Damn the New York Times

[mme_hardy]

 
From the front page of the app this morning, the headline

For Some Fans, Accusations of Rape Crumble Bill Cosby's Wholesome Image

This accurately summarizes the article. The entire article is about how much fans are hurt by the idea that an idol is accused of rape.  The opening sentence is "As woman after woman has come forward to accuse Bill Cosby of sexual assault or molestation, there has been growing public revulsion, but also a nagging question: Did it have to be Cliff Huxtable?".  Note "sexual assault and molestation", not "rape".  For a thousand words, we get sentences like "“I felt a real deflation, not even the outrage I should have felt if the accusations are true." and "“He reminds me a lot of my own father, or he did,”"  There are no sentences like "This reminded me of the way I felt when nobody believed my accusations of rape", or "People's focus on the accused rapist rather than on the victims is giving me flashbacks."   

Worst of all, the article has this: "And still, with at least 15 women coming forward with similar stories — of being given a drink or a pill by Mr. Cosby, then waking up feeling [italics mine] they had been sexually assaulted — many fans continue to point out that he has never been charged. The women, they say, must be after money."

There is no refutation in or near this sentence.   There is no comment about what rape experts say about stories like the women's.   The fans' statements about what constitutes rape are repeated unchallenged.    In the very last paragraph, we finally get "Reflecting on Mr. Cosby now, she thinks of the survivors of sexual abuse she sees in her work, at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C. “I feel like women are unable to safely report male perpetrators in our culture,” Dr. Gray, 38, said. "  And then we get to the last sentence of the article, also from Dr. Gray: " About the show, she said: “I remember a very happy, close family. It’s the contrast between that and what you hear on the news that’s so upsetting.”
Damn the New York Times.  Damn its editors, and especialy damn Kate Zernicke, who wrote this piece of trash.

Comments

[mme_hardy]

IIRC, the clock starts ticking differently for different crimes and different jurisdictions. It can vary based on how serious the crime/tort is, which state you're in, when it happened, when you found out it happened, [for child abuse, in some states only] when you reached the legal age of majority, ...

This can have highly amusing results, as when the Supreme Court decided in the Lilly Ledbetter equal-pay suit that the clock started ticking when the company started underpaying her rather than when she found out about the underpayment, meaning that she should have sued years before she knew there was anything to sue about. Ladies and gentlebeings, your lifetime-appointed Supreme Court.

[recessional]

Yeah. On the criminal side Canada has no statute of limitations for indictable offenses (so, like, all major crimes ever), and on the civil side the only limit is if the person you're suing can demonstrate that you have no good reason to have waited however long to file the suit, and by precedent "my rapist/abuser had social power and I was fucking scared" is acknowledged as a good reason (as of about 1996, I believe). So I live in a different world, kinda.

[legionseagle]

Ah. That's a relevant distinction between jurisdictions on the civil side. In the UK since 2006 ( A v. Hoare ) it's been the standard limitation period in torts, with the court being able to disapply it on the application of the claimant if it's "just and equitable" to do so.

[mme_hardy]

I first learned about the statute of limitations from various detective TV shows and movies, in which the detective would intone "There's no statute of limitations for murder!" From the same trusted legal authorities I learned that this extended to any capital crime.

[recessional]

Heee. I learned from my-father-the-crown-prosecutor, I think on having a brain-blank moment at the idea of there being in some states a point where you can't be prosecuted for rape anymore, and him saying that no, Canada does not have that: if it was serious enough to indict you - what I believe in the US is called "felony" - then it sticks on you for life.