Time to throw out the entire justice system, because the requirement to prove a crime was committed is just a defense of someone who is obviously guilty. So says feminist activist Elisabeth Dee, who will graduate from Stanford University in 2016 — presumably not with a degree in pre-law, history, government or logic.
During a rally in which participants carried mattresses to protest the university’s handling of sexual assault cases, Dee called on the school to eliminate the burden of proof entirely.
“The Alternate Review Process puts so much emphasis on the burden of proof, but it doesn’t take into account discrimination or hate against people of all identities,” Dee told the Stanford Daily. “[The ARP] should be focusing more on that … not defending the perpetrator, because essentially burden of proof is a defense of the perpetrator.”
Because rape is so traumatizing (which no one is arguing against), Dee said proving that it happened “was like being raped all over again.”
And because of that, schools should just take all accusers at their word.
“No one should have to go through that,” Dee said. “You should take people at their word because nobody would lie about this kind of painful experience.”
I guess Dee has never heard of Tawana Brawley or Crystal Gail Mangum.
Another protester, Lina Garcia Schmidt, called for the mandatory expulsion for those found guilty of sexual assault. I wouldn’t be so opposed to that — since sexual assault is an actual crime — if the accused were found guilty through a fair process. But that’s not the intention here. Schmidt, who hopes to graduate in 2015, wants those found guilty to be treated like criminals, but doesn’t want them to face the burden of proof required in criminal trials. Instead, she thinks Stanford’s current “preponderance of evidence” standard is acceptable.
“There’s a lot of misinformation about rape… there are statistics that show that false accusations of rape are incredibly rare, the standards of proof that Stanford have are, I believe, adequate,” Schmidt said.
False murder convictions are also rare, but we still presume innocence to be absolute, in order to be certain that the person whose life is about to be ruined or ended really committed the crime in question.
Yet another activist, Alona King suggests that since accusers have historically been treated unfairly, more people should be expelled.
“It’s important to represent those who have historically been silenced in this conversation,” King said. “In the history of the University, only one person has been expelled for sexual assault, and that’s wrong.”
It is true that accusers shouldn’t be dismissed in order to protect the school from looking bad or any of the other reasons sexual assault claims have historically been ignored, but at the same time, students shouldn’t be convicted just to protect the school from investigations from the Department of Education.
Correcting one terrible problem by creating another is probably not the best solution.
