Longtime California Climber Arrested on Rape Charges

JaredGwrote:

I’m not reading all that but I love that you have 3 separate paragraphs that start with “Last” and the last one is still 5 paragraphs from the end. 

I plead guilty JaredG...that's pretty funny, I have to admit. 

Go easy on me: I wrote that in a depressed haze, after the woman I love dearly ended our relationship because of my inability to separate myself more completely from my ex-wife and daughter.  So I wasn't in the best mind frame. 

That said, apart from the repetition of "last" I stand by my text, both the prose and the content. 

@WF WF51, I'll respond with an abrreviation because that seems to be more on your reading level. SPCBS (some people can be saved).  Here's looking at you. 

@ Alan, it took me about 5 minutes of Googling to find countries which, compared to the United States, have a broader and more inclusive definition of rape, as well as fundamentally different legal procedures regarding the investigation and prosecution of sexual assaults.  As a consequnce, these countries have much higher rates of reporting.  Essentially, they take women more seriously, and treat sexual assault cases in much the way that I suggest. 

You wrote:

"One final point...it is unlikely that any changes in the legal process will "ensure that women are protected from sexual assault". While realistically and unfortunately nothing will ever totally 'ensure' such a result, but the the necessary changes to reduce the prevalence of such offenses are dependent on societal changes beyond anything that can happen within the legal system."

I think that's not good enough.  The legal system both reflects and shapes society.  We can do better.  

Once again, based on your experience, can you really not suggest any changes to the legal system that would prevent predators like Charles Barret, Jason Crist, or Andrew Sullivan from commiting crimes for so long without facing consequences?  (As far as I know, Andrew Sullivan has never been held accountable).

If you continue to insist that nothing can be done, at best it sounds like American exceptionalism, and at worst it sounds like support for the status quo, which obviously fails women.

BigCountrywrote:

You're a joke

Only to people like you!

And to think that I recently agreed with one of your posts!  For shame.

BigCountrywrote:

Bruno all of what you say is basically considered bs because of the absolute stupid shit you say in dog forums and other threads. You're a joke

This ^ is the problem.

I'm on the other side re dogs when Bruno is responding but there should be a way to separate it right? Have some fucking empathy dude, kicking a guy when he's down isn't cool. I don't care if s/he is on the other side of a political issue or on dogs or helmets or whatever the fuck.

Instead of personal attacks, why don't you argue the issue?

Fucking MP...

Jeremy Lwrote:

This ^ is the problem.

I'm on the other side re dogs when Bruno is responding but there should be a way to separate it right? Have some fucking empathy dude, kicking a guy when he's down isn't cool. I don't care if s/he is on the other side of a political issue or on dogs or helmets or whatever the fuck.

Instead of personal attacks, why don't you argue the issue?

Fucking MP...

You argued with a wall before? That's what it's like talking to him. There was no political issue or attack here. Just calling argumentative bs what it is. Welcome to MP

Furthermore, Bruno if you are down, I was unaware and had no intentions to kick you while you're down. If I unknowingly did, dude my bad.

Bruno Schullwrote:

I plead guilty JaredG...that's pretty funny, I have to admit. 

Go easy on me: I wrote that in a depressed haze, after the woman I love dearly ended our relationship because of my inability to separate myself more completely from my ex-wife and daughter.  So I wasn't in the best mind frame. 

That said, apart from the repetition of "last" I stand by my text, both the prose and the content. 

@WF WF51, I'll respond with an abrreviation because that seems to be more on your reading level. SPCBS (some people can be saved).  Here's looking at you. 

@ Alan, it took me about 5 minutes of Googling to find countries which, compared to the United States, have a broader and more inclusive definition of rape, as well as fundamentally different legal procedures regarding the investigation and prosecution of sexual assaults.  As a consequnce, these countries have much higher rates of reporting.  Essentially, they take women more seriously, and treat sexual assault cases in much the way that I suggest. 

You wrote:

"One final point...it is unlikely that any changes in the legal process will "ensure that women are protected from sexual assault". While realistically and unfortunately nothing will ever totally 'ensure' such a result, but the the necessary changes to reduce the prevalence of such offenses are dependent on societal changes beyond anything that can happen within the legal system."

I think that's not good enough.  The legal system both reflects and shapes society.  We can do better.  

Once again, based on your experience, can you really not suggest any changes to the legal system that would prevent predators like Charles Barret, Jason Crist, or Andrew Sullivan from commiting crimes for so long without facing consequences?  (As far as I know, Andrew Sullivan has never been held accountable).

If you continue to insist that nothing can be done, at best it sounds like American exceptionalism, and at worst it sounds like support for the status quo, which obviously fails women.

Bruno, I really don't want to get into this with you, because it would be endless and very unlikely to be productive. More personally though---we were having a civilized online dialogue, but then you decided to question my motivation for participating, despite my being very clear on my points ( did you actually read those posts or is it a comprehension problem?)---there was absolutely no need for that. Still I'll make one last effort to respond.

There are, in fact, many changes already in place within the legal system which is constantly evolving /-again I mentioned some in my earlier posts. Many of the things that you suggested in your 'investigation' paragraph already exist, and have for years, in many jurisdictions, where there are high quality, specially trained police officers ( often female) and prosecutors assigned to such cases from the beginning and who follow very specific protocols during their investigations. A quick Google search would have informed you of this. They also utilize sophisticated scientific forensic methods, such as DNA, during the investigations and, again as I stated previously, there are specific evidentiary rules they routinely use at trial. Hence, at least in the jurisdictions I am familiar with, there is a high conviction rate---including a number of my own clients.

However, none of these methods within the legal system will "prevent predators...from committing crimes for so long...." In a democracy, the criminal justice system is inherently 'reactive'--after a crime has occurred. We don't lock up or somehow 'segregate' people because we have the feeling that they might commit or even have committed crimes. Such things happen in totalitarian countries ( so now may soon be coming here---maybe you will be pleased), but not in democracies. If my memory is correct ( may well be wrong, Andrew could correct me) none of CB's prior involvements with the police involved sexual assault allegations, so, if this is correct , then he wouldn't have entered any law enforcement data base ( which do exist) as a sex offender

Your proposal regarding criminalizing 'failure to report' because someone "heard about a sexual assault" is totally unworkable--for many reasons. Just picture one scenario. If a 'person' heard about such an assault that hadn't already been reported, that strongly suggests that for whatever personal reason the victim her or himself ( men are also sexually assaulted) declined to do so. Now, if said 'person' having heard of this assault, goes to the police and files a report as required, wouldn't the victim, under your proposal, then be subject to prosecution for failure to report? Think things through a bit more before making such proposals. ( I should note that in many jurisdictions, licensed professionals are in fact required to make such reports, often specifically for cases involving child abuse---but they have special responsibilities and training for such situations.)

You also disparage the jury system, largely based on cartoonish stereotypes. Have you ever served on a jury or participated in an actual trial? It isn't perfect--and again, changes are occurring on how juries are selected, and there have been occasional bad outcomes/--as there are in the European system, but there are thousands of jury trials across the country every year and in the vast majority of them the jurors work diligently to reach the correct result according to the law--and most of time they succeed.

You talked about  false convictions/--a good percentage of them involved sexual assaults ( the Central Park 5, for example). Most of these resulted from poor/corrupt police work and prosecution ( hiding exculpatory evidence is a common theme), with race also playing a significant role in many of them. Do you actually believe that reducing the legal protections currently in place will somehow lead to fewer false convictions?

Enough.

Alan Rubinwrote:
Enough.

No, Alan, it's not enough.  

The status quo is obviously insufficient to protect women from sexual assaults, as these cases show.

Despite your experience, you have once again failed to suggest any meaningful changes.  In the past, I really appreciated your posts, but I now see them as defensive and conservative (in the sense that you are defending a broken system).

• I think you weigh the risk to innocent men more than justice for women who have been victimized.
• I think you hide the possibility of meaningful change behind claims of over reach and totalitarianism. 
• I think you have a naive view of the US justice system and US democracy (both of which are oxymorons).

To respond to some of your specific questions, when I worked as a high school teacher in California, I was called up for jury duty but I never sat in a trial.  As a teacher, I'm familiar with the duty of care to report possible crimes, and I've done so many times, in California and in Switzerland, where I live now.  I've also become deeply involved in the care and counseling for young people that often follows intervention.  This is part of why I suggested a duty to report as a possibility to consider for a broad public in cases of sexual assault.

Now, setting aisde personal back and forth, anybody curious about alternative judicial practices might want to look up the "equality principle" or the "principle of legality" vs the "expediency principle" and the "adversarial system" which is used in the United States.  

The equality principal is particularly interesting, especially as it relates to sexual assault.  It requires that police register and prosecute all offenses that come to their attention.  This aproach is used in some Scandanavian countries, and it's part of the reason why cases of sexual assault against women are taken more seriously there than they are in the United States.

More to the point, there obviously are changes we could make. 

What do other think?

How could we improve the justice system to help women who are victims of sexual assault?

How could we improve the justice system to help women who are victims of sexual assault?

I don’t believe that the justice system is anywhere near the crux of the pervasiveness of sexual assault crimes.

I’d assume people committing these acts do so under the belief that they will not get caught.

Sexual acts are, by design, generally a very private affair. I find it hard to believe that there is any form of judicial control that will have a meaningful impact on mitigating the problem. Can you think of another issue of moral corruption that has demonstrably been solved, or alleviated by legal protocol?

Outside of overtly extreme measures like… mandatory death penalty; or mandatory written consent forms before any sexual act… i struggle to see what would help from this angle.

also, sorry about your relationship troubles dude. Never fails to be a reliably shitty portion of life .

Jason Pirolowrote:

I don’t believe that the justice system is anywhere near the crux of the pervasiveness of sexual assault crimes.

I’d assume people committing these acts do so under the belief that they will not get caught.

Yes, AND... people committing these acts know that even when "caught" perpetrators are rarely prosecuted. I used to do pro bono work for a rape treatment center that provided support to victims who were considering reporting crimes and, later, who were dealing with the judicial and law enforcement systems as a witness and victims. What the system puts them through is brutal. Prosecutors don't like to bring cases they can't win. Defense attorneys, of course, have a duty to their clients to attempt to create a "reasonable doubt" that the crime occurred. What tends to happen, as a result, is that the veracity and credibility of the victim/witness is put on trial rather than the alleged actions and behavior of the accused.

That doesn't seem to happen the same way with other crimes. 

WF WF51, I'll respond with an abrreviation because that seems to be more on your reading level.

An old approach, bad writers have been using it forever. "I'm not incoherent. You aren't intelligent enough to understand me and my brilliance." Sorry. Your manuscript was rejected. 

Andrew Ricewrote:

Yes, AND... people committing these acts know that even when "caught" perpetrators are rarely prosecuted. I used to do pro bono work for a rape treatment center that provided support to victims who were considering reporting crimes and, later, who were dealing with the judicial and law enforcement systems as a witness and victim. What the system puts them through is brutal. Prosecutors don't like to bring cases they can't win. Defense attorneys, of course, have a duty to their clients to attempt to create a "reasonable doubt" that the crime occurred. What tends to happen, as a result, is that the veracity and credibility of the victim/witness is put on trial rather than the alleged actions and behavior of the accused.

That doesn't seem to happen the same way with other crimes. 

While not disputing the added trauma that going through the legal system puts on victims of sexual assault and how that often results in them not wishing to proceed, but as to your last point, the "veracity and credibility of the victim/witness"  is very often the focus of trials for many crimes, not just those involving sexual assault---most of the trials that I was involved with usually centered on such issues. And, as I hope you recall from our discussion regarding CB, in many jurisdictions, certain areas of potential cross-examination, most specifically a victim's sexual history, are, with certain very narrow and limited exceptions, now off-limits in trials of sexual assault crimes.

Edit to add as I have likely reached my post limit:

Please keep in mind, that when lawyers are questioning a victim or witness, it is based upon the information/version provided to us by our clients. Maybe sometimes they may seem far-fetched, but, only if we actually know them to be false, we are professionally required to proceed from that direction. But often, in the relatively small percentage of cases that actually go to trial ( the vast majority are resolved by pleas), the facts and evidence aren't clear and the client's account may well be the truthful one.

But, to your question, while the word 'consensual' may not be appropriate, in assault cases the question often is who was the actual aggressor, so in such a case we would be attacking the credibility of the version presented by the alleged assault victim attempting to show they were not being truthful as to what occurred--so pretty similar to consensual.
In a fraud case, again depending on our client's story, it might be the same--questioning the credibility of the complainant's version of what actually happened with the money.

I'll give one example of the latter---client was a bookkeeper for a small business, who allegedly stole a significant amount of money from the company. She  did acknowledge that she did 'cook the books', but said it was with the owner's knowledge and 'consent' as part of a bigger tax fraud that he was conducting, but then he set her up as the 'fall girl' when things appeared to be going south. Sounded pretty 'out there', but then through investigation and vigorous cross-examination, it became clear the guy was a 'bad actor' doing all sorts of improper shenanigans. I had him in the stand for over three days of tough cross-examination and was rewarded with 23 not guilty verdicts. I admit that I much preferred cross-examining him than a sexual assault victim. So, yeah, that was sort of a consent cross-examination on a fraud case.

Alan Rubinwrote:

While not disputing the added trauma that going through the legal system puts on victims of sexual assault and how that often results in them not wishing to proceed, as to your last point, the "veracity and credibility of the victim/witness"  is very often the focus of trials for many crimes, not just those involving sexual assault---most of the trials that I was involved with usually involved such issues. And, as I hope you recall from our discussion regarding CB, in many jurisdictions, certain areas of potential cross-examination, most specifically a victim's sexual history, are, with certain very narrow and limited exceptions, now off-limits in trials of sexual assault crimes.

Witnesses, yes. Victims, I have to disagree. How many times have you, as a defense attorney, raised in front of a jury whether getting beaten by someone in an assault was actually "consensual" on the part of the victim, or if having one's life savings stolen in a financial fraud was actual consensual on the part of the victim? Yet in sex crimes between adults that's the number ONE defense. We saw that in Barrett. He claimed that the charged victim had actually consented. And his attorneys attempted to make that case to the jury. 

Todd Berlier wrote:

I think an important distinction is that I’d assume people committing these acts do so under the belief that they weren't doing anything wrong.

That is a pretty far out thing to believe Todd. There are a lot of folks out there that don't give AF for sure and I believe they mostly all know the concept of what is right and good, they just aren't convinced that they will ever get caught.

I don’t know if my phone was spying on the recent back and forth in this thread or how the hell this popped up coincidentally on my YouTube but this will piss you off.  Talk about blaming the victim. Why am I not surprised it’s Florida. WTF  

https://youtu.be/inQycbIUrI4

Todd Berlier wrote:

I don't really have any idea the numbers as I haven't looked them up recently, but it is my understanding (and I should have been waaay more clear, so apologies) that the vast majority of sexual assaults are from people known to the victim and in the moment of the crime don't understand the harm they are causing. Two of the three victims I know were rectally raped during or after consensual sex. Police made no qualms saying they didn't have a chance at a conviction. The third was by a friends uncle when she was 14 and I won't tell the horrid details.

I believe a very small number of rapists are the kind stalking women unknown to them.

Sorry for any confusion.

The women known to them typically gives them more confidence they won't get in trouble , that is a huge problem and a parents biggest fear. I worry about both sides of it(we have daughters the same age)but honestly the one I worry about the most is the known kids who seem to get away with anything and possibly come from a mostly accepted as a "good" family. 

M Mwrote:

That is a pretty far out thing to believe Todd. There are a lot of folks out there that don't give AF for sure and I believe they mostly all know the concept of what is right and good, they just aren't convinced that they will ever get caught.

I think it’s more that it’s somewhere on the continuum of “I thought that was consent” to “no [person of the appropriate gender identity, sexual identity, other specifying characteristic] could possibly object to any sex act with me”. That’s not exculpatory, obviously, but rather points at the idea that rape is the final act in a long chain of men (mostly) not being made responsible for how their actions impact others. Put another way, it’s an indictment of the culture that created the rapist, alongside an indictment of the rapist themselves.

It’s entirely possible that a rapist does not recognize their actions as wrong, which is a real problem, and not one that will be solved within the judicial system.

Petsfed 00wrote:

it’s an indictment of the culture that created the rapist

I believe you're referring to Institutional Rapism

I was reading the IG post, some here, and remember the CB stuff. It’s amazing how circumspect people become when these charges are leveled. It’s amazing how people collapse around protecting the rights of the accused where they otherwise would not bother. It’s still a great time to be a predator in this country.

Mark Pilatewrote:

I don’t know if my phone was spying on the recent back and forth in this thread or how the hell this popped up coincidentally on my YouTube but this will piss you off.  Talk about blaming the victim. Why am I not surprised it’s Florida. WTF  

https://youtu.be/inQycbIUrI4

That’s pretty funny - not the content or current subject but the “coincidence”

A friend’s SO was once gossiping with a sib about The Kardashians. This was in their Google-fied home. After a bit of this, Siri spoke up and said “Cheating is not a crime.” My friend was instructed to trim down to just one room Google-fied.