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With murder and other such crimes, however, there is often evidence that is generally damning. (weapon, intent, etc.) With sexual cases (eg. rape) you have two people with no other evidence other than their own say. Just because there was intercourse doesn't mean there was rape. For example, guy A sleeps with girl B. Both consent at the time. The next day, B calls the police and says she was raped. Court believes B, because, as we all know, men are evil, and A is jailed for 20 years by nothing other than her testimony. (There's also the matter of not being able to consent (ie. too young), lying about your age, and getting your partner arrested for absolutely no reason whatsoever, but that's another story.)

You're right about the system: it's corrupt. It consists of DA's that just want to get another 'win' on their record, and have no actual concern on whether they're putting an innocent man in jail. It also has the 'public', who want 'justice' for a crime, when, in fact, they just want someone in jail, as if that actually fixes anything at all.

@piranha:
No i don't call you that.. I just said: "if it were real then ..." to press on the severity of the subject. You did not harras anyone but yourself, which is strange to begin with. If you feel that i called you a sexual offender then i apologize for being not clear.

@alboin:
I get the fact that there are abusers of the system, but if the system works they should be punished also. You talk about 20 years, sadly in the Netherlands i have heard sentences of 240 hours of community service and 6 months probation for the real offenders. So yeah no system will work properly. It depend on the persons (offenders) in all cases but yeah that is a difficult subject because of the mentally ill, the disabled, etc.. and applying Darwin and removing the criminal from the gene pool, makes us as cruel as the offenders.

Someone told me once:
"Men are born evil and only their upbringing and mental capabilities will tame it."

Well, this is osdev, so then we should all be pretty good people.

It's not real, so it's not, like, the worst thing thats happened in a few years, I do realize that it is pretty bad.

-JL

After discussing this with some of the other mods we've elected to place piranha on a temporary ban for a short period and then on probation for a period of time afterwards.

piranha displayed bad judgment with the joke but he's been around for a while and contributed to the forums with no problems before so we don't want to ban him forever. However we also don't want people to think sexual harassment (even if it's meant as a joke) is something we want taking place here so there has to be some type of consequence.

If a person "may not have actually done" the crime, that person must not be "found guilty".

I believe the relevant term in US law is "beyond any reasonable doubt" or somesuch.

That is exactly the point I was trying to make - apologies if it sounded ambiguous / completely different!

We can't discuss this much because we don't know the extent of piranha's prank sexual harassment...

I saw the first three posts (I was the third person to reply).

So wait, are you seriously apologizing for pranking yourself? Go see a counselor or something, nobody cares really.

If you care to read, he did sent himself a harassing PM, and then complained about it.

While pretending to be somebody else.

ya, i was the first reply to that self-prank and it doesnt really seem all that harmful as a prank. I understand that sexual harrassment isnt something to make fun of... but I think his lesson was learned just from failing miserably at the prank.

Upon reflection i found you somewhat funny, After all he is a small kid and should not be banned .

Personally, I think some things are being looked at as too black and white here.

Firstly, "sexual harassment" in the legal sense is not always damaging. Yes, real sexual harassment is always damaging, but, for example, I was put on probation for a couple weeks at one job for sexual harassment because a girl I had relations with and I were flirting via notes and someone else picked up the note and reported it.

Secondly, this is kind of boiling down to a perception vs reality thing. Everything else aside, the "jenny" account was never truly accessed by the so-named party, and therefore was never associated with the so-named party in a true sense except for in the minds of readers. It's your choice whether to make an association, even if it may not be thought of in that way very often. I can't really see harassing yourself as any type of rape, mind or body. Unless you like that kind of thing, but then I'd still call it violating yourself, if that. lol

Just my two cents, but I would regret the loss of piranha as a part of this forum, especially over something like this. In my opinion, a ban over this is like charging a kid with the maximum sentence for shoplifting on his first offense for a pack of gum.

The maximum sentence for anything is a permanent ban - and for serious an intentional harassment that is indeed what is to be expected as it can not be tolerated. If you read again, piranha got a far lesser punishment so I completely disagree with your claim that he's been punished too severely.