The Hanging Judge of Sedom and his Kangaroo Court

I posted an article (Dorothy Rabinowtiz) about false convictions for child abuse yesterday. The question is why convictions on absurd claims, unsupported by the evidence are obtained and why the charges are made in the first place?  Dorothy Rabinowitz - Wall Street Journal Reporter and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for writing about this topic notes the following

[She] lays some of the blame, in passing, on “advanced political opinion,” which has created an aura of piety around claims of violation made by women and children. On this view, as Rabinowitz writes, to side with the falsely accused would have been “to undermine the battle against child abuse; it was to betray children and all other victims of sexual predators.” Even to raise questions about these cases would have been tantamount, in the opinion of one of the Amiraults’ tormentors, to victimizing the children all over again.

This explanation readily applies to the defense of false rape charges - such as those reported in Rolling Stone Magazine - where the reporter chose not to even ask the accused about the charges. It was enough if a coed charged a fellow student of rape to make the charges true. Questioning whether a claim of rape is true is betraying all rape victims. This seems to be basis of Federal Title IX regulations.

It also explains the bizarre spectacle of certain blogs - that defend accusations and rumors and even suspicions of sexual abuse - refusing to let the absence of supporting evidence about the veracity of these claims to discredit them.Of course all those who merely questioned the validity of the allegation were simply discredited for doing so.

We have seen how they will take the side of the accuser - even when the authorities that they initially praised and relied upon to validate these accusations have reversed themselves and retracted their defense. To deal with the dissonance of continuing to support the charges when the basis for the support has been removed - they conclude that these distinguished authorities are corrupt or lack the moral strength to say what they believe and obviously must have been pressured to retract their support. The possibility that the accusations were mistaken or misunderstood doesn't seem an option. The possibility that the retraction is a sign of moral integrity is not a consideration.

Instead of acknowledging that careful evaluation of the evidence has shown that the accusations had no basis - these individuals invent negative explanations about their formerly highly regarded authorities such as institutional bias. In other words men of community authority will eventually do what they have to defend community institutions such as schools.  They claim without evidence that the facts must have been suppressed to save jobs. In fact any explanation will do - as long as the accusations of sexual violence are kept alive.

As Rabinowitz noted, it seems that these hanging judges feel that to question the accusations is tantamount to questioning the whole enterprise of protecting the abused and a betrayal of all victims of sexual violence. Thus they view that their denial of the conflicting evidence and their continued support of the false accusations is the correct moral stance required of all moral individuals. Slandering the falsely accused and anyone who supports them - in spite of the lack of evidence - is viewed as courageous and just. In fact anyone who fails to support their vision of things is accused of moral cowardice or hypocrisy or selling out. The hanging judge is convinced that he is the only one with moral backbone.