hsmith19

Maybe. You will still usually have to demonstrate that you suffered some actual damage to your reputation as a result of the communication. You'll also have to show the person making the statement either knew or should have it known it was false at the time they made it. That's why defamation is one of the very toughest civil causes to prevail on.

To show defamation you first have to prove the claim is false, then prove your reputation was actually harmed by the claim. So the tweet itself would have to be false and would have to have resulted in damages, apart from whether the original accusation from the girls reporting the assault was true or not.

If what we're assuming here is true, the issue isn't that the content was inappropriate. It's that it was shared without the participants' knowledge. Maybe that's common at SLU these days too. I have no idea, but I won't break out the tiny violins for anyone who gets in trouble for it.

Defamation almost never applies to statements made to the police or to people like college administrators. Making a false report to police is a criminal offense, though.

This is just totally untrue. The reactions people get when they report sex offenses absolutely affect them and affects other, even if names are never released. People use "innocent until proven guilty" outside of criminal litigation as an excuse to presume the accusers are lying and as an excuse to put the burden of proof on the victims to prove their story. Despite the sentiment in this thread that the "pendulum has swung too far" to the side of helping rape victims, there is still a problem with people not reporting these kinds of things, and this is one of the biggest reasons why.

Geldmacher is right. There's no mystery why Rosenblum would take a case like this, especially since he already took a similar one for Lindenwood.

Nobody who was paying attention thought there would actually be criminal charges. The problem was a lot of people thought no criminal charges would or should = no consequences period.

Even if Rosenblum is getting paid by someone, I would be very surprised if he would take money from SLU or anyone associated with SLU while representing multiple clients being investigated by SLU. That would be highly out of the ordinary for any criminal defense attorney, and a possible ethical violation for the atty, even setting aside NCAA rules and Title IX statutory concerns.

No, this has been twisted around. Frank said Martin told him he had not spoken to Gordon specifically. Ford is the one who said he had a blanket rule against speaking to kids after they verbal. Martin has never claimed to have a blanket policy like that, and in fact Ford heavily implied Martin does not follow such a policy on the radio. "Not everybody else around here operates like that" or words to that effect.

Yes, the facts were different. I didn't bring it up to say it was the exact same situation. I brought it up because it's yet another recent example of sexual assault allegations in the SLU dorms. Surely you can see how multiple similar incidents put extra pressure on the school even when they're not all identical events.

It hasn't been mentioned on here because we're focused on 2010, but there was also that freshman charged with rape in a dorm just this past spring.

Yeah...the idea that the whole team is going to quit and we won't have five guys to put on the court is just a bit hysterical.

None of what you just said about Title IX is in conflict with what I said. An impartial investigation under Title IX does not require the same presumption of innocence that a criminal charge does.

Yeah, I suspect that's exactly what happened here and in 2010 for that matter. These things usually involve a disagreement over who consented to what after the fact. The question for SLU isn't whether what happened was sexual assault under a criminal definition, though. I'm already assuming it was not, although i could be proven wrong on that too.

If you had some kind of a point here, feel free to make it clear. I've already said the version I got might not be accurate. But if their version of the allegations is accurate, then either not just one but three girls made up a whopper or the players really effed up. Others have already brought up the "college girls cry rape for fun all the time" line here, which is just plain gross.

Where did I say anything about guilt or innocence? They shared with me what they were told the allegations were. And as I said, their version might not be accurate. But if you're one of those people who believe college girls run around making up stories about sexual assault and going through traumatic rape exams in hospitals for kicks and giggles, I don't have anything else to say to you.

If memory serves, there were exactly four players involved in the 2010 situation too. A little eery. I know our roster this year is deep, but is it really much deeper than the one that had the Big Four as freshmen?

So now we've covered racism against whites and sexism against males. Speaking of victims, any way we can work the War on Christmas in too?

Maybe just a tad...not saying that's absolutely for sure what happened here, of course. Wouldn't want to let a little familiarity with what goes on at college parties get in the way of observing the presumption of criminal innocence in all settings at all times.

The short answer is whoever was more responsible for initiating the sexual contact is the one who faces consequences. In practice it is almost always the man found to have initiated it. Maybe not entirely fair but the way it is in these investigations.

I am saying that in general, colleges do (and should) believe female students who claim they were sexually assaulted. Obviously if there is convincing evidence the women are lying, the accused should not be punished. As I've said multiple times, I would love for such evidence to come out. But I'm more comfortable presuming outside of criminal court that a group of multiple women are telling the truth than presuming they are all lying or wildly exaggerating.

First, I defy anyone to claim D1 athletes receive no special advantages and have always been treated exactly like every other student. Second, and this goes back to Desmet's point, the presumption of innocence applies to criminal courts only. Trying to apply the presumptions, burdens, and standard of proof from criminal litigation to a private school's disciplinary procedures is just as silly and irrelevant as it would be to cry "free speech" and "censorship" when Steve deletes posts on here. It really amazes me how SLU people who lived through 2010 can still be confused on this. And by the way, I'm not saying I'm always cool with the way some of these kangaroo courts on college campuses operate either. But the idea that Pestello could just let kids accused of stuff like this go on as if nothing happened and that be tenable politically and ethically is just not realistic. Whether criminal charges are filed is totally irrelevant to what happens to the kids as SLU students.

Alcohol and sex with people you don't know very well creates all sorts of scary environments in college. Not just for athletes. I don't know what evidence that would exonerate the players accused would look like exactly. I would like to believe some will magically appear somehow and all these girls really are making this all up or at least wildly exaggerating for some reason. But color me pessimistic for the moment.

I'm going off what I've heard from current students involved in the student government and current faculty. If it's not accurate, great. I really hope it's not.

The only fact that generally matters in cases like this is what the victims claim happened. There may be cases where college women totally make up false accusations of rape, but to allow the accused to just go on like nothing happened because the accusers mighy be bald-faced liars would just not be a tenable position for any administration to take. The victims' race and wealth won't (and shouldn't) matter. And in this case, if there is really not just one but multiple accusers who would have to make up lies about being sexually assaulted, it would be even more untenable than it was for SLU in 2010.