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Security Researcher Attacked While At Conference
New submitter fineous fingers writes "U.S. computer security researcher Georgia Weidman has revealed on her blog that a fellow speaker at the Confidence security conference in Krakow, Poland attempted to rape her. The attack occurred in her hotel room in the early morning hours of 28 May. Luckily, Georgia was able to fend her attacker off by clocking him in the head with a coffee mug. I was personally at this conference, but was staying at a different hotel and found out about it after the fact. It was Georgia herself that told me after she gave her fantastic talk on Leveraging Mobile Devices on Pentests. That she was able to give a flawless presentation later that day and had the courage to talk about the attack on her blog shows how awesome she really is."
He denies it. She presented no evidence. He presented none either, even though he is under no obligation to. No charges files. Her word against his.
Of course he denies it what is he going to say? "Yes I am a sexual predator"? There was plenty of evidence that something went down. There were bruises on both of their faces. Many of her items (that Gont took) were found in his room even after he denied having them. Polish Law Enforcement WAS contacted but decided not to take any action.
Look at his left eye: http://lh6.ggpht.com/-Vgd8jBxq8oo/Ua9HT0nPpuI/AAAAAAAAQ1k/oc6uKE5J9Bs/s800/_0272_confidence__M.jpg This was taken on the afternoon of the second day of the conference. The attack happened on the early morning of the first day. fingers
She did go to the police. Neither person involved was Polish so they were not interested. Fingers
Of course he denies it what is he going to say? "Yes I am a sexual predator"? There was plenty of evidence that something went down. There were bruises on both of their faces. Many of her items (that Gont took) were found in his room even after he denied having them. Polish Law Enforcement WAS contacted but decided not to take any action.
Probably Polish LEOs decided that since she let him in her room in the wee hours of the morning, there is no way to determine what happened from there on.
Hence, the case devolves into a she said he said, and if she won't file official charges, and stay there long enough to see it through, they will decline to make an arrest. Its up to her to file formal charges.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
I put that link in the summary. They took it out. Fingers
RTFA, dumbass. She did report it but the Polish police declined to file a report.
I find every time they go running to the Internet instead of the cops to be suspect frankly, as I can accuse anybody of anything and so can you. .... if he did what she said she should have been on the phone to the cops not 10 minutes later, why wasn't she?
I don't know if you're illiterate, lazy, or just an ass -- but had you read the linked post, you would know that the very first thing she tried to do was contact the police, and she stuck at it for hours until she was able to get them to show up. Turns out, this can be difficult to accomplish late at night, in a foreign country where you don't speak the language, in a former Eastern Bloc country.
She was unable to get an outside line from her hotel room phone. The hotel desk clerk claimed not to understand English well enough to place the call when asked. Her own cell phone had been damaged in the attack; she eventually was able to have a friend contact the U.S. embassy, who were able to - finally - reach the Polish police.
~Idarubicin
From her blog (her post is long and detailed):
From his blog (he wrote very little):
What disturbs me here is the knee-jerk suggestion that she invented the story for some unspecified reason. Statistically, only a very small number of rape accusations turn out to be fabricated. Of course I don't know for sure what happened. I've never even heard of these people before. But based on the little evidence I have seen, I know who I believe.
A reasonable person would draw the conclusion that he must have injured her; if she was observed /not injured/, and he was observed not injured, prior to him entering her room.
And she and he were observed injured shortly afterwards.
Only unreasonable doubts could show otherwise.
Rape is about power. Sex is secondary. He was assuring his power over her. Well, trying. He lost.
If he just wanted sex, he could have gotten a prostitute. Her pimp would have killed him for damaging his employee if he tried to do the same thing.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Rape isn't about sex. It's about power and humiliation.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
Unless you are in an area where tourism is important, yes, they do. They can't successfully prosecute if there are no witnesses, and if all the witnesses will be gone at the time of the trial, taking a complaint is a waste of time. So yes, many places will refuse to prosecute if they assume you won't be in town or reachable during a trial.
And not everywhere shares your views on attempted rape. She wasn't actually raped or killed, and rape isn't as serious everywhere as you imply. There was a recent case in Nigera where a mob attacked and stripped a woman for not wearing a long enough skirt, leaving her naked and abused in the street. From what I've heard, the public outcry there was in support of the mob, but I'm not in Nigera.
Learn to love Alaska
She contacted the police immediately. The police indicated a lack of will to pursue the matter. She then moved on to the conference organizers and her blog.
Learn to love Alaska
A friend of Georgia's connected her to the US embassy; she ended up using my girlfriend's cell phone to call the police by dialling 112. (random question: how many Americans know that that's the international GSM emergency number? My guess, not many.) Still, there was a whole bunch of "not my problem" going on on the part of the hotel staff; they spoke English just fine until we asked for them to call the police; after that, the only words they said were "No speak English".