I know a woman who accused her girlfriend of abuse and cut contact with her. The one who was accused told all of us she was sorry, she didn’t realise she was abusive, and she wanted to know how she did it, so she could work on improving as a person. A few of us asked the accuser how she was abused, and… Nothing. She can’t say. I don’t know if she can’t or doesn’t want to or both, but that accusation fucked with that girl and gave her PTSD. And I’m never again going to treat that ‘victim’ like I believe her. Too many people doing that.
brown567@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
When a woman claims to have been assaulted, I automatically believe her in regards to how I treat her.
As far as the person she’s accused goes, though, I think it’s pretty easy to understand that nobody should be convicted on the sole evidence of their accuser’s testimony, and I think that should apply to the court of public opinion as well.
It’s a situation where either one person is guilty of a horrible crime, or the other is making false allegations of said crime. In order for both to be “innocent until proven guilty”, you need to assume the allegations are true when interacting with the woman, and assume they’re false while interacting with the accused. It’s really counterintuitive and maybe impossible to do
Genius@lemmy.zip 4 weeks ago
pupbiru@aussie.zone 4 weeks ago
id also add to assume they’re at least somewhat plausible when interacting with people around them who may be effected in the future
putting people on guard, as long as it doesn’t negatively effect anyone involved is useful: it’s not a good outcome to have information, keep it to yourself to protect people, and then for someone new to get hurt
it’s incredibly tricky, and imo false reports are just as bad as true reports: false reports hurt real, and future victims significantly
brown567@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
That’s an excellent point