RIP Kobe

Calling out people who are skewing facts and making presumptions of guilt in a case in which we can’t be 100% sure about, not even close to 100%. Sorry if it’s not enough for some to say, “He did a bad thing and we will never know to what degree he was bad, and we should thus consider both possibilities of potential badness in remembering him.”

There are a range of possibilities in this case, that’s all I’m saying. You could use the same argument to acquit every rapist, and you could also use the counter argument to convict every rapist. Neither would be the right thing to do. Given the nature of sex, with it mostly occurring privately between two people, it’s obviously extremely hard to prosecute sex crimes and that’s tragic and we should try to improve that. But we shouldn’t ignore the reality of certain specific situations in which there was a very significant possibility of a misunderstanding.

This is a direct quote from the medical examiner:

“[The nurse] stated that there were several lacerations to the victim’s posterior fourchette or vaginal area, and two of those lacerations were approximately one centimeter in length,” testified Det. Winters. “And there were many, I believe, 2 millimeter lacerations. Too many to count… [The nurse] stated that the injuries were consistent with penetrating genital trauma. That it’s not consistent with consensual sex.”

Det. Winters further stated that the nurse told him the vaginal injuries had most likely occurred within “24 hours,” and that the accuser had “a small bruise on her left jaw line.” Also, that examiners had found “blood excretions” on Bryant’s T-shirt “to about the waistline.” The blood, testified Det. Winters, had “the same DNA profile as the victim in this case.”

I’ve read several different articles today and saw nothing about “3 spots”. So be careful about impugning Rugby’s reputation. Even if there were just 3 spots, if he read similar sources that I did he would never know.

But I do question where the “3 little spots” reference came from?

I don’t post that often but have to agree with others cuse and I like you. Just say you were mistaken and let’s move on.

Donated $100. Thanks for sharing.

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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.

Wikipedia says “three small stains of blood.”

The bottom line is that to say there was she bled so much that it got on his shirt when we simply don’t know how much blood there was is a mischaracterization of what we know.

Nah, I mean we can move on and I don’t need to keep arguing about it, but read about this and the facts are not clear enough to know exactly what happened. To call him a rapist is wrong, to call him innocent is wrong.

I’m currently arguing with a friend who’s a big Kobe fan who thinks I’m nuts to think there’s any chance he did it or that there was even a misunderstanding. She’s obviously biased, but still, when I’ve got people coming at me telling me I’m way wrong because he clearly raped her and that I’m way wrong because there’s no chance he did the slightest thing wrong, it makes me think that it’s pretty clear that I’m right that there are a range of possibilities and that we’ll never know.

That was literally leaked by his defense team and denied by the prosecutor. Jesus you are looking really fucking bad here.

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Weird how you didn’t demand the same standard of language and certainty when you just threw in that she fucked three dudes so who knows who even choked her and made her bleed…

“Blindspot” is not cutting it here.

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The LA Times did not attribute it to his defense team. They just write that DNA evidence suggested it, and that the prosecutors denied it.

Cuse of course no one knows what happened for sure, but the evidence certainly leans towards him having raped her, I would say likely for sure. I mean he says as much that she didn’t consent, and as someone said above, that’s rape. Sex without consent is rape.

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Kobe admitted he put his hands on her neck and that was normal with his long time mistress at the time as well.

I did not consider her having sex with three men to be defaming her, as I stated, that shouldn’t be considered in any way to be a mark against her character. We also know for certain that she had sex with at least one other person based on DNA evidence, so there’s no need to account for any reasonable possibility that that is not true.

I also said I might have been wrong about the third, and it may have been outside the three day window or whatever.

Yes, and this is normal for a fairly high percentage of people during consensual sex. The fact that he choked her does not prove a lack of consent.

Right but it disproves the need to slut shame her to try and show Kobe didn’t choke her. We know he did based on his own words.

I think there’s a pretty big difference in how we should judge someone’s character if

A) They think there IS consent

B) They know there is NOT consent

Do you disagree?

It doesn’t make her experience any less horrible, but I think it makes a huge difference in terms of how we judge the offender. As I said above, I think one of these is just irredeemable, one of them is not.

"Her name was mistakenly released to the media three times (by policy, The Times never published it), and a sealed transcript of a closed hearing on DNA evidence was emailed to seven media outlets, including The Times.

In the transcripts, a DNA expert detailed evidence bolstering the defense’s contention that Bryant’s accuser had sex with someone else soon after the alleged rape."

Jeeze I wonder who did that? I suppose since we don’t know for sure, we have to consider all possible ways this thing could have been mailed to several media sources.

And also, I wonder which team the “DNA expert” worked for? I guess we shouldn’t assume the defense.

And ya, this is the same DNA evidence that the prosecutor denied proved anything about her having sex just after the rape.

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Nobody in this thread is doing that. The choking happened, it’s a matter of consent with regard to that. Other sexual encounters could be to blame for her vaginal injuries.

I’m not saying you are. It seems like you are making the argument Kobe’s lawyers put that out there to try and show the injuries came from someone else than Kobe rather than slut shaming her. We know that can’t be however because one of Kobe’s defenses was that he chokes women during consensual sex on the reg.

Yea maybe but there is no way to know whether he truly thought he had consent, maybe he just said that, he already lied about having sex with her. In this case I think you can pretty much run “he thinks he had consent, and he didn’t care about consent as the same”

I’m already repeatedly on the record that the defense team, and by having presumably approved their strategy, Kobe as well, are responsible for their wrong and bad actions shaming and outing the name of the victim.

Now, as for what I posted specifically, the LA Times may be interpreting the evidence they saw, or they may have made a mistake in not attributing the allegation, or they may be trying to go extra easy on the hometown hero the day after he died. I don’t know. I’m passing on information from the LA Times, which I hope we can all accept as a credible news outlet. I’ll allow for the possibility they’re doing something bad here, though.

Did the prosecutor say she didn’t have sex in those 15 hours, that it was not proven that she had sex in those 15 hours, or something else? Like, again, range of possibilities. Personally I don’t really care if she had sex 5 hours before, 5 hours after, 20 hours before, 20 hours after, whatever. That’s her business and nobody should judge her for it. All I’m concerned with is the evidence for the case and how it impacts the facts of the case.

Really at this point, I also don’t care much about that. Getting back to my main point: there’s a significant likelihood that he raped her intentionally, a significant likelihood that he misunderstood the consent being withdrawn, and a very small likelihood of other events. He should be judged based on a range of possibilities, not just one.

That’s pretty much all I’m saying - that there’s no way to know what he truly believed in that moment, thus no way to know what really went down. I don’t think that “he thinks he had consent” and “he didn’t care about consent” are the same. People who care about consent can misinterpret consent, especially about specific acts rather than an overall sexual encounter.