Jury at Southwark crown court finds Oscar-winning actor, 64, not guilty after four-week trial
Spacey had previously denied 12 charges – seven sexual assaults, three indecent assaults, one count of causing a person to engage in sexual activity without consent, and one count of causing a person to engage in penetrative sexual activity without consent.
A further charge of indecent assault was added mid-trial, taking to 13 the total number of alleged offences listed on the indictment.
Last Wednesday, the four indecent assault charges were struck off by the judge because of a “legal technicality”.
I don’t know anything about this, and I wish the article went into a lot more detail about the accusations and why they were found not credible, especially since there were so many from separate people.
Like, did they find some evidence against the accusers, like happened with the Michael Jackson cases iirc, or did they just decide the accusers didn’t present enough evidence or witnesses to be believed?
Spacey might well be innocent, of course. I just worry because society is often disinclined to take male sexual assault victims seriously, and I feel like if the alleged victims were female the press would (since “Me Too”) at least give them a little more coverage than this? This article feels like it has a “the accused is found not guilty, and everyone knows that sexual assault cases are always decided correctly, so he is 100% innocent and we can all wash our hands of this” vibe, but meanwhile Bill Crosby walks free, so I can’t personally trust it with so little information.
Especially not when it’s about a rich, powerful man with a huge fanbase, aka exactly the type of person nobody wants to believe would be a predator (and maybe he isn’t! But I need more info here, darn it!)
Ah well. I’ll google more later I guess.
At least it doesn’t seem to have turned into a media hellscape circus like what happened to Amber Heard.
I concur. It feels like Spacey is gonna just have his name cleared now for reasons we know not, but Marilyn Manson (for example) will forever be seen as a vile monster even though Evan Rachel Wood and Illma Gore are very clearly insane and creating this situation out of thin air
(Little about me to go with my divisive comment; I’m a victim of childhood SA, I believed ERW for a full year on principle before looking into the evidence, at which time it became inescapably obvious that she’s a psychopath who’s doing the absolute most with absolutely nothing based on reality behind it)
clearly insane
psychopath
You should probably avoid this language when talking about SA, even if you’re referring to people you believe are lying about being victims of SA. I don’t know enough about the above individuals to weigh in on whether they are trustworthy or not, and I’m betting most people running across this comment also don’t have the level of knowledge necessary to parse this message without getting tripped up by the language you’re using which may be especially triggering if they are also victims of SA.
They forged an FBI document using a real agent’s name in order to SWAT his house (the actual agent whose name they used has publicly stated that she had nothing to do with this case and never wrote that document), gave ERW’s ex the agent’s name with a fake number as the only contact to discuss custody of their son after illegally absconding to Tennessee with him under the pretense of being threatened by MM, filled said toddler child’s head with so much fear of MM that he began drawing pictures of “the evil man” who is the reason he’s not allowed to see his father anymore, gave several women a checklist of abuses to create a cohesive story and told them that a) just because they don’t remember it happening doesn’t mean it didn’t and b) they’re hurting the other women’s chance for justice if they don’t agree that it happened to them, just for a few examples. I think I’m using those words perfectly appropriately.
Claiming that someone is lying about SA without listing evidence could in and of itself be triggering, discussing SA at all could be triggering, one would assume that entering a thread about SA could be triggering. I’m not sure I agree that referring to these two as psychologically unhinged would be more triggering than any of the other content of this thread, or more specifically any of the rest of the content of my post accusing them of making it up. Incidentally, I’m using the term psychopath literally, not colloquially;
Individuals with psychopathy (Antisocial Personality Disorder) display a decrease of emotional response and lack of empathy with others. This individual might possess a superficial charm but deep down is manipulative and impulsive. A psychopath is characterized by a lack of regard for the rights and feelings of others, controlled and manipulative behavior, the absence of shame, and an inability to form emotional relationships (Morin, 2021). They are incapable of loyalty to individuals, groups or social values. They are grossly selfish, callous, irresponsible, impulsive and unable to feel guilt or to learn from experience
I’m using the term psychopath literally, not colloquially;
i think you’re using the term inappropriately, or at least irresponsibly. ASPD, psychopathy, whatever you like, has specific conditions for diagnosis, and we are not well served by generalizing disordered behavior to people whose lives we have limited insight in, based on a perspective which is not a psychiatrist’s office. calling people “psychologically unhinged” is in poor taste even if these people were diagnosed with ASPD.
your quote for how to define a psychopath is not how clinical professionals speak about people with the condition, and the idea that treatment is impossible is a falsehood. there are effective treatment options for the condition. the clinical profile for ASPD is itself contested for its focus on criminality, which some clinicians say allows its misapplication to people in impoverished conditions, who have adopted anti-social behaviors as part of a survival strategy, and whose criminal behavior can be better explained by the desperation of poverty and unstable living conditions. insinuating these people are beyond help, or that their behavior cannot be adjusted, is problematic in this context.
there are also specific problems with insinuating that women are “unhinged” or “crazy”. the history of how women were denied freedom and autonomy from the patriarchal structures of the past and present is deeply interlinked with the institution of mental health care. “hysteria” was a recognized medical condition for a long time, and was used to justify putting women who were resistant to the authority of their family, husband, or other patriarchal systems into asylums, give them lobotomies, or otherwise pacify them with medication when they resisted control. the majority of lobotomies were performed on women, and the justification and permission to do so was very often in the hands of the patriarchs who controlled their lives. so… yes, calling women crazy has a pretty fucking horrifying history, and calling anybody crazy stigmatizes mental health issues.
if what you’re saying is true, go ahead and point that out. tell people what they did and how bad it is. but try not to pathologize doing terrible things? women have very real reasons to be triggered by that sort of attitude, because it has been and still is used to insulate misogynists, rapists, and abusers from being held responsible for their actions.
I just don’t agree with your sentiment. I understand the points you’re making are accurate reflections of history (modern and otherwise) but I don’t agree that it’s necessary to avoid labelling people when critiquing their behavior, regarding women or otherwise. Also “unable to learn from experience” is not analogous to “treatment is impossible”, which I assume is where you got the assumption that I was saying that from.
Edit: I see that the person originally responding to me in this discussion is a mod, so if they’d like to clarify that they explicitly want me not to use the words I have in the way I have here then that’s fine, but that’s not what happened here as yet, so yea. These are my feelings on the subject. I understand yours, but I don’t agree. I think what you’re suggesting casts a far wider net over the issue than is necessary. I think she’s a genuinely dangerous person with clear patterns of harmful pathological behavior and I don’t think it’s wrong or detrimental to all women to discuss it. I’m transmasc nonbinary, autistic comorbid with ADHD and chronic treatment resistant depression, and a whole host of other stigmatized and marginalized things as well, and I don’t think it necessarily harms the entire conversation of mental illness as a whole to point out that people can do bad things in conjunction with or because of their mental illnesses, I think it’s disingenuous to act like that’s not an aspect of mental illness at all just because people can ignorantly group all neurodivergence together. I feel like your perspective is more about circling the wagons to control the attack, which I understand, but I think it limits potential discussion without providing any actual meaningful benefit to the communities involved.
yeah i guess i did extrapolate that point out further than you meant it. my bad. i think that labeling people isn’t really the point that i find aggravating, though. its applying clinical labels to people who don’t necessarily have those clinical conditions. like, is psychopathy really what’s going on here? can people really know that observing from afar? i don’t think so, and i think its at least a little bit irresponsible to make those sorts of claims about people because they do bad things. there is nothing intrinsically pathological about causing harm to other people. like, the fact that you seem to think you can identify “clear patterns of harmful pathological behavior” is mostly the thrust of my resistance. it certainly is harmful behavior, and it may very well be pathological, but frankly neither you or i are well positioned to make judgements about the mental health of strangers, in the same way we aught not assume people have a specific physical illness.
i think its probably good to point out that people can do bad things because of their mental illness, but we don’t have enough information to just say she has this specific mental illness because she did bad things. its kinda like speculating on the sexuality of public figures, or at least those two ideas feel similar in my brain.
It’s not just that her behavior is harmful, it’s that she’s creating a whole false reality around it and controlling multiple narratives from every possible perspective. She created/co-opted a movement to go along with the Manson allegations, she moved across the country with her son to reinforce her narrative and used that as a way to hurt her ex husband, she used her power in the role of a child’s mother to create a world in which there was a monster they must run away from at all costs to where the kid couldn’t even play outside in Tennessee because of the monster in LA… And whenever she’s confronted with the idea that what she’s done is harmful to anybody she rewrites or reinforces the narrative that she’s doing it for the right reasons and deflects any responsibility or awareness that she’s done anything wrong (for example, when it looked like she was going to lose custody she suddenly decided it was in the child’s best interest to go live with the father in LA, the very city she ran from in order to protect the very child she was taking away from LA).
I’m not saying everybody who hurts somebody is “pathological” or “psychotic”. I’m saying ERW specifically exhibits a lack of capacity for empathy, a total lack of self awareness or awareness of the effects of her behavior, and has no concern or even acceptance of those effects as reality when confronted with them, and what she does and how she is is characteristic of ASPD.
