Googler Accuses Twitter Engineer Of Sexual Assault, Trial By Twitter Commences

DemosthenesXXI · 2010-11-06T12:52:01+00:00

A hell of a debate is going on over in /r/programming about this situation.

Half the folks over there are assuming that the accusation is true, the other half is attempting to bring in reasonable doubt about the accusation, and the third half is simply asking the question; "if it actually happened, why didn't she go to the cops rather than risk a libel suit by just blogging about it with the guy's real name?"

The actual blog post is pretty interesting. She makes her statement and then everyone except two or three people simply accept her accusation at face value. The two who ask questions are immediately decried as "victim-blamers."

Then, there's another link on the original TechCrunch article about a person on Hacker News who asks some pointed questions about the blog post, who is also lambasted as a victim-blamer.

There seem to be a lot of people who have no idea about the alleged assault who are invested in shaming anyone who does anything other than immediately accept that the assault really happened.

Another point is that she (Noirin Shirley) claims that this is not the first time that she has been assaulted at a conference. This is another point that you are not supposed to call into question, lest ye be branded a victim blaming misogynist.

Nobody needs to go over and do anything...

But there are two things that stood out from this situation.

One posters in /r/feminisms had this to say:

This is why I think libel laws are a feminist issue. If this were the UK, she could lose a defamation lawsuit, even if she's says nothing but the truth in her blog.

And another person in /r/programming made this statement:

If it's true, she is entirely justified in recounting or communicating it in whatever way she wants. It is not character assassination if it is true. It is not baseless if it is true. If it's true, she is morally justified in printing 'I got groped by Florian' t-shirts and beanies.

I'm purposely not linking because these statements speak for themselves. Both of these statements indicate that the writers feel that an accusation of sexual assault trumps any legality of defamation, libel, and slander. And that belief troubles me to no end.

fishwish · 2010-11-06T22:13:49+00:00

On the question of is she has done this sort of thing before, there is an unconfirmed note (kind of like her blog post) that states that she made rape allegations against a guy on her university blog but did not report it to the police.

The comment was posted on tech crunch's now deleted article, but this guy saved it.

http://pauloflaherty.com/2010/11/06/what-about-the-other-side-of-the-noirin-shirley-accusation/

I used to move in the same circles as this woman and she is a bit of a Walter Mitty type. When she was at university she accused a man of raping her – and named him – on her university hosted blog. I believe her university threatened her with academic sanctions (or worse) if she didn’t remove the blog post. It was a long time ago so I don’t remember exactly but I don’t recall her filing any charges with police over that case. The fact that this is the second time she has done this sort of thing makes it difficult for me to believe the veracity of this story.

Trial by internet is NOT RIGHT. Go to the police, file charges and only then – if you are sure it’s legally ok to do so – name your attacker. I’m sorry to say this but this is exactly the sort of thing that makes it difficult for women who have been assaulted to bring their attacker to justice!

Again, for those who want to point out that this is unverified, you are 100% correct. It's an unverified allegation. That's part of the whole problem. But if anyone cares, it's a place to start looking.

deluxetoaster · 2010-11-06T14:45:21+00:00

Guilty until proven innocent.

Gareth321 · 2010-11-06T16:57:35+00:00

Of course I don't know what really happened. Anyway, the fact that a simple, one sided, not backed up with any kind of proof accusation can do so much scares me to death.

This guy's career is over, no matter what he's really done. If she's lying we'll probably never know and, even if we do get to know the truth, she will not face consequences anyway.

Now, think about the fact that if you're a man any woman can do this to you and you've got no way to defend yourself. Your career, maybe even your freedom, taken away in hours.

How did we get here?

charlie6969 · 2010-11-06T15:21:39+00:00

One word; Libel.

fishwish · 2010-11-06T19:04:15+00:00

Interesting. Tech Crunch has killed their article. I wonder why.

http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/05/trial-by-twitter/

mrdev4 · 2010-11-06T21:38:27+00:00

we should never jump to conclusions based on accusations of one person.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-5332343-504083.html

thetrollking · 2010-11-07T01:38:30+00:00

Umm, link is dead.

DemosthenesXXI · 2010-11-06T21:35:07+00:00

Update:

An update to the story has been posted on Gawker, after TechCrunch pulled the story.

Gawker is claiming that she did contact the Atlanta PD about the assault. It's funny because on the original blog post, there was no mention of her contacting the police. I think that she may be doing a bit of backpedaling to cover her credibility because of the backlash that this has caused.

On a side note, they mention the Con Anti-Harassment Project. This is a group with a very misandric bent to it, as they clearly go out of their way to assume that any female accusations of harassment are true and that men are always guilty. Furthermore, they blatantly choose to ignore that men get harassed at cons too by women. (Having worked security as several national fan-based conventions, I've seen women who have stalked or harassed men at these events and then expect the security group to defend them on their say-so.)

DemosthenesXXI · 2010-11-06T21:38:04+00:00

Here's another quote from Noirin Shirley from Twitter:

"It is not my job to avoid getting assaulted. It is everyone else's job to avoid assaulting me."

This also says a lot about what is going on here, IMHO.

LoudmouthedBitch · 2010-11-06T17:19:38+00:00

She's a bit of a cunt for dragging him into this publicly. She's pretty much ruined his career because he was making inappropriate advances to her at a fucking party.

mrdev4 · 2010-11-06T21:28:11+00:00

I posted this comment on "hacker news" and was down voted. :(

"HN is a starting to feel like the tribal region of Pakistan.To make a assumption of guilt based on a blog post is ridiculous."

fishwish · 2010-11-06T13:59:13+00:00

If his actions are as described, this it was over the line. But also what I see as very unfortunate is that some of the commenters are not escalating the claims to say he attempted to rape her. The first casualty in any of this always seems to be any sense of proportion.

Sorgenlos · 2010-11-06T18:13:17+00:00

How about the white knights?

Skud

also relevant to sexual assault @ tech confs: open source women back each other up project (and gentlemen's auxiliary) http://bit.ly/d78IQ1

a whole project about it?

kloo2yoo · 2010-11-06T13:34:16+00:00

this is exactly the stuff I would rather NOT see played out on this reddit. You can tell about your past, but please keep names out of it.

mrdev4 · 2010-11-07T02:39:19+00:00

I think we have found the Sarah Palin of the OSS feminist movement.

Title	Googler Accuses Twitter Engineer Of Sexual Assault, Trial By Twitter Commences
Author	DemosthenesXXI
Upvotes	38
Comments	43
Date	November 6, 2010 12:47 PM UTC (15 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/e2468/googler_accuses_twitter_engineer_of_sexual/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/googler-accuses-twitter-engineer-of-sexual-assault.1046168 https://theredarchive.com/post/1046168

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