[The Lizard of Oz]

Thanks for posting this Sp5. Few subjects are grimmer or more relevant.

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The U.S. Congress enacted a burden-shifting rule on consent defenses for the US military a few years ago, but it got shot down by a military judge on US Constitutional grounds.

I did not know this and it is chilling to find out. Damn.

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When I asked why, thinking that he was tired of sordid child molestation charges, brutal rapes and the like, he told me “I am tired of all these made up false charges we have to support.” And proceed to tell me stories of women who had made charges of rape obviously motivated by revenge or money, which were still brought forward by the DA for political reasons. So we ended up agreeing and swapping stories. This is the environment we live in.

This does not surprise me in the least. Prosecutors are pressing these charges knowing full well that they're made up. What sleaze.

Question: what can we do to make them think twice? Prosecutors have to start paying a price for bringing these false charges to trial.

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Rape by strangers is one of the rarest crimes, even in big dense cities.

Indeed. Few people really understand this.

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From her point of view, once she makes charges against you, she is going to be embraced by the state’s punitive and therapeutic institutions. She will have a “victim advocate” assigned to commiserate with her. She will meet with friendly prosecutors and police officers willing to believe her, even bending over backwards to do so. Her friends will sympathize with her.

You, on the other hand, are a cockroach which the power of the state is poised to bring the hammer down on.

Truer words were never spoken.

Given this, it seems to me that the key is to protect yourself well ahead of time. Ideally, have video and text records of enthusiastic consent for as many sexual encounters as possible. If you cannot obtain video evidence, elicit texts, emails, etc that reveal gushing consent after the fact. I feel that it would be much more difficult to press charges in such a context. Of course this applies more to outright sexual assault accusations and less to the even more frequent if somewhat less life-destroying domestic violence/restraining order cases.