Besides, in what way would it help women to insist that an accusation without evidence suffice to establish guilt? Women can very well be the accused, and men, accusers. The accused in pre-modern witch hunts included both men and women, and so have the accused based on "recovered memory" since 1980.
More generally, there can be no liberty under the principle of accusation equals guilt -- a dangerous principle that the US government today is doing all it can to have us all accept. Such a principle gets widely accepted when most of the public are unable to imagine themselves in the position of the accused, thinking that it will never be applied to them. Those who are tempted to believe an accusation without evidence ought to ask themselves if they will accept the principle of accusation equals guilt even if they become the accused themselves.
On 10/21/06, joanna <123hop at comcast.net> wrote:
> There is also a mountain of data about sexual abuse in families. No one
> is saying that she has proved her case; we are objecting to her
> allegations being dismissed out of hand.
If there is corroborating evidence that Herbert Aptheker raped his daughter, as Bettina Aptheker says he raped her from age 3 to age 13, I will believe her account. Otherwise, I can be at most agnostic, and odds are strongly against her account being true, given that it is based on "recovered memory."
Is there any condition under which you and Jesse change your mind? What can make you dismiss the accusation? If nothing can, then, what you two assert is merely faith. -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>