It’s possible that I got this wrong and it was two in two days. I wasn’t 100% sure, which is why I said “or whatever.” I find stuff saying that she likely had sex with someone else in the 15 hours between leaving his room and getting the medical exam, but also stuff saying that she had sex with someone else in the week before the attack. So it may be two in two days and three in the week, and I mixed it up. Or the one before was just the defense team’s accusation, or the one before and the one after are the same partner.
I agree that it doesn’t matter if she had consensual sex or how many times in terms of judging her character as an accuser who is going to testify or as a person. It does matter in terms of the evidence that was collected. As I’ve already said, Kobe’s defense team presented a lot of this in a way that was intended to shame her, her name should not have been made public, etc… His role in that is bad, and at the very least he had to sign off on it.
You’re doing it again. She was 19 and he was 24, those are facts without skew.
I think we should acknowledge the range of possibilities that the facts dictate, accept that there are probabilities to assign to each one, and evaluate him accordingly. I think there’s a massive difference, in terms of his character, between not understanding that she revoked consent and understanding it and doing it anyway. I think to judge someone as if it’s 100% certain that the absolute worst case scenario is what happened is wrong when it’s nowhere near 100% certain.
That’s what I’m doing and why.
On the other hand, I have a history of erring farther to the other side in most of these cases, especially Franken. I don’t think saying, “consider the possibility that what he did wrong is not the most extreme thing, but rather this other bad thing,” speaks to a blind spot. I think it speaks to reading the facts and reacting accordingly.
Like to put this all another way, I think someone can be redeemable if they misunderstood whether or not consent was given. That’s one of those cases where the mistake on his part is unfortunately far less extreme than the consequences she experienced as a result. I don’t think he should be judged based on what she experienced, but rather based on his own character and what he did. So if we all got the full knowledge of what happened and that’s what it was, I’d say that he handled it reasonably well in terms of apologizing and doing the best he could to be better moving forward, and I’d say we shouldn’t consider him a bad person. On the other hand I’d say the way they shamed her was wrong, and he should be held accountable for his role in that.
On the other hand, if he knew she revoked consent and just flat out violently raped her… if that was his intent… That’s irredeemable. He’s an evil person. I don’t think we should assume that about someone without a high level of certainty, and I don’t think we have a high enough level of certainty in this case to assume it.
As a result, the reality that we live in is that Kobe Bryant might be the guy who made a terrible mistake, was held responsible, and did his best going forward and we should judge the mistake to a degree, but that degree should fall short of judging his overall character during his 41 years on earth. He also might be the guy who was evil and did a terrible thing, and shouldn’t be celebrated at all. But we don’t really know, so we have to consider both possibilities in remembering him and in his legacy. To consider either to be 100% the way it was is just not following the facts that are publicly available.