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It is a mistake to believe that moral panics regarding sexual assault never occur. That's precisely what the satanic (sexual) ritual abuse trials were. Because
by s_q_b 12y ago
It is a mistake to believe that moral panics regarding sexual assault never occur. That's precisely what the satanic (sexual) ritual abuse trials were.
Because the Department of Justice says that a female is one third more likely to be raped not attending college than on a college campus I'd say it is at least possible we're in the midst of a moral panic over sexual assaults on college campuses.
The lack of reliable data, which places the number of campus sexual assaults somewhere in the wildly varying range of .08% to 20% of the population, the pseudo-religious "with-us-or-against-us" mentality, the desire to see justice done extralegally rather than in a court, and the vitriolic shaming of dissenting voices all have the flavor of a moral panic.
The mob-based tribal thinking that "if he's been accused more than once, he must be guilty" is an inherent flaw in human reasoning, of which this program is simply a mathematical model.
Mathematically, the fatal flaw of the model is that it assumes all accusations are supported by evidence of an arbitrary positive weight, and that all accusations are independent. This is never the almost never the case in real accusations. Perhaps before dropping out of school he should read up on other misuses of statistics that have manipulated juries and ruined lives, like the famous "Prosecutor's Fallacy." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosecutor%27s_fallacy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosecutor%27s_fallacy, which quite literally lead to the death of British Solicitor Sally Clark.
What saddens me most is that some casual readers are now walking around with the incredibly mistaken assumption that it is mathematically sound to assume a person accused thrice is virtually certain to be guilty.
I don't say any of this to diminish the very real problem of sexual assault, but merely to point out that people are surrendering their rights and their reason to mob mentality.
That mentality is precisely what two thousand years of legal scholarship evolved to fight. And whether executed by silicon or scythe, mob mentality is wrong. And quite frankly it is frightening to watch.
- philwelch 12y agoI will agree that multiple accusations of sexual assault are unlikely to be independent. One of the biggest reasons victims come forward is when they realize that their rapist has raped other people in the past and will continue to rape other people in the future. Is there any such reason for false rape accusations to be joined? Moral panics very rarely involve people coming forward and accusing an individual person of attacking them. It's possible for one or two deranged nut jobs to go around saying that (eg) Bill Clinton raped them. Over a dozen people accusing someone like Bill Cosby who isn't widely hated the way Clinton was, and recounting their individual experiences? Is there any precedent for something like that happening?
- s_q_b 12y agoYes, many. See e.g. The McMartin Preschool Trial. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMartin_preschool_trial http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMartin_preschool_trial >"By spring of 1984, it was claimed that 360 children had been abused." All of these linked allegations later turned out to be complete fabrications, creations by the investigators invented out of whole cloth, and targeted against the same specific individuals. In fact false accusations from multiple individuals are a common police tactic. Perhaps the individual has slept with several others, and the encounters ended non-violently but non-amicably. Suddenly consensual encounters retroactively become remembered as non-consensual after questioning by investigators, the very purpose of which is to elicit accusations. As a representative at these hearings, and student advisor, I've witnessed this happen to students many times. See also the DSK trial, where a French author from years before brought charges that were similarly dismissed. The bandwagoning effect occurs regardless of whether the allegations are true or false. People want money, power, special treatment, and attention, and sadly, false allegations are often an easy mechanism used to get them. So yes, both false allegations and true allegations are unlikely to be made independently. Not to mention the truly crazy people who are completely uninvolved and will jump in for no discernible reason whatsoever, or in criminal cases CIs who are transformed into additional "victims" to secure convictions. This isn't a story of math to the rescue. It's a store of bad statistics and not paying enough attention in class, where they usually teach some variant of the prosecutor's fallacy, since this type of falsity comes up often enough to warrant consistent reinforcement that statistics aren't magic, and they can ruin people's lives.
- philwelch 12y agoWell children in specific are far easier to manipulate. As for DSK, I conceded the possibility of "one or two deranged nut jobs", which is pretty much all that happened in his case. Agreed that the statistics don't tie out.
- s_q_b 12y agoYeah, I'm debating off the top of my head. I've seen it happen enough, I'm sure there's a good exemplar case involving adults, but bandwagoning of false allegations is a very real phenomenon.