The General US Politics Thread

x5 Properly funding those type of programs would also be a good start, since there's a huge backlog of unprocessed ones and chronic shortage of nurses trained to use them.

Edited by megaeliz on Oct 11th 2018 at 8:40:35 AM

You know, this reminds me of how difficult it is to prove accusations of adultery in an Islamic court — you need at least four people who personally and clearly witnessed the accused people committing the act of genital penetration.

Edited by MarqFJA on Oct 11th 2018 at 3:41:34 PM

The same argument can be made, though, oh, my cousin said I could have their TV, this was consensual. In a lot of rape cases? The issue isn’t whether or not sex happened, it’s whether or not everybody was on board with that happening.

Exactly. A LOT of cases are solved on "he said, she said" and as long as the witness is considered believable, they are usually believed. It is only in rape cases in which suddenly there is a basic assumption that the witness is lying.

Rape cases are one of the only ones in which the victim is put on trial too.

x6 Rape is a different kind of crime than burglary or murder. Those cases will always have evidence showing the actual commission of the crime, which doesn’t always exist with rape.

I worked in law enforcement for close to a decade, and in my experience any kind of pure one witness against another case was either thrown out or settled out of court.

In the case of rape, better rape kits and procedure would really help. Failing to perform a kit on a rape victim should be considered tampering with evidence at the very least as well.

Rape kits aren’t a magic bullet though. They can have limited effectiveness in obtaining a conviction, and even if you get one done, it may get thrown out by bad cops along with your case.

Note: the rape kit being thrown out within 30 days of the rape is in the full complaint, not the AP article. Read pages 28-34 if you’ve ever wondered why most women don’t go to the police.

Fixed that for you.

from what I’ve read, the biggest problem with them, is that a lot of them actually never get tested at all. When a concerted effort is made to fund and process them, it actually proves to be reasonably effective for identifying serial assailants in particular .

Edited by megaeliz on Oct 11th 2018 at 10:19:51 AM

They’re not a magic bullet, but they’re helpful. Having one makes a case that much more solid.

Kits getting thrown out is a procedural issue, since the kits typically aren’t treated with the care they should be. I knew some deputies who didn’t even consider them evidence.

Edited by archonspeaks on Oct 11th 2018 at 7:44:36 AM

The main problem is that even if there is a rape kit, the male can still insist that the sex was consensual. Especially if it is the husband or boyfriend (which is the case in a huge percentage of rape cases). Unless the victim is physically hurt, it is still a "he said she said" scenario. The only function a rape kit seems to have is that the attacker can claim that the victim would have done one if he or she is telling the truth. Never mind that taking a rape kit is pretty much like getting violated a second time and a lot of woman need time to decide if they want to come forward or not.

A rape kit makes sense when the woman doesn't know who the attacker is. Then it can help finding predator. If the woman already knows, though, it is next to useless.

Another thing worth pointing out is that if you claim you were mugged, you'll usually get a sympathetic response where people will empathize with you. If you claim you were raped on the other hand, people will sympathize with the person who assaulted you. It's fucked up.

Um, we have a Womens' Issues thread for discussion about rape laws and enforcement. It is not a topic speicifc to the US hence not appropriate for this topic.

Which is ironic since a mugger could be more sympathetic in the "desperately poor due to growing up in a shithole" sense.

It's certainly not helpful in this case that criminal prosecution requires a high standard of evidence, but it also doesn't seem like a good idea to lower the requirement and combine it with a situation it can be impossible to tell a crime had been committed at all. It's problematic.

x5 A rape kit can be used to determine degree of injury, which can be helpful to the prosecution. That said, yeah, many women choose not to get them to begin with.

Edited by archonspeaks on Oct 11th 2018 at 7:51:45 AM

Which only leads to woman not getting believed if they are not injured enough. Honestly, this is helpful if a woman actually got hurt badly during the assault, but in a lot of rape cases the victim is forced to participate in order to limit injuries. Only to then being told that it didn't struggle enough.

Even in cases where the kit doesn’t really indicate anything it can lend a sense of “officialness” to the case, as well as identify the suspect beyond any reasonable doubt, which an effective prosecutor will absolutely capitalize on.

If the woman is okay with having one done, it should be done, and it should be handled the way any physical evidence would be handled. Having one can only help the prosecution.

Edit: copy that, we’ll move the discussion.

Edited by archonspeaks on Oct 11th 2018 at 7:56:40 AM

Yes, it's a problem. Criminal cases need to presume innocence and be proved beyond a reasonable doubt. When the starting point is "no proof the crime is committed" it's a hard standard to reach.

Will do.

Edited by RainehDaze on Oct 11th 2018 at 3:56:52 PM

Sure. But beforehand, this has to be spread around as much as possible:

Along with the "silly mother" story it really shows how ridiculous Trump acts about those issues, which might be the best medicine to NOT get suckered into his crazy logic.

Here's something else on my mind. How do online communities that discuss political things- well, usually smaller communities, turn into echo chambers? A lot of the weird alt-right that came to light festered in a few online communities, in small groups. Where do these trends come from? What makes an online board tend towards one side or the other? What can a community do to prevent stagnation?

Edited by Friendperson on Oct 11th 2018 at 9:06:34 AM

Trump was on another trainwreck interview with Fox and Friends this morning.

He ranted for about an hour, and the the hosts start to look desperate to shut him up.

Apparently, thinks that Devin Nunes should get a Medal of Honor. (Apparently parroting Hanity.)

Edited by megaeliz on Oct 11th 2018 at 12:11:02 PM

Whichever side is more prevalent will start dogpiling and flaming any member that has opposing viewpoints, eventually driving them away. The way to prevent this is to have mods be as unbiased as possible and shut down such flaming in order to facilitate more open and evenhanded discussion.

It's more prevalent for this to happen with the altright since the kind of attitude and character associated with them has no moral qualms or intent to honest debate and will sink to disgusting lows to drive off dissenters.

Edited by danime91 on Oct 11th 2018 at 9:15:31 AM

A lot of the political issues are more personal and more existential in their impact. Debating the generally unsexy bread-and-butter of government and management is something only the truest wonks do, and it's a lot easier to disagree without disagreement coming across as personal opposition. Like, someone can disagree with me about taxes and I'll be fine with it, but if they start talking in racist buzzwords, I'll take that a lot more personally, as both a liberal and as a brown man. Now multiply that dynamic across an entire community.

And even with that considered, politically homogeneous groups — like, say, us, where we have a general pro-Democrat, center-left consensus on the Politics thread — we disagree on the more granular stuff, because no one here is making the inflammatory, racist or misogynist arguments. Those guys got rightfully banned a long time ago.