Sen. Al Franken Accused Of Sexual Assault By LA Model And Radio Host

[Dashinka 24,500]

3 minutes ago, smilesammich said:

i disagree. trump supporters quickly buy in to trump's claim that all his accusers are lying. with moore it's, gee um *head scratch* how do we figure out who's telling the truth, oh well it was a long time ago. now with franken, it seems the right is clinging to the picture when the picture isn't even the sexual assault that tweeden was most repulsed by..but let's focus on the picture because that's proof. tweeden's account of what happened with the forced kiss is secondary.

When you mix politics with the claims it is always questionable.  Just like the claims against Moore from 30-40 years ago, one often wonders where these claims were when he was a judge.  Throw into the mix lawyers like Gloria Allred who appears to be doing this for her own publicity and it increases the stink level.  Then you include the fact that the Democrats always seem to get a pass politically for similar transgressions and the stink level gets even higher.  This is why these types of things need to go through the judicial system accordingly instead of everyone ignoring the 5th, 6th and 7th amendments and trying the case in the media.

[Dashinka 24,500]

7 minutes ago, bcking said:

It is difficult because unless the victim comes forward incredibly quickly (which doesn't happen often) actual evidence of events occurring are very hard to come by. It ends up being a "he said, she said". While in the court of law the burden lies on the accuser, knowing that many of the accusations are real saddens me to think that so many people guilty of assault would get off just because of a lack of evidence. But that frustrates me about our legal system in a lot of cases. One of the reasons I wouldn't make a good lawyer. I'd want to be Daredevil style. Try to deal with it in court, but if the court fails and I know the person is guilty I still want them to suffer.

 

That is why for me multiple accusations from separate unrelated people does hold a lot of weight. It still doesn't provide "proof" but as I said most of the time we will never have direct "proof". 

So what if it is not true,and the accuser just hates the other person and wants them to suffer?  Is that fine?

[bcking 3,157]

1 minute ago, Bill & Katya said:

So what if it is not true,and the accuser just hates the other person and wants them to suffer?  Is that fine?

Of course not.

 

But as has been said, the evidence suggests a false accusations is only about 2% of cases. 

 

Regardless of how we set our threshold of evidence, we will always have "false positives" and "false negatives" and they are reciprocally related. We have to except some risk of "getting it wrong", in both directions.

 

Since false accusations are relatively rare, I would lean more towards minimizing false negatives.

 

As I said the presence of multiple independent accusations can help. If 2% of accusations are false, then if you have 4 accusations the chance they are all false is .000016%.

[smilesammich 10,727]

7 minutes ago, Bill & Katya said:

When you mix politics with the claims it is always questionable.  Just like the claims against Moore from 30-40 years ago, one often wonders where these claims were when he was a judge.  Throw into the mix lawyers like Gloria Allred who appears to be doing this for her own publicity and it increases the stink level.  Then you include the fact that the Democrats always seem to get a pass politically for similar transgressions and the stink level gets even higher.  This is why these types of things need to go through the judicial system accordingly instead of everyone ignoring the 5th, 6th and 7th amendments and trying the case in the media.

you're underestimating the power of shame. to many women going public is waaaayyy more trouble than it's worth. no one wants to be publicly humiliated, called a liar, and have all their dirty laundry all aired out..

i think with the moore accusers, they just got to a point where they'd seen enough of this creep and his flagrant public hypocrisy and went full on towanda. same with tweed

Edited November 17, 2017 by smilesammich

[Dashinka 24,500]

Just now, bcking said:

Of course not.

 

But as has been said, the evidence suggests a false accusations is only about 2% of cases. 

 

Regardless of how we set our threshold of evidence, we will always have "false positives" and "false negatives" and they are reciprocally related. We have to except some risk of "getting it wrong", in both directions.

 

Since false accusations are relatively rare, I would lean more towards minimizing false negatives.

 

As I said the presence of multiple independent accusations can help. If 2% of accusations are false, then if you have 4 accusations the chance they are all false is .000016%.

2% could still be a lot of people falsely accused.  I for one wouldn’t want the judicial system making decisions based on statistics that are very hard to prove or are massaged to fit a narrative.

 

A “false” rape allegation is provably false – meaning, for example, that the accused has a bulletproof alibi or the accuser eventually recants. In many of the cases examined by the authors of the study, there was simply not enough evidence to bring charges. A rape might have occurred, but it might not have. Such cases are not classified as false. Specifically, in their analysis of sexual-assault cases at a large university, the authors found that 5.9 percent of cases were provably false. However, 44.9 percent cases “did not proceed” – meaning there was insufficient evidence, the accuser was uncooperative, or the incident did not meet the legal standard of assault. An additional 13.9 percent of cases could not be categorized due to lack of information. That leaves 35.3 percent of cases that led to formal charges or discipline against the accused. So there is obviously a lot of uncertainty here, a lot of he-said/she-said when allegations are filed. It would be a mistake to conclude, on the basis of the existing evidence, that nine out of ten assault claims are genuine.

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/416536

[Dashinka 24,500]

4 minutes ago, smilesammich said:

you're underestimating the power of shame. to many women going public is waaaayyy more trouble than it's worth. no one wants to be publicly humiliated, called a liar, and have all their dirty laundry all aired out..

i think with the moore accusers, they just got to a point where they'd seen enough of this creep and his flagrant public hypocrisy and went full on towanda. same with tweed

You are probably correct, and this is one of the reasons we only get idiots that actually run for political office as most people do not want to face the scrutiny from the unrelenting press (especially if the person does not agree with the press’s political bias).  

 

Back to the topic, I am fine with Franken staying put because politically he has lost all credibility.  Now whenever we see him trying to ask tough questions to someone we will all see that picture in our heads of him mocking a sleeping woman and writing scripts that forces her to kiss him.

[bcking 3,157]

2 minutes ago, Bill & Katya said:

2% could still be a lot of people falsely accused.  I for one wouldn’t want the judicial system making decisions based on statistics that are very hard to prove or are massaged to fit a narrative.

 

A “false” rape allegation is provably false – meaning, for example, that the accused has a bulletproof alibi or the accuser eventually recants. In many of the cases examined by the authors of the study, there was simply not enough evidence to bring charges. A rape might have occurred, but it might not have. Such cases are not classified as false. Specifically, in their analysis of sexual-assault cases at a large university, the authors found that 5.9 percent of cases were provably false. However, 44.9 percent cases “did not proceed” – meaning there was insufficient evidence, the accuser was uncooperative, or the incident did not meet the legal standard of assault. An additional 13.9 percent of cases could not be categorized due to lack of information. That leaves 35.3 percent of cases that led to formal charges or discipline against the accused. So there is obviously a lot of uncertainty here, a lot of he-said/she-said when allegations are filed. It would be a mistake to conclude, on the basis of the existing evidence, that nine out of ten assault claims are genuine.

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/416536

Even the 6% rate of probably false cases...

 

4 cases all being false would have a likelihood of 0.0012%.

 

The group that had to be thrown out were exactly my point before. It is very hard to professional unless the victim comes forward immediately and there is physical evidence, which is rare. Many of those cases will be true, some will be false.

 

Based in social stigma, cultural climate etc... I would say of the ones that can't be proven either way likely fall closer to the "true" category. But I admit that part is purely 100% speculation.

 

Also - even if we think each accusations has a 50% risk of being false, then the risk of 4 separate accusations being false is 6%, which is quite low. And that is assuming a very high falsehood rate.

[smilesammich 10,727]

6 minutes ago, Bill & Katya said:

Back to the topic, I am fine with Franken staying put because politically he has lost all credibility.  Now whenever we see him trying to ask tough questions to someone we will all see that picture in our heads of him mocking a sleeping woman and writing scripts that forces her to kiss him.

yeah, sort of like every time i see our lovely president's face i picture him being mr. i'm so debonair grabby grabberson with his tiny hands. no credibility. just a creep.

[Voice of Reason 10,298]

30 minutes ago, smilesammich said:

i disagree. trump supporters quickly buy in to trump's claim that all his accusers are lying. with moore it's, gee um *head scratch* how do we figure out who's telling the truth, oh well it was a long time ago. now with franken, it seems the right is clinging to the picture when the picture isn't even the sexual assault that tweeden was most repulsed by..but let's focus on the picture because that's proof. tweeden's account of what happened with the forced kiss is secondary.

To me, the pic is proof of nothing. May in fact be a joke.  Anyone who has worn a flak best knows that the person under it can feel nothing, period.  There was zero physical contact involved in the pic. It is akin to wearing a piece of plywood in front of oneself.

 

If dude pushed his kiss on her, THAT'S  the assault in my mind.

[Amica Nostra 4,803]

10 minutes ago, bcking said:

Even the 6% rate of probably false cases...

 

4 cases all being false would have a likelihood of 0.0012%.

 

The group that had to be thrown out were exactly my point before. It is very hard to professional unless the victim comes forward immediately and there is physical evidence, which is rare. Many of those cases will be true, some will be false.

 

Based in social stigma, cultural climate etc... I would say of the ones that can't be proven either way likely fall closer to the "true" category. But I admit that part is purely 100% speculation.

 

Also - even if we think each accusations has a 50% risk of being false, then the risk of 4 separate accusations being false is 6%, which is quite low. And that is assuming a very high falsehood rate.

Love the approach

[bcking 3,157]

I'm too late to edit my last post. Obviously I didn't mean "It is very hard to professional unless"....that was my phone's doing. I meant "prove". Also "Based on social stigma". I'm really not liking my new phone's autocorrect. I feel like it is making more mistakes than it used to.

 

[Boiler 45,518]

That 2% has to be false. No way you could have the data as very few are prosecuted.

 

2% od rapes prosecuted maybe a headline figure but of they are not prosecuted how do you know it was a rape.

[smilesammich 10,727]

7 minutes ago, Boiler said:

That 2% has to be false. No way you could have the data as very few are prosecuted.

 

2% od rapes prosecuted maybe a headline figure but of they are not prosecuted how do you know it was a rape.

take it up with the source https://www.rainn.org/statistics/criminal-justice-system

[bcking 3,157]

7 minutes ago, Boiler said:

That 2% has to be false. No way you could have the data as very few are prosecuted.

 

2% od rapes prosecuted maybe a headline figure but of they are not prosecuted how do you know it was a rape.

B&K cited an article that reported:

 

5.9% of cases were provably false

44.9% of cases "did not proceed"

 

We could use either of those:

 

4 cases with a 5.9% rate of "false" - There would be a 0.0012% chance of them ALL being false

4 cases with a 50.9% rate of "false" - There would be a 6.7% chance of them ALL being false

 

Even in the most conservative scenario where we assume every case that "did not proceed" was actually false (which I think we can all agree is highly unlikely), if you had 4 independent accusations the risk that all 4 would be false would be 6.7% (A more reasonable scenario where half of the cases that did not proceed were false would give us a risk of less than 1%)

 

That is pretty low. Of course that assumes that they are independent accusations, and then we could always get into the "grand conspiracy" category. Though I think it would be reasonable to assume that the risk of a "grand conspiracy" is at least lower than the risk that an accuser is just making it up themselves independent of other people.

Edited November 17, 2017 by bcking

[Boiler 45,518]

3 minutes ago, smilesammich said:

take it up with the source https://www.rainn.org/statistics/criminal-justice-system

Thanks I had been looking at UK sources, seems US numbers are similar.