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Comment by snprbob86 | Hacker News Reader

I don't really appreciate the fact that the suspect is named publicly, but the victim is not. It should be either neither, or both, preferably the former. Every time I see an article about rape, there are hints of bias to full on convictions in the court of public opinion. Innocent until proven guilty!

Uber probably has GPS data for the Driver's phone. Did he linger at the destination long enough for a rape to occur? Or did he immediately begin traveling towards his next fare?

There's a character witness for the driver, but what about for the woman? After all, she was just kicked out of a bar...

What is the status of her injury?

There's just not enough information here for this to justify as news quite yet.

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I started to agree with you in terms of "fair is fair", but on the other hand rape is severely undereported partly because of the embarrassment, if you know you'll be publicly named I can't imagine that will increase the number of reports.

Not to draw any conclusions, but hiding the name has the effect of reinforcing that there's something to be embarrassed about.

It's not just about cause and effect though. If I were a woman I don't think I'd want every potential future jilted boyfriend to be able to Google my name in the future and discover I'd been raped. Not because of embarrassment, but because they could re-victimize just by bringing it back up. But of course, there is the element of embarrassment for many, which just adds to the problem of having it completely public.

I don't support naming victims of any crimes, certainly including rape (unless the victims consent or their identity is unavoidably public).

That said, I'd like to see some numbers about reporting of stranger-rape. I know that acquaintance-rape is heavily underreported, and as a very large amount of rape is acquaintance-rape, that means that rape is underreported. I'm ignorant about the reporting rate of stranger-rape.

> After all, she was just kicked out of a bar...

What difference does this make?

None at all, unless you make a habit of victim blaming.

Not to diminish what is going on but at this point all we have is heresy, we don't know what actually happened. She could have been drunk enough that she thought it happened when it didn't (knew a few people like that, men and women in college), or she could have a history of making accusations (rape or not). It is also equally likely that something did happen to her and that her accusations are accurate and something should be done (prosecution). At this point we must wait until at least a judge has heard the case and if there is any kind of prosecution going forward. Only then can we even begin to form any kind of cogent opinion on the matter given all the variables and unanswered questions.

>Not to diminish what is going on but at this point all we have is heresy, we don't know what actually happened

It is only ever sexual assault cases where this many calls for skepticism -as to whether a crime even happened- are made.

Personally I do it for every case. I see it happen for murder trials, sexual abuse cases, everything in the media where the presumption is that the person is guilty and it's just a question of how much. Right now what's been reported does look fairly damning but the evidence itself hasn't been shown to the public or a jury yet. The only way for someone to be presumed innocent until proven guilty is to be skeptical of everything.

It's not a question of guilty/innocent; it's the question of "well she was so drunk she got kicked out of the bar, so how could it have been rape" being _absolute bullshit_.

First: I'm always skeptical. I fear how easily it would be to be marked with a scarlet letter. I rather 10 guilty men go free, for any crime of any magnitude, than have 1 innocent man be punished.

Second:

Murder yields a body.

Theft creates a void.

Vandalism leaves a mark.

The body left by rape cannot distinguish between regret and terror. The void cannot be measured by the outside. The mark may be an act of theater.

However, the public demands justice and often we lose sight of our principles. The court of public opinion cares not about a shadow of a doubt.

I'm with you on this. Its almost as if the op is blaming the victim for allowing this to happen.

Just think how you would feel if this was your mother, sister, or daughter. You would not have the same attitude. Women never deserve this, ever. It scars them for life.

It's the word of one person against the word of another. If it were two men and you had to choose whom to believe, you would probably find it more likely that the lier is the one that otherwise causes more problems, and e.g. gets kicked out of bars.

So when an otherwise upstanding man brutally rapes a vulnerable woman, it's his word against hers? Rape is almost always perpetrated from a position of power. That's why most rapes are committed by men against women.

That aside, they caught the incident on camera, so it is not one person's word against another's: http://dcist.com/2012/12/uber_customer_accuses_driver_of_rap...

What's interesting about that is also something left out of the other article, that the girl is a teenager. That makes me wonder how she was out drinking? It also makes me wonder then if these are the same cases. The descriptions of the crime is incredibly similar so I'd believe they are but it sounds like there very well might be more here than the press knows about yet.

> So when an otherwise upstanding man brutally rapes a vulnerable woman, it's his word against hers?

Unless there are witnesses or evidence (e.g. camera, sperm, bruises, ...), then, yes, obviously. What else have you got?

But, my intention was simply to demonstrate gender bias by considering two men in a similar situation, the word of a reputable man against the word of a less reputable man. I guess I've demonstrated it...

>That's why most reported rapes are committed by men against women.

FTFY.

He's pointing out that the only "evidence" so far against the driver is not coming from the most reliable source - in this case, a woman so intoxicated that she was kicked out of a bar.

If you get high enough you get symptoms of paranoia. Maybe the fact that he talked to her a little bit in the cab scared her, and when she got raped she didn't have a good enough look at the perpetrator and assumed that it was the cab driver.

Innocent until proven guilty. It's unfortunate that his name is being plastered over the news like this.

> It should be either neither, or both, preferably the former

Entirely agree. Doesn't it contradict the notion of innocent until proved guilty to subject the suspect to a media circus? It's like getting doxxed just because a bunch of bloggers see a chance to get hits.

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