[solidsnack9000]

...if you believe that the accused is affirmatively innocent, you have to believe that the accused is guilty.

This is not strictly or even practically true, but you acknowledge that later. When the defendant prevails in a court case, we don’t turn around and lock up the plaintiff.

You go on to say:

...a world in which all who accuse people of sexual harassment are effectively guilty-until-proven-innocent in the court of public opinion isn’t a great world, either.

If you replace “sexual harassment” with any other accusation, do you still feel the same way? With regards to the flaw in human thinking you mention — do we have to work with it for all kinds of accusations, or is it specifically a problem for sexual harassment?

[geofft]

> If you replace “sexual harassment” with any other accusation, do you still feel the same way?

Yes, I do.

The reason I mention sexual harassment is that a lot of people are making accusations of sexual harassment. To believe that the accused are all innocent until I hear evidence otherwise until proven (i.e., to treat the accusations themselves and their consistency as having no information value) is to believe that all the accusers are lying. Very few people are making accusations of, say, piracy on the high seas, so I don't feel like I'm really believing that anyone is lying by holding the belief that piracy on the high seas is rare or that the average person is not guilty of piracy on the high seas.

There are a couple of other accusations I hear regularly. Some of them are things like "Police can murder citizens with impunity" and "The NSA is spying on us." I do think that those accusations should be heard and understood, and not dismissed in the court of public opinion on the grounds that the police and the NSA are innocent until proven guilty.

There are other accusations like "A pizza shop in DC is running a child-trafficking ring under its basement" or "Antifa poured concrete on Amtrak rails, causing the derailment earlier this week." For those I don't believe in holding the accusers guilty until proven innocent, either; a small amount of research can demonstrate to public opinion that the accusations are false on the merits and the accusers are guilty because of specific reasons. (Or, perhaps, the court of opinion can find that the accusers are generally people who make up stories, which still avoids applying a standard of guilty until proven innocent to similar accusations in general.)

[solidsnack9000]

...is to believe that all the accusers are lying.

For those I don't believe in holding the accusers guilty until proven innocent...

You've used this kind of phrasing a few times, but strictly speaking, not believing the accuser is not the same as accusing them of any crime -- being wrong is a not a crime.

It seems to me that you are saying, that practically speaking we either hold the accused guilty-until-proven-innocent, or we hold the accusers guilty-until-proven-innocent -- we have have to make a choice, in the absence of proof. Is my understanding correct?

[ggg9990]

False accusation is a particular problem for sex crimes because the legality of the act depends on consent.

You can't explain away a dead body saying "he asked me to murder him." But you can explain away evidence of sexual intercourse by saying "it was consensual."

[dragonwriter]

> False accusation is a particular problem for sex crimes because the legality of the act depends on consent.

That's true of criminal assaults in general; striking someone with their consent is usually not a crime.

> You can't explain away a dead body saying "he asked me to murder him."

You can in jurisdictions where assisted suicide is legal. And even where it's not, a combination of no intent to kill plus consent can render an act that otherwise would be murder (even with either of those factors alone) into a non-criminal.

Sexual assault isn't different because consent matters, it differs because juries are more sympathetic to the accused (at least, accused from certain backgrounds) when it comes to determining whether there is sufficient grounds to believe consent may have been present or to dismiss such a belief.

[solidsnack9000]

In the absence of evidence that indicates non-consent — signs of a struggle, injuries, presence of date rape drugs — evidence of sexual intercourse doesn’t need to be explained. Actually, even in the presence of clear evidence of non-consent, evidence of sexual intercourse doesn’t need to be explained — it’s the evidence that creates the impression of an assault that needs to be explained.

It seems wrong to take evidence of sexual intercourse alone, and a statement by a plaintiff claiming that the sexual intercourse was non-consensual, as a basis for a conviction. That amounts to just deciding to believe one side and not the other. If that what’s happening, why look for any evidence at all?