Totally off-topic, but I was a huge BSM fan in the 1970s (to the horror of my college roommate!). How in the hell did the two of them get put together for an evening’s performance? Was it put-all-the-non-white-people-together night, or something?
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I’m sure you can listen to Bill Cosby’s interview in Buffy Sainte-Marie: A Multimedia Life and find out.
That’s how rape is dealt with in most of the world. I mean, it might be a bit worse in America, but it’s hard to compare. I tried to do some googling and find conviction rates for rape by country. I found this graph, which shows how many of recorded rape offenses end up in a conviction in different countries:
Of course, that doesn’t take into account the rapes that are never even reported to police. This graph makes that point pretty clear:
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My jaw just dropped. Really, that’s just bizarre. That will have to be watched, clearly.
Thanks for the heads-up!
But wait! If we take the FBI rate of 8% false reporting, that totally gives a 0.0000000000000000000000000000001.2% chance that Cosby is innocent!
We have to consider that!
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What gets me is that Cosby hasn’t even denied anything. He’s hardly said anything at all, except to tell “jokes” and to try and discredit the women – but he hasn’t ACTUALLY addressed the allegations. So when I said “and that ONE man is telling the truth” – that wasn’t even correct.
It’s just that @Paul_Cyopick and people like him ASSUME he’s innocent – even without him denying anything, let alone actually talking about the events in general except to make “jokes” on stage – while assuming that the women coming forward are lying.
Women who speak out are considered to be lying. A man is assumed to be innocent, without even an attempt at defending himself. He’s just assumed to be innocent, while the women are assumed to be lying.
It’s disgusting. It’s sick.
Also, as an aside, keep in mind that the figure of 8% doesn’t necessarily mean 8% of all false allegations are false. It just means unfounded or unproved. Not necessarily false.
It is extremely difficult to assess the prevalence of false accusations. Not all jurisdictions have a distinct classification of false accusation, resulting in these cases being combined with other types of cases (e.g. where the accuser did not physically resist the suspect or sustain injuries) under headings such as "unfounded" or "unproved." There are many reasons other than falsity that can result in a rape case being closed as unfounded or unproven.
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It doesn’t matter what someone is accused of… great.
Let’s flip this around, then.
30 women have been accused of lying about a rape. Deliberately making up a false story either for attention or money. Seems pretty awful, doesn’t it?
But, luckily, unless you have evidence to prove this is true, you have zero reason to believe it, no?
So shouldn’t you by default believe them?
Unless you start off with the assumption that a male is the “default” position in any dispute of what happened, there’s no reason to take his side as a privileged position…
You could hold both ideas, but then you’d have to have to take the position that we should operate on the assumption that 30 people believe they were raped by Bill Cosby but that he didn’t do it, until we find proof one way or the other.
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I wonder if it’s a self-perpetuating cycle. Victims realize that justice is unlikely, and don’t want to endure the further humiliation of seeing the rapist walk away scot free, so the crime goes unreported.
Regarding the first graph you posted: I wonder what it means that conviction percentages have declined almost across the board from 1995 to 2003?
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Others have pointed out your ignorance of the value of eyewitness testimony, but I’m trying to understand how you conclude that the absence of what you believe is evidence automatically means Cosby is innocent. By your own argument both sides should be equally valid, but you seem to have a personal stake in jumping to the conclusion that Cosby’s accusers are all liars.
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That’s certainly a big part of it. Personally, I never reported my sexual assault - it was the last thing on mind at the time, especially since it happened in a foreign country. Rape really drains you physically and emotionally, and having to deal with police and court proceedings often just add to the trauma.
I honestly can’t say. It would seem as if rapists are being convicted less and less, and that rape is being taken less seriously. It honestly wouldn’t surprise me at all, even though I insistently keep believing in progress.
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I’m not sure how much coverage it’s getting in the US, but if you want an illustration of how seriously rape is taken, consider the case of Ched Evans, a soccer player and convicted rapist, who is still being given the benefit of the doubt by many within the sport, and the belief that he’s “served his time” (which he hasn’t, he’s out on licence and his sentence was a joke anyway) and should be allowed to return to his highly paid career, and that there’s something wrong with fans and sponsors indicating that they’ll sever all ties with their teams if they employ him.
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I’m pretty old, dude - two years to go till half a century - I know about all that stuff. Never thought he was that funny. And never watched the Cosby show in the 80’s - it was on at the same time as Magnum PI 
Perhaps his delivery is irritating to me, I don’t know.
If he had actually served his time then he should indeed be allowed to regain whatever employment he’s fit for —or gaol has no rehabilitative role whatsoever and is just a hole where society dumps its waste.
The issue should be more about whether the time/punishment was adequate and he received appropriate teaching, guidance and counselling to reduce the chance of him doing it again. If that isn’t the case, then public outcry is entirely appropriate.
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Plenty of people can’t return to their professions after sexual offence convictions. It’s worth noting that as someone on the sex offenders register, he wouldn’t be able to do any of the kids football/community work that football teams get involved with, if nothing else.
Almost nobody would stand a chance of getting re-employed by the people they worked for when they got sent down, but he did. Personally, I reckon he’s perfectly entitled to try to get work back in football, but I applaud the sponsors and fans who make it clear that they don’t want him at their club, as they are also entitled to do.
Like it or not, footballers are high profile public figures and have some obligations to act as role models. After his conviction, he could perhaps have done that, apologised, served his time, worked with charities afterwards, rehabilitate his reputation and eventually, perhaps, find his way back. But he has shown no contrition, his only regret was about his cheating on his partner, not the victim he raped. And his recent fauxpology wasn’t worth a damn.
But my point WRT this thread was more this sort of rape-denying ass-hattery:
Mark Lawrenson risks controversy by suggesting Ched Evans could be ‘victim’ on BBC Football Focus
He said: "It’s become a circus, almost, and I’m just saying from everything I’ve read this week sometimes you’re actually thinking is he [Evans] a victim. It’s just been madness.
Ched Evans: Steve Bruce questions rape conviction
“I might be upsetting people but there is a question of the rape and how he’s been convicted by a jury,” said Bruce.
"When you look at the evidence, it is there for appeal.
“It has divided opinion of course. When you look at the case in detail - and I don’t think most people have really, because they have just seen Ched Evans as a convicted rapist - but when you look at the case and the evidence then certainly Ched has got a case.”
Ched Evans: Gordon Taylor makes Hillsborough ‘comparison’
the Professional Footballers’ Association chief executive was asked about Evans’s insistence that he is innocent.
“He wouldn’t have been the first person to be found guilty, maintained their innocence and been proved right. We know what happened with Hillsborough,” Taylor told BBC Sport.
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Is it me? It seems that for a lot of people that Cosby is guilty because there have been so many women claiming rape? There has been no trials and yet the proletariat have decided that all these women are telling the truth because they have nothing to gain…other than their fifteen minutes or less in the bright glare of a media frenzy. The world has evolved into a place where if you were to win the lotto tomorrow, you would have past friends and family crawling out of the wood work to share in your bounty or at the very least, have their name associated with your newly found wealth!
Dear ladies and gentlemen - merely because someone (okay let’s way women because we as a society still find it difficult to imagine that men can be sexually abused) claims that they were sexually assaulted does not make it true. The Rolling Stone made the case for a “raped” college coed by a slew of fraternity brothers and somehow, because we cannot possibly conceive that women would accuse a man of rape without it being true because that would mean, illogically, that all women must be lying about sexual assault.
I don’t know whether Cosby is a serial rapist or not and neither do the arm chair psychologists who are damned certain that he is guilty. The point is, we have a media driven populace and that populace craves attention. Who in their widest dreams would have imagined twenty years ago that a young woman would gain fame, notoriety and $100 of millions dollars annually just because of her appearance in a porno? And just think about all the young girls trying to follow in her footsteps!
I welcome a trial. I welcome many trials of his many accusations. Of course, here, in some cases, the statute of limitations has run out. There will never be a trial, unless Cosby sues them for defamation of character, a tort for which truth is a valid defense. Here’s the thing, though… trials are for determining guilt in a court of law. As a matter of opinion, we DON’T have to wait until they’re actually proved guilty in a court of law for how we react to somebody, we can decide we don’t want to support them, or that we will provisionally believe one side or the other (and in cases like this, there is ALWAYS another side, provisionally believing Cosby is provisionally believing every one of his accusers is a horrible, evil liar… if it were one accuser, you might be comfortable making that call… but it kind of gets harder and harder the more people come forward).
I’m not sure your “well, there’s the fifteen minutes of fame” argument really holds up, though. Firstly, the fame is, at best, a mixed blessing. You get loads of people who love the guy calling you liars, and some are the really aggressive fans who’d phone you up at all hours of the night to scream at you, or egg your house, or whatever, and not much in return. Secondly… is there really a lot of fame associated with being the 31st person to claim Bill Cosby raped you? If fame is your goal, why not be the first person to accuse Mr. Rogers of raping you? Not only would he be NEW news, he’s dead, and can’t defend himself! (also, I haven’t looked him up, but I’m crossing my fingers somebody isn’t going to jump in and correct me with something awful that went under-the-radar for years just like these Cosby accusations). Or Brad Pitt. Or Miley Cyrus. THAT would get attention, if that is your goal. Of course, in those cases, it would be harder to prove you could have been… after all, these women all have some prior encounter with Cosby that at least makes it plausible they could make the accusation, and they might not have that with any of these other names… but that doesn’t explain why other, equally crazy-for-fame people aren’t jumping on them. But that kind of says something iffy though, that such a large number of people who’ve had alone time with Bill Cosby are also the kind who’d lie about something so abominable just for fame. If it was a lie, that kind of bears investigating just for how he could attract so many sociopathic liars compared to other famous people.
Yet, the thing is… a rapist… isn’t likely to rape just one person. I mean, really, this is a person who’s decided to commit one of the most atrocious acts you can, and you think that he’s just going to do it once. If you think of it like a staircase to hell, raping one person is being willing to a huge number of steps down from where most of us are, in order to get what you want. Raping another, in order to get what you want a second time… well, it’s still a step down, but it’s not as big a leap, especially when you’re already down there. If it was only one, you’d probably be saying “It’s only one woman making these allegations!”.
Of course. Just as, if I’m holding a gun over a dead body, and somebody says shot the man, it doesn’t mean I’m a murderer. But if fifty people said they say me shoot, well, then, that still doesn’t necessarily make it true, but it makes it a lot harder to discount. The balance of evidence weighs in.
Uh, what? I don’t know anybody who says that. And plenty of people don’t just conceive, but by default ASSUME that a woman accusing a man of rape is lying. But there are no universals, some accusers are false, some accused are actually rapists. Sometimes when we take sides we believe the wrong person. Your “we can’t believe a woman would lie because that would mean all women are lying” is just nonsensical, though. I literally can’t parse it.
We also have a populace of males who are aware that most rapes are never prosecuted, most rape accusers are discounted and attacked (by the way, you’re helping with this right now!), and most rapists get away with it.
Think of all the young men growing up knowing that, being aware that if they just took what they wanted, they’d suffer no consequences. I’m far more worried about that than about girls appearing in a porno of their own consent in a misguided attempt to get fame.
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Not in any way the point I was making.
What is this monolithic “proletariat” that has automatically concluded the women are telling the truth without considering any evidence or taking into consideration the possibility that the accusations might be false? For that matter how is it you’re so certain that the “proletariat” has come to this conclusion without giving careful consideration to circumstances?
Just because a person is willing to consider the possibility, given the available information, that Cosby’s accusers are telling the truth doesn’t mean that person has mentally tried and convicted the accused without benefit of a real trial. If you’d look carefully, rather than making sweeping generalizations, you might find that the “proletariat” contains such people.
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