Punish how? It’s a private league. I’m sure my employer and yours would fire you if a credible, but old claim surfaced. Why is firing okay, but suspending or docking pay not?
Schefter: Patricia to become new Lions HC
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Yeah. I’m not a Patriots fan, so “laundry” doesn’t apply.
Statistics are awesome. If your point is that the stats show that men are awful and so when accusations that a particular man has been awful that he probably was, well then I’m all done here.
Not many private employers will fire people if a 21 year old dropped case that predated the accused's employment surfaced. In fact, as noted above, such actions could put the employer in legal trouble. And the bolded has not been established.
You misunderstanding me on purpose again? My point is about whether the team or the league is the party to determine punishment, if any. Who is Patricia’s employer? The Lions or the NFL?
IIRC correctly from stuff I picked up in the #DFG thing, the legal case against Brady was only on the limits of the commissioner's ability to punish based on the CBA with the players union--and even then, obviously, the ultimate finding was that the Commissioner's powers to punish were quite expansive.
In the process, I also gathered--and the experts can correct me if I'm wrong--that coaches, not party to said CBA, can basically be beaten with a bent iron rod with impunity. And that doesn't make it right or wrong, and again, I could be mistaken, but that was my basic take-away.
So there is a what can they do versus a what should they do distinction to be made--the league can probably do a lot.
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Remember Al Franken? If this allegation is true, and Matty P made a habit of this kind of behavior, more stories will come out, and soon. That's one possible endgame.
Another possible endgame would be the alleged victim coming forward, or at least being willing to speak with reporters or investigators. If she does, and her story checks out, that's another big problem for him, given that he's publicly called it a false accusation.
Those seem like the 2 scenarios whereby this can (and should) take him down.
Hard to envision how anything else could or should, as we're unlikely to ever see the truth of the matter resolved to anyone's satisfaction.
Another possible endgame would be the alleged victim coming forward, or at least being willing to speak with reporters or investigators. If she does, and her story checks out, that's another big problem for him, given that he's publicly called it a false accusation.
Those seem like the 2 scenarios whereby this can (and should) take him down.
Hard to envision how anything else could or should, as we're unlikely to ever see the truth of the matter resolved to anyone's satisfaction.
I remember that too. But I also remember that the CBA gave Goodell that expansive power. I honestly have no idea how that applies to non-player team personnel... which is why a I asked the question.
Maybe, but as you say, what is and what should be aren’t the same thing. IMHO, it’d be a bad thing if the NFL (or any employer) can punish employees for any and all alleged transgressions, crimes, whatever that occurred long before the employee was even an an employee. Unless the employee lied about it on a job application or in interviews, obviously.
So, what is the solution to the scenario where the accuser is not able to or unwilling to go through the entire process of testifying against the person they are accusing - when the accuser's non-participation denies the accused an opportunity to defend themselves?
I understand and sympathize with situations where a woman may not have felt supported by the police when reporting abuse (the story of Marciano's friend and the story of Van Everyman's wife's experience in college), but in this scenario the men appear to have been arrested and charged rather quickly. This suggests that the authorities took the accusations seriously.
Yes, there are groups in our society who are systematically disempowered and vulnerable, but what can be done to encourage those groups to more actively participate in the system of justice available without compromising the integrity of that very same system of justice?
I understand and sympathize with situations where a woman may not have felt supported by the police when reporting abuse (the story of Marciano's friend and the story of Van Everyman's wife's experience in college), but in this scenario the men appear to have been arrested and charged rather quickly. This suggests that the authorities took the accusations seriously.
Yes, there are groups in our society who are systematically disempowered and vulnerable, but what can be done to encourage those groups to more actively participate in the system of justice available without compromising the integrity of that very same system of justice?
The NFL does have broad powers to punish team employees that are not covered by the CBA. For example, Gregg Williams was suspended indefinitely for his role in BountyGate, while Payton was suspended for a year; neither one had any recourse. Similarly, IIRC when Rodney Harrison was caught with HGH, he was suspended 4 games, while a coaching assistant for the Cowboys was suspended for a year for the same offense.
Coaching assistants, like most people in the workforce, are at-will employees. Which means that their employment can be terminated just about any time without cause. However, typically, most employers will do a background check and ask the applicant to disclose any convictions, etc. Assuming that the background check comes back clean and the applicant didn't lie about anything, 99% of employers will not worry about a 20 year old allegation that got dropped, indictment or no.
Word. And yeah, to piggy back on the above, we've learned that even owners' "rights" are... perhaps non-existent subject to the "will of the league."
The whole thing is creepy as fuck--I don't think any of it should be legal, but I'm not the legislature.
I quite agree.
But here we need to separate, as I think you're getting at, that normative/philosphical and the empirical/historical.
In terms of SHOULD? Yeah, I am troubled by private organizations engaging in this kind of social policing for a number of reasons--though I also recognize why they want to do so, which then becomes complicated. Simply the racial ramifications of being able to wield institutional racism against people through guaranteed sanctions simply for allegations would be disastrous, as an example. So yeah, there's a ton bad here.
In terms of what IS, as in, the empirical state of things? The NFL has continually pushed for their authority to do all of the above for pretty much whatever reason whatsoever. As per above, my understanding is that the players have the MOST protection.
Also, and perhaps most historically significant, they recently sanctioned Ezekiel Elliot of the Dallas Cowboys based in large measure of unproven (at least in the publicly available information) allegations, and then shut down owner Jimmy Johnson for trying to make a stink about it.
So, in real concrete real world terms, this is all terribly relevant with respect to what the league may actually do in the case of Patricia. The 21 years is an obvious difference, but...
There's the bigger issue of #menbehavingbadly and then there's the issue facing the league. Each are important and interesting, but in somewhat different ways, obviously--but I think the distinction is important to understanding each and both.
What, and the newspaper just randomly decided to run a criminal records search on him for no obvious reason? Three months after he was hired? I highly doubt it.
If this is based on the victim feeling empowered by #metoo to come forward and finally seek justice for what happened to her, then I would probably believe her.
If this is based on some disgrunted Lions employee dredging up twenty-year-old dirt, without the woman's consent, solely to make the Lions look bad, then I would probably believe Matt Patricia.
Facts don't exist in a vacuum. There's always some reason why things get published, and it isn't always for the public benefit.
Right. Those infractions were committed while the coaches were team (league?) employees, though. Not for allegations made a decade or more prior to their employment.
Yep. But my question was sorta: who do they work for? The team or the league?
Exactly. But maybe not in the NFL. We will see.
I want to take a moment to push back against the idea that the posters here who are advocating for justice, presuming innocence until proven otherwise or just taking an opposite side in the discussion are doing so out of some fear that our male-dominated society is being taken away from us.
I, personally, think that despite all of the discrimination and injustice in our collective history, America's greatest accomplishment can be found in our constitution and it's amendments.
I, personally, think that despite all of the discrimination and injustice in our collective history, America's greatest accomplishment can be found in our constitution and it's amendments.
It's not that I don't agree, but that you might want to change your avatar if you're going to post that, because I can't stop laughing.
As to not good ones, yes, that was the point I was making. You suggested that Belichick was wrong to say thing things he did about Patricia. I'm saying that everything Belichick said could be true and yet Patricia could still be as, you say, not a good person, with respect to women.
As for the heady stuff, I didn't mean for us observers, I meant for the the people involved in the incident. Clear headed reasoning simply isn't that effective for figuring out what happened in an incident and the attempt to make sense of things in such fashion can obscure a better understanding of what really happened--and this phenomenon historically has hurt women in the process precisely because things just don't make sense.
My objection with your one statement, for example, was that you suggested there was no imaginable reason to think a woman would bring a false charge of sexual violence but for sociopathy.
That is bad to say. Seriously. You shouldn't say that. It's factually incorrect and harmful to any understanding of the issue, and we're going to need to understand the issue to get anywhere. And by understand, I mean as distinct from understanding it IS an issue and feeling passionately about it. It's too important, and too big, and the moment is too rare, and the potential "opposition" is too powerful not to get it right, so it's different from just caring a great deal. I mean, I have my own reasons to care a lot too, but I've never brought them up before because I don't agree with "Arguing by Biography" because it, no matter what it is,
I have experience as an EMT-M (4 years certified volunteer service, 2 years as assistant teaching in EMT classes), disciplinary system advocate (college, 2 years, trained), sexual assault orientation group leader, judicial hearing board member (5 or so years, major state school. by request of dean based on past training and experience), witness to sexual violence crimes (multiple times, including multiple cases going as far as judges and involving sanctions of significance, though sadly never official state ones [though one guy was afraid to return to the country for at least some significant period of time...]), but none of that really speaks to what's important, which is why I bring up this biography at all (and why I generally am reluctant to do so)--you seem concerned that the concerns of men that cause people to suggest something less than scorched earth might because of biographical concerns and a lack of direct engagement with the issue--because what I think of most with this stuff is not any of that, but all the people who have been hurt--and how that hurts me, too, which is selfish, perhaps, but it's also quite real and I think it's all related. I'm pissed off that women I might become involved with have been hurt in ways that might be hurting my relationship with them. I'm pissed off that almost all of them have been hurt, badly. I'm pissed off about the crying late at night. I'm pissed off that most people don't understand this is going on, I'm pissed off that we can't talk to friends like this is as "normal" as it is but instead is a barrier and that for a huge population, suddenly understanding the actual state of things in America would amount to a Seeing the Matrix moment and it's not clear how many might pop. That pisses me off. There's a semi-formal rule in the political forum called "Rev's Rule" which is the notion that anything said to anyone that might make someone less likely to want to hook up with me (implicit: for reasons of sexual shaming, etc.) that should be a bannable offense. It's funny haha but it's funny because it true--even in the most selfish vision of this, women getting hurt hurts me, and that pisses me off. But it also pisses me off because I have friends who are women, so women's suffering obviously affects me--again, this is just in selfish terms. I want the people around me to be happy--that makes me happier (duh). But I also want them to be happy and live lives of flourishing in their own right--I dunno if I watched Star Wars more times growing up more than other kids but somewhere along the way I took it seriously and the bad shit done out there to others bugs me. Injustice anywhere is justice everywhere or some shit like that. But here's the thing, just because I care about all that doesn't mean that whatever position I take is correct--isn't there just as much likelihood that I take a stance based not on what is right but upon my anger or passion? Should I Leroy Jenkins this just because I have some chicken? No. That is not how we decide how to act--not if we want to take this issue seriously, not to my thinking anyway. So, no, I like to think we try to find a better way, right? What you seem to think of as a smokescreen of an important approach to justice I think of what it means to REALLY take this issue seriously. Which is, not to recreate the sins of the past, but to learn from the experience of the past, and how this conversation--longer in the making than perhaps most realize (women were told to take a back seat because slavery was more important in the mid-nineteenth century, and hell, we still have women's names for "their" political stuff like, um, feminism, as opposed to "civil rights" which is a movement rather less inclusive than its name would suggest, when one really things about it)--has and can go, and you don't care just because you have felt it, right? That's not it--I mean, I don't think it's why we do it. You do it because it's right, and the there is wrong going on, not just because you've felt it. I mean, even in just a practical sense, you can't expect everyone to have had direct experience and, in fact, you want more people than have to still be able to understand, to empathize, right? I mean, you don't necessarily want everyone to find themselves in a situation where they have a dying woman in their hands in a room surrounded by drunken football players and other assorted athletes, some of whom are interfering with your and your partner's assessment of her vitals which are crashing fast, telling you she's ok, and realizing that you had had to talk your way in there to see her after being initially told there was no patient and it had been a false call and that it was really weird that there was some weird futon dragged out into the center of the room with this passed out (dying) woman on it surrounded by drunken men and realizing that potentially the only thing preventing violence against you and the other guy you came with and then whatever happens to the woman and this woman is dying, like, shit they can't reproduce in movies human eyes look like fish eyes but different sizes, colors, and dilations this chickisfuckingdying and her skin is getting fucking WEIRD is your gift of speech that got you in the room in the first place and a radio with a police officer on the other end, the one that you call for an Advanced Life Support unit on which finally gets the attention of at least one of the dickheads in the room that maybe this is real, because that's what this is all about, things getting real, yeah? But we can't really expect everyone to understand what this is like, right? Or to find out later that the reason you were called was because the woman's friends, whom had been prevented by the guys in the room from calling for help, had managed to separate themselves by going to the bathroom and called it in... but still had only called in for a medical emergency, not a potential criminal one which would have summoned cops with the EMTs which would have been... helpful... and, you know, it's even weirder to have it only occur to you years later, and only because it was explained to you, that you never suffered any social ramifications from the social circles in which that incident occurred, even though you had them busted, was because they recognized that you saved their asses too. But of course, we don't focus about such in trying to convince people that the issue is important because it
Not just for women who have been harmed, but for women who might be harmed in the future, but also for men who might not harm women but for, but also for...
There are lots and lots of bad ways to have the conversation of sexual violence. There are fewer good ones. When you ask about the desire to frame false accusations as... whatever...
Does it even occur to you that that might be the worst way to even discuss this issue? From the point of view of the exception? And that this has been going on for years and years and people have a lot of experience--heck, you should ask of some of the people who pose here who work on this very issue in litigation and legislation--and maybe...
Seriously: What did you mean by putting "justice" in quotation marks in that "question"?
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The solution, from a criminal justice standpoint, is to get objective evidence of what happened: rape kit, pictures of bruising or other physical injuries, testimony from third parties, etc.
Yes it's alarming that a woman made the allegations she did and that they were serious enough to warrant an immediate arrest and the DA was prepared to go to trial (though I suspect the immediate arrest occurred because it was spring break and they didn't want the accused to simply take the next plane out). But it's also strange that the case relied solely on the woman's testimony. I mean, it's spring break and typically people share accommodations with friends and at the very least there should be evidence of a break-in.
The TL, DR version is that we will never know. Yes there is a real possibility that something really nasty happened. But while perhaps statistically unlikely, no one at this point can rule out any other scenario, from complete fabrication to major or minor shading of the truth. And any attempt to do so will be futile.
I thought you were laughing at the album title as it relates to the discussion.
Q: Are We Not Men?
I would say it's a different way to discuss this issue, which I think has value on this board.
I think you are quoting "question" for the same reason.
Rev, everyone is entitled to their opinion. You're an excellent poster and I don't doubt these are deeply felt beliefs. And the experiences you describe as an EMT are horrifying. But please, spare me the lecture on how a bunch of dudes coming together on an internet message board to stand up for the forgotten men who *could* be wrongly accused of rape defines taking this issue really seriously.
For decades, there has been virtually no justice for female victims of sexual assault. And outside of a handful of non-profit advocacy groups, survivors and lawyers, nobody gave a shit. As I mentioned upthread, hundreds of thousands of rape kits have sat on shelves collecting dust, untested, for decades. A shocking number of the kits that have been tested have revealed men's DNA on multiple kits -- which is to say, serial rapists. These are the definition of open and shut legal cases -- and we've done nothing. As a result, countless women victims live their whole lives in shame and distress, unable to trust other people, battling addiction, struggling to hold a job, passing some of these problems onto their children. And these are simply the cases we know of.
Are there men who were falsely accused and unable to shake the stigma going through similar trauma? Of course. And they deserve our sympathy (tho I would argue that there are a whole lot more avenues for men with the stigma of assault in their past to pursue than women). But I honestly cannot fathom how many men would have to be falsely accused to "balance the scales" of injustice. It's the obscenely gross imbalance that is the problem.
Honestly, I feel like a lot of this debate over false accusations isn't much different than Trump's claims of "voter fraud." Like, sure, we all think voter fraud is despicable -- and, of course, there are plenty of isolated examples of it happening -- and maybe even some institutional reasons for it happening as well. But the "evidence" that it's widespread is a fucking joke -- and has no champions on this board, IIRC.
In the case of voter fraud, we all know why Trump and the GOP are pushing the issue: they're playing the race card. So what card is being played here? The "it's complicated" card? Or something else?
Human behavior may be complex and unpredictable particularly in the area of sexuality and sexual violence. And while it is not hard to "imagine" reasons women would falsely accuse men -- it was @JimBoSox9 I think who gave an example -- the legal system is so severely stacked against those who do that it is hard to understand why any woman might think she could get away with it.
By contrast, men face no such constraints when they commit these crimes. She was drunk, it was consensual, it's my word against hers, she's crazy, she's ugly, she had a grudge against my girlfriend are all acceptable defenses in the court not just of public opinion -- but law.
Your point is "Maybe she's not thinking that far ahead." Sure ... or maybe she is? I just am not comfortable saying that because something is possible that it's likely when, frankly, we know better.
Again, I'm not willing to throw men in jail on the basis of accusations alone, but I legitimately do believe that we have an obligation to have a serious conversation about how men accused of sexual crimes should be handled by our legal system. The presumption of innocence is an important principle in our legal system, but it's not working on this issue.
Van Everyman, I really dislike your writing style and the way you attempt to make your points. You use long run-on sentences. You write in broad strokes and you make assumptions about everyone who challenges your posts. I started to respond to your post but, frankly, got tired of it. One quick point, you are a dude on a message board too, so cut the shit with the random 'you guys are just like Trump supporters' off-topic bullshit. It is that type of writing-style that discourages a serious conversation.
Skipping to the bottom of your post:
Skipping to the bottom of your post:
What are you suggesting as an alternative to the presumption of innocence and how would your suggestion address the systematic problems where rape kits are sitting on shelves collecting dust or where the police and/or the courts are not doing their jobs?
Two points. I've done a lot of work in the past in the field of domestic violence and I agree with you that the number of false accusations is dwarfed by the number of times a perpetrator of abuse (physical or sexual) gets away with the violence and that victims are faced with a ton of barriers that often make it easier to not proceed than to proceed.
But on a case by case basis? It's hard to tell.
And that's because our criminal justice system was never intended to deal with "he said / she said" crimes. When our criminal justice system was developing, things that happened behind closed doors wasn't illegal. Also, there is some ideas in the adversarial system that the fact-finders (i.e., juries) would know the parties testifying would be able to "find facts" based on the various people's credibility.
Unfortunately, our adversarial does not deal very well when you have one party saying one thing and another party saying another.
Which is why our modern protective order (or domestic restraining order) system is a civil action and only requires a preponderance of the evidence.
So there are a lot of problems. Not quite sure what to do with them. It's good that you are cognizant of these problems but some of this is structural and will need more than a conversation to address.
Since VE is writing from experience. I will throw this in. I taught a kid whose Uncle was falsely accused. The guy's life, career were destroyed. It took 7 years to clear his name, but in my city if you say his name most people think he did some terrible things. Evidence was clear from day 1 (it ws later revealed) that this guy was not at the scene, and was the wrong guy. It came down to one well meaning, but poorly trained cop working alone, and an ambitious prosecutor wanting to make a splash. The prosecutor was eventually punished, and over and over in the civil trials against the prosecutor the defence for unethical actions was "victims are rarely believed."
It is not possible to have a conversation about this issue without discussing it at a macro and gender-specific level -- the institutional issues and, yes, how men in particular address this issue when confronted with it. A serious conversation cannot begin with "But what about false accusations!" or "But that contradicts my personal experience." These things are important to consider and weigh for sure, and we should acknowledge and respect individual experiences such as @reggiecleveland 's, but they shouldn't be a starting or focal point, particularly since most of us aren't exposed to actual sexual assault. Almost all of it happens behind closed doors.
And certainly, I get that as men, we hate being tarred with this brush -- that we are all somehow "part of the problem." As a man, I hate being lumped in with this. All men are not rapists. All men are not gropers or harassers. But like it or not, we *own* the culture of sexual violence.
Rev said upthread about how "women's rights" somehow got excluded from "civil rights." It's a great point. As insidious as racism is in our culture, misogyny is even more so. With racism, we adopted quotas in the workplace and other public forums -- an imperfect mechanism for justice for sure and one that created a lot of resentment, but still effective in many ways. Can the same be done with women? Should it? I'm not sure -- much as I'm not sure how we deal with it in our legal system. @wade boggs chicken dinner makes some good points about what it is and isn't built to handle. What's happening at Nike with women banding together to demand accountability suggests that perhaps the workplace may be a better place to resolve some of these issues.
So, listen, I agree: we do need a serious conversation about this issue. And we need to talk to one another respectfully. But any serious conversation about sexual assault must not only acknowledge the massive power imbalance at play at almost every level between men and women but, IMO, begin with it and refrain from justifying or marginalizing it. Then, we might get somewhere.
No. My point was this isn’t hard to find if one knows where to look. It’s not some buried piece of paper.
You are having difficulty separating criminal justice - which is not in play here, since all charges were dropped more than two decades ago - and someone possibly being mistreated by a private employer, which, while awful, happens many times every single day without any recourse.
Employers have almost unlimited power to fire employees who do not fall under the protection of a collective bargaining agreement or are members of any other protected class.
When such an employee is fired, they essentially have no recourse unless they can prove wrongful termination (example: being fired because you discovered your boss was embezzling funds and the company decided that your boss was more valuable than you, warts and all) or unless they can prove unlawful discrimination. (Age, gender, race.)
I am not arguing that this is a good thing. It's a very bad thing. But it's perfectly legal in our system and guilt, innocence and/or justice (sadly) doesn't enter into it.
So, oops?
I'm at the UMass graduation this afternoon. In the program is a series of little snippets describing notable UMass alums - doctors, politicians, businessmen, journalists, an astronaut, etc... Dr J. is briefly profiled. Among the honorees is Matt Patricia '01G. Talk about poor timing.
I'm at the UMass graduation this afternoon. In the program is a series of little snippets describing notable UMass alums - doctors, politicians, businessmen, journalists, an astronaut, etc... Dr J. is briefly profiled. Among the honorees is Matt Patricia '01G. Talk about poor timing.
You would want me on that jury, because I would take absolutely seriously the responsibility of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. The last time I was on a jury, it was a felony A&B case in MA, and I basically Henry Fonda'd an initial guilty take into a not guilty verdict, with several "march back into the courtroom so the judge can clarify stuff for us" moments in between. About a guy who was alleged to have hit his ex-wife in the course of picking up their joint-custody kid, no less. Suffice to say I take the formal shit very, very seriously.
You are conflating situations of legal guilt and the judicial system, with presumptions in the court of public opinion, the accused dude's reputation, and career prospects. The "would you let your daughter hang out with him" test that someone earlier proposed. Short of there being legal and judicial consequences, and in this narrow area of sexual assault, I believe the presumption of innocence has been so overplayed for so long, at the cost of lives and psyches of so many women, that if it goes too far the other way for a little while in the course of adjusting, we are net better off.
To put it in pseudo-quantitative terms: Right now, something like 100 assaults go without justice for (maybe) every 1 false accusation. And we need to accept that no policy would result in a zero on either side, so we're talking tradeoffs. From a perspective of (A) trying to ensure that sexual assaults go down at a much faster rate than false accusations go up, and (B) achieving the various goals of a justice system, you would gladly tolerate an uptick in the latter (people being hurt by false accusations) in order to achieve a disproportionate reduction in the former (sexual assaults going unexposed and unpunished). Desiring a system which results in slightly less friction at all the various veto points in the process - which includes all the usual victim-blaming tactics and expressing of sympathies for the accused but not the putative victim - is one that I believe would achieve a positive rebalancing. I stop short of desiring that approach for the justice system (give the devil benefit of law, and all that), but I think normal society has its own tools to achieve those ends.
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[QUOTE="InstaFace, post: 2811241, member: 73971"
To put it in pseudo-quantitative terms: Right now, something like 100 assaults go without justice for (maybe) every 1 false accusation. And we need to accept that no policy would result in a zero on either side, so we're talking tradeoffs. From a perspective of (A) trying to ensure that sexual assaults go down at a much faster rate than false accusations go up, and (B) achieving the various goals of a justice system, you would gladly tolerate an uptick in the latter (people being hurt by false accusations) in order to achieve a disproportionate reduction in the former (sexual assaults going unexposed and unpunished). Desiring a system which results in slightly less friction at all the various veto points in the process - which includes all the usual victim-blaming tactics and expressing of sympathies for the accused but not the putative victim - is one that I believe would achieve a positive rebalancing. I stop short of desiring that approach for the justice system (give the devil benefit of law, and all that), but I think normal society has its own tools to achieve those ends.[/QUOTE]
So are you going to volunteer to be the in the group that gets falsely accused to help balance the universe towards justice? Who gets to be the lucky ones that help us all out for the greater good by having their lives ruined, marriages destroyed, careers ended by false accusations?
These are all great theoretical stances to take. I am curious how we should decide who gets to be the falsely accused so others will come forward.
To put it in pseudo-quantitative terms: Right now, something like 100 assaults go without justice for (maybe) every 1 false accusation. And we need to accept that no policy would result in a zero on either side, so we're talking tradeoffs. From a perspective of (A) trying to ensure that sexual assaults go down at a much faster rate than false accusations go up, and (B) achieving the various goals of a justice system, you would gladly tolerate an uptick in the latter (people being hurt by false accusations) in order to achieve a disproportionate reduction in the former (sexual assaults going unexposed and unpunished). Desiring a system which results in slightly less friction at all the various veto points in the process - which includes all the usual victim-blaming tactics and expressing of sympathies for the accused but not the putative victim - is one that I believe would achieve a positive rebalancing. I stop short of desiring that approach for the justice system (give the devil benefit of law, and all that), but I think normal society has its own tools to achieve those ends.[/QUOTE]
So are you going to volunteer to be the in the group that gets falsely accused to help balance the universe towards justice? Who gets to be the lucky ones that help us all out for the greater good by having their lives ruined, marriages destroyed, careers ended by false accusations?
These are all great theoretical stances to take. I am curious how we should decide who gets to be the falsely accused so others will come forward.
how about flipping that and deciding who gets sexually assaulted with no recourse, and then victim-blamed and shamed for trying to obtain some. Your sister? Your daughter? You?
We're talking social policy. There are no absolutes, no perfect solutions. Counterexamples abound. The best we can do is look at the statistics, at the trends, and ask whether we've found the right balance, or whether a better one can be found.
We're talking social policy. There are no absolutes, no perfect solutions. Counterexamples abound. The best we can do is look at the statistics, at the trends, and ask whether we've found the right balance, or whether a better one can be found.
You keep associating me with a position I am not aligned with, and with positions I don’t ascribe too.
It’s like I’ve been erased and replaced with some kind of representation of sonething that you disagree with so even though you’re directing the posts at me, they don’t address me. I dunno if this is a true form of what psychologists call projection, but I find it unnerving.
You literally have no idea where I stand on the bulk of what we are talking about, or, for that matter, what I or some of the others here (and there are some experts) might know or understand about some of these issues because you are too busy telling me about them—poorly, I might add.
But as I said, even that’s less annoying than being addressed as a simulacrum of a person. I literally have no idea where you get some of these ideas from me telling you that you shouldn’t call people involved in these incidents sociopaths simply because you don’t understand what goes on in them, which, while is an opinion you may be entitled too, one which is factually wrong, harmful an understanding of what we would need to do to fix things for women, identifies you as someone who has not bother to learn about the problem with any sort of thoroughness or rigor, and ultimately, perhaps most importantly, cannot form the basis of a better approach to the system because we don’t want another system based on bullshit unsupported hypotheses about what people are like because that’s one of the problems that got us this current broken system in the first place.
Everyone’s got a right to their opinion? And I’m supposed to believe your taking this seriously as in a rigorous fashion befitting the level of the problem? Go try that shit on the main board with a non-empirically based argument about sonething we have data on and see where that gets you.
Why the hell would I even be posting about the standards for a criminal conviction in the Patricia thread anyway? None of this makes any sense.
Umm... no. I have zero difficulty telling the difference.
That brings me back to my original question: who is Patricia’s employer? The Lions or the NFL? Are you comfortable with the idea that the NFL can fire, suspend or otherwise penalize any player or coach for *allegations* of any past criminal behavior? Or is this okay only for allegations of sexual assault?
Say a coach was accused of selling weed 20 years ago, arrested, charged, then released when charges were dropped for whatever reason. Can Goodell suspend that coach? Maybe he can. If so, I’d argue that’s a bad thing.
Edit: Maybe I should reiterate that I think it’s okay that teams can hire/fire coaches for almost any reason, aside from the discrimination reasons you mentioned.
Are you saying that as a moral position or with a nuanced legal understanding of the league’s relationship to each team and coach and player and federal antitrust law, etc.
There are some versions of similar strategies that have been proposed that even work for the legal system in analogous ways. It might be worth brainstorming what others might be come up with.
My favorite is by Paul Butler, who caused a stir in his Yale Law Review piece that juries use jury nullification to free every black man on trial that wasn't clearly an overt threat to the community. The argument, as you can probably follow from your own view, is that the system is broken already and the people in power won't fix it, so just break it in the opposite way and see how fast they fix it.
When I teach the argument, I use an example I found in a Reader's Digest years ago about a change machine in a doctor's office that was broken and only paying $0.75 on a dollar for change. The receptionist called and called and they never came to fix it, so one day, she called again and said it was broken and paying $1.25 on the dollar, and they came and fixed it that afternoon.
Obviously, the acquittal model is elegant for a number of reasons in that it has individualized treatment of persons and you're not punishing the not-guilty, etc. But I wonder what kind of similar "reversals" we might be able to engineer not even so much to level the playing field so much as, as per Butler, to get the people who can to want to fix it.
Can we fit it on a bumper sticker?
But yes, this is the kind of innovative, forward thinking we need.
I think you are on to something here although it could very well be someone who knows about the case and just happened to see Patricia associated with big time money. The problem is that it's unclear what exactly happened, and what Patricia's role was in it.
I don’t understand what you mean by “moral position” here. Are you asking whether my discomfort is with the NFL having the authority and power to punish (fine, suspend, fire, whatever) players and coaches for alleged, but not proven, misbehavior or criminal acts that predate (in this case, by decades) the player’s or coach’s employment by an NFL team is a moral objection or a practical one? If so, more the latter, but I’m sure my sense of fairness is part of it, mainly because the NFL is rather famous for biased and arbitrary enforcement of rules. As I’ve said at least twice, I’m more-or-less ok with teams themselves punishing or firing employees, as long as it doesn’t violate the CBA, coach’s contract or the law.
Again, is Patricia an employee of the Lions or the NFL? [Edit: or both?] What legal authority, if any, does the NFL have to punish Patricia for alleged past criminal misbehavior predating his NFL career? Based on my memory of Deflategate — which isn’t exactly analogous — the NFL didn’t fire Jastrezemski and McNally, but more-or-less ordered the Patriots to do so... I suppose under threat of hefty fines levied against the team. Is that how it’d work in the Lions-Patricia matter?
If you have zero difficulty telling the difference, why do you keep asking questions that relate to criminal proceedings?
The NFL’s ability to punish or ban players is restricted by the CBA. There is no such restriction with regard to coaches or team employees.
Teams are the employer. And they can issue whatever punishment they want on non-player employees. Teams are governed by the league. And the league can issue their own discipline on team employees.
Whether I am comfortable or not isn’t the issue. But honestly, I’m indifferent.
Yes. And maybe it is a bad thing. But until the coaches unionize, nothing will stop it.
Because the league sets the terms for how teams/franchises operate, they have the same ability to punish or fire employees (for whatever reason they want) as the team does.
That may not seem right. But as we saw with the Saints when their GM, coach and several assistants were suspended (and had no ability to appeal) the commissioner can step in where he chooses and issue punishments or order someone banned from the league. (Which would have the practical effect of firing them.)
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I haven’t kept asking questions that relate to criminal proceedings.
I asked whether Patricia is an employee of the Lions or the NFL and said I think it’s a bad idea for the NFL to determine whether Patricia should be punished (fine, suspension, firing or whatever) for allegations of criminal activity that were dismissed 20 years ago before he worked for the Lions or the NFL.
In a separate, but related post, I asked, exactly once, who is still on board with Blackwell’s Ratio: “Is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer?” I am fully aware that Patricia doesn’t currently face criminal charges. I was responding to the more general idea raised here and elsewhere that false sexual assault and rape accusations are so rare that they need not be taken into account. I’m happy to separate those two discussions. In fact, I already did. No idea why you want to conflate them.
I know. Well, I know that’s true with regard to players and the CBA. I do not know that the NFL’s power is unlimited with regard to punishment of coaches or other team staff... especially for things that are unrelated to football and allegations made long before the employee in question was an employee. That’s why I asked the question about it.
You sure about that? If the league were to learn that Joe Blow, head of NY Giants customer relations, was *accused* of, say, drunk driving, or selling weed, or beating up his girlfriend 20 years ago, and the charges were dismissed, that the NFL could fire him anyway? Or compel the Giants to fire him?
I get that. Whether I’m *comfortable* with any of it isn’t the issue either. Just thought I’d share my opinion on it... you know, on a sports message board where people sometimes express their opinions about stuff. Given the kangaroo courts the NFL tends to run, I think it’d be better if teams handle this stuff (meaning the PR implications of finding out a coach or player was accused, but not convicted, of something abhorrent two decades ago) rather than Roger Goodell. But no one at the NFL is asking me, so that’s just my opinion. It’s not a strongly held opinion, but it seems to have irked you for some reason. Sorry about that.
Absolutely.
The league doesn’t often use this power, because they want to manage their image and be seen as a benevolent force. Plus, if you use that sort of power too often, your franchises would rebel and force changes to the way you govern the league.
So, with the caveat that I don’t think the league * would * order the hypothetical employee to be dismissed for a 20 year old case of selling weed or a DUI, they absolutely could if they thought it was a critical issue.
They would be much more likely to act in a case of domestic violence. Their ultimate decision would be based on the facts of the case and whether an investigation now convinced them that it happened and that might blow up on the league.
Cutting to the chase, I don’t think they’ll do anything with Patricia’s case. But they certainly could.
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