>>>  Laatst gewijzigd: 13 augustus 2022   >>>  Naar www.emo-level-8.nl  
Ik

Notities bij boeken

Start Filosofie Kennis Normatieve rationaliteit Waarden in de praktijk Mens en samenleving Techniek

Notities

Incididunt nisi non nisi incididunt velit cillum magna commodo proident officia enim.

Voorkant Dershowitz 'Guilt by accusation - The challenge of proving innocence in the age of #metoo' Alan DERSHOWITZ
Guilt by accusation - The challenge of proving innocence in the age of #metoo
New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2019, 233 blzn. (epub)
ISBN-13: 978 15 1075 7561

[Ik weet niet, hoor. Een man, fan van Israël en van Trump, een jurist, veelschrijver, het boek opdragen aan zijn vrouw. Hm. We zullen zien. De titel sprak me aan.]

(7) A note to readers

"The #MeToo movement has generally been a force for good, but as with many good movements, it is being exploited by some bad people for personal profit. Supporters of the #MeToo movement must not allow false accusers to hurt real victims by hiding behind its virtuous shield, turning it into an exploitative sword against innocent people."(7)

[Daar kan ik het wel mee eens zijn. Het is alleen niet zo echt een 'beweging', met een organisatie en een beleid en zo. ]

(8) Introduction

Hij schildert de situatie van een totaal valse beschuldiging die - zoals verderop blijkt - hem zelf betreft. Hij is 75 als dat gebeurt, met een lange carrière achter de rug waarin hij zeer uiteenlopende cliënten had, waaronder Epstein.

"Imagine how it would feel if you — or your husband, father or son — were falsely accused of a heinous sex crime by a woman you never met.
Imagine further how you would feel if you had conclusive evidence — in the accuser’s own words — that she never had sex with you.
Now imagine that you also had recorded evidence — from her lawyer’s own mouth — that it was “impossible” for you to have been in the places she claimed to have had sex with you and that she was “simply wrong” in accusing you.
Imagine even further that you discovered that your false accuser had a sordid history of falsely accusing other prominent men for money, and that she was falsely accusing you because she felt “pressured” by her lawyers who promised her a big payday.
Finally, imagine that despite this evidence, many people continued to believe the false accusation, just because “women who are abused don’t lie.”
That is the situation I and my family have been facing over the past five years. Although I am the victim here — the victim of a deliberate frame-up motivated by money — I am being treated as a perpetrator, despite the fact that I have done absolutely nothing wrong. My reputation has been trashed, my family has suffered, my retirement has been ruined, my health has been affected — all because a woman with a long history of lying decided, at the urging of her lawyers, to perjuriously include me without a scintilla of evidence in a list of men to whom she says she was trafficked by the notorious Jeffrey Epstein, whom I had represented a decade earlier." [mijn nadruk] (8-9)

Hij schildert zijn provocerende persoonlijkheid in de publieke sfeer. Hij was een beeldenstormer, je was voor of tegen hem. Thuis daarentegen was hij juist niet zo.

"In my fifty-year teaching career at Harvard, I had many female research assistants, secretaries, students and colleagues. My wife and I invited my students to our home every year. Not a single complaint had ever been lodged against me for sexual (or any other) misconduct. My students, assistants and friends all know that I don’t flirt with, hug or touch anyone other than my wife. That’s not who I am."(15)

"So when I was accused [door ene Virginia Roberts Giuffre - GdG] at the end of 2014 of having sex on seven occasions with an underage female who I had never met, no one who knew me and Carolyn believed the accusation, even when it was circulated around the world."(15)

"Then it turned out that Giuffre had been paid $160,000 by the Daily Mail to accuse several men, including President Bill Clinton, Vice President Al Gore and his then-wife Tipper of having been entertained by Epstein on his notorious island. She provided the Mail with detailed accounts of their visits, including a claim that Clinton had been flown to the island with his Secret Service contingent on a helicopter piloted by a woman who had just received her license, and that he had dinner with two underage “very innocent looking” girls. The problem with her story is that Secret Service and other records prove that none of the three had ever been on Epstein’s island."(17)

Bovendien blijkt uit allerlei bronnen dat ze niet minderjarig was toen ze met Epstein omging.

"Nonetheless, the media continues to refer to her as underage and to anyone who she claims had sex with her as a pedophile."(18)

[Opnieuw de kwalijke rol van de op sensatie beluste media. Alles voor de oplages. Ik vraag me af: als zo'n blad aantoonbaar geld heeft uitgegeven aan iemand om leugens te vertellen, is dat blad dan opgeheven of minstens aangeklaagd en gestraft?]

"It was not surprising, therefore, that the federal judge struck the accusation from the record as irrelevant and impertinent, and Giuffre’s lawyers admitted that it had been a “mistake” to file it.
The matter was closed. I was exculpated by the evidence. The media, even the notorious social media, stopped accusing me. Life was back to normal. I was still controversial politically, especially because as a liberal Democrat who had strongly supported Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump, I was now defending President Trump’s constitutional rights against those who would impeach or prosecute him. I wrote two controversial books on the subject and regularly appeared on TV. As a result, I became something of a pariah on Martha’s Vineyard, where former friends turned against me for defending the constitutional rights of a president they honestly believed was bad for the country and the world. I was repeatedly asked how I could defend the rights of a president I had voted against. Finally, my wife, who was getting bored with my complicated responses, got me a T-shirt that simply read: “It’s the constitution, stupid.” Wearing it didn’t make me any friends. Nor did my advocacy for Israel make me many friends on the hard left. But even those who shunned and despised me for my defense of Trump’s constitutional rights and my support for Israel did not believe that I had engaged in sexual misconduct.
My public life was more controversial than ever, but my private life returned to what it had been before the accusation against me had been proven totally false. Then along came the #MeToo movement and everything changed. Although the evidence of my innocence only increased during this period — and the evidence of my accuser’s mendacity also became more evident — the atmosphere changed dramatically. Evidence was no longer important. It was the accusation that mattered, as well as the identities of the accuser and accused. The presumption shifted from innocence to guilt. For a man to call a false accuser a liar became a political sin, even if the accused had hard evidence of the accuser’s lies, as I did. Much of the media, especially but not exclusively the social media, bought into the narrative of guilt by accusation instead of by proof. They refused to report on evidence of innocence that contradicted the narrative of guilt. For some an accusation of sexual guilt is so horrible that it must be true, regardless of the evidence. For others, it is irrelevant whether I did or did not have sex with Giuffre. I’m “guilty” of having defended Jeffrey Epstein, the porn star Harry Reems, the boxer Mike Tyson, and the football player O.J. Simpson, as well as having raised doubts about the credibility of some accusers. For these zealots, my history of defending a small number of accused rapists and wife-killers (even when combined with my history of representing many female victims) is enough to overcome any presumption of innocence or absence of evidence of guilt." [mijn nadruk] (20-21)

[Dat lijkt me de kern van de zaak. Kipnis schreef ook over die belachelijke benadering in haar boek Unwanted advances - Sexual paranoia comes to campus en over alle problemen die dat voor beschuldigden oplevert, ook al zijn ze onschuldig. Dershowitz zegt terecht:]

"If my evidence is not enough to overcome the current presumption of guilt by accusation, will any falsely accused person ever be able to prove his innocence?"(24)

[In feite is het hiermee gezegd. Ik lees de rest zo snel mogelijk door. ]

(29) Chapter 1 - How I Met Jeffrey Epstein

[Dat walgelijke sfeertje van rijke en invloedrijke mensen die allemaal met elkaar netwerken en elkaar allerlei kansen toedelen.]

(39) Chapter 2 - “You’ve Been Accused”

[Die wettelijke mogelijkheid in de USA om iemand valselijk te kunnen beschuldigen zonder dat je het risico loopt dat je een 'defamation suit' naar je hoofd krijgt is natuurlijk raar, ja.]

(51) Chapter 3 - David Boies and His Firm Create a Conflict of Interest

[Ook raar: de advocatenfirma die Giuffre representeert ziet er geen gat in om ook D. te representeren. Wat helemaal niet mag.]

(68) Chapter 4 - The Chronology of a Frame-up; The Newly Unsealed Emails and Manuscript

[En dat diezelfde advocaten haar aanpraten om geld te gaan verdienen aan het beschuldigen van (onschuldige) mensen is helemaal onethisch. Zo'n firma mag niet bestaan. Is die firma opgeheven? Vast niet.]

(83) Chapter 5 - Suitable for Framing; Why Me?

Noot 36

"This attitude that “women need to be believed” because the women have “nothing to gain” by accusing someone of sexual assault dominated the Kavanaugh hearings. At the time of the controversial confirmation hearings, I wrote several op-eds urging the public not to make decisions who to believe based on gender identity" [mijn nadruk] (90)

(90) Chapter 6 - Being Exculpated

"It was a costly mistake for me because the false accusation — the recent fabrication — was published and transmitted all around the world. And false accusations can’t simply be struck, withdrawn, or called a mistake. The original story, containing the false accusation, received far more attention than the subsequent stories about the evidence that proved my innocence and the withdrawal of the false accusation."(96)

[Dit is nu al het zoveelste voorbeeld van de bijzonder bedenkelijke manier waarop media met de feiten en de waarheid omspringen waarop ik de laatste maand gestoten ben.]

"Even after it was proved conclusively that she had committed numerous acts of perjury, she remained a free woman, unpunished for repeatedly lying under oath and deliberately seeking to destroy the reputation of an innocent victim of a financially motivated frame-up. Nor was I the only victim of her perjury. Every real victim of sexual assault suffers when a false “victim” is caught in a lie, as Giuffre has been." [mijn nadruk] (99)

"I believe failing to prosecute perjury by adult women — she was over thirty when she first committed perjury about me and she is 36 now — who falsely and willfully accuse men of heinous sex crimes for money constitutes an unacceptable double standard in a society seeking to move toward gender equality under the law. I am committed to seeing the law changed so that no other innocent person should have to endure being falsely accused of a crime without having recourse under the rule of law. Currently, lawyers, clients, and witnesses can make defamatory statements in public court filings and depositions without fear of a civil suit or a perjury prosecution." [mijn nadruk] (100)

[Ook al zou het niet voor geld zijn ... ]

"Some zealots who push these movements and causes are so convinced of their righteousness that they become intolerant of dissent, due process and other cumbersome barriers to their truth, with a capital T — a Truth of which they are absolutely certain. For them, procedural safeguards — such as the presumption of innocence and the requirement that the accuser prove her case by evidence — are unnecessary when a woman accuses a man of sexual assault.
We are already seeing the decreasing respect for such safeguards with the #MeToo movement. For some in that movement, an accusation by a woman is enough to establish guilt, because “women don’t lie,” and “women must be believed,” about being sexually assaulted.(...)
Moreover, women victims may be telling the truth about some aspects of their victimization and lying about other aspects." [mijn nadruk] (104-106)

"The #MeToo movement must not become hostage to those who seek to exploit it and turn it into a racket. It must distinguish between true victims of sex abuse, false victims and those who may have elements of both. It must become more nuanced in its assessment of accusations. If the mantra that all women always tell the truth and that all women should always be believed were to become widely accepted, it would simply substitute one form of sexism for another. In the past, too many women were disbelieved just because they were women. The #MeToo movement rightfully challenged that over-general stereotype. But the other over-general stereotype — that no woman should ever be disbelieved — must be challenged as well. The #MeToo movement began as an understandable reaction against the sexism of allowing predatory men to get away with abusing women. It should not be allowed to be distorted into an overreaction that allows greedy women and their lawyers to turn innocent men into victims of deliberately false accusations." [mijn nadruk]

[Ik ben het daar erg mee eens. En het is een enorm probleem dat vrouwen zichzelf en andere vrouwen altijd als slachtoffers presenteren.]

(111) Chapter 8 - A Pattern of Perjury Suborned

"It is a sad sign of the times that the New York Post reporter has refused to publish these [ontlastende - GdG] emails — which she and the Post are free to do. They, like other media, refuse to disclose negative factual information about alleged #MeToo victims, if such information would undercut the politically correct, but often factually incorrect, narrative of victimization." [mijn nadruk] (113)

[Een vrouwelijke reporter dus. En dit is een ander groot probleem: dat vrouwen altijd weer de neiging hebben om andere vrouwen de hand boven het hoofd te houden, te ontzien, te verdedigen, kritiekloos te benaderen, etc. Je kunt leugens niet laten bestaan omdat dat politiek zo mooi uitkomt - als dat is wat bedoelt wordt met 'politiek correct'.]

"Thus, the pattern of perjury is clear: three women, all represented by the same lawyers, change their stories in an effort to incriminate me only after meeting these lawyers and apparently being pressured by them."(116)

[Dat lijkt me genoeg voor een aanklacht, toch?]

(118) Chapter 9 - A Mystery Following Epstein’s Suicide: Why Did David Boies Drop the Ball against Leslie Wexner?

"Not only did Leslie Wexner’s name completely disappear from the case after his lawyer met with Boies and McCawley, but Giuffre’s lawyers went out of their way to pronounce him innocent of any wrongdoing."(126)

[Waarschijnlijk heeft de auteur gelijk dat Wexler achter de schermen geld betaald heeft aan deze of gene om van die beschuldigingen af te komen.]

(135) Chapter 10 - The Weaponization of the Media to Defame and Sue

"Welcome to the Kafkaesque world of American justice."(139)

[Inderdaad.]

"But the law has not yet been changed, and so the insidious and unfair tactic is still being deployed, with the assistance of the media. It encourages and incentivizes the leveling of knowingly false accusations in court filings that are then deliberately leaked to the media and published by them without any corroboration or on-the-record confirmation. The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has, however, recently cautioned the media against allowing itself to be weaponized in aid of this tactic."(140)

[Weer de kwalijke rol van de media. ]

"Judge Cabranes’s wise caution raises a broader issue of journalistic ethics. Should the media report an accusation by an accuser in court-protected documents, when the accuser is not prepared to make that accusation on the record, outside the protection of the litigation privilege? The truth or falsity of accusations made in a court pleading cannot generally be tested or challenged in a judicial proceeding. If the accuser is not even willing to make the accusation on the record with a journalist, it seems unfair for that journalist to repeat the accuser’s accusation, especially if uncorroborated.
Why would a reporter who is interested in the truth not press an accuser to repeat and defend her accusation on the record? If the accuser refuses, the reporter should, at the very least, report that refusal. (As we see in the pages to come, many journalists do not even do that, especially with #MeToo accusations.)" [mijn nadruk] (142)

[Precies. Maar het punt is natuurlijk dat journalisten vaak helemaal niet geïnteresseerd zijn in het vinden van de waarheid. Bullshit verkoopt beter.]

"Brown [een journaliste - GdG] is all too typical of reporting about #MeToo accusations. For her everything is black and white: women accusers never lie about anything. Men who deny accusations do lie. There is no nuance or attempt at balance in her reporting. If there is evidence that a victim is lying, she will simply not report that evidence, regardless of how strong, because it will undercut her simple-minded and one-sided narrative."(149)

"I later learned (and wrote) that the negative profile was proposed by Virginia Roberts Giuffre’s lawyers in order to promote their case, and that it was approved by The New Yorker editor, David Remnick, as a way of silencing me. Both Remnick and Bruck have relationships with Boies, and both despise President Trump, Prime Minister Netanyahu and Israel. Destroying me suited all their agendas, so the project was launched."(157)

[Het is dus blijkbaar waar dat ik hier met een aanhanger van Trump en Israël te maken heb. Geen beste positie, vind ik. Toch vind ik dat hij tot nu toe gelijk heeft in zijn reacties rondom de beschuldigingen.]

(165) Chapter 11 - I Demand to Be Investigated

[Niets nieuws. ]

(174) Chapter 12 - Being Sued for Telling the Truth: A Grave Danger to the First Amendment

"Giuffre’s lawyers have argued that I did not have the constitutional right to defend myself against an accusation that I was a “pedophile” by calling my false accuser a “liar.”"(179)

(183) Conclusion - It Could Happen to You!

"Although I haven’t been accused of any crime by a prosecutor and don’t face a criminal prosecution, in some ways it’s worse to be accused by an individual woman in the age of #MeToo. A criminal defendant has the opportunity prove that he is not guilty. A man falsely accused of sexual misconduct by a woman has far less opportunity." [mijn nadruk] (183)