Reply #68: I have to add this....

[Jazz2006]

I'm not saying that it's wrong for victims of sexual assaults to take grave offence to some of the horrific and outrageous posts that have been made on the numerous threads relating to this case. Not for a second. Some of the stuff that has been posted here is so outrageous that it cannot and should not go without response.

I have personally been involved with several of the multiple facets that can arise and that have arisen in such cases - i.e. victims being wrongly demonized by the defence and the media; innocent accused persons being demonized by the media; rightly accused people being held up as pillars of the community by the media even when it turns out that they were absolutely guilty; disinformation being spread far and wide by the media on both sides; false accusers being taken at face value despite the existence of reason to doubt the accusations; legitimate accusers being portrayed as false accusers despite the non-existence of any reason to doubt what the accuser says; false accusers being found out as false accusers; and, saddest of all, legitimate victims not being believed by juries who still think it all comes down to "what she was wearing" or "what she was drinking" or "what she does for a living" or "whether she was previously virtuous" or "what she might have been up for and what she might have consented to had she actually found the guy more interesting or exciting than she did".

Bottom line, I think that "trial by media" has a bearing on all of the above. And I think that justice would be better served all around if "trial by media" was not an issue in the first place.