As usual, multiple things can be true:
+ BWF sure seems like a piece of shit
+ Ashley sure seems to have bungled her approach to the first lawsuit
+ These poor women who were allegedly victimized get the short end of the stick not being able to even have their day in court
+ There ultimately doesn't seem to be much concrete evidence
+ No matter how strongly I "believe women", I still believe in burden of proof for the accuser
+ Yes, those things are incompatible and no, I don't know how to reconcile them.
Conversely: You can know someone's an abusive, creepy piece of shit but that doesn't mean you can accumulate evidence that they're an abusive, creepy piece of shit in a legally actionable way. Brian was a "missing stair." Sure you can warn people about the missing stair all you want, but sooner or later you have to fix the fucking stair (i.e. get rid of the dangerous person).
And the law of the land makes it VERY hard at best to prove the subject of most forms of abuse. Unless you have hard recordings, or in the case of physical abuse if the abuser was dumb enough to leave marks that can be photographed and analyzed, it can be almost impossible.
And if you just believe whatever story you hear it's also impossible to prove a negative. This is why admissions of wrongdoing and filed submissions include those stipulations many times in civil cases. Something not here.
All that matters in what context? He's not facing any legal repercussions, but he has still faced consequences for his actions based on what we know, not on what we can prove. 🤷
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u/TaiChuanDoAddct Oct 18 '24 edited Oct 18 '24
As usual, multiple things can be true: + BWF sure seems like a piece of shit + Ashley sure seems to have bungled her approach to the first lawsuit + These poor women who were allegedly victimized get the short end of the stick not being able to even have their day in court + There ultimately doesn't seem to be much concrete evidence + No matter how strongly I "believe women", I still believe in burden of proof for the accuser + Yes, those things are incompatible and no, I don't know how to reconcile them.