. I'd hate to see a repeat of history here.
All that said I'm still not so sure that what Lori Drew did rose to the occasion of being criminal. She didn't create the account. She didn't send the comments that supposedly drove Megan to kill herself. The people who did got immunity and got away with it. Should it be a crime to create sock puppet accounts in order to remain anonymous for whatever reason? Unless the person intends to defraud someone I don't think so. Should it be a crime to ignore a site's TOS? No. That would be like prosecuting anyone who breaks any sort of contractual agreement. Should it be a crime to tell someone they'd be better off dead? No, I don't think so. I may not like someone doing that to me or to my children but we do have freedom of speech and so far it's not a crime to create an Internet Persona either. To this day I still cannot figure out what Lori Drew did that was criminal. Immoral? Yes. Perhaps even evil? Yes. Criminal? Not yet.
The beauty of the jury system is that some members of the jury might view matters exactly as you do.
No, that's not "the beauty". The problem is that the uncertainty that this creates results in prior restraint on free speech, and that's a bad thing.
This verdict should be clearly and unambiguously struck down.