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My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

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Re: My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

#111

Post by matz1 »

JPKab wrote: post #27

Jon Pretty sounds like a complete creep and yes, based on this account, a predator. That being said, there is a court and criminal justice system for a reason. While I empathize with the author, and utterly despise the archetype of high-status men who use their status within programming communities as a tool to target women, I find the nature of these kinds of posts to be counterproductive. Therapeutic to the author?…

> Imagine a letter like this targeted at you one day, except unlike Mr. Pretty, you are innocent.

You already assume he is guilty ?

Re: My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

#113

Post by js2 »

Yes, of course she should have contacted law enforcement, but she was in a foreign country, intimated and young. And law enforcement still fails women:

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/how-po...

In an ideal world, the criminal justice system works. In the real world, it's a patchwork system that sometimes works and sometimes doesn't.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2019/09/17...

So this is why we see women continue to post these stories. Her story is backed up by other women.

I believe her.

Meta: I don't know how to make the justice system work better in a case like this. The presumption of innocence is critical and I don't want a system easily abused by false accusers, but it's also clear that predators can take advantage of the presumption of innocence. Even if she had gone to police at the time, ultimately she would have to convince them it wasn't consensual.

https://slate.com/human-interest/2014/11/how-cops-respond-to...

Edit 2: found this paper from 2012 written by a police organization that talks about the complexities of dealing with sexual assault in the criminal justice system:

https://www.policeforum.org/assets/docs/Critical_Issues_Seri...

A quote from the conclusion: Rape is the most underreported of crime, because rape victims find it so difficult under the best of circumstances to report it to the police. But it’s made worse when victims say they were interrogated by the police as though they were criminals. Or they are disbelieved and threatened with lie detector tests, or essentially are blamed for the conduct of perpetrators.

Reading the paper, false accusations are barely discussed. The paper spends a lot more time talking about police not believing victims ("unfounding").

Re: My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

#114

Post by klyrs »

mirekrusin wrote: post #34
ezluckyfree wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no, a lynching is a murder by a racist mob this is a community realizing that John Pretty is a predator and deciding that they don't want a predator in a position of power frankly, it's weird as hell for you to be confusing those two things

not me or you are to judge this, we don't know the details, it may as well be that he is completely shit partner and not much more than that, which is not unlawful. do you think after those posts his scala/programming/whatever he's doing career won't suffer? he's dead in many professional circles regardless if he's jail material or not.

He wasn't her "partner", he was her mentor; he abused his position, tricked her into staying in an apartment alone with him, got her drunk and forced himself on her against her wishes.

Re: My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

#115

Post by totony »

faitswulff wrote: post #48
eloff wrote: post #36

> I don’t remember how much I drank. I don’t remember him drinking. But I remember feeling uncomfortable when he made advances on me. I felt being taken advantage of that he had unprotected sex with me when I was intoxicated. Nothing felt right. I remember panicking and crying. I don't want to victim blame here because this guy sounds like a grade A creep and predator. But does a person not have some responsibility h…

Yes, you are victim blaming. Men aren’t wild bears, they’re human beings who should be held accountable for their actions. How drunk someone is around another human being has nothing to do with the perpetrator’s culpability.

I don't think that's what the parent meant.

If someone is intoxicated, I agree that it seems weird to disregard their consent when drugs+alcohols are the social lubricant of society (and very interwined with sex).

Also, of course you are responsible for your actions even when under the influence (drive and kill someone? no excuse because you were intoxicated - it's your fault). It's crazy to me that people call that "victim blaming". Although I understand how someone can take advantage of others, I don't think the distinction is intoxicated = taken advantage of.

Re: My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

#116

Post by Cyril_HN »

nicklecompte wrote: post #95
JPKab wrote: post #27

Jon Pretty sounds like a complete creep and yes, based on this account, a predator. That being said, there is a court and criminal justice system for a reason. While I empathize with the author, and utterly despise the archetype of high-status men who use their status within programming communities as a tool to target women, I find the nature of these kinds of posts to be counterproductive. Therapeutic to the author?…

> Imagine a letter like this targeted at you one day, except unlike Mr. Pretty, you are innocent. “Imagine that you were convicted of murder but, unlike John Wayne Gacy, you were innocent.” Seriously what is the point of comments like this? False convictions are real and very very bad, but I know very few social justice advocates who are opposed to locking up serial killers. Likewise, the existence of unscrupulous pe…

You are conflating conviction with mere, non-legal accusation.

Conviction means someone made an accusation at a legal level, then it was considered worthy by police, then by a country's prosecution service, then by a jury, and then (probably) by an appeals court too. Under normal circumstances, that's a bar infinitely higher than, "I'm claiming to have a story about someone."

Re: My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

#117

Post by trynton »

mirekrusin wrote: post #14
dheera wrote: post #2

Related: Open letter of support for community members targeted by Jon Pretty https://github.com/scala-open-letter/scala-open-letter.githu...

I don't know anything about it, but this starts to look a bit like public lynching.

@mirekrusin: "I don't know anything about it, but this starts to look a bit like public lynching."

Trial by Internet.

Re: My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

#118

Post by fishnchips »

ivan_gammel wrote: post #97
fishnchips wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Contact law enforcement.

This is generally a good idea and the right thing to do, but cancel culture still exists for some reason. Probably it's because people do not trust conventional justice and do not believe in law enforcement?

Publicly taking high moral ground when it costs you nothing is insanely gratifying and as old as the humanity itself.

Re: My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

#119

Post by xahrepap »

fishnchips wrote: post #41
api wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't like this court-of-public-opinion stuff much either and the abuse potential is real. At the same time: what else are people going to do? There seems to be no other recourse. Most people let bullies get away with it because even stepping in as a third party means standing up to a bully. It can be scary, but even if there's no real risk it's still a fucking pain in the ass. Who wants to get into a mud slinging…

Contact law enforcement.

A relative ran an online community. It was small, but not tiny

There was some cyber-bullying (for lack of a better word) going on. My relative called law-enforcement, then was referred to the FBI. A case was filed and was told they would circle back on it to collect details. They never called back. My relative was never able to make contact with them about it again.

Completely ignored. I can't remember the details, but it wasn't just a "you're fat and ugly" type of bullying. But it was a real safety issue for a member of the community. Law enforcement completely failed in this case.

Now what?

I despise the "public court". The internet and viral online comments deciding who's innocent and who's guilty. (the man during the US capitol riots who lost his job because he was seen in a photo holding a black woman. Turns out, he was actually saving her life! But the "public court" announced him as guilty and they went after him, contacting his employer, people saying awful things about him online. https://kfor.com/news/washington-dc-bureau/white-man-seen-in... )

But on the flip side... what do you do when law enforcement completely fails?

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