Breaking the Silence

@schnitzelater said in #654:
> All I am saying is that they also had a moral responsibility to make sure the allegations were true before punishing them. If I were to allege that you committed a crime against me, would Lichess have a moral responsibility to kick you off the website? Or would the moral thing to do is check if I was telling the truth?

Of course, as they should. No one is asking them to believe blindly. I don't know if you've read the blog. There are plenty of evidence and multiple witnesses and victims. If such were true against me and I committed them here against the members of Lichess, sure Lichess can and should kick me off the website. This will come after analyzing and verifying, which was done here and which is why the report is so long.

> Also, maybe that's why it took so long. They didn't want to just punish people before they were convinced that it was true.

They needed several years for that and in the meantime create more alleged victims. Sorry, I don't buy that. They should have done better.

> But the issue that I have, and I believe others as well, is that I do not trust the judgement of chess organizations when it comes to criminal matters. If the allegation occurred in a Walmart, would the CEO of Walmart get to decide if the person was innocent or guilty?

I believe @qu0thraven already explained this scenario to you. Thanks @qu0thraven. Just to reiterate, no one is asking chess organizations to make criminal judgments. Please understand that these are different scenarios with different repercussions. Even if the chess federations made the strictest sanctions, they would have no effect if these matters were brought to a court.

> I also must apologize, I only support the death penalty for actual rape, not sexual harassment.

Thank you for explaining and I feel you there. Rape is a truly horrific thing and in some cases, I believe the death penalty is well-deserved. Although it is debatable as research has shown plenty of evidence against its efficacy.

@Pashut said in #607:
> In your example (which is not the same as these cases), you qualify as a witness in his case, and he qualifies as a witness in your case.
>

I think we both would qualify in both of these cases. I don't think being a victim of an assault and being a witness to an assault are mutually exclusive.
I think we could approach this in two ways:
1) discuss the definition of the term witness
2) recall why it's relevant in our case

If we start with 1), the definitions I find upon googling (which is consistent with what I thought before) runs along the lines of "Who can be called as a witness?
A witness is a person who saw or heard the crime take place or may have important information about the crime or the defendant." (this example is from a website by the US justice department)
If we apply that to the example the victim of an assault (or alleged assault) would qualify as a witness too.

2) I think it's relevant to mention the allegations and to accept that these statements are actual evidence. Not in the sense that we necessarily are or aren't convinced by them, but in the sense that they may help us to arrive at an idea of what has occured. Evidence in that sense.

I agree that something 'objective' like a video of the alleged assault would carry additional weight, same with additional witnesses.

However, it's also relevant to consider that in cases of sexual assaults, they are often commited under circumstances where the perpetrator has made sure there's neither going to be third party witnesses nor any cameras running.

Witnesses don't have to be disinterested neutral observers in my opinion, they just have to tell the truth. If they are perceived as disinterested neutral observers their statements will gain additional weight in the eyes of most observers, I'll grant you that. But witness statements by the alleged victim and alleged perpetrator are important with none of them being uninvolved in the slightest. Having personal interests in an outcome doesn't translate to an inability to tell the truth.

This doesn't mean that one should not consider the lack of these as weakening a case, but it does mean that the lack of it doesn't necessarily make it less likely it occured, contradictory as that may sound. Sexual assault cases often have the issue of lack of third party evidence. This lack is part of their nature and doesn't make an allegation less believable as such. It only make it less provable.

In any case, somebody saying "this happened to me" is 100% a legitimate piece of evidence.

> But in each of the alleged incidents at hand, only the alleged victim and the alleged perpetrator were present. She says he molested her. He denies it. Classical case of: "she says, he says". Nobody else saw the incident. No camera picked it up. No unbiased, objective observer (i.e. with no vested interest for either side of the story) was present. If you call her a "witness" (because she saw it), then you must call him a "witness" too (because he saw it too). So, in such a case, how do you adjudicate who is telling the truth?

That is an excellent question.
I can arrrive at a conclusion of what I believe to have likely happened, one important caveat is that I don't know.

How to judge or at which conclusion you arrive will depend on many things, such as how believable you find statements, how you assess the motivation behind the statements and how likely you think these statements would be made if they were true or if they were not true. This goes for the allegations as well as for the denials.

It's also going to depend on assumptions or knowledge of how regularly sexual assault occurs, how you think of the people involved, their character and credibility - prejudices might factor in too.

It's also strongly affected by which scenario is closer to something that could happen to you as an observer depending on which 'side' is wrong: If you can imagine or even recall yourself going through the horrors of being sexually assaulted that may well lead to be more sympathetic to the (alleged) victims' side with an emphasis on listening to survivors, whereas if you can more easily imagine yourself being wrongly accused of a sexual assault, you might be more likely to approach the situation from the perspective of the accused with an emphasis on due process and sceptical or even dismissive assessment of the evidence.

In general though, the more independent allegations there are, the more it is likely that at least one of them is true. If, just as a random starting point, we assume a 50% chance that any accuser is correct with their individual allegation (this number will vary wildly on factors mentioned earlier), in the case of two accusers the probability that nothing untoward has happened in any of these cases drops to 25%.

If you don't start with 50% obviously you're going to end up with a different value, but the tendency is the same.

"He said, she said" is quite different from "He said, they said".

@sgtlaugh said in #661:
> Please read again what I wrote. I quoted www.brown.edu/campus-life/health/services/promotion/sexual-assault-dating-violence/myths-about-sexual-assault-reports to provide an overview of how allegations are misclassified. There are some details there, and if you want to dig deep there's even more. For instance, the previous link has a reference to the following paper:
>
> www.researchgate.net/publication/49689129_False_Allegations_of_Sexual_Assualt_An_Analysis_of_Ten_Years_of_Reported_Cases
>
> The paper has many details, and also under the citations and references sections, there seems to be plenty of missing that provides an estimate for unfounded cases. There's even more like, and there are percentage figures in many of them:

> The kind of questions you are answering makes me wonder whether you've actually studied all these references or just taken a glance to validate your own thoughts. I've already explained to you why even though there are unfounded cases, we can analyze and have an estimate for false allegations. I've explained how we can deal with them. There are numerous journal papers published in reputed journals and conferences providing this estimate. On what basis are you questioning its correctness? What's the rationale? This is also a separate topic from the main point of the original blog post.

I read full Lisak article and his results. www.researchgate.net/publication/49689129_False_Allegations_of_Sexual_Assualt_An_Analysis_of_Ten_Years_of_Reported_Cases His results are following - "Of the 136 cases of sexual assault 8 (5.9%) were coded as false reports, 61 (44.9%) did not proceed to any prosecution or disciplinary action, 48 (35.3%) were referred for prosecution or disciplinary action, and 19 (13.9%) contained insufficient information to be coded (see Table 2)." When he states that 5,9% are false it means that police during the investigation, concluded that sexual assault didn't happened. Now tell me in what category these cases "61 (44.9%) did not proceed to any prosecution or disciplinary action" lie? Were these allegations false? Or were these allegations true? That's why I've written here several times to you about this HUGE gray area for your statistics. That's why I can have my personal opinion that your number 2%-10% is low.

About everything else. Yes USCF shouldn't take action, because they have big responsibility as a big chess organisation. Individuals can discriminate someone based on rumors, big organisations should not. It's my personal opinion.

@schnitzelater said in #659:
> But you are forgetting about the severity of what was alleged. Sexual harassment is a major crime and should be dealt with in the criminal courts. Even if you think that it should not be a crime and the only punishment be getting fired you are wrong, sexual harassment should be and is a crime.

Sexual harassment and sexual misconduct, while very serious, are usually handled within organizations. (Although failure of an organization to handle such things appropriately can go to criminal court as there are some laws around this.) Sexual assault and sexual violence are more severe and clearly criminal. There is also a lot of overlap.

So, in the example I gave above, I did mention the filing of police reports, beyond the steps an organization has the right to pursue in-house, which can lead to a criminal justice procedure. That is, if an individual or group of individuals, an organization, or in some cases the State itself wishes to pursue it. But other than co-operating with law enforcement and the justice system, criminal prosecution is beyond the scope of organizations such as Lichess, etc.

I am probably mistaken but it sounds to me as though you are saying that if an issue is serious enough (that is criminal), organizations should take no action?

@sgtlaugh said in #664:
> Of course, as they should. No one is asking them to believe blindly. I don't know if you've read the blog. There are plenty of evidence and multiple witnesses and victims. If such were true against me and I committed them here against the members of Lichess, sure Lichess can and should kick me off the website. This will come after analyzing and verifying, which was done here and which is why the report is so long.

But if there is sufficient evidence, then prove it in a court of law. Then there can be real justice. I would support all of this if it was proven.
If it cannot be proven, then all of this was done wrongly and the chess organizations would owe the wrongfully accused an apology and a bunch of money for their crimes of defaming and slandering them.
It just doesn't make sense that they would take action before knowing it was true.

@CyberShredder said in #666:
> I read full Lisak article and his results. www.researchgate.net/publication/49689129_False_Allegations_of_Sexual_Assualt_An_Analysis_of_Ten_Years_of_Reported_Cases His results are following - "Of the 136 cases of sexual assault 8 (5.9%) were coded as false reports, 61 (44.9%) did not proceed to any prosecution or disciplinary action, 48 (35.3%) were referred for prosecution or disciplinary action, and 19 (13.9%) contained insufficient information to be coded (see Table 2)." When he states that 5,9% are false it means that police during the investigation, concluded that sexual assault didn't happened. Now tell me in what category these cases "61 (44.9%) did not proceed to any prosecution or disciplinary action" lie? Were these allegations false? Or were these allegations true? That's why I've written here several times to you about this HUGE gray area for your statistics. That's why I can have my personal opinion that your number 2%-10% is low.

Thanks for reading the full paper. I got confused because it felt like you were not being specific in your arguments, and also because you asked how are false allegations defined when quoting my link for that paper. Because the need for a clear definition is acknowledged and clearly defined under the Key Methodological Issues section.

In any case, that section also quotes the following:

> "The determination that a report of sexual assault is false can be made only if the evidence establishes that no crime was committed or attempted. This determination can be made only after a thorough investigation. This should not be confused with an investigation that fails to prove a sexual assault occurred. In that case, the investigation would be labeled unsubstantiated. The determination that a report is false must be supported by evidence that the assault did not happen"

The cases that are unfounded, or that did not make it to the prosecution, we don't know anything about them. Sexual assaults are often hard to prove. At the same time, it is hard to disprove. As such, we can discard or ignore them and still analyze the rest of the data. Sure it's not ideal or perfect, but at the same time, it shouldn't skew our results significantly. I am acknowledging the gray area, the papers also do. There also needs to be more research done on this. However, even with the gray area and limited research that we have, it is still possible to get a reasonable estimate. The Lisak paper also explains this, but perhaps not as explicitly as I mention.

> About everything else. Yes USCF shouldn't take action, because they have big responsibility as a big chess organisation. Individuals can discriminate someone based on rumors, big organisations should not. It's my personal opinion.

No one is asking for discrimination, only providing a safe environment for everyone. Inaction is also an action. Also, don't call all these collective and corroborating evidence rumors. They do have big responsibilities, which is why they should take action or measures. However, they need to be fair, unbiased, and rational.

@schnitzelater said in #668:
> But if there is sufficient evidence, then prove it in a court of law. Then there can be real justice. I would support all of this if it was proven.

I get that, but for various reasons, victims often do not want to come out and share their experiences. Such legal procedures are not an easy thing too, it takes time, reignites trauma, costs money, there can be potentially other side-effects. I support your statement and urge the alleged victims to take legal action as well. That's the real path to justice. But the argument is that in the meantime, should organizations take no action or preventive measures even if there are reasonable grounds for taking them?

> If it cannot be proven, then all of this was done wrongly and the chess organizations would owe the wrongfully accused an apology and a bunch of money for their crimes of defaming and slandering them.

Sure we do. We would owe them even more if such matters are taken into court and they are wrongly convicted. Such trade-offs always exist. When it is impossible to know the truth, they always will so what's the solution here?

On the contrary, if we wait and do nothing, creating more alleged victims, and later these allegations turns out to be true, don't we owe an apology to these new victims too?

@qu0thraven said in #667:
> Sexual harassment and sexual misconduct, while very serious, are usually handled within organizations. (Although failure of an organization to handle such things appropriately can go to criminal court as there are some laws around this.) Sexual assault and sexual violence are more severe and clearly criminal. There is also a lot of overlap.
>
> So, in the example I gave above, I did mention the filing of police reports, beyond the steps an organization has the right to pursue in-house, which can lead to a criminal justice procedure. That is, if an individual or group of individuals, an organization, or in some cases the State itself wishes to pursue it. But other than co-operating with law enforcement and the justice system, criminal prosecution is beyond the scope of organizations such as Lichess, etc.
>

So you are admitting that you think sexual harassment and misconduct are fine and that people who do that stuff should face no legal recourse? I guess we just disagree there.

> I am probably mistaken but it sounds to me as though you are saying that if an issue is serious enough (that is criminal), organizations should take no action?

I apologize. What I meant to convey was that if there is a criminal action, then the organizations should not NEED to take any action because the court will handle it. If someone is found guilty, for sure go ahead and fire them.

@sgtlaugh said in #669:
> Thanks for reading the full paper. I got confused because it felt like you were not being specific in your arguments, and also because you asked how are false allegations defined when quoting my link for that paper. Because the need for a clear definition is acknowledged and clearly defined under the Key Methodological Issues section.

> In any case, that section also quotes the following:

> The cases that are unfounded, or that did not make it to the prosecution, we don't know anything about them. Sexual assaults are often hard to prove. At the same time, it is hard to disprove. As such, we can discard or ignore them and still analyze the rest of the data. Sure it's not ideal or perfect, but at the same time, it shouldn't skew our results significantly. I am acknowledging the gray area, the papers also do. There also needs to be more research done on this. However, even with the gray area and limited research that we have, it is still possible to get a reasonable estimate. The Lisak paper also explains this, but perhaps not as explicitly as I mention.

You stated previously himself that without providing any data I can't state or disapprove your claim about 2%-10%. In fact I can. I can make my own conclusions regarding these 44,9% cases. I can myself state that at least 15% out of those 45% is false, you can disagree and state that not, only 4% or any other number, because in fact we don't know, and will never know espesially now, when to the gray area above I can add another one, where people don't report to police at all and just shitpost on twitter

> No one is asking for discrimination, only providing a safe environment for everyone. Inaction is also an action. Also, don't call all these collective and corroborating evidence rumors. They do have big responsibilities, which is why they should take action or measures. However, they need to be fair, unbiased, and rational
For me it's discrimination. Inaction is action. Right one.

@sgtlaugh said in #670:
> I get that, but for various reasons, victims often do not want to come out and share their experiences. Such legal procedures are not an easy thing too, it takes time, reignites trauma, costs money, there can be potentially other side-effects. I support your statement and urge the alleged victims to take legal action as well. That's the real path to justice. But the argument is that in the meantime, should organizations take no action or preventive measures even if there are reasonable grounds for taking them?
>
>
But they already have come out and shared their experience. Otherwise we would not be talking about it.
>
> Sure we do. We would owe them even more if such matters are taken into court and they are wrongly convicted. Such trade-offs always exist. When it is impossible to know the truth, they always will so what's the solution here?
>
> On the contrary, if we wait and do nothing, creating more alleged victims, and later these allegations turns out to be true, don't we owe an apology to these new victims too?

The solution to this problem has already been answered. "It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer." You are describing Blackstone's ratio and then taking the position of a dictator. This is basic philosophy that you are getting wrong.

By your own logic, because there is a non-zero chance that you are a murderer then you should be locked in jail so that you do not make any more murder victims. If you take what you are saying to its logical conclusion, then no one is innocent and we should all be locked in jail.