Welcome to Gaia! ::

I better be credited... biggrin

To me, the Jackson Trial, more than others, illuminated a lot of problems with the system. It showed the world, how hard child molestation cases are to prove. There is almost no evidence, by the time a child has the courage to come forth, and it quickly becomes a case of he said/she said, or he said/he said, as the case may be. In such a situation, in our system, the child has no chance to win. The child will rarely be taken seriously, no matter how spotted the past of the accused, and there will be nearly no evidence to back up their claims.

Of course, there are other times, where they are believed, most notably, and a rare exception to the rule, would be the charges placed against the Catholic Church.

This begs the question, what sort of world do we live in, where men of faith, and goodness, can readily be believed of one of, if not the most vile act upon earth, while a man who clearly fits the profile of a *****, can be presumed innocent of all suspicions?

Listening to reporters, and juror members after the trial, their comments came down mostly to the credibility of the mother, rather than that of the son, or the accused. They allowed their hatred of a lousy mother, to jade their opinions of the son. Just because the mother is slime, does not mean that something did not happen.

Others pointed out that the accuser, had changed his story a few times. None seemed to accept the idea that he could have been traumatized by whatever happened in Neverland Ranch. Think back when you were a young kid. It was hard enough for most people to admit if they were being bullied, or beaten, to authority figures, can you not then imagine how hard it would be to come forth, and report that sort of violation upon you? There are grown up rape victims, that don't report it, for just that reason. It seems unreasonable, for a sick young boy to be able to have the courage, that quite a few adults cannot muster up, much less that he should do it right away, and never omit anything.

I've known quite a few friends, who were in a situation like that kid claimed to be in. Nothing ever came of their situation. Only one was brought up on charges, and they were dismissed right away, because the supposed molester, was an upstanding citizen.

Granted, there was no hard evidence, no smoking gun to pin Jackson to the case. However, the jury has done a grave misjustice in this case. By finding him not guilty, in a highly viewed trial, it just reinforces the hopelessness of those that have been raped and molested, telling them that no one will believe them anyways. That the person who did it, will get away. And that they will have a social stigmata forever, because they brought the abuse to light. They'll forever be "That kid that ______ happened to."

Their Not Guilty, has shown that the progress made by convictions against the Catholic Church, is only a momentary thing. These events happen to kids everywhere, even with 'good people'. Because of what happened in this Trial, I just see more people knowing they can 'get away with it'.

The problem with sexual abuse trials is simply that the evidence amounts to the accused's word against the accuser. Unless there are several cases, with a few people who were abused coming forward or witnesses are willing to back up the accused or the accuser, it's a matter of who you believe.

This case involved one young boy and a very famous man, whose story is known and pitied around the world. In this specific case, the jurors who saw the witnesses present their evidence and didn't have to make do with second hand reporting, believed the accused.

The second problem with child abuse is the delay in reporting a case. The longer the gap between the abuse and the trial the less likely it is that the case will go to trial, since the accused can claim that any witnesses who could support him have died and who can remember what they did on a given day several decades ago.

Many cases have come to trial in Ireland and people are going to jail and they're not just clergy. The problem is that in rape and other sexual abuse cases, an adversarial trial is a horrendous experience for the alledged victim and many decide that it's not worth it. The accused also has rights though, an innocent man shouldn't be convicted and his rights in a trial include cross-examination of the alledged victim.

To be entirely honest I don't know exactly how to take the announcement as in my opinion he shouldn't have been aquitted of all those charges (he admitted to the alcohol one) and in some ways I have a suspicion that he only got away with it because he was famous.

Admittedly, there is something VERY dodgy about the man - I can't help but shudder everytime I see him and the way he treats his children is horrible so I would have reason to question his "Not guilty" verdicts myself...

I hope that made sense. @_@

Apparently the alcohol charge was something like "giving alcohol to minors in order to molest them sexually", so admitting that he gave them wine meant nothing.


What they needed was three or four children who came forward and I doubt that confidentiality agreements could have prevented them from testifying in a criminal trial. It doesn't matter what you sign.

Basically, lots of children were alledged to have been abused, but one of the least believeable ones came forward for the trial. Since cameras weren't in the court, you can't rely on the media to tell you what happened, especially the american media, since they're news entertainment, not news. The jury saw all the evidence and weren't prejudiced by news coverage. The atmosphere could have been completely different inside the court-room and probably was.

Michael Jackson has been cleared of abusing that boy, but they can always try him again if another child comes forward. Unless they get more than one, though, I doubt they'll try.

See, I disagree on that point. Doesn't make me 'evil' or anything, just practical. I rather have those 100 guilty men do their time, even if you get 1 innocent man, than the other way around.

And yeah, a confidentiality agreement IS binding in court. If you'll remember, they had Jackson's first lawyer come in to testify. However, because of Client/Lawyer confidentiality laws, his testamony was, well, fairly nonexistant.

And it really depends on what news you watch. Court TV is News Entertainment. CNN and MSNBC is News with Spin. Fox News is News with Opinion. National News is 1 hour worth of news, crammed into a 3 minute spot. Print news is mostly Progressive Agenda News.

It really depends on what you want to listen to, and your ability to look beyond the spin/agenda/opinions, etc.

You forget the past guy who came forth, and admitted, sounded very believable. Good man, family man, no criminal record, no court records, etc.

Anyways, it's a murky trial, showing a lot of the injustices of both Celebrity Trials, and Child Molestation trials.

ninja I can say, as an American, who has watched quite a bit of BBC news, that it is biased. There really isn't such as thing as unbiased news, because reporters will have opinions, they'll have words, thoughts, opinions that shape their reporting even though they might not realize it.

Granted, BBC isn't as bad as some I've seen though.

And we aren't talking about a murder trial here. We're talking about nonviolent crime, which is an important line, at least it is in American Law, and probably British Law, since our system started out as a version of Brittish Law.

And personally, I would have wished they would have covered voter Fraud in the state of Washington, more than the Trial. I didn't care about the Trial too much. It was on alot. The issue was something important to me, for personal reasons. I was hoping that a lot of good would come out of it, it would bring the issue to light, and we could get some sickos that do those things behind bars. But that would have only happened, if you got a guilty verdict. The Not Guilty, meant that there is still the belief that if such a thing does happen to you or someone you know, don't come forward, because they won't get punished for it anyways.