Addenda and Clarifications

[Ed - This post may be read in conjunction with "BREAKING: More women say: I deserve justice by my own terms, I'm worth it." and "Investigating and prosecuting sexual offences".]

Having done some holiday pondering and mental pontification, this turkey feels that perhaps some clarifications are in order to better understand the posts below on accusations of sexual offences and the procedures which are subsequently followed (particularly in light of the comments on the posts below).

What the ST article does not make clear (and these are woeful omissions) is that:

(1) an accusation per se is not tantamount to a conviction;

(2) an accusation does not inexorably lead to prosecution;

(3) in the context of a nightclub (i.e. dark, all-round diminished faculties due to inebriation, two total strangers etc) does not provide conducive conditions for fact-finding and evidence-gathering.

In relation to (3), what the article glaringly fails to point out is the potential for abuse by both parties - both the alleged offender as well as the alleged victim. The article's primary failure is its angle - that there is a "trend" of evil, wanton, trollopy women whose sole motivation in accusing men of molest/OM is to recover some form of compensation.

In mainly interviewing lawyers who have represented these alleged offenders, the article ends up painting these men as wholly innocent. But what has been omitted is this: there possibly has been no fact-finding; no completed investigations. At this stage, one cannot decide guilt or innocence. There simply is no proof, which is the problem of nightclubs, and other situations where the evidence boils down to Him vs. Her.

(And more importantly, the cardinal principle of legal ethics: a lawyer must always act in his/her client's best interests. That is to say, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, a lawyer will assume and profess the innocence of his/her client.)

And therein lies the conundrum (as contained in the soundbite from Prof. Hor appended at the end of the article). The fact that the men coughed up money proves nothing - it sheds no light on their actual motivations. At the end of the day, I do feel that the likelihood that the composition was to avoid prosecution is at least equal to the likelihood of the victims not wishing to re-live the incident.

But perhaps, what could (and perhaps would?) tilt the balance is that at the end of the day, character evidence against the female victim is admissible, and will be duly considered.