If so, he deserved it. He was an abusive fuck.

@Livinlife He may well have been but then again he said it was tit for tat. I know myself once being on the wrong end of accusations, how hard it is to convince anyone of your complete innocence.People think the worst even if proved wrong.

@273kelvin yes, sadly that happens. I'm sorry you experienced that.

Quite true, Bette Davis (who herself had no great love for Joan) thought that Christina was a lying piece of shit.

@evidentialist Not necessarily a tough call. Childhood abuse does some fucked up things to other children in that family whether they are the target or not. My sister who is 13 months older than me swears I make it all up and he was a saint. However, the sister who was 4 years older filled in much of my childhood that I cannot remember and validated one form of the abuse: "You got the belt every day. Literally. You were beat every single day that I can remember."
The human brain does many different things to get us through the day.

@EllenDale -- I understand that, but all we have now is the word of the remaining children plus what has gone before. It is for that reason one is not able to make any form of definitive remark or supportable judgment calls. Bystanders on a road traveled by others whose stories we hear but cannot know.

@evidentialist once all we had was the word of an assaulted woman. Now we have #MeToo

@EllenDale -- Yes, and as much as I liked to see the rise of #MeToo the hashtag and real public awareness was originally because of an emotional appeal from Alyssa Milano for women to speak out and up about sexual harassment.

“If all the women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote ‘Me too’ as a status, we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem.”

Nothing wrong with that, but people tend to forget who started the movement and why. Community organiser Tarana Burke founded the Me Too Movement in 2006, in order to spread awareness and understanding about sexual assault in underprivileged black communities. Now, her organisation coordinates outreach in local schools and provides educators with resource kits to use in their classrooms.

“[Me too] was a catchphrase to be used from survivor to survivor to let folks know that they were not alone and that a movement for radical healing was happening and possible," Ms Burke said in an Ebony interview.

She added: “In this instance, the celebrities who popularized the hashtag didn’t take a moment to see if there was work already being done, but they also were trying to make a larger point."

My point here is that we cannot in any logical or rational manner act as judge, jury, and executioner based on hearsay under any circumstances without all the information laid out in detail for us to see. In my estimation, to do so is tantamount to the state handing down the death penalty in error because everyone was emotionally involved and overlooked vital elements in the case. Not that an innocent dies (though it is possible), but their lives can be ruined because of what we think instead of what we know.

@evidentialist
And lives and careers weren't ruined because there were those who managed to get blacklisted because they wouldn't 'put out' or cave or shut up?
Read "The Lucifer Effect" sometime and find out what happens to lone whistleblowers or those who speak out alone. There is a reason the targeted kept quiet.
It goes both ways as far as lives being ruined. Interesting how a certain gender seems to take exception to it ever coming to light.

• And yes there are casualties, Al Franken. I've a very hard time with that one, but otherwise to date this is all long overdue.

@evidentialist First, innocent children who are raped or beaten are inextricably changed for life. Many are "ruined;" the rest will never be the person they could have been before the crime was committed against them. Second, these are silent crimes because, like you, people don't get proof to their satisfaction, so reporting it when one has the maturity to know it shouldn't be happening is too late. No one can prove what goes on behind closed doors except others in the family who were there, which is why I maintain that Crawford and her brother, who corroborates her story, are more believable than the siblings who deny it. Check the studies and victims: those who are terribly abused (themselves or as witnesses, and yes, witnessing abuse is traumatic, too) are more likely to succumb to their mind protecting itself by hiding the abuse from the conscience. That doesn't mean it didn't happen. It means they are survivors. I have witnessed far too many people talk about what happened to them. Emotional breakdowns like that cannot be faked. If you were unfortunate enough to be around someone who broke down describing what he/she went through, you would see that, too.

@Qualia -- I'm aware of that too, but it does not give us license to make judgments out here on the periphery. Work this all into and through the court system and we who know little to nothing about a specific case should stay out of it.

@EllenDale -- Don't talk to me as if I have no experience with these issues. I have plenty of first hand experience and work related experience with them. You are trying to bring this around to something I did not and would not say. I definitely do recognize the problems and fixing them is long overdue, but those of us who are not involved in specific cases and are not privy to all the information should not make judgments based on pure emotion. As a matter of fact, we should not make judgments at all until we are in a position to know what we're talking about rather than making assumptions. I'll happily leave that to the religious folks. They are past masters at that.

@Qualia <<hug>> Thank you. I'm glad you spoke up here. People may say Christina did it for the fame to sell one book, but what does her brother have to gain? That case reminds me very much of the current Dylan & Roan Farrow/Woody Allen abuse scandal that she speaks of. When a sibling lives next to it and sees what the victim goes through during childhood and believes it, who are outsiders to discredit it as the abuser did?

@EllenDale -- The ideal is to do neither. I think all accusations should be treated seriously, but I think we, the folks on the outside, are not in a position to pass judgment, either.

@EllenDale I've seen extreme favoritism in families before, my dh was the "black sheep". This happened because he dared question his mother from childhood. He succeeded in spite of, not because of the maternal side.
I don't doubt for a hot minute these kinds of things happen. Also I thought the body language and tone of voices off here, although I'm not a behaviorist, the fact they've got a blanket denial going is suspect to me. Another factor is the tendency of many people to canonize their deceased loved ones, exalting them to some sort of sainthood after death. It's weird.

@evidentialist If we waited for cameras and dna to be around for judgement there would be few pedophiles ever caught.
As far as women coming out there is very little benefit. Look at the great lengths Trump & Weinstein went to cover their tracks, killing editorials, hiring detectives to find dirt on their victims.
If there wasn't a baseline power imbalance our representative government would not comprise the more than 2/3 majority of elected right now.

@evidentialist
Your arguments fall into the non-sequitor fallacy. You initially post:

this is one of those really tough calls (A reader may consider this a non-judgmental opinion, but it actually assumes the writer has the right to make the call in the first place).

the disparity[...]causes one to pause and wonder a bit (This opinion casts doubt as to the veracity of Christina and Christopher's claim, which implies a judgment call on the part of the writer).

Is it all a matter of personal perception/personality (The rhetoric used questions the veracity of the victim's claim, as if the writer has a right to question it).

why is the negative only coming from Christina and Christopher? (Because the writer formed this as a question and included the word only, it implies that these two people are not necessarily truthful--again, as if the writer has the right to judge).

The others didn't have these opinions at all (This is the only statement of fact that is not a result of the writer's opinion).

Then in your first reply to me:

It is for that reason one is not able to make any form of definitive remark or supportive judgment call.

and in your third reply to me:

As a matter of fact, we should not make judgments at all.

(Yet your initial posting is replete with implied judging. Additionally, as argumentative writers have learned, a writer's first and last points remain with the reader the strongest. By first questioning the veracity of the victim and then following that up by quoting a denial, I posit the writer IS implying a negative judgment call and encouraging a reader to infer one).

If you do have first-hand and work-related experience with these kinds of issues, I would think you also have the training to take into consideration the psyche of children raised in a dysfunctional home and the natural reaction of victims and witnesses to refuse to believe traumatic experiences to the point of blocking it out. Take your own advice, please, and don't judge at all.