When a “victim” alleges sexual assault or abuse, the press policy is to report the accused’s name but not the victim’s.
And “victims” never lie.
But the rules are different when the status of the victim is really low – like a convicted criminal and prisoner. Then the press reports the victim’s name, because once your status has been reduced to “criminal” and “prisoner”, you are just there to be stepped on and abused anyway.
Another way to look at it: in the latter case the victim isn’t really a victim. The status of “victim” is like a sacrament conferred by the law enforcement-media establishment and no one else, and they decline to confer that sacred appellation to the unworthy. And they alone determine who is worthy or unworthy, who shall be anointed and who shall not.
And of course the exact same kind of accusation that is sacrosanct coming from a “victim” is a lie coming from the unworthy and the profane:
McDonald, 41, alleges the abuse happened in 2000 and 2001 at the Albion Correctional Facility in Orleans County. Gilbert’s defense is simple: McDonald is lying, his lawyers say.“We’ve been denying it for over a dozen years because it didn’t happen,” his attorney, John Licata, told the jury in his opening statement Tuesday.
Say that an anointed victim is lying and prepare for the inquisitorial wrath of the law enforcement/media axis. Not so for the un-anointed. It’s open season on them.
Does status determine everything? Some people think so. Some people behave that way.
Update: I already like this lady. Good retort:
Asked Wednesday to draw the scar on a line drawing of a torso that Pincus provided, McDonald drew a much shorter version than what she described in a deposition as a 6- to 8-inch mark.
Parrying the questions back, McDonald said the differences in her statements were minor — inconsistencies attributable to the passage of time and the dimming of memory.
“I didn’t stand there and tell him to stand still while I measured his scar,”
She kicked his butt on that one.
Lawyers on Strike 