Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Balances

MrD has a good discussion of a recent article:

The thing is, you can't have a system which is easy on both the accuser and the accused. Being the victim of a crime is distressing. Being accused of committing a crime is distressing. Any system has to come up with some sort of balance between the rights of the accuser and the accused, and there are reasons that Grossman should be familiar with for the particular balance that society has struck. That's not to say that it's the best possible balance, but let's be clear: Any change that would have had things easier on her son would also have made things harder on at least some actual rape victims. There is not a system that magically sorts out the guilty from the innocent without making things difficult for anyone.

There are a lot of ways in which we could modify and improve the ways we handle rape-related issues, but this is a fundamental principle that we always need to keep in mind.