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My ex-girlfriend wrote a blog post similar to this one, accusing me of sexual assault. I volunteered to take a police polygraph test, hired a lawyer and initiat

• sneak 13y ago
  Unfortunately, private citizens cannot initiate criminal trials, and most police do not take reports of sexual assault very seriously, if indeed they do anything at all.
  • hawkharris 13y ago
    That's right. I didn't mean to imply that citizens can initiate it on their own, but the author should at least try to press charges. The definition of sexual assault / rape varies by state. In any case, I don't think vigilante justice by blog post is an appropriate solution.
    • steveklabnik 13y ago
      Can you explain to me how posting a factual account of a situation is 'vigilante justice'?
      • barrkel 13y ago
        The post accuses someone by name with some fairly emotive acts. Enough to have repurcussions on the other person's life. That seems like an attempt at amateur justice to me. In my country, the post would be grounds for libel if she can't prove it in court.
        • throwaway86 13y ago
          Imagine if the United States adopted the legal structure around the reporting of accusations in Britain. Nancy Grace would be out of a job overnight, and perhaps we'd see more successful libel verdicts. To explain: the media cannot report on an accusation until the accused is convicted, as I understand it, though I'm not British and not familiar with the very probable nuances that exist.
        • seszett 13y ago
          In mine, it would be grounds for libel most likely even if she can prove it in court, as far as I understand law. Or rather, the point is that she can't prove it fast enough for it not be libel (proof has to be produced within ten days, and in this case, proof would be a judgement against the guy). And I have to say that seems perfectly reasonable to me, as public accusations outside the justice system are something I really disapprove of.
          • epochwolf 13y ago
            In the US if she's telling the truth, there is no case for libel.
      • Dalkore 13y ago
        Factual, are we 100% certain? If you are going to attached these type of title to this person, we had better be damn certain. This is why we have a legal system and not mob rule based on emotions. If he is guilty then so be it but until we know for sure, we should hold judgement. Also she mentions at the beginning that she is just writing this to get it out there, sounds rushed.
    • hawkharris 13y ago
      steveklabnik, When someone publishes your name in a blog post concerning sexual assault, scores of people harass you in comments, emails and sometimes phone calls. They take it into their own hands to administer justice. You become concerned that employers, friends and family members will see the accusation if they search for your name. So, if you're angry at someone, you can achieve a form of vigilante justice by publishing negative information about them and sharing it with many people - even if your account appears to be factual and not sensational. You'll see people attempting to take justice into their own hands if you look at the comments below the author's post.
      • steveklabnik 13y ago
        Those who have been long-time HN news commentators may remember that I myself was on the receiving end of a Hacker News and Reddit 'lynch mob' for a mistake I made. It was terrible for me. Yet, I also made someone else feel terrible. Mistakes get made. I have to deal with remembering that for the rest of my life. I think about it often. Yet, equivocating "harass you in comments, emails, and sometimes phone calls" with being sexually assaulted is... yeah. Note that Joe has specifically said that he's radio silence on this issue. No apologies, no rebuttal, no his side of the story.
        • makomk 13y ago
          > Yet, equivocating "harass you in comments, emails, and sometimes phone calls" with being sexually assaulted is... yeah. Except if the person being harassed is female, in which case of course they're equivalent and you're a rape apologist if you disagree.
      • codahale 13y ago
        When someone publishes your name in a blog post concerning sexual assault, scores of people harass you in comments, emails and sometimes phone calls. You mean like what happens to women when they talk about sexism in our industry? You mean like what people are doing to Justine right now? Yes, that would be bad.
    • throwaway86 13y ago
      And yet frighteningly effective; here's an anecdote that includes a thought exercise to consider, and let me preface the thought exercise by making clear that I am not accusing anyone of lying in the situation linked here and intentionally have no opinion on it, for reasons that shall become clear. (In fact, I wish I hadn't read it.) Let's introduce Bob (not his real name). Bob is a mid-level engineering manager. Single, handsome, mid-30s. Bob is a friend of mine from school and I've known him for 17 years. At work, he has a handful of direct reports, all developers. One of these reports is Ashley (not her real name). The entire time Ashley has reported to Bob, she never made any display of personal affectation, never so much as having a cigarette with Bob on a break. Early this year, Ashley and Bob represented the company at a conference. Bob was having a drink at the hotel bar when Ashley materialized and asked to join him. Bob agreed, and they were alone in a dark corner of the bar for more than a couple hours. Bob tells me that the conversation was light, cheerful, and fun. At the end of the evening, Bob walked Ashley back to her room, said good night, and went back to his room. That's what Bob told me happened. I pressed him; "are you being truthful with me?" He indicated that he was, and I believe him because I've known him for the better part of my adult life. If he needed to maintain a lie publicly, he would have confided it to me. He has no reason to lie to me and I can safely say that he never has. Ashley isn't the best employee and knew it. Bob was, in fact, preparing to hit Ashley with negative performance, which would have prevented transfer and a bunch of whole other terrible things. It just so happens that this conference was two weeks before her annual review, which is salient because Ashley attempted to blackmail Bob. She showed him a Tumblr draft that claimed that Bob had attempted to rape her when he walked her back to her hotel room, in enough detail to sell the story. The implication was clear: be good to me on my review or I publish this. Bob confided this to me because he had no fucking idea of what to do. He had no proof either way, and as the alleged victim would be a report, things would look bad if he attempted to terminate her. And then, if he did, she'd potentially revise the draft to make it look like Bob fired her to cover up his alleged misdeeds. This happened in the last six months, and I am legally prohibited from knowing how it resolved. Bob cannot tell me, but he still has his job and a career, so the shoe hasn't dropped yet. Clearly, Ashley is quite aware that when stories like this are published on Hacker News or other media, a sweeping majority of the audience will immediately interpret what is presented as hard fact. In this case, there are two witnesses, but in others there have not been. Bob's ordeal gave me a thought exercise and made me think of all the times I've been alone with people at conferences: if someone wrote this exact post and substituted all the details for me, instead, what recourse would I have as the accused? The answer is none. Even walking away with the lesson of "don't be alone with someone" doesn't really help, because by the time witnesses step forward to defend you and say a blog post is completely fabricated, it's already bounced off the moon and come back. And yes, I realize sociopaths like Ashley are rare. But given how demonstrably effective blogging like this is, do you really think they will remain rare in the long-term? The only solution to this is to be suspicious of everything you read that is one-sided. Be suspicious of my anecdote, even; I could be making it up, for all you know. The thought underlying it, that the Internet's talent for rushing to conclusions on one side of a story is extremely dangerous (Sunil Tripathi, anyone?), is the important part of the story that I want to convey. Imagine if this blog post appeared on the Internet with your name and a conference you've been to substituted in. As Twain said, how long would it take you to get your boots on? Would you ever recover from that kind of damage? We can't foster this environment in our industry, and I'm saddened that it just continues to get worse. It's going to get worse because time after time after time, the Internet makes clear that understanding both sides of a story is a historical artifact, and events of the future will be determined by who blogs about them first. Scary shit. Imagine sharing a name with the accused, even! My mom just got denied an apartment because a woman of a different race shares her name and has a felony conviction. And that's a government system, not a social network. A pile of folks have made clear, too, especially some well-known names in the industry that are already all over this thread, that if you express the opinion that I just did you are enabling rapists to completely gut our industry, blaming and/or silencing victims, and so forth. I made the mistake once of sharing this opinion in another high-visibility disclosure similar to this one, the thrust of which was "let's not blog about someone's guilt or innocence on any topic until they've been convicted of something regardless of gender or offense," and I was directly accused of being a rape apologist because of the context. The only reason I'm even sharing this opinion is because I'm on a throwaway, but my identity is fairly deducible if you follow my history. Another commenter was right: there is really no talking about this. It really chills me on the industry, to be entirely honest, and I've had exiting the industry on my mind since the PyCon incident involving dongles.
    • Larrikin 13y ago
      I think ideally the community as a whole should simply ignore stories like this until they are proven or disproved in a court of law. All they do is get the community in an uproar and don't actually solve anything except making the life of both people worse. Until that both people should be given the benefit of the doubt
  • ishener 13y ago
    In most legal systems there is also a civil procedure against sexual (or any other) assault
• justin66 13y ago
  > I applaud the author for sharing her experiences. This post is eloquent and courageous. Having said that, a blog post is not the right place to seek justice. In fact, the information here may interfere with a trial. I encourage her to delete this post and initiate a criminal trial in order to hold the perpetrator accountable. It's pretty clear to me that the author is not interested in seeking justice and is more interested in letting people know what the heck happened to her. She's not obligated to press charges, no matter how much you think she should. It is absolutely not your call. > I volunteered to take a police polygraph test, hired a lawyer and initiated a libel suit. Unless the woman involved was lying about having two supportive eyewitnesses (and those guys are lying about BEING eyewitnesses on their blogs) this is woefully beside the point. I'm sorry for what happened to you but I wonder why you brought it up.
  • steveklabnik 13y ago
    > It's pretty clear to me that the author is not interested in seeking justice and is more interested in letting people know what the heck happened to her. For those playing along at home, Justine raised this issue almost two weeks ago, but the deluge of people saying "I need more details before I believe you" forced her to actually post this. She didn't even want to be this explicit about it, but the community made her. She refers to this at the end of the post: > I’m extremely upset I had to write this post. That it wasn’t simply enough to finally, after 10 months have the courage to say Joe O’Brien sexually assaulted me. But if this is what has to happen this is what happens.
    • justin66 13y ago
      Thanks. That's sad.
  • Dalkore 13y ago
    She has pressed charges via the internet. Many of the people on here have accepted judgement and this will stick with Joe for ever. Yes Joe made a very bad choice and was he being malicious by moving forward in his advance KNOWING Justine did not want any part of it. The looks to be a hard argument to honestly make. I am not convinced by her own account. Intent matters and I doubt Joe intended to sexually assault one of his own employees in front of his other employees in a bar. That is the real question here.
• conformal 13y ago
  posting your personal account of someone's crimes against you in a blog is not a fair or reasonable way to deal with what is clearly a very serious matter. it sounds like what happened was awful and these types of incidents are common in many predominantly male professions, e.g. law, finance. i was recently seriously harassed and more-or-less sexually assaulted by an acquaintance's wife at a wedding in a swimming pool. as a man, i doubt that any police department would take me seriously if i wanted to press charges. this does not mean that i am going to take to the internet and post my account of it. nobody wins by doing this. this trend of women posting their account of a sexual assault online is alarming because of what hawkharris describes: it could be false and then is plastered all over the net, irrevocably damaging the reputation of the accused.
  • justin66 13y ago
    > this trend of women posting their account of a sexual assault online is alarming because of what hawkharris describes: it could be false and then is plastered all over the net, irrevocably damaging the reputation of the accused. Here is something I find curious: you are one of many commenters here literally ignoring the fact that Justine has witnesses to what happened and bringing up the hypothetical, irrelevant possibility that such an accusation could be made falsely. What gives?
    • throwaway9848 13y ago
      And here is one of those eyewitnesses accounts - http://blog.matt-darby.com/essays/i-am-the-other-developer http://blog.matt-darby.com/essays/i-am-the-other-developer
    • jimzvz 13y ago
      Both of the witnesses' testimonies seem to be subjective: "It was getting creepy, but Justine didn't move, or slap him. She was laughing..."[1]; "The executive's posture and actions aggressive; "no" was not a possibility."[2] Their stories also don't corroborate: "Fast forward to (from what I remember), around 1am. "[1]; "It was slightly before midnight..."[2] I think it is good that there are witnesses but it is not as simple as saying that because there are, Justine's version of events is correct. We don't know exactly what they saw and heard, how much of their versions are based on actual events or the aftermath or their relationships with the involved. That is why it is still important to maintain innocence of the accused until proven guilty. "Here is something I find curious: you are one of many commenters here...bringing up the hypothetical, irrelevant possibility that such an accusation could be made falsely" It certainly isn't irrelevant to the accused. His reputation and in fact his entire life is at stake. A few blog posts do not constitute proof. [1] - http://blog.matt-darby.com/essays/i-am-the-other-developer http://blog.matt-darby.com/essays/i-am-the-other-developer [2] - http://theotherzach.com/writes/2013/10/9/events http://theotherzach.com/writes/2013/10/9/events