Julian Assange: rapist or not?

[tyr_13]

I can't find the article either.

 

[lionking]

This thread has become a "criticise the Swedish legal system at your peril" one.

 

[Korren]

This seems like an incredibly simplistic, black-and-white view of the world. It seems trivially obvious to me that there is no contradiction whatsoever in thinking "it is good that rape case A is being investigated" and "it is unusual that rape case A is being investigated".

But it's not unusual: a 20% flat chance of prosecution isn't exactly astronomical odds, and with two distinct victims this case is already better sourced than many other reported rape cases.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

The opposite of what I said would be that Wolf thinks we should prosecute Assange because it's not unusual. I think the word you were looking for was "different".

What is Naomi Wolf saying according to you then?

You've gotten to the stage of using big fonts and asking to have things explained to you when you can and should just read it for yourself, which is the point at which I give up engaging with you.

I'll post my response (which is mostly me being forced to repeat myself anyway) and then you can have the last word. Have fun.

You are simply assuming that the courts are wrong.

No, I'm just basing my opinion on the evidence we do have and dismissing the faith-based "they must have secret evidence nobody knows about!" argument which attempts to get around the need for evidence.

Any daft court decision can be excused with the "secret evidence" argument.

There's also the tricky question of what this secret evidence could possibly be, given the timing involved, the initial handling of the case, the need to disclose material to the defence and the nature of the alleged offence. Unless you have time machines in Sweden, it seems to me that believing in secret evidence in this particular case is only marginally more sensible than believing in unicorns.

What makes you think that? Surely not Wolf's article? I believe I have quite thoroughly dissected that one. I mean, it's just one stupid argument after another.

That's a phrase I'd use to describe your own posts. Seriously, when you're posting in enlarged fonts you might want to take a step away from the computer and think about whether everyone else in the world has gone crazy or whether it's just that you've gone crazy.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

But it's not unusual: a 20% flat chance of prosecution isn't exactly astronomical odds, and with two distinct victims this case is already better sourced than many other reported rape cases.

Bear in mind that 20% is going to include non-date-rape cases which are easier to get a conviction for.

Also the two claimed victims aren't independent of each other, which reduces the strength of their testimony compared to two totally independent witnesses, there's no physical evidence, and Assange has a far better case than most to argue that it's possible that the complainants were got at or are otherwise motivated to lie.

If that's all they've got, and barring a time machine that is almost certainly all they've got, that's not proof beyond reasonable doubt by any stretch.

 

[The Dark Lord]

If that's all they've got, and barring a time machine that is almost certainly all they've got, that's not proof beyond reasonable doubt by any stretch.

Maybe not. That would be up to a jury, if it got that far. If he wasn't running away from the accusations like a coward, he may well have been cleared by now. I think it is hilarious that instead of facing the accusations like a man, he has instead made himself a prisoner in the Ecuadorian embassy. lol

 

[PhantomWolf]

First I note that she still contains the same errors as her previous work, eg. claiming that the women were interviewed together, they weren't, in fact they were interviewed on separate days. Even on the day they made the complaint together they were seperated to tell their stories. She also claims that it's unusual to interview ex-boyfriends, when as others have pointed out previously, it isn't.

So is the prosecution unusual for a rape. Well yes. All rape prosecutions are unusual simply because the vast majority of them never get beyond a complaint. The real question is not is this complaint unusual compared to all complaints, but is this complaint unusual compared to other rape cases with a similar amount of evidence? That one we can't answer directly as we don't have all the evidence that the Prosecution does, but regardless of how some want to cut it we do know that FIVE courts have reviewed the evidence and unanimously concluded that there is sufficent evidence to proceed.

So, from the basis that multiple courts have agreed that there is sufficent evidence to proceed, it would seem most likely that the prosecution believe they have enough to gain a conviction, so the question is, is it unusual to persue a rape case where there is enough evidence to secure a conviction? I see no evidence that it would be unusual to proceed with prosecuting a rape case where the prosecution is confident of a result. In fact, I'd say that it would be unusual if they did not.

So the final question becomes, is it unusual to persue an alleged rapist that has fled prosecution when there is a case that the prosecution believes is strong? Again I have seen no evidence of Sweden or any other countries for that matter who merely throw their hands in the air when an alleged rapist runs and says, "Oh well we better drop the charges cause he ran away." Again I'd suggest that doing so would be unusual.

So really the conclusion is that while compoarted to all rapes, this one is being treated in an unusual manner, for a case that involves the prosecution believing that they have enough evidence to convict and having had that evidence tested in five courts to confirm that they do have a case, and in which the suspect has fled the juristiction of the Prosecution, it's being treated quite normally.

 

[nathan]

I were raped in Uppsala, where Assange is alleged to have committed his crime, I could not expect prosecutors to lobby governments to arrest my assailant.

Have the prosecutors lobbied one or more governments in this case?

On the contrary, "ordinary" Swedish rapists and abusers should assume that police might not respond when called.

I was under the impression the complainants in this case went to the police.

When I tried the rape crisis hotline at the government-run Crisis Centre for Women in Stockholm, no one even picked up - and there was no answering machine.

Er, why does a non-police organization not answering the phone tell you anything about how the police might respond? (and for that matter, how does she know she got the right number?)

 

[trustbutverify]

So now Huckster Naomi Wolf is a credible voice on this issue. Next stop, Alex Jones.

 

[JihadJane]

What?!?? I have no "evidence" that he said that, or that the witnesses are telling the truth.

Correct

I simply find them. and the defectors who have complained of hasty redactions, more credible than Assange. You can dance and sing all day about how they are all just jealous of Assange like supporters mostly do, or that it was the Pentagon, just wondering what stupid theory ya'll run with

"Credibility" isn't evidence. It's highly a subjective quality, easily influenced by ideological and other bias.

Excited, flowery rhetoric is evidence, either.

Which the judge described as his "statement was a deliberate attempt to mislead the court", and the Swedish Bar Association warned him for not having followed their Code of Conduct.

Appeal to authority.

And it was not "a text message", there were three of them.

So what? It's still not "Oh Wow!!!!1!1!!!"

 

[JihadJane]

 

[nathan]

Appeal to authority.

Do you not know that the judge(s) presiding over the case is the ruling authority?

So what? It's still not "Oh Wow!!!!1!1!!!"

A lawyer deliberately misleading the court is a rare and serious event. It's the kind of thing that gets them censured. Oh, and I believe you're misquoting me.

 

[uke2se]

No, I'm just basing my opinion on the evidence we do have and dismissing the faith-based "they must have secret evidence nobody knows about!" argument which attempts to get around the need for evidence.

Are you not aware of how police investigations are done at all? I mean, this is stunningly ignorant. You and I are not capable of making an informed judgment in the court case because 1. the evidence isn't available to us, and 2. we are not trained to do so.

We have legal systems with trained personell because we won't and can't accept mob-justice, which is basically what you are advocating here.

Any daft court decision can be excused with the "secret evidence" argument.

Nobody is talking about "secret evidence" but you. I am talking about the case evidence that isn't made public because it's an open investigation. No judgment in the case has been rendered yet. Only a judgment in the matter of extradition.

There's also the tricky question of what this secret evidence could possibly be, given the timing involved, the initial handling of the case, the need to disclose material to the defence and the nature of the alleged offence. Unless you have time machines in Sweden, it seems to me that believing in secret evidence in this particular case is only marginally more sensible than believing in unicorns.

Complete poppycock.

That's a phrase I'd use to describe your own posts. Seriously, when you're posting in enlarged fonts you might want to take a step away from the computer and think about whether everyone else in the world has gone crazy or whether it's just that you've gone crazy.

The reason I was posting with enlarged font is kind of obvious. You are strikingly hard to get through to. People blinded with ideology often are.

 

[uke2se]

Bear in mind that 20% is going to include non-date-rape cases which are easier to get a conviction for.

Also the two claimed victims aren't independent of each other, which reduces the strength of their testimony compared to two totally independent witnesses, there's no physical evidence, and Assange has a far better case than most to argue that it's possible that the complainants were got at or are otherwise motivated to lie.

If that's all they've got, and barring a time machine that is almost certainly all they've got, that's not proof beyond reasonable doubt by any stretch.

How do you know so much about what evidence is available? Have you seen the evidence presented to the extradition court? Are you trained in making a legal judgment?

 

[uke2se]

Since the Assange-apologists have now firmly and fondly embrased a conspiracy theory (five courts plus prosecution plus police plus Swedish government plus US government plus UK government plus who-knows-who-else), it might be time to move the thread to the conspiracy theories section of the forum and start demanding the same level of evidence for this conspiracy as we do from twoofers and holocaust deniers.

 

[tsig]

"The gist of her article" is a straw man of your own invention. Her actual article says the exact opposite.

Claiming to have divined "the gist" of something is a very popular way to try to smuggle in a straw man, alongside "what it all boils down to" and "basically what they are saying is...". However it's normally done more subtly. Claiming that Wolf is saying the exact opposite of what she actually printed in black and white is pretty cheeky even by SI&CE standards.



Repeating this isn't going to make it any more persuasive.



This is indeed an epic fail of rationality. Courts can and do get things wrong all the time, and educated laypeople can and do call them on it. If you have so little faith in your ability to reason that you dismiss completely the idea that a court could be wrong and you could tell that it was wrong, then that's your own business. I suffer from no such delusions of inferiority.

That's why rationalists should look to the available evidence, not to the opinion of the court, and not to imaginary secret evidence that the court might have had.



What do you think it feels like to be such a bumbler, from the inside? I put it to you that it might feel as if normally meticulously rational posters, with a proven track record of disagreeing with court decisions when they had the evidence on their side and of being proven right, had suddenly gone insane and were disagreeing with you for no reason.

I assure you, I've suffered no recent strokes or brain injuries. The same brain as ever is behind these posts.

I don't think Assange or anyone else deserves a free pass to sexually assault people for whatever political activism they've engaged in. However I do very strongly think that justice should be blind, and that there is significant reason to think here that Assange is being singled out by the justice system for special treatment as punishment for his political dissent.

He fled to avoid prosecution and is hiding in a foreign embassy, that's the only thing special about this case.

 

[WildCat]

Assange is indefinitely detaining himself.

 

[Here_to_learn]

Appeal to authority.

Nope, fact. The judge did in fact describe it that way, and the Bar association did in fact warn him for his actions.

So what? It's still not "Oh Wow!!!!1!1!!!"

Well, it's often used as an argument for JA. For example the "Sex, Lies and JA" makes a point that JA left sweden without knowing that an interview had been requested, and then goes on to describe the red notice as "Then the Swedish prosecutor upped the ante", without mentioning at all that several requests had been made to JAs lawyer.

The fact that JAs lawyer missed/ignored/lied/whatever about the requests has been known since feb 8th 2011. And regarding "missed", if you read the judgement (p7) you can see that not only had he received the texts, the second one showed evidence that he had responded to the first one.

But regardless of if we blame JA for not being reachable, or his lawyer for not trying, it's still a fact that when the "documentary" was created in july 2012, nobody had to be in doubt that the prosecutor had tried to reach JA, still it was not mentioned at all.

So when used "for" JA it's an important point, and when it's shown to be a lie it's not...

 

[Childlike Empress]

Excuse me if I confuse what you are talking about, but from the transcript:

PER E. SAMUELSON: In mid-September he got a message from his then-lawyer, but the prosecutor did not want him and... that he was... for an interview, and that he was free to leave Sweden, and under that assumption he left Sweden in the afternoon of the 27th of September in good faith that he had sought for and got approval from the prosecutor to leave the country.

edit: ah, on second read I understand your post, you mean they didn't mention that the lawyer didn't inform him correctly according to your information.

 

[Dave Rogers]

Her point was that date rape cases in Sweden are rarely investigated vigorously and rarely result in convictions. So the Assange case is unusual in the way it has been pursued and the enthusiasm with which it has been pursued.

I realise that anti-Assange posters most definitely do not want to acknowledge that, because then some explanation of why Assange was treated in this unusual fashion would seem to be needed. However that's an appeal to consequences, not an argument. You need actual evidence that the way Assange has been treated really is usual, as opposed to assurances from the people pursuing him that everything is above board, attempts to shift the burden of proof or other alternatives to evidence.

It seems to me that there's an unspoken false dilemma behind all the above: Either Assange's case is being treated in a completely normal fashion, or the case against Assange is somehow flawed or politically motivated. And it seems to me that this is nonsensical.

Assange is a well-known public figure. There are many reasons why a justice system, concerned about its perceived failure to prosecute perpetrators of rape and sexual assault competently and willingly, might choose to focus on a high-profile case where it is felt that the evidence strongly supports a conviction. It could even be argued that, in such a high-profile case, the authorities would have to be even more confident of the strength of their case than in a more commonplace one. The public embarrassment, should Assange be successfully extradited to Sweden and then acquitted, could be quite severe.

So there is, in fact, a perfectly reasonable answer to the question, if Assange's treatment by the Swedish criminal justice system is unusual, of why it's unusual; it's unusual because he's an internationally famous person. That alone means that it's almost inevitable, either that he'll receive special treatment, or that the level of scrutiny of his treatment will generate a spurious appearance of special treatment.

And none of this is in any way related to the questions, either of Assange's guilt or innocence of the charges levelled at him, or of whether there is some nefarious US plot to make it easier to extradite him by making it more difficult. It gives no useful indications to the answer of either question.

Dave