> I'm glad to see the claims of sexual and gender based harassment don't seem to be true.
Not to be pedantic, but it implies there is no systemic sexual and gender based harassment. It doesn't say anything about Julie-Ann's experiences except that they're not provable.
If you're a reasonably intelligent person subject to real wrongdoing of this nature, would it not behoove you to collect evidence that will support your allegations of misconduct when you finally make your claim public? The fact that there really is not one piece of evidence she's been able to produce leads me to believe that claims of sexual misconduct are anything more than imagined.
I've been in a situation where I was reasonably certain that I observed fiduciary misconduct. At the time I basically had three choices:
(1) stay at the company and ignore it
(2) stay at the company and collect irrefutable evidence and expose the wrongdoing; or
(3) ignore it and leave the company because it was not my problem to deal with and would be more damaging to my career to do something about it.
There was never a 4th option: "expose the wrongdoing with no concrete evidence". I didn't have enough to substantiate any allegations. It's entirely possible that I could have even been mistaken about what actually happened since my relationship with the person in question was rocky and I might have been projecting my negative perceptions of that person onto a novel situation. Without collecting concrete evidence to prove my allegations, I couldn't even be certain of what happened, much less certain that exposing the wrongdoing without evidence would be fruitful.
The burden of proof was the responsibility of the accuser, and in this instance the accuser has failed to substantiate claims made.
If we extend that line of reasoning then if you're raped but can't prove it you should stay silent because making it public without hard evidence is just not an option.
Rape kits don't necessarily show consent or lack thereof, which is crucial but usually ends up boiling down to being a he-said-she-said problem. You could know who the rapist is with a rape kit that also points to the same person and still be dragged through the mud with the "you must have enjoyed it because you're a slut/you slept with him/her in the past" kind of crap - not many people can deal with that so.....yeah. Plus they are not always the end-all to a rape case even if you have proof of physical contact with no consent.
That's before you even get to any problems before you reach the rape kit stage - I've read way too many depressing posts on r/twoxchromosomes and other sites where women don't even know if they've been raped because they don't remember it after being drugged (good luck with a kit that late) or don't think it "crosses the line" or are just like "it was a bad night" if their boyfriend rips their clothing off and tries to have sex with them even though they were saying "no" and crying the whole time. Usually comes hand in hand with a culture that likes to perpetuate bullshit like "you can't change your mind in the middle of having sex" and "married people can't be raped by their partner".
Gooood luck with rape reporting in general, there's a reason - no, many reasons - why so many people keep silent.
uhhh no. no they don't, necessarily. I guess if your only definition of rape is the screaming sexual assault in an alleyway trope, of course you'd think that.
I don't find this comment pedantic. It's a crucial distinction.
I think that this case demands a lot of suspension of judgement since absolute judgements one way or the other are so damning/redeeming to opposite sides of the dispute, and since the allegations are so difficult to demonstrate or disprove. I think that it's most likely that neither absolute judgement of wrongdoing is perfectly explanatory of the situation.
So, for me, it's best to assume that both sides genuinely feel that they are not in the wrong, and that the facts are not as clear as either side supposes. It's deeply unsatisfying, and if one party or the other truly is malicious and completely to blame, then it's unfair. But I think that it's the most fair conclusion that can be drawn with the information available.
Indeed it doesn't, but Github's point with these releases is to exonerate their company and their culture, not Tom Preston-Warner. So showing that there isn't systemic harassment is what they want.
Defining culpability would never come from them. A labour law suit would be the ticket, although I'm not sure under what umbrella it falls under in the US.
Also the fact it was a company hired investigator. It's in the companies best interests to hype their impartiality. Here's hoping a news organization will do some reporting and find out if this investigator has the record claimed, even if it only verifies it.
Not to be pedantic, but it implies there is no systemic sexual and gender based harassment. It doesn't say anything about Julie-Ann's experiences except that they're not provable.