Rape

A court's job is to determine guilt based off the evidence presented. A court's decision does not necessarily determine whether an event or crime actually took place. This ties in with "innocent till proven guilty". To accent this, I have taken part in a few mock trials and studies on this concept. In each one, one of the key points is bias and how it effects their choices. Many people don't realize that the stories and pleas of both sides are frames to put the evidence in context. They become so enamored with the one who sways them the most, to the point they downplay or outright ignore evidence putting their chosen side in a negative light. This also plays on the fact that people don't like to admit they are or could be wrong and will "dig in" to their decision. If you want a classic example of this, watch 12 Angry Men. (Its a good movie in its own right too) It doesn't matter who you think is telling the truth, it doesn't matter what the statistical likelihood of the event occurring is. The court is only to judge based off the presented evidence. Its hard for people to grasp this, its hard to think about criminals who escape justice due to lack of evidence. Yet, if we do not steadfastly maintain this standard it won't matter how many criminals we put away when you have inoccents standing right next to them. Bonus Info: I get a lot of stuff about consent and about dangers people face when it comes to sexual assault. For consent, I am a firm believer that you can revoke consent at any time prior to or during sex. However, if you wait till the next day/after the event I don't think you can say it was "rape" or "assault". As to saying that taking precautions when it comes to drinking, partying, going out, ect is part of some rape culture or toxic (insert gender here), I disagree. You can't control people who decide to do criminal acts onto others, what you can control is the level of difficulty they will have doing those acts to you. You should always look to your own personal safety. Responsible alcohol consumption, proper interaction with strangers, avoiding obvious hazardous places, having a plan to get home, ect. If I went to a party, got blackout drunk, took drinks from people I don't know, walk through a dark alleyway digging through my wallet, and wake up finding myself in some rando location missing my wallet and beat nearly to death then I have made a mistake. Yes, the people who potentially drugged me, beat me up, and robbed me are guilty and should be punished. On the flip side, I need to recognize how my behavior and lack of situational awareness got me into that position and identify steps to ensure it doesn't happen again. To repeat, bad guys should be punished, I should reevaluate my choices. This is not me saying that I should be punished for being a victim, just that I need to take that inward look. Another personal bit, I know people (male and even one female) that have been falsely accused. Almost immediately their lives started to denigrate. The accused was almost universally reviled and treated like a monster before even a report was finished. Luckily, all these people I know had solid evidence that left no question to their innocence. However, it was a hard road to recover from even with, in one case, video tapes showing them nowhere near where the crime took place.

That's the thing. Nobody is defending rape, we're standing against the idea that we need to take potential victims ONLY at their word with no other corroborating evidence. We can't do that because innocents WILL be thrown in jail under a system like that, and if they aren't they will still be reviled for something they didn't actually do. https://i.redd.it/yzon4n2i3op11.jpg

@yhavent: Absolutely those who have experienced it shouldn't be afraid to speak up. I'm not trying to say they shouldn't, I'm trying to stress that, as a victim of rape, they need to pull together more than JUST their own testimony. In this way the true monsters WILL be punished, not some random guy 10 years down the road because they felt like they never received justice in their own case. This comes off as vengeance to me, and vengeance is not justice. Again, my point is victims need to speak up immediately so solid cases can be made against said rapist. With evidence I advocate even the death sentence for extreme sexual abusers. I simply can't advocate for them to take their anger out on innocent men in the future.