Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Lawsuit: Sexual harassment ‘victim’ was San Francisco business rival in disguise

mercurynews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 359 posts

Re: Lawsuit: Sexual harassment ‘victim’ was San Francisco business rival in disguise

#241

Post by philh »

adekok wrote: post #195
peteretep wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has the side-effect that real victims are put off from filing charges, which is generally thought to be not a good thing.

So we shouldn't prosecute insurance fraud, because it will put off people who file real claims? Nonsense . Corrupting the justice system should be punished to the fullest extent of the law. How can you have justice when the justice system goes along willingly with abuse? There are cases where claimants are proven beyond any doubt to have lied. Lied knowingly, egregiously, and with malice aforethought. The idea that t…

The claim was a descriptive one: "This policy has this bad side effect."

You seem to have taken it as a prescriptive one: "We should do the exact opposite of this policy, as hard as we can."

Re: Lawsuit: Sexual harassment ‘victim’ was San Francisco business rival in disguise

#242

Post by freeflight »

matt4077 wrote: post #214
mcappleton wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

False accusations should be punished with the same penalty as the accuser tried to put upon the innocent. Until that happens, people will see no reason to stop false accusations that they think will help them.

Do you believe that the harm of being raped is about equal to the harm of a false conviction for rape? I'd actually tend to "yes", but it's probably impossible to answer. People react very different, and the prevalence of suicide is actually higher among rape victims than for people sentenced to long prison sentences. But the real problem is: The penalty in your comparison would be for rape, whereas the accusation wa…

Without belittling the severity of rape, yes I believe it can actually be quite more harmful/destructive. Falsely accused rarely get rehabilitated even when it turns out they had been innocent, their career, their reputation, their social circles, it will be all ruined and with that comes distress of the mind.

People are quick to throw around guilt, once that's in the room your reputation will be sullied forever as everybody still has this nagging "Well, he could still have done it" thought.

Case in point: The German teacher Horst Arnold. In 2001 a female coworker accused him of having raped her during a break at school. He denied the charges and in 2002 he was sentenced to 5 years in jail.

He served his time and, due to a series of random events, in 2008 it came to light that the female coworker, who got him into jail, has a rather long history of lying and misrepresenting facts.

In 2011 he was declared innocent, but he was denied rehabilitation into his job as a teacher and any monetary compensation for the time spent in jail. He fought for this until 2012, when he was found dead on the street due to cardiac arrest.

Re: Lawsuit: Sexual harassment ‘victim’ was San Francisco business rival in disguise

#243

Post by [deleted] »

wand3r wrote: post #36

This world is getting so fucked up. We can't crucify people for "hitting on" or other somewhat tame behavior because we have nothing left to throw at the real offenders. Conversely, people benefit on both sides of the equation; using sex to their advantage or weaponizing allegations like this. Sexual assualt is REAL and should be punished. We need to focus on a balance between being human and being a predator. People…

[deleted]

Re: Lawsuit: Sexual harassment ‘victim’ was San Francisco business rival in disguise

#245

Post by philh »

matt4077 wrote: post #214
mcappleton wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

False accusations should be punished with the same penalty as the accuser tried to put upon the innocent. Until that happens, people will see no reason to stop false accusations that they think will help them.

Do you believe that the harm of being raped is about equal to the harm of a false conviction for rape? I'd actually tend to "yes", but it's probably impossible to answer. People react very different, and the prevalence of suicide is actually higher among rape victims than for people sentenced to long prison sentences. But the real problem is: The penalty in your comparison would be for rape, whereas the accusation wa…

> the prevalence of suicide is actually higher among rape victims than for people sentenced to long prison sentences.

I would guess this is confounded by the difficulty of committing suicide in prison? (Attempts might be less confounded, but still somewhat.)

Re: Lawsuit: Sexual harassment ‘victim’ was San Francisco business rival in disguise

#246

Post by valuearb »

koonsolo wrote: post #237
wand3r wrote: post #36

This world is getting so fucked up. We can't crucify people for "hitting on" or other somewhat tame behavior because we have nothing left to throw at the real offenders. Conversely, people benefit on both sides of the equation; using sex to their advantage or weaponizing allegations like this. Sexual assualt is REAL and should be punished. We need to focus on a balance between being human and being a predator. People…

> This world is getting so fucked up. The world is bigger than US. And for the rest of us, we don't really seem to have this problem.

Tell that to Horst Arnold.

Re: Lawsuit: Sexual harassment ‘victim’ was San Francisco business rival in disguise

#247

Post by pyre »

adekok wrote: post #239
peteretep wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You lost me at equating bringing an insurance claim with bringing sexual assault charges. I don't believe that axiom holds.

Explain why. Be specific. I think the misunderstanding is that you think I'm saying insurance claims are equal in scope to sexual assault. That is (TBH) ridiculous. To the extent of deliberate blindness. What I'm actually doing is making a statement about the fraudsters. Not the victims. FALSE sexual assault charges do not involve sexual assault. False sexual assault charges do not have real victims . So false sexual…

The issue that you're missing is that "sexual assault fraud" can be claimed in cases where there is actual sexual assault, but it is a he-said/she-said situation. That is where the "chilling-effect" comes in. Sexual assault cases are many times he-said/she-said situations, so any victim reporting runs the risk of getting accused of (and needing to defend themselves from) "sexual assault fraud" in addition to trying to pursue actual charges (where the defence will spend a lot of time trying to assault the victim's character, basically calling them a "slut" in open court).

Re: Lawsuit: Sexual harassment ‘victim’ was San Francisco business rival in disguise

#248

Post by peteretep »

adekok wrote: post #239
peteretep wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You lost me at equating bringing an insurance claim with bringing sexual assault charges. I don't believe that axiom holds.

Explain why. Be specific. I think the misunderstanding is that you think I'm saying insurance claims are equal in scope to sexual assault. That is (TBH) ridiculous. To the extent of deliberate blindness. What I'm actually doing is making a statement about the fraudsters. Not the victims. FALSE sexual assault charges do not involve sexual assault. False sexual assault charges do not have real victims . So false sexual…

I think it's probably easiest to ignore the inchoate name calling and focus on where we can agree, specifically:

    > You have an implicit claim
    > that sexual assault is 
    > somehow magical, and 
    > deserving of different 
    > standards than insurance
    > fraud
Yes I do.

Specifically I believe sexual assaults are under-reported, and that more assaults happen because they're under-reported.

Taking those back-to-front, an insurance claim that's unreported doesn't endanger wider society, where a serial rapist abusing his position of power does.

As to under-reporting of sexual crimes, evidence is easily Googleable. But even if it wasn't, one looks at cases like Jimmy Saville where alleged victims didn't come out until others did; largely due to their feeling they wouldn't be believed.

Re: Lawsuit: Sexual harassment ‘victim’ was San Francisco business rival in disguise

#249

Post by adekok »

philh wrote: post #241
adekok wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So we shouldn't prosecute insurance fraud, because it will put off people who file real claims? Nonsense . Corrupting the justice system should be punished to the fullest extent of the law. How can you have justice when the justice system goes along willingly with abuse? There are cases where claimants are proven beyond any doubt to have lied. Lied knowingly, egregiously, and with malice aforethought. The idea that t…

The claim was a descriptive one: "This policy has this bad side effect." You seem to have taken it as a prescriptive one: "We should do the exact opposite of this policy, as hard as we can."

> The claim was a descriptive one: "This policy has this bad side effect."

That claim is provably false. I explained why, using examples.

> You seem to have taken it as a prescriptive one: "We should do the exact opposite of this policy, as hard as we can."

That cannot possibly be concluded from what I said.

My claim is that when it's proven that people lie (i.e. fraudster, as I said), ignoring those lies is corrupting the justice system.

The thing is, perjury is a criminal offence. I don't think you'd disagree.

The mistake you're making is assuming that because I say some people are proven to lie, you think I'm claiming that all people lie. That's a logical fallacy, and basically assumes I'm an asshole or an idiot.

Your claim seems to be that we should never prosecute liars, because it will dissuade real victims from coming forward. I think that claim is horrific, for reasons I explained.

To counter your next comment.. no, I don't think claimants should be charged when their claims cannot be proven to be true. Again, making an unsubstantiated claim is not legally perjury, and is not a criminal offence.

My claim is that provably false claims should be punished.

Is that really so difficult to understand?

Re: Lawsuit: Sexual harassment ‘victim’ was San Francisco business rival in disguise

#250

Post by saturdaysaint »

SeoxyS wrote: post #59
wand3r wrote: post #36

This world is getting so fucked up. We can't crucify people for "hitting on" or other somewhat tame behavior because we have nothing left to throw at the real offenders. Conversely, people benefit on both sides of the equation; using sex to their advantage or weaponizing allegations like this. Sexual assualt is REAL and should be punished. We need to focus on a balance between being human and being a predator. People…

> watching the accuser ride the publicity to raise a round. Can you elaborate on this? Did I miss part of the story—did one of the accuser actually do that?

It sure reads like this guy didn't read the story and is running with the (admittedly misleading) headline. This story doesn't have any grey area or confusing situation - anonymous slander on the internet has nothing to do with sexual politics.
Post reply on HN