Over the past decade, there have been numerous allegations of rape, sexual assault & sexual harassment made by women who in many cases waited years & many decades to make their claims, some of them simply asking for money, and some going so far as to file criminal charges to help extract that money civilly.

This has got to stop now. Claims of rape, sexual assault & sexual harassment should require the same burden of proof as any other crime, and it should be even more scrutinized than most other crimes, with the evidence being on par with that required for murder charges, the latter of which in many cases also moves forward with little proof other than usually faulty eyewitness testimony.

A claim & charge of rape should only be allowed if the accuser comes forward right away and a rape kit is performed to gather evidence. Using simply the testimony of the accuser(s) as the only evidence is essentially a conflict of interest. It’s common for people to come out of the woodwork and file claims decades later against a person who has an initial claim against them in hopes of getting notoriety, pity & a payoff. Using that standard of evidence, you could convict anybody of virtually anything with enough people making the same claim of guilt & no other evidence.

Keep in mind that if a person is truly guilty of a crime against you, when you fail to report it & press charges, you leave them free to commit the same crime against someone else. You are materially responsible for subsequent crimes by that person, and by extension, should be civilly responsible for damage claims by future victims.

What about people who have been accused, but either never charged, or never convicted of the charges? Those people have their lives ruined even though they’ve never been found guilty of anything. You can & will believe what you want to believe, but as of December 2023, neither Bill Cosby nor Kevin Spacey are legally guilty of any crimes. Cosby’s conviction was overturned due to a retracted grant of immunity, who then had his testimony twisted around in court & in the media to portray him as saying something he never said, and the authorities simply never had a good case against Spacey. Actor Danny Masterson of That 70’s Show also was recently convicted without any evidence other than the accuser(s) testimony, which came 2 decades after the incidents allegedly happened.

Furthermore, it should be illegal to publicize claims against someone before they have been charged with a crime, and I believe that protection should extend until they are convicted, as a non-guilty verdict doesn’t translate into a non-guilty verdict in the court of popular opinion.