Lawsuit Re: Sex Abuse Allegations Against Daughter of Pres. Nelson and Her Husband

[smac97]

Here:

Quote

SALT LAKE CITY — Allegations rejected 30 years ago by multiple law enforcement investigations resurfaced Wednesday in a federal lawsuit filed against the daughter and son-in-law of the president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The couple was identified only as John and Jane Doe in the suit, but an attorney for the defendants identified them as Brenda and Richard Miles, the daughter and son-in-law of President Russell M. Nelson, president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, often called the Mormon church.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Utah by six unnamed plaintiffs, alleges that their father and the Mileses were part of a ring of adults and babysitters who sexually assaulted them as young children during "touching parties" at homes in their Bountiful neighborhood.

The Mileses rejected the lawsuit’s claims through their attorney, calling them "patently false and deeply, utterly offensive" and "long-ago debunked accusations."

"We have never abused these children or anyone else. To do so would be contrary to our beliefs, our principles, our character and the way we have always lived our lives. Police investigated these allegations against us more than 30 years ago and found no evidence to support them. To protect ourselves from the specter of false allegations, we voluntarily took a polygraph test. The results of the tests, which we took in 1986, support the reality that we did not sexually abuse these children.”

The Mileses’ attorney, Jim Jardine, said, "Child abuse is evil, but so is a false accusation of child abuse."

Wow.

Decades-old allegations of sexual abuse are deeply problematic. 

-Smac

 

[strappinglad]

This is the new ' normal' ? Let's hope not.

[rongo]

I honestly think that if I were a political nominee, the opposition would come out with five women who claimed I had done terrible things to them in school, in our twenties, etc. It would be nonsense, of course, but we have a climate where the accuser is to be believed above all, with no evidence actually driving away from this imperative. Even though my wife was my first kiss, more and more victims would come out of the woodwork.

National Review had an interesting article comparing the "believer her!" imperative with Atticus Finch and To Kill a Mockingbird. By this standard, Atticus did a terrible thing not believing Mayella Ewell. How dare he question her story and poke holes in it! What a monster!

[Duncan]

Or just because someone is in a position of authority, power, "big name" doesn't mean they can get away with anything they want to and lowly peasants just have to deal with their deceit and crimes. Like my Grandma used to say your sin is sure to find you out. How do you deal with people in power who did awful things but refuse to acknowledge it? In this Nelson case though it seems looney

[Anijen]

1 hour ago, smac97 said:

Here:

Wow.

Decades-old allegations of sexual abuse are deeply problematic. 

-Smac

 

I think part of the reason that sexual harassment and assault claims are believed (on their face, even in the absence of evidence) is that they are so extreme and outrageous that the thought of the accusations being false is itself a violation of social norms. To falsely accuse an innocent man of sexual harassment and assault is so patently unethical and beyond the pale of acceptable behavior that many assume it pretty well must be true. “Why in the world would she make it up if it wasn’t true?” is likely the first and only thought needed to accept her claims. No rational, responsible, moral person would do that.

[Gray]

44 minutes ago, rongo said:

I honestly think that if I were a political nominee, the opposition would come out with five women who claimed I had done terrible things to them in school, in our twenties, etc. It would be nonsense, of course, but we have a climate where the accuser is to be believed above all, with no evidence actually driving away from this imperative. Even though my wife was my first kiss, more and more victims would come out of the woodwork.

 

Most people never face such accusations. Most estimates of false accusations of rape say that they are statistically very rare. On the flip side most sexual assault actually goes unreported. So this is all upside down.

I hope that rapists have a lot to be worried about, as more victims speak up.

[Gray]

1 hour ago, smac97 said:

Here:

Wow.

Decades-old allegations of sexual abuse are deeply problematic. 

-Smac

 

Without commenting on this case, do you think all the clergy abuse victims who came forward decades later were just making it up?

[bluebell]

1 hour ago, smac97 said:

Here:

Wow.

Decades-old allegations of sexual abuse are deeply problematic. 

-Smac

 

It sounds like these accusations came forward around the time of the sex abuse scandal hysteria of the 1980s.  I read one online article that stated that that episode was "the most destructive moral panic since the Salem witch trials."  Let's hope were not gearing up for another kind of episode.

[rongo]

3 minutes ago, Gray said:

Most people never face such accusations. Most estimates of false accusations of rape say that they are statistically very rare. On the flip side most sexual assault actually goes unreported. So this is all upside down.

I hope that rapists have a lot to be worried about, as more victims speak up.

I think the Kavanaugh hearings have shattered the old normal, though. I think we're going to see circus claims with every important nominee ---- and the fact that this was replacing Kennedy instead of Scalia is what drove radicals bonkers. 

The fact is that there *are* false accusations ---- rare or not. And where nothing can be corroborated, and six past FBI background checks have turned up nothing, you can't crucify the accused, even if you want to believe the accuser. 

[smac97]

9 minutes ago, Gray said:

Without commenting on this case, do you think all the clergy abuse victims who came forward decades later were just making it up?

I'm not sure what "clergy abuse victims" you are referencing here.  

Thanks,

-Smac

[ksfisher]

9 minutes ago, Gray said:

Most people never face such accusations. Most estimates of false accusations of rape say that they are statistically very rare. On the flip side most sexual assault actually goes unreported. So this is all upside down.

I hope that rapists have a lot to be worried about, as more victims speak up.

Interesting reading

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day-care_sex-abuse_hysteria

[pogi]

37 minutes ago, Anijen said:

I think part of the reason that sexual harassment and assault claims are believed (on their face, even in the absence of evidence) is that they are so extreme and outrageous that the thought of the accusations being false is itself a violation of social norms. To falsely accuse an innocent man of sexual harassment and assault is so patently unethical and beyond the pale of acceptable behavior that many assume it pretty well must be true. “Why in the world would she make it up if it wasn’t true?” is likely the first and only thought needed to accept her claims. No rational, responsible, moral person would do that.

No “rational,  responsible, moral person” would assault women and children either...yet it happens.

Should we assume that all women are rational, responsible, and moral people?  Surely, you can see the leverage of power that unquestioned accusations can give a person.

 

[smac97]

19 minutes ago, Gray said:

Most people never face such accusations. Most estimates of false accusations of rape say that they are statistically very rare. On the flip side most sexual assault actually goes unreported. So this is all upside down.

I hope that rapists have a lot to be worried about, as more victims speak up.

Interesting reading here:

Quote

The Flawed Statistic That’s Helping Poison the Brett Kavanaugh Debate
By DAVID FRENCH
September 22, 2018 6:00 AM

Only a small fraction of rape claims are proved false, but far more are never pursued, because of insufficient evidence.

It happens every single time there’s a public debate about sex crimes. Advocates for women introduce, in addition to the actual evidence in the case, an additional bit of  “data” that bolsters each and every claim of sexual assault. You see, “studies” show that women rarely file false rape claims. According to many activists, when a woman makes a claim of sexual assault, there is an empirically high probability that she’s telling the truth.

In other words, the very existence of the claim is evidence of the truth of the claim.

I am concerned that is what we are seeing in society more.  Allegations against Brett Kavanaugh and others are being bolstered by the notion that the allegation is evidence for itself.

That just doesn't work.

Quote

Here, for example, is Isaac Stanley-Becker writing in the Washington Post: “No crime is more underreported than rape, according to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, which estimates that the rate of false reporting is somewhere between 2 and 10 percent.”

This same statistic is cited again and again. And it’s being cited to bolster Christine Blasey Ford’s allegations against Brett Kavanaugh. Here it is at the BBC, in Vogue, and at Raw Story. This Vox report goes even farther,  repeating an incredible and unverifiable claim that “994 out of 1,000 perpetrators walk free.”

I could go on and on. Writing in Vox, Sandra Newman adds a new twist, not only arguing that false rape reports are “quite rare” but that people who make false claims tend to fit a particular profile. Ford’s claim, she says, “sounds nothing like a false rape accusation,” but it “does sound like millions of real attempted rapes.”

I've seen this line of reasoning, too.  McKenna Denson must be believed because her claims "sound like" other claims of sexual assault.

Again, very problematic.

Quote

If you believe this data, it’s easy to see why people are so outraged when a skeptic says that an alleged victim hasn’t come forward with compelling evidence. After all, it’s a statistical fact. Women are almost always telling the truth. It’s science.

But there’s a problem. A serious problem. Anyone who tells you that we can statistically peg the number of “false” rape claims is peddling a fatally flawed statistic. There’s a simple reason why: Our system does not adjudicate whether a claim is true or false. It adjudicates burdens of proof. Yes, there are some rare instances where an accuser recants, DNA evidence totally exonerates, or a defendant can decisively prove he is innocent, but those cases represent a small fraction of the whole.

This is a very important point.  False allegations of rape are virtually never investigated as such.  The focus of criminal proceedings is based on the allegation being proven.  If it fails in that regard, we can't say that it was a "false" claim, or a valid claim that just had evidentiary problems.  In the main, we don't know either way.

Quote

If a prosecutor declines to pursue a case, does that mean the alleged victim filed a proven false claim? Very rarely. Instead, it usually means that the prosecutor doesn’t believe he can prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt. If a judge tosses a sexual-harassment lawsuit at summary judgment — or if a civil jury rules against a sexual-harassment plaintiff — does that mean she filed a proven false claim? Very rarely. It instead means that the judge found the allegations insufficient as a matter of law or that the jury found they were not supported by adequate evidence.

These outcomes don’t mean that the allegations are false. They don’t mean that they are true. They simply mean that the evidence didn’t meet necessary thresholds.

For example, in one of the key studies that the National Sexual Violence Resource Center relied on, researchers classified as false only 5.9 percent of cases — but noted that 44.9 percent of cases where classified as “Case did not proceed.” The category was defined as follows:

This classification was applied if the report of a sexual assault did not result in a referral for prosecution or disciplinary action because of insufficient evidence or because the victim withdrew from the process or was unable to identify the perpetrator or because the victim mislabeled the incident (e.g., gave a truthful account of the incident, but the incident did not meet the legal elements of the crime of sexual assault). [Emphasis added.]

There is absolutely no way to know how many of the claims in that broad category were actually true or likely false. We simply know that the relevant decision-makers did not deem them to be provably true. Yet there are legions of people who glide right past the realities of our legal system and instead consider every claim outside those rare total exonerations to be true. According to this view, the justice system fails everyone else.

This creates an artificially inflated sense of justice denied. It creates incentives (on campus, for example) to create a separate justice system for sexual-abuse cases and to minimize due process for the accused. It shapes the way in which we evaluate other human beings, and it leads countless Americans to prejudge a case without careful regard to the evidence. After all, absent specific evidence that individuals are lying, they must be telling the truth. Right?

But the reality is far more complex, and that complex reality demands individual adjudication and individual assessments. Yes, there are some small number of women who fabricate claims out of whole cloth. There are men who are clearly guilty. But between the two poles of certainty, there is an enormous amount of ambiguity and confusion, and it is the task of the finder of fact to weigh the specific evidence in that specific case.

This is why I think Gray's question is misguided ("do you think all the clergy abuse victims who came forward decades later were just making it up?").  I won't play the odds when it comes to allegations of sexual assault.  We need to address each of them individually, on their merits and on the evidence.  

I don't think we should grant an unwarranted presumption of truth to any and all rape claims, but the "Believe All Women" crowd is demanding that we do precisely that.

Thanks,

-Smac

[Gray]

26 minutes ago, rongo said:

I think the Kavanaugh hearings have shattered the old normal, though. I think we're going to see circus claims with every important nominee ---- and the fact that this was replacing Kennedy instead of Scalia is what drove radicals bonkers. 

The fact is that there *are* false accusations ---- rare or not. And where nothing can be corroborated, and six past FBI background checks have turned up nothing, you can't crucify the accused, even if you want to believe the accuser. 

So you're taking one sketchy SCOTUS nominee and trying project a trend from that? A sample size of one?

Kennedy wasn't exactly a liberal justice, you know. In fact he has ties through his son to Trump's questionable loans. The accusations against Kavanaugh are credible. His testimony is riddled with lies and evasions. That's really all that's needed to disqualify him.

Edited October 3, 2018 by Gray

[Gray]

18 minutes ago, smac97 said:

I'm not sure what "clergy abuse victims" you are referencing here.  

Thanks,

-Smac

For starters

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_sexual_abuse_scandal_in_Ireland

[Gray]

19 minutes ago, ksfisher said:

Interesting reading

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day-care_sex-abuse_hysteria

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_accusation_of_rape#Estimates_of_prevalence

[Gray]

1 minute ago, smac97 said:

Interesting reading here:

I am concerned that is what we are seeing in society more.  Allegations against Brett Kavanaugh and others are being bolstered by the notion that the allegation is evidence for itself.

That just doesn't work.

I've seen this line of reasoning, too.  McKenna Denson must be believed because her claims "sound like" other claims of sexual assault.

Again, very problematic.

This is a very important point.  False allegations of rape are virtually never investigated as such.  The focus of criminal proceedings is based on the allegation being proven.  If it fails in that regard, we can't say that it was a "false" claim, or a valid claim that just had evidentiary problems.  In the main, we don't know either way.

This is why I think Gray's question is misguided ("do you think all the clergy abuse victims who came forward decades later were just making it up?").  I won't play the odds when it comes to allegations of sexual assault.  We need to address each of them individually, on their merits and on the evidence.  

I don't think we should grant an unwarranted presumption of truth to any and all rape claims, but the "Believe All Women" crowd is demanding that we do precisely that.

Thanks,

-Smac

Most estimates about the prevalence of false accusations are about 5% or less.

[smac97]

1 minute ago, Gray said:

For starters

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_sexual_abuse_scandal_in_Ireland

So in response to your question ("do you think all the clergy abuse victims who came forward decades later were just making it up?"), I answer "No."

But as the article I quoted previously observes: 

Quote

But the reality is far more complex, and that complex reality demands individual adjudication and individual assessments. Yes, there are some small number of women who fabricate claims out of whole cloth. There are men who are clearly guilty. But between the two poles of certainty, there is an enormous amount of ambiguity and confusion, and it is the task of the finder of fact to weigh the specific evidence in that specific case.

Christine Blasey Ford has made a serious allegation. It merits a serious hearing. But as we consider its merit, there should be no default presumption that anyone is telling the truth.

"No default presumption" is the key wording here.  The only "default presumption" I am willing to go by is a presumption of innocence for the accused.

Thanks,

-Smac

[rongo]

2 minutes ago, Gray said:

So you're taking one sketchy SCOTUS nominee and trying project a trend from that? A sample size of one?

No, I'm also taking into account the climate in many other areas, not just this hearing. 

[smac97]

4 minutes ago, Gray said:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_accusation_of_rape#Estimates_of_prevalence

More than one in twenty rape claims (5.5%) are "deemed false or baseless . . . [a figure that is] at least five times higher than for most other offence types."

Moreover, I refuse to grant credence to any particular rape claim based solely on the existence of the claim itself - as you appear to be advocating.

I also refuse to grant credence to any particular rape claim simply because the accuser is a woman.

Thanks,

-Smac

[Storm Rider]

It is hard to expect sanity, common sense, and morality when it comes to politics. Do I think rape is not always reported? Of course. Do I think sexual abuse is not always unreported? Of course. Do I know humans lie? Absolutely and without question. Do I think females are human? Without question. Do I think people falsely accuse others in order to win an objective? Yes. 

Do I think that an accusation must be supported by the facts?  Yes.  Do I believe in innocent until proven guilty? Completely and unequivocally. Do I believe in Due Process? Yes, wholeheartedly yes. 

Do I think only one gender should be believed always? Please reread my statements above. 

[bluebell]

16 minutes ago, pogi said:

No “rational,  responsible, moral person” would assault women and children either...yet it happens.

Should we assume that all women are rational, responsible, and moral people?  Surely, you can see the leverage of power that unquestioned accusations can give a person.

 

I didn't read Anjien's post as saying that it's reasonable to assume that no rational moral person would make up a sexual abuse accusation, only that that's why so many are believed on their face without evidence.  

[rongo]

Is falsely accusing someone of rape as bad as rape itself? Or, is falsely accusing someone of rape not as bad as raping someone?

Rape being extremely evil, to me, falsely accusing someone of it is just as bad as rape itself. I don't think it's somehow a "lesser of two evils." 

This is what angers me about the whole thing. The allegations being as serious as they are, if there is no corroboration or evidence for the claim, then the claim should not be able to be weaponized to submarine a nomination. Even if you really believe that he did it and that he did the things that have been alleged (including the gang rape squads, which even the Democrats are ignoring), without corroboration or evidence after all these years, you can't (or shouldn't) continue to try to have them destroy a man and his family. Unless you don't care about any of that and just want to be 100% political about it. 

[Storm Rider]

On ‎10‎/‎3‎/‎2018 at 2:56 PM, Gray said:

So you're taking one sketchy SCOTUS nominee and trying project a trend from that? A sample size of one?

Kennedy wasn't exactly a liberal justice, you know. In fact he has ties through his son to Trump's questionable loans. The accusations against Kavanaugh are credible. His testimony is riddled with lies and evasions. That's really all that's needed to disqualify him.

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On the floor laughing. The accusations are credible if I am blind, deaf, and dumb and only then. Let's stop with the propaganda. Yes, he attempted to rape me when I was 15, no 18, no, well I cannot remember. Well, it was very close to the club. Well, not really close. Well, it was between my house and the club. There were four guys that raped me. Well, no it was two, Well, no it was really three guys and another girl. However, NOT A SINGLE ONE in attendance can recall the party nor can they support her claims. Yeah, but I can draw a floor plan of the house, but I just cannot tell you which house I went to. I remember this perfectly, except I don't know when, I don't know with whom, and I don't know where.  Yes, really - they are credible to only those who ignore the facts. 

Edited October 12, 2018 by Storm Rider

[Amulek]

1 hour ago, smac97 said:

Decades-old allegations of sexual abuse are deeply problematic. 

Agreed.