While I agree that "trial by Twitter" (or "trial by blog-wars") is probably one of the worst ways of dealing with sexual assault, there's an awful lot of anecdotal/hearsay "evidence" that reporting it to police is likely to be even less effective and probably more personally invasive.
Seriously. Google some stats about sexual assault case's successfully prosecuted. Read up on research about how few rapes are reported, and notice how often victims suggest the big reasn they don't report rapes is because of the way they expect (rightly or wrongly) to be treated by police and courts.
I can fully understand why women who've been raped refuse to want to go through the standard process of reporting and prosecuting that crime.
I can fully understand why anyone who suffers something short of rape would think it's not worth bothering trying to get the police to do anything about it. Seriously - what sort of reaction do you thing she would have got fronting up to a police station and saying "This guy banned me from a conference because I refused to have sex with him. Please have him charged."
In an ideal world? Yeah, the "police" would fix this. In the real world, not s much...
While I agree that "trial by Twitter" (or "trial by blog-wars") is probably one of the worst ways of dealing with sexual assault, there's an awful lot of anecdotal/hearsay "evidence" that reporting it to police is likely to be even less effective and probably more personally invasive.
I've also had to take a friend to the hospital after a rape. I had to listen to her complaints about the invasiveness of the rape kit, and I also had to deal with the subsequent futility of it all.
The way I have decided to deal with this is to choose my friends and associates carefully, based on their code of ethics as determined by their actions over a long period of time.
How about a private service combined with a device to record, encrypt, and upload a "lifestream" style recording? There would be two encryption keys involved, one in possession of the customer and the other in possession of the service provider, who would be under contract to perform their side of the decryption only in certain conditions. This would have saved my friend from rape and also saved me much stress in a situation where I was physically threatened and also in an unpleasant fender bender where the other party lied their ass off.
I think this would be a better deterrent to many crimes than widespread gun carry laws. (Epidemiological studies of gun ownership find it's a net loss due to the higher incidence of deadly violence.)
This, minus escrow requirements, is David Brin's "the watchers" or "transparent society". I'd be really afraid of how the escrow happened, but if I could keep control of recordings, I'd support it.
Of course, one of the main reasons I'd want recordings is so that if I shot someone in self defense, I'd have video supporting that to show to the DA or jury.
The UK has shown that video isn't that great a deterrent of criminal activity. It does make people feel safer, but doesn't actually reduce crime. It is sometimes helpful in prosecutions, but even that isn't a major factor in street environments (in a bank, it's better).
I'm a safe and responsible firearms owner. I'm pretty confident that my firearms ownership, training, and use contributes to my personal safety. I think my safe driving and carrying a cellphone, first aid kit, flashlight, etc. and keeping cases of water and some canned good at home is more of a net win, though.
The UK has shown that video isn't that great a deterrent of criminal activity. It does make people feel safer, but doesn't actually reduce crime. It is sometimes helpful in prosecutions, but even that isn't a major factor in street environments (in a bank, it's better).
AFAIK, those cameras are placed in locations, and the street crime just moves elsewhere, while the bank robbery stays at the bank. I'm proposing to place cameras on people. I bet the crime in specific street locations did decrease.
The reason I propose the (private) escrow, is so there could also be an audio recording. (Not compatible with current laws, though.) An audio recording would've been useful in the posted scenario.
Seriously. Google some stats about sexual assault case's successfully prosecuted. Read up on research about how few rapes are reported, and notice how often victims suggest the big reasn they don't report rapes is because of the way they expect (rightly or wrongly) to be treated by police and courts.
I can fully understand why women who've been raped refuse to want to go through the standard process of reporting and prosecuting that crime.
I can fully understand why anyone who suffers something short of rape would think it's not worth bothering trying to get the police to do anything about it. Seriously - what sort of reaction do you thing she would have got fronting up to a police station and saying "This guy banned me from a conference because I refused to have sex with him. Please have him charged."
In an ideal world? Yeah, the "police" would fix this. In the real world, not s much...