Repercussions of Papadakis' book & Cizeron's response

[Theatregirl1122]

People really will go to any length to excuse men and blame and silence victims.

And then they ask why victims don’t come forward

 

[Willin]

When it comes to other people, I go by actions, not by what people say about them. People are often wrong about the character of other people. And even their own character, if it comes to that.


I did not say she shouldn't say anything. I said she shouldn't say anything about him. She said a lot of things about how this situation impacted her and I didn't object to any of it as she is one of the subjects of the documentary and therefore it was relevant. I only objected to her declaring that she was 100% sure he was innocent. There was no need to do that. No one would have known she was still dating him if she hadn't told us.

And, as I said, I find her declarations less than compelling. Her "100% innocent" boyfriend was accused, thoroughly investigated and, unlike with many, many accusations, got a SIX-YEAR ban. And his appeal was not "you overlooked this evidence" or "you considered the evidence wrongly" but "you don't have jurisdiction."

This is not a case where there is a lot of ambiguity or wiggle room. In our system, many, many more rapists get off than are wrongly convicted. In most cases where the accusation is false, that comes out well before anyone is punished. While there is a theoretical chance he is innocent. It is minuscule. Like 0.0000001%.

It's HARD to get banned. Plenty of rapists both in court and in sport have gotten away with it because there's "not enough evidence." There being enough evidence in this case really says something about the likelihood of him being guilty.

Well that and the fact that his defense was a legal technicality, NOT that the evidence was poor.

 

[MsZem]

That's not being victimized. That's essentially losing a job, which can happen to people in any occupation, and not always because of anything they personally did or were involved with.

Losing a job is traumatic, and if it's a wrongful termination, it's also victimizing. And a skating partnership (which in this case also involves a romantic relationship) is a lot more than just a job. Isn't that apparent in what Papadakis wrote, too?

I don't think LFB is in the same category as the survivor by any means; not even close. But she has been placed in a very difficult position by someone she loves and trusts, and that's a hard thing to deal with.

 

[PRlady]

People delude themselves about romantic partners all the time. I did for years in my second marriage. He wasn’t a rapist but he was a nasty jerk, as evidenced by something he didn’t tell me about until years after we divorced. I know that almost all my friends said “finally!” To themselves when we split up.

I’d like to think that if he had done something illegal to hurt someone else I would have turned him in and left him much earlier but can’t be sure. Humans are so good at self-delusion.