[duxup]

Generally the existing legal system is a very difficult path.

Having said that I do agree with you (and thus my other comment) that these informal efforts by people who understandably are not qualified to deal with these things, are a mess too, and I'm not at all sure how they could possibly get it right often enough.

US Universities in their effort to make the path less difficult have demonstrated that just pressing your foot down on the balance of justice is not justice.

[dvt]

> Generally the existing legal system is a very difficult path.

Yeah, it's a difficult path because of pesky things like evidentiary rules, burden of proof, and presumption of innocence. False accusations happen, especially in mega-competitive spaces like sports/chess competitions. I'm not sure why so many folks believe that destroying someone's livelihood, career, and reputation is ethically permissible based simply on a paragraph with zero transparency.

Hypothetically, if you were falsely accused, wouldn't you want a fair trial?

[runako]

> Hypothetically, if you were falsely accused, wouldn't you want a fair trial?

You can't force an accuser to file a criminal complaint. The mechanism available in this case is a defamation civil suit.

[lettergram]

> Generally the existing legal system is a very difficult path

And for good reason, the current legal system assumes innocent until proven guilty, beyond a reasonable doubt (for criminal cases). Civil cases have a lower burden of proof.

These protections are there for a reason. Everyone has likely been accused of things they didn’t do. We shouldn’t assume anyone’s word without a decent amount of certainty.

sexual “misconduct” is even more insidious, because most people making the accusations are doing so long-after the fact, often have outside motivation for making claims AND likely have too low of a burden for a civil or criminal case… In other words, feel free to make claims, but without proof it’s hard to justify ruining someone’s life.

[jasonlotito]

> Everyone has likely been accused of things they didn’t do.

To this degree? No. This is not likely.

> We shouldn’t assume anyone’s word without a decent amount of certainty.

Several claims from individuals with corroborating evidence in this case.

> most people making the accusations are doing so long-after the fact, often have outside motivation for making claims

Citation needed. I need evidence that most people making accusations are doing so "long after the fact" AND have motives outside the offending incident to do so.

On a side note: Codes of Conduct and Guidelines have existed long before the modern era. Private entities are free to handle these however they want, and suggesting they leave everything to the courts is a new and unique perspective that needs more backing to suggest it would be a better system.

[RangerScience]

(to be clear, I'm pretty sure I agree with you @jasonlotito)

> long after... motives after

AFAIK/IME this actually does end up being true, but why it's true matters -

1) It can take a long time for someone to realize what they've been through, and it can take even longer for them to get to the point where they can talk about it.

2) A lot of folks seem to take the stance that they don't want to deal with everything involved in bringing up what happened to them until they start seeing it happen to others.

[lettergram]

> Several claims from individuals with corroborating evidence in this case.

Claims are not evidence, can anyone see the claims?

Can I see the rebuttal from the accused?

The point I’m making is this is not “justice” it’s “injustice” because it’s not actually adjudicating a dispute. What’s happening here isn’t a “trial”.

Here’s what I understand from the article — a group of people (who likely know each other), accused a high profile competitor of sexual misconduct, 4 years after the incident. There appears to be no police report nor any other legal action.

That’s it… so to me it’s hard to say “yeah let’s ban someone and ruin his name!” Because quite frankly, I don’t see any evidence. Note: there could be evidence! I just don’t see it presented here.

[wuiheerfoj]

Testimony is evidence, just not _conclusive_ evidence.

The reality is for such cases there’s basically never going to be conclusive evidence; I think that’s why they cause such a divide amongst people