> The story is dramatically more powerful if other women come forward.
This is dangerous logic. The court of public opinion is a feedback loop. If an unconfirmed accusation gets no traction then the most hardcore wrongdoers will escape justice because everyone is too afraid to come forward. At the same time, if a confirmed accusation goes unquestioned then someone who has made a false or exaggerated accusation has a huge incentive to cajole friends into making confirmations that are also false or exaggerated, and the more false accusations are made the easier it is for the original accuser (or the likes of Nancy Grace) to convince others to make further false accusations.
That's why these issues are so contentious. Getting to the real truth is practically impossible because people form an opinion first and then produce evidence that comports with it, and that misleading evidence influences the opinions of others who do the same thing until the truth and the story have no relation to each other.
It's an issue where you have to choose between punishing a lot of innocent people (and increasing the power and thereby occurrence of false accusations) or allowing a lot of guilty people to escape punishment. There isn't a good answer, and that makes people angry -- especially if you're one of the innocent people who was punished or one of the victims of the guilty people who weren't.
This is dangerous logic. The court of public opinion is a feedback loop. If an unconfirmed accusation gets no traction then the most hardcore wrongdoers will escape justice because everyone is too afraid to come forward. At the same time, if a confirmed accusation goes unquestioned then someone who has made a false or exaggerated accusation has a huge incentive to cajole friends into making confirmations that are also false or exaggerated, and the more false accusations are made the easier it is for the original accuser (or the likes of Nancy Grace) to convince others to make further false accusations.
That's why these issues are so contentious. Getting to the real truth is practically impossible because people form an opinion first and then produce evidence that comports with it, and that misleading evidence influences the opinions of others who do the same thing until the truth and the story have no relation to each other.
It's an issue where you have to choose between punishing a lot of innocent people (and increasing the power and thereby occurrence of false accusations) or allowing a lot of guilty people to escape punishment. There isn't a good answer, and that makes people angry -- especially if you're one of the innocent people who was punished or one of the victims of the guilty people who weren't.