The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Campus Kangaroo Courts

Posted on | January 26, 2015 | 78 Comments

Federal law trumps campus policy:

A lawsuit filed by an Amherst College student who argued the school unfairly held up his academic career over an old, unproven allegation of an on-campus rape has quietly settled.
According to records in U.S. District Court, the college recently reached a settlement with the “John Doe” but neither his lawyers nor school officials will discuss the terms of the agreement.
Doe filed the lawsuit last year after the college decided to revive a 2009 allegation a week before he was set to earn his diploma in 2014 — and after the college had disciplined him for excessive drinking and acting out sexually. His accuser, identified only as “Student A” in court records, said he complained to school officials at the time of his alleged encounter with Doe but never filed a formal complaint. In the meantime, Doe had taken a school-mandated, yearlong “medical withdrawal” from the college in his native South Africa. . . .

Using student disciplinary procedures to adjudicate charges of sexual assault simply won’t do. This case appears to involve a male-on-male accusation, which is unusual, but otherwise the case is quite typical, involving “excessive drinking” as a precipitating factor. And the overreaction factor is also obvious:

During a pretrial hearing last year, Doe’s lawyer, David P. Hoose, told a judge that Amherst College was letting negative publicity around its handling of a number of on-campus rape allegations unfairly drive their treatment of Doe.
“Amherst College has taken a beating in the national press for the last two years because of the way they’ve handled these types of allegations, and now with the benefit of hindsight and the beating that they’ve taken, they want to expiate all of their sins … over Mr. Doe’s body,” Hoose told U.S. District Judge Mark G. Mastroianni.
Amherst College remains among dozens of colleges under under investigation by the U.S. Department of Education for potential mishandling of sexual assault or harassment allegations.

Read the whole thing. Cases like this remind us why our Constitution has certain protections, such as the right to a speedy trial and no double jeopardy, for criminal defendants. Nobody wants criminals to go unpunished, but neither can we allow the law to become a weapon of abuse. “John Doe” in this case cooperated with the school’s policy, only to find himself retroactively punished five years later because activists have stoked a witch hunt.

Powerful emotions surrounding the issue of rape are being exploited by feminists, who have created a climate of hysteria and who terrorize their critics by defaming as “rape apologists” anyone who disagrees with them. (Really: George Will is “pro-rape”?) Christinia Hoff Sommers points out that the momentum behind this tsunami of “rape epidemic” rhetoric began with the media:

The frenzy over college sexual assault now sweeping the nation was triggered by a specific event.
In 2010, a small team of investigative journalists published a report revealing, so they claimed, an epidemic of college rape. The report was a jumble of highly selective reporting and dubious statistics, as we shall see. But the reporters spread the news far and wide and no one thought to question their accuracy. . . .
That year, reporters at National Public Radio teamed up with the left-leaning journalism organization Center for Public Integrity (CPI) to produce and promote a 104-page “investigative reporting series” (PDF) entitled “Sexual Assault on Campus: A Frustrating Search for Justice.” . . .

Read the whole thing. The dangers involved in this kind of hysteria are perhaps underappreciated by those too young to remember the McMartin Preschool case and the Wenatchee witch hunt.

(Hat-tip: Greg on Twitter.)

 

Category: Crime, Education, Feminism

Comments

78 Responses to “Campus Kangaroo Courts”

  1. Jeanette Victoria
    January 26th, 2015 @ 10:09 am

    Wow this really sounds like the hysteria that surrounded the McMartin case and the whole ritual abuse fiction. What a nightmare that was!

    Check out Diana Napolis AKA Curio my very first u hinged cyber-stalker who ended up in Patton Sate Hospital for the criminally insane. Funny how the current set of homo-fascists loons repeat some of her fiction.

  2. RS
    January 26th, 2015 @ 10:10 am

    The dangers involved in this kind of hysteria are perhaps underappreciated by those too young to remember the McMartin Preschool case and the Wenatchee witch hunt.

    Quite.

    I was cutting my “trial teeth” during that time and found myself appointed frequently to represent children or accused parents in civil proceedings involving alleged abuse. The parallels are, indeed, striking with the college rape hysteria.

    At the time mid ’80s to mid ’90s, in addition to criminal cases you reference, there was an explosion of civil actions created by skittish legislatures and overseen by state family service bureaucrats. Most these people cared not one wit about evidence. Rather, the mantra was “believe the child; better to punish the innocent than let a single guilty part go free.” It was like something out of Kafka.

    There were star chambers formed where disclosure of due process violations in the press were defined as criminal acts “to protect the child victims.” Numerous “experts” made millions testifying about how children never lie or how the most bizarre allegations carried with some “hidden truth.” It was the nativity of the “fake but accurate” meme.

    I have preserved a deposition of a doctor who told me–under oath–that physical evidence of assault is evidence that a child was abused. Fair enough. In the next sentence, he said absence of physical evidence in conformance with the allegations was also evidence of abuse and justified removing the child from contact with the alleged perpetrator.

    It got so bad, the term “SAID Syndrome” was coined, i.e. “Sexual Abuse In Divorce,” where every father was deemed to be a potential sexual abuser of children. Changing a diaper was a dangerous act if you were a dad and in the midst of a divorce, because there was a cadre of young, progressive, social service workers looking to find anything to justify their existence.

    If history is a guide, it will take a decade for this to be completely spent. Who knows how many people will be unjustly injured during that time.

  3. DeadMessenger
    January 26th, 2015 @ 10:10 am

    Regarding dubious media reports, “…no one thought to question their accuracy. . . .” – scariest thing in the whole post.

  4. Jeanette Victoria
    January 26th, 2015 @ 10:11 am

    Check out the yahoo group witchhunt I was a part of that group in the late 90’s exposing the Satanic Ritual Abuse proponents.

  5. Jeanette Victoria
    January 26th, 2015 @ 10:12 am

    But so typical in the last couple of decades.

  6. DeadMessenger
    January 26th, 2015 @ 10:22 am

    I read some of your witchhunt experiences – all that my sensibilities could withstand – and “unhinged” is a pretty accurate term to apply. I don’t know how you got through it without going nuts yourself. In fact, it’s probably still going on, isn’t it?

  7. RS
    January 26th, 2015 @ 10:25 am

    It was insidious. As I noted above, I was appointed to represent both children and parents. I did my job. I never lost a case until a new, progressive judge came on the bench. I then lost one. I appealed the judgment and it was reversed. Thereafter, I was never appointed again.

    Later, I was told the reason for my receiving no further appointments was I wasn’t a “team player.” That is, I insisted upon due process, the letter of the law and evidence, regardless of who my client was. The Progressive Left cannot abide that, inasmuch as it cannot abide anyone who stands between it and its agenda.

  8. Jeanette Victoria
    January 26th, 2015 @ 10:58 am

    Oh it is anon coward @NicoleBonnet1 and her “crew”
    have posted that I am committing workers compensation and SSDI fraud and
    had
    incited people to report me. They have posted a fake review of my
    photography on the revenge and extortion site RipOffReprot. The worse
    is the posti ng emails and phone
    numbers of my bishop and priests from my church to get people to call ad
    harass
    them. They have posted on Tor hidden pages all my private information
    with a
    slew of lies (Like I’m a human trafficker and a danger to children and I
    steal
    the photos I used in my photography). The most creative lie was posted
    by Katie
    Murphy (@kkmurphy) she claims I tried to murder my mother and was
    committed as
    a result. And she claims she was “paralegal”.

    Mix is peddling the fiction that I was “institutionalized” Nope
    never happened, closest I got to a governmental run mental institution was when
    I was the relief med nurse at Metro State Hospital in Norwalk Ca.

    Yet they claim I’m the stalker. Because spreading horrific lies about me and
    then posting maps to my home phone numbers and emails associates and friends is
    *NOT* stalking when a deranged fruitcake does it.

  9. Jeanette Victoria
    January 26th, 2015 @ 11:13 am

    Remember just noticing a loons public abusive posts is “stalking!”

  10. Jeanette Victoria
    January 26th, 2015 @ 11:14 am

    As one who had seen the working of the court room I’m not surprised.

  11. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    January 26th, 2015 @ 11:19 am

  12. Jeanette Victoria
    January 26th, 2015 @ 11:22 am

    OMG I’m so old I remember when that song came out.

  13. Finrod Felagund
    January 26th, 2015 @ 12:30 pm

    Heh, I still have that song on 45.

  14. Southern Air Pirate
    January 26th, 2015 @ 12:33 pm

    That whole 1980s and 90s era of divorce and the use of sex so that mom’s can keep the kids from dad was one of the big legs that lead to the rise of the Men’s Rights Activism. The initial fight for dad’s to see thier kids unsupervised from the state and to prevent the destruction of a man’s career by the use if sex predator laws against them.

  15. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    January 26th, 2015 @ 1:04 pm

    http://news-briefs.ew.com/2014/07/01/rolf-harris-sex-crimes-conviction/ The writer was convicted of sex crimes…

  16. Jeanette Victoria
    January 26th, 2015 @ 1:43 pm

    Figures

  17. Bob Belvedere
    January 26th, 2015 @ 1:52 pm

    Don’t forget the Malden [Mass] Daycare cases. A whole family was destroyed.

    FYI: One of the prosecutors/persecutors was Martha Coakley [an ADA at the time] – she has never admitted the Mass. Attorney General’s Office sent innocent people to jail.

  18. Bob Belvedere
    January 26th, 2015 @ 1:54 pm

    It was Dorothy Rabinowitz of The Wall Street Journal who investigated the case and found the Truth.

  19. RS
    January 26th, 2015 @ 2:38 pm

    She (Rabinowitz) did God’s work in that reportage.

  20. Zohydro
    January 26th, 2015 @ 2:50 pm

    A male-on-male case… “Unusual”, indeed!

    There must be more to this: How can they blame this on the cisheteronormative patriarchy and “rape culture”?

  21. richard mcenroe
    January 26th, 2015 @ 2:54 pm

    Wasn’t just the social workers. There were lawyers who gave paid seminars for attorneys on how to poison a man in a divorce case with abuse and pedo allegations.

  22. RS
    January 26th, 2015 @ 3:04 pm

    Yep. I was there.

  23. kilo6
    January 26th, 2015 @ 3:08 pm

    Did somebody say Kangaroo Court?!?!
    How about a Drunken Kangaroo Court

    https://media.8chan.co/meatpie/thumb/1411779857694.gif

    Ay Mate, that’s a nice undergraduate education you got there. It would be a shame if something happened to it
    *hic*

  24. Adobe_Walls
    January 26th, 2015 @ 3:09 pm

    All the more reason we should not abide the left.

  25. DeadMessenger
    January 26th, 2015 @ 3:09 pm

    Do you remember the story of Lot, in which the men of Sodom demand that Lot let them into his home, so that they could homosexually gang rape the two holy angels staying there? So the angels blinded the men so that they couldn’t find Lot’s door, yet the men – while blinded – still persisted?

    A normal, not mentally ill person would immediately seek help for this sudden condition. But not the men of Sodom. No, they were so obsessed with their perversion, that even sudden blindness didn’t stop them from burning with lust for other men.

    Their response was like a person with chemical dependency, for example, a crackhead looking for his next rock, regardless of anything else going on. Severe addiction, in other words. And, one would reasonably conclude, a mental illness.

    My point here is that your cyber-stalker is, essentially by his own admission, mentally ill. Unfortunately, it appears that birds of a feather do flock together, in that your stalking loons have formed a flock.

    You would think after all this time they would just give up. I can’t see what they’d hope to accomplish, but then, I’m not crazy. It’s like Brett Kimberlin times…how many more? A lot, I gather.

  26. RS
    January 26th, 2015 @ 3:13 pm

    I should also mention, this hysteria was abetted by the Progressive Left, because it supported the proposition that parental custody should not be the default custodial arrangement. Better the state oversee a child’s upbringing. Those people are still there.

  27. DeadMessenger
    January 26th, 2015 @ 3:14 pm

    That’s messed up.

  28. Zohydro
    January 26th, 2015 @ 3:18 pm

    We need a new rule around here…

    Like, “No member of the Faculty will abuse marsupials in anyway whatsoever . . . whilst anyone is looking!”

  29. RS
    January 26th, 2015 @ 3:26 pm

    Be very afraid. That view is still alive and well, especially among state family service bureaucracies.

  30. DeadMessenger
    January 26th, 2015 @ 4:09 pm

    Indeed.

    When my son was underage, he got the idea to run away from home, seeing as how my husband and me were “mean”, we had “expectations” and enforced “rules”. We hear a commotion and open his bedroom door in time to see an open window, and him getting into a strange car. We called the po-lice and reported this.

    Turns out that these older kids that my son was counting on to take him away actually took him straight to the police station, where they shared my son’s wild tales about us. Like about living in what sounded like a crackhouse where he was regularly abused. (Keeping in mind that my son is like a yeti, or Baby Huey or something.)

    Cops show up with my son in tow, and he lets them in the front door with him, and they start snooping around. No unringing that bell, I figure, so we stand by and reluctantly let it happen. House is clean and neat, fruit, veggies and meat in the fridge, no alcohol, no drugs except aspirin. Whoops – they seem to have broken into the Cleaver house. Cops leave, leaving my son with us to start his 100 years punishment of restriction and hard labor in the yard.

    A week later – A WEEK – don’t forget, a week – DCF shows up with a different cop, demanding to see my house and talk to my kids. I say sure, let me just see your warrant. She didn’t have one, and the cop made all sorts of threats, but I stand my ground at the door and tell them, no warrant, no entry.

    The kicker? She claimed to wany to make sure my kids were alive and that we hadn’t killed them. I swear, this is true. I said, you think my kids are in danger of being murdered, so you wait a week to check on them? And you have no warrant? Piss off.

    They never came back, but DCF called many times over the following three months – I ignored their calls – and sent threatening letters demanding that we take “parenting classes”, which I also ignored until they finally gave up.

    So yeah, I know all about family services. It’s the most vile, degenerate government “service” of them all, manned by an army of idiot state lick-spittles with a collective IQ of 80 and the ill-intentions of Rasputin.

    Don’t get me started.

  31. DeadMessenger
    January 26th, 2015 @ 4:19 pm

    Yeah, I read that. To this day, I can’t hear the name Martha Coakley without puking a little in my mouth.

  32. DeadMessenger
    January 26th, 2015 @ 4:22 pm

    I was wondering the exact same thing. Somebody got their wires crossed, looks like. (heh)

  33. Lena Dunham Talks About Humor | Regular Right Guy
    January 26th, 2015 @ 4:57 pm

    […] Campus Kangaroo Courts […]

  34. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    January 26th, 2015 @ 4:59 pm

    Martha Coakley, the Angela Corey of the North.

  35. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    January 26th, 2015 @ 5:00 pm

    I am sure you have Wombat’s vote.

  36. Rob Crawford
    January 26th, 2015 @ 5:44 pm

    Wasn’t Janet “Fireball” Reno the Florida equivalent?

  37. Zohydro
    January 26th, 2015 @ 6:29 pm

    You can’t leave us hanging here! How did it all, and he, turn out?

  38. Jeanette Victoria
    January 26th, 2015 @ 6:36 pm

    You are right they are nothing but a study in projection

    And look right on cue damn they are such predicable loons

    https://twitter.com/__Lazarus__/status/559841137465499649

  39. Quartermaster
    January 26th, 2015 @ 6:39 pm

    Particularly after someone stuffed him in a can.

  40. Jeanette Victoria
    January 26th, 2015 @ 6:42 pm

    Here is something frightening that the deranged paranoid schizophrenic stalker Diana Napolis was a Social worker who had a masters degree. https://encyclopediadramatica.se/Curio She was responsible for removing children from their families. She was/is obsessed with Satanic Ritual Abuse,

  41. Quartermaster
    January 26th, 2015 @ 6:47 pm

    I had a fight with Georgia’s version of state supported child terrorism when my daughter got herself in dutch with them. We got the kids, then 4 months later they take them back, and before it’s over I’m better than a quarter of million poorer. I got the kids away from those criminals, but it took nearly two years. I got them back two years to the day they originally gave them to me, and fired the case worker, who had perjured herself in the final proceeding (and several times before), and my attorney nailed her hide to the wall. She should have been charged and imprisoned, but in Georgia, all they do is fire them.

    Georgia DFACS had killed 200 kids in their tender loving care before they got my grandkids. Needless to say, I was a nervous character for a couple years.

    So called CPS needs to be shut down.

  42. Jeanette Victoria
    January 26th, 2015 @ 6:49 pm

    That is so evil but I’m not surprised

  43. Jeanette Victoria
    January 26th, 2015 @ 6:56 pm

    I had cops come to my house because some kid claimed I was showing them how to use the Ouija board this was in the 80’s. Fortunately for me several kids stood up for me and told the truth (it seem the little liars were trying to blame be for their bad deeds to their parents) I had told them it was dangerous and they should stop immediately But I was a pagan then so I was automatically a suspect thin the knuckle draggers in uniform.

  44. RS
    January 26th, 2015 @ 7:12 pm

    Your story and the ones below do not surprise me in the slightest. It was quite commonplace at the time,

  45. Matthew T. Mason
    January 26th, 2015 @ 7:51 pm

    Funny thing about McMartin: I was initially in agreement with the prosecution until I saw a report on 60 Minutes and an article in Playboy. And they are hardly conservative bastions.

  46. Matthew T. Mason
    January 26th, 2015 @ 7:53 pm

    I still do not know why Pam Bondi has not gone after Corey for prosecutorial misconduct in the Zimmerman case.

  47. LLC
    January 26th, 2015 @ 8:58 pm

    Reminds me of WJJ Hoge’s runaround with Bill Schmalfeldt. “Someone’s saying something bad about me somewhere that I frequent for the sole reason of complaining about someone saying something bad about me.”

  48. Jeanette Victoria
    January 26th, 2015 @ 9:10 pm

    The thinking is so deranged, they can spread horrific lies but noticing their public posts is STALKING!

  49. DeadMessenger
    January 26th, 2015 @ 9:26 pm

    Never got hassled beyond that, but I also homeschooled by then which might’ve helped head off problem areas at the pass.

    Son turned out ok, considering. When he was in 2nd grade, there was a severe freon leak (never disclosed, btw…I found out the truth from other parents whose kids were also affected), my son had a series of grand mal seizures, from which he almost died. He was in a coma for quite awhile, and when he came out of it, he had to learn to walk, talk, read, etc., all over. It was like having a 7 yo infant. His maturation was adversely affected, so at the time of the incident above, he was like a huge, man-sized 13 yo.

    Now he’s a 26 yo, 18 yo.

    Because of this, and other trials, we all became saved Christians, we worship together as a family, and even in spite of some really horrible things (his seizures, my cancer), we survived and thrived because of the glory of God. So…happy ending.

  50. Jeanette Victoria
    January 26th, 2015 @ 9:29 pm

    I think that kind of misconduct is pretty common we just don’t hear about it because it is usually with ordinary people