Quote:
Originally Posted by PepsiFree
You’re 17, newly 18. Get invited up to a room. First time you’re seeing anything like this, in all likelihood. Most of the guys involved you know and trust. Would you know exactly what was happening or what you were supposed to do? Maybe they want you to join and you have that feeling that it isn’t right, but it takes you longer than it should to just separate yourself from the situation. The agent said “about 10 minutes”… would it have made a difference if it was 5? What was happening at the time?
8 guys were part of the lawsuit. 5 guys are being charged.
I think there’s probably a lot of deserved blame and deserved guilt for the 3 who aren’t being charged. But I think it’s a lot easier for older guys to say they should’ve just known and made the right decision in the moment. Where it’s really hard to stomach is all the silence after. Maybe understandable to make a bad, immoral choice in the moment. Much less understandable not to rectify that once you have the benefit of hindsight and know exactly what you saw.
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Yeah. Frankly this is not the easiest case to even get one conviction from. It will all depend on what the evidence is about the state of intoxication and the visible signs, since IIRC there was an explicit verbal consent. The prosecution will have to prove that she was too intoxicated (or maybe too intimidated or coerced) to give actual consent. And then (again IIRC because it's been years since my advanced crim course and aside from the the law evolved) prove that the accuseds were aware or wilfully blind to the lack of true consent.
If there's video evidence and it shows her in a bad state of awareness, then it gets easier. But short of that it's all going to be about vive voce testimony and a judge/jury's view of credibility.
EDIT: the amount of people involved and the circumstances may help the prosecution in this regard.