6 ms·

This has the side-effect that real victims are put off from filing charges, which is generally thought to be not a good thing.

notgood 9y ago
False accusations are the ones proven to be false; and not every single one that couldn't be confirmed by court or by a jury.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  Which suggests an obvious course of action: - true accusation - punish the perpetrator - false accusation - punish the accuser - unable to confirm either way - nothing happens I still don't understand why some people have so much trouble with this concept and want to bias towards "guilty until proven innocent" thinking. And yes, I know that in civil cases in the US, it's "preponderance of the evidence" and not "presumption of innocence". It still means you should get punished only if your deed is proven (in Bayesian sense) more likely to be true than false.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - adekok 9y ago
    > I still don't understand why some people have so much trouble with this concept and want to bias towards "guilty until proven innocent" thinking. Witch hunts are exciting. It's also empowering to believe that you're one of the "good guys", going after those dastardly "bad guys". TBH, it's the same thinking behind any pogrom. "Those people" are rich, so breaking in and stealing everything is on the side of justice. "Those people" have secret cabals which rule the world, so it's OK to abuse and attack any individual you see. The people with that attitude aren't aware of history. That attitude has been tried before in many countries. The end result is genocide. It doesn't start out that way. But the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
  - peteretep 9y ago
    > suggests an obvious > course of action Do you not think people already get jailed for claims that are probably false?
    - Turing_Machine 9y ago
      Almost never. It does happen, but it's so rare that it generally makes headlines when it does.
      - bryanlarsen 9y ago
        The false conviction rate is estimated to be >4%. http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2014/04/28/how-many-people-are-wrongly-convicted-researchers-do-the-math/ http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2014/04/28/how-many-...
        Turing_Machine 9y ago
        That's 4% for people who are sentenced to death. The rate for those sentenced for lesser crimes is likely much higher, due to plea bargaining ("plead guilty to petty theft or we'll charge you with grand theft"). That's not really what we're talking about here, though. We're talking about the rate of conviction of those who are proven conclusively to have lied resulting in someone else being convicted of a crime. Generally such people receive no consequences at all. For instance, as far as I know the woman in this case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Rape_on_Campus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Rape_on_Campus has not been charged with anything, despite falsely accusing an entire fraternity house of rape.
  - michaelt 9y ago
    I still don't understand why some people have so much trouble with this concept Having sex with independent third-party witnesses or video recording remains a minority activity. So any attacker with half a brain can ensure it's the victim's word against theirs. From there it's a simple question of our willingness to let the guilty go free vs. our willingness to see the innocent wrongly punished. This is known as Blackstone's Ratio [1] and it dates to the 1760s. Needless to say, there's a certain political equilibrium here; if you'll let off 1000 guilty people to avoid 1 wrongful conviction, you'll have a thousand victims and their families campaigning for tougher punishments for every 1 wrongfully convicted person campaigning in the opposite direction. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_formulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_formulation
TeMPOraL 9y ago
It cuts both ways. Bias toward cracking down on false accusations, and real victims might be afraid to file charges. Bias toward assuming accusations are always accurate, and you enable weaponizing them - which is the whole point of this story. There needs to be a balance here. Also, note - you mention filing charges. But the problem with sexual harassment cases is, they don't even get to that level. It's usually enough to "file charges" on a blog and post it to Twitter to do 90% of damage.
- peteretep 9y ago
  > It cuts both ways Yes, so the onus is on the person suggesting changes to the current balance is proving that another balance would be better.
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    Exactly. Note that it's the social media outrage about (alleged) sexual harassment cases that is trying to change the current balance.
adekok 9y ago
So we shouldn't prosecute insurance fraud, because it will put off people who file real claims? Nonsense. Corrupting the justice system should be punished to the fullest extent of the law. How can you have justice when the justice system goes along willingly with abuse? There are cases where claimants are proven beyond any doubt to have lied. Lied knowingly, egregiously, and with malice aforethought. The idea that those people should be let off with a polite smile of "we don't want to put off the real victims" is horrific.
- peteretep 9y ago
  You lost me at equating bringing an insurance claim with bringing sexual assault charges. I don't believe that axiom holds.
  - adekok 9y ago
    Explain why. Be specific. I think the misunderstanding is that you think I'm saying insurance claims are equal in scope to sexual assault. That is (TBH) ridiculous. To the extent of deliberate blindness. What I'm actually doing is making a statement about the fraudsters. Not the victims. FALSE sexual assault charges do not involve sexual assault. False sexual assault charges do not have real victims. So false sexual assault charges are, in fact, entirely equivalent to false insurance claims. Both are false. Both do not involve real victims. Your reaction comes across as an un-thinking knee-jerk "OMFG sexual assault is bad"... to the point where we can't have a rational discussion about anything related to the subject. Look, there are fraudsters. See "Jackie" at the University of Virginia. Or the Duke Lacrosse case. In both situations, "wishful thinking" people came damned close to lynching the accused, facts be damned. And in both cases, every single aspect of the claimants story turned out to be provably false. You have an implicit claim that sexual assault is somehow magical, and deserving of different standards than insurance fraud. All possible evidence shows that this attitude is not just wrong, it is actively dangerous. It denies reality. It denies justice. It hurts innocent people.
    - pyre 9y ago
      The issue that you're missing is that "sexual assault fraud" can be claimed in cases where there is actual sexual assault, but it is a he-said/she-said situation. That is where the "chilling-effect" comes in. Sexual assault cases are many times he-said/she-said situations, so any victim reporting runs the risk of getting accused of (and needing to defend themselves from) "sexual assault fraud" in addition to trying to pursue actual charges (where the defence will spend a lot of time trying to assault the victim's character, basically calling them a "slut" in open court).
spodek 9y ago
The man accused of sexual harassment is a real victim, if his accusation is correct. Why do people not see men as victims? His reputation could be ruined for the rest of his life, even if he is innocent. People take the law into their own hands and could physically hurt him as a result of a false accusation amid a system that disregards due process. This community -- Hacker News -- is considering creating a list to name people accused of harassment without due process -- in other words, a vigilante system that could lead to innocent people, generally men, being victimized like this man, a real victim.
- peteretep 9y ago
  > Why do people not see > men as victims? Why do you think they don't?
  - Lev1a 9y ago
    Because they're apparently sexist idiots like you who don't think men and women should be treated equally? They somehow got the notion stuck in their heads that men just can't be in the victim role when in reality it's not that rare for men to be in that position (Hint: It doesn't get reported because of the exact stigma mentioned above).
    - CWuestefeld 9y ago
      Down-voted for "idiots like you". Name calling does not add anything to the discussion.
  - spodek 9y ago
    You wrote elsewhere on this thread: > This has the side-effect that real victims are put off from filing charges, which is generally thought to be not a good thing. Well, this man appears to be a victim who is filing charges. You seem not to consider him a real victim. Don't we want victims such as him to defend themselves? As I understand your quote, you can answer your question better than I can: why didn't you consider him a victim? You may have other reasons not to consider him a victim than that he is male, but I'm just using your quote to illustrate. A quick search returned this page at the top -- http://www.clarkprosecutor.org/html/domviol/men.htm http://www.clarkprosecutor.org/html/domviol/men.htm. I don't know its credibility, only that it suggests a trend, cites many sources, took less than 1 minute to find, and there seemed plenty more such pages.
mcappleton 9y ago
The standard of evidence should be the same as that of any other crime - I.e. Innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. If you locked a person in a cage for 10 years, you would be considered a horrible person. It's no different if you get other people to do it for you. A truly false accusation is a terrible crime that must be punished like any other. But it must be proven false beyond reasonable doubt just like any other crime.
marcoperaza 9y ago
In order to be punished for a false accusation, prosecutors would have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you lied. If the prosecutor can prove that, you should have the book thrown at you. Making a false accusation is a very serious thing; it's an attack on someone else's life.

notgood 9y ago

False accusations are the ones proven to be false; and not every single one that couldn't be confirmed by court or by a jury.

TeMPOraL 9y ago
Which suggests an obvious course of action: - true accusation - punish the perpetrator - false accusation - punish the accuser - unable to confirm either way - nothing happens I still don't understand why some people have so much trouble with this concept and want to bias towards "guilty until proven innocent" thinking. And yes, I know that in civil cases in the US, it's "preponderance of the evidence" and not "presumption of innocence". It still means you should get punished only if your deed is proven (in Bayesian sense) more likely to be true than false.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- adekok 9y ago
  > I still don't understand why some people have so much trouble with this concept and want to bias towards "guilty until proven innocent" thinking. Witch hunts are exciting. It's also empowering to believe that you're one of the "good guys", going after those dastardly "bad guys". TBH, it's the same thinking behind any pogrom. "Those people" are rich, so breaking in and stealing everything is on the side of justice. "Those people" have secret cabals which rule the world, so it's OK to abuse and attack any individual you see. The people with that attitude aren't aware of history. That attitude has been tried before in many countries. The end result is genocide. It doesn't start out that way. But the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
- peteretep 9y ago
  > suggests an obvious > course of action Do you not think people already get jailed for claims that are probably false?
  - Turing_Machine 9y ago
    Almost never. It does happen, but it's so rare that it generally makes headlines when it does.
    - bryanlarsen 9y ago
      The false conviction rate is estimated to be >4%. http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2014/04/28/how-many-people-are-wrongly-convicted-researchers-do-the-math/ http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2014/04/28/how-many-...
      - Turing_Machine 9y ago
        That's 4% for people who are sentenced to death. The rate for those sentenced for lesser crimes is likely much higher, due to plea bargaining ("plead guilty to petty theft or we'll charge you with grand theft"). That's not really what we're talking about here, though. We're talking about the rate of conviction of those who are proven conclusively to have lied resulting in someone else being convicted of a crime. Generally such people receive no consequences at all. For instance, as far as I know the woman in this case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Rape_on_Campus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Rape_on_Campus has not been charged with anything, despite falsely accusing an entire fraternity house of rape.
- michaelt 9y ago
  I still don't understand why some people have so much trouble with this concept Having sex with independent third-party witnesses or video recording remains a minority activity. So any attacker with half a brain can ensure it's the victim's word against theirs. From there it's a simple question of our willingness to let the guilty go free vs. our willingness to see the innocent wrongly punished. This is known as Blackstone's Ratio [1] and it dates to the 1760s. Needless to say, there's a certain political equilibrium here; if you'll let off 1000 guilty people to avoid 1 wrongful conviction, you'll have a thousand victims and their families campaigning for tougher punishments for every 1 wrongfully convicted person campaigning in the opposite direction. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_formulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_formulation

TeMPOraL 9y ago

It cuts both ways. Bias toward cracking down on false accusations, and real victims might be afraid to file charges. Bias toward assuming accusations are always accurate, and you enable weaponizing them - which is the whole point of this story. There needs to be a balance here. Also, note - you mention filing charges. But the problem with sexual harassment cases is, they don't even get to that level. It's usually enough to "file charges" on a blog and post it to Twitter to do 90% of damage.

peteretep 9y ago
> It cuts both ways Yes, so the onus is on the person suggesting changes to the current balance is proving that another balance would be better.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  Exactly. Note that it's the social media outrage about (alleged) sexual harassment cases that is trying to change the current balance.

adekok 9y ago

So we shouldn't prosecute insurance fraud, because it will put off people who file real claims? Nonsense. Corrupting the justice system should be punished to the fullest extent of the law. How can you have justice when the justice system goes along willingly with abuse? There are cases where claimants are proven beyond any doubt to have lied. Lied knowingly, egregiously, and with malice aforethought. The idea that those people should be let off with a polite smile of "we don't want to put off the real victims" is horrific.

peteretep 9y ago
You lost me at equating bringing an insurance claim with bringing sexual assault charges. I don't believe that axiom holds.
- adekok 9y ago
  Explain why. Be specific. I think the misunderstanding is that you think I'm saying insurance claims are equal in scope to sexual assault. That is (TBH) ridiculous. To the extent of deliberate blindness. What I'm actually doing is making a statement about the fraudsters. Not the victims. FALSE sexual assault charges do not involve sexual assault. False sexual assault charges do not have real victims. So false sexual assault charges are, in fact, entirely equivalent to false insurance claims. Both are false. Both do not involve real victims. Your reaction comes across as an un-thinking knee-jerk "OMFG sexual assault is bad"... to the point where we can't have a rational discussion about anything related to the subject. Look, there are fraudsters. See "Jackie" at the University of Virginia. Or the Duke Lacrosse case. In both situations, "wishful thinking" people came damned close to lynching the accused, facts be damned. And in both cases, every single aspect of the claimants story turned out to be provably false. You have an implicit claim that sexual assault is somehow magical, and deserving of different standards than insurance fraud. All possible evidence shows that this attitude is not just wrong, it is actively dangerous. It denies reality. It denies justice. It hurts innocent people.
  - pyre 9y ago
    The issue that you're missing is that "sexual assault fraud" can be claimed in cases where there is actual sexual assault, but it is a he-said/she-said situation. That is where the "chilling-effect" comes in. Sexual assault cases are many times he-said/she-said situations, so any victim reporting runs the risk of getting accused of (and needing to defend themselves from) "sexual assault fraud" in addition to trying to pursue actual charges (where the defence will spend a lot of time trying to assault the victim's character, basically calling them a "slut" in open court).

spodek 9y ago

The man accused of sexual harassment is a real victim, if his accusation is correct. Why do people not see men as victims? His reputation could be ruined for the rest of his life, even if he is innocent. People take the law into their own hands and could physically hurt him as a result of a false accusation amid a system that disregards due process. This community -- Hacker News -- is considering creating a list to name people accused of harassment without due process -- in other words, a vigilante system that could lead to innocent people, generally men, being victimized like this man, a real victim.

peteretep 9y ago
> Why do people not see > men as victims? Why do you think they don't?
- Lev1a 9y ago
  Because they're apparently sexist idiots like you who don't think men and women should be treated equally? They somehow got the notion stuck in their heads that men just can't be in the victim role when in reality it's not that rare for men to be in that position (Hint: It doesn't get reported because of the exact stigma mentioned above).
  - CWuestefeld 9y ago
    Down-voted for "idiots like you". Name calling does not add anything to the discussion.
- spodek 9y ago
  You wrote elsewhere on this thread: > This has the side-effect that real victims are put off from filing charges, which is generally thought to be not a good thing. Well, this man appears to be a victim who is filing charges. You seem not to consider him a real victim. Don't we want victims such as him to defend themselves? As I understand your quote, you can answer your question better than I can: why didn't you consider him a victim? You may have other reasons not to consider him a victim than that he is male, but I'm just using your quote to illustrate. A quick search returned this page at the top -- http://www.clarkprosecutor.org/html/domviol/men.htm http://www.clarkprosecutor.org/html/domviol/men.htm. I don't know its credibility, only that it suggests a trend, cites many sources, took less than 1 minute to find, and there seemed plenty more such pages.

mcappleton 9y ago

The standard of evidence should be the same as that of any other crime - I.e. Innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. If you locked a person in a cage for 10 years, you would be considered a horrible person. It's no different if you get other people to do it for you. A truly false accusation is a terrible crime that must be punished like any other. But it must be proven false beyond reasonable doubt just like any other crime.

marcoperaza 9y ago

In order to be punished for a false accusation, prosecutors would have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you lied. If the prosecutor can prove that, you should have the book thrown at you. Making a false accusation is a very serious thing; it's an attack on someone else's life.