"The Stream - Justice on trial: Sexual assault in Canada"

bluewit · 2016-02-18T04:05:43+00:00

Look I get it: traumas AND trials are scary... but jeez..

here are a few snippets--

The conversation eventually gets to rape shield laws preventing questions about a person's previous sexual activity & of course the guests start suggesting that there's something inappropriate about daring to ask about the complainant's' behavior after their alleged incidents.. Which might seem like a reasonable "thought" from a survivor-centric perspective... But as they are discussing this, the current case, it seems obvious that'd be a clear miscarriage of justice to reject such a line of questions (given the complainants outright lied in statements about their post-incident conduct with regards to avoiding contact vs making unprovoked romantic contact)..

--one of the interviewees, whose expertise is as an activist & as-a-survivor--(of an attack by a stranger, not a grey area case nor someone she knew) -- is asked what she envisions if justice could be if it had a trauma-informed approach...

to directly quote her:

I'm not the entire expert on this; I'm not a lawyer, I'm not a judge, I'm not a defense lawyer, I'm not a crown; However- I do believe that 'injunction' with our criminal justice process, um, increasing the use of our restorative process could be of value to not only uncovering the communicative process that does result in abuse, --not saying it's the survivor's fault, but... to... Inform the criminal process through a restorative process we could possibly uncover elements of trauma that impact memory, and the way that complainants treat perps after abuse: uh- as in it's quite logical from some perspectives to, um, keep in touch with your perp, afterwards. In order to A) make sure you know where they are, and B) make sure that they're happy with you so that they don't do it again. And so um, I think that using expert witnesses and a restorative process, in junction with our criminal process could be of value to making a more full and thorough discussion.

If that's contrasted with the vibe of the

"I love your hands"

message discussedin the case at hand? ... This whole conversation seems to be taking odd turns...

... As the conversation continues she is asked "Why?" she's out there AT the JG trial--

"Um, well, from my own experience, I recall feeling very alone while I was in a victim witness identity; um victim-witnesses are not allowed to speak on their own behalf publicly for fear of discrediting themselves on the stand. And so um when I see such excessive coverage of uh ghomeshi's defense team & ghomeshi - I feel like it's important to visibly show a face that says that we do not believe this perspective and that survivors believe survivors. We're here. We've been through it, we know what this is about, and this is not an honest process.

...

So, almost immediately following that, a host asks about the business of how there WILL be cases where the defendant isn't guilty, and a guest (B Burgess) said "it's better that ten guilty people walk than one innocent person goes to jail; and that is as it should be." --to which of the host expressed some pretty biased sounding incredulity, pulling into a false neutral after making her stance pretty clear, calling his belief that such a system is better than the alternative "an awful...........umm...... --situation to be in really isn't it?"--Another lawyer guest suggests "Frankly I think the only acceptable ideal to aspire to is that no innocent person gets convicted and no guilty person gets acquitted; and until we adjust our thinking and focus on that zero error rate as the ideal to which we are all aspiring, we are going to err on the side of dis-serving complainants in the process"

... to which the reply from the activist comes in the form of:

"I would completely agree with that; just to jump in here, um; to be honest with you, anybody in this room or in this conversation were to go through the process of a sexual assault trial, I think it would become very clear, that um, no victim would do this, for the purposes of discrediting another person unless they were sociopathic: the rates of false allegations for sexual assault actually exist at a far lower level than most crimes in canada, including break & entry, including murder, including like fraud, so I find it upsetting when I hear the argument used that there are false allegations as a means of such rugged interrogation because to be quite frank this process is horrible, and no individual would make it to the end of it if they were lying unless they were actually a sociopath."

...

Just a few choice excerpts & a bit of context to them...

dagthegnome · 2016-02-18T06:05:53+00:00

I'll admit to being a voracious watcher of Al Jazeera English. For a long time, it was my principle source of news, and I still get a lot of my international news from there. The comprehensiveness and depth of their coverage of most issues is phenomenal in comparison to a lot of the major Western news organizations these days, from the BBC to the American networks, who really have become shadows of their former selves.

That said, I stopped watching The Stream years ago. Regardless of the issue being covered, this program really is just a morons' circle jerk. Its format is designed to misdirect and misinform viewers, rather than reporting or analyzing the news.

In the first place, the reason most people watch the news is so that they can get an accurate report of events and analysis of these events by experts, and that means that news organizations shouldn't care and shouldn't give air-time to the half-baked musings of Johnny Hashtag on Twitter or Jane Safe Space on Facebook.

The Stream prioritizes ideology and the all-important "lived experience" over expert opinion and reasoned analysis. Often, the one guest who goes on the program armed with actual statistics is given the least amount of time, while the hosts favour the shrieking hysterics of their non-expert guests, who do not have a place on any credible news-analysis program. The program's manic pace, its constant pandering to the half-baked opinions of its self-absorbed audience, and its callous disregard for the principles of journalism all seem designed to tell narcissists what they want to hear instead of presenting an impartial evaluation of news events.

And the bold-faced hypocrisy and unabashed dishonesty featured in this episode are the inevitable results of creating a program designed to appeal to the audience's feelings rather than confront them with facts. All the rational people go somewhere else, and you're left with these people instead.

Title	"The Stream - Justice on trial: Sexual assault in Canada"
Author	jamminnummeruno
Upvotes	6
Comments	4
Date	February 18, 2016 12:40 AM UTC (10 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/46c1m9/the_stream_justice_on_trial_sexual_assault_in/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/the-stream-justice-on-trial-sexual-assault-in.955912 https://theredarchive.com/post/955912

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