People saying Michael Moore shouldn’t have bailed out Assange are saying that anyone accused of rape should be tortured
Assange had no charges against him by any institution, but was still imprisoned in solitary confinement (an established form of torture). If you object to Moore bailing Assange out, you object to someone spending money to end the torture of someone who hasn’t even been charged with a crime.
The problem being that under a system requiring “proof beyond a reasonable doubt”, perpetrators are often unconvictable and therefore charges may not even be laid in the first place (whether because prosecutors don’t feel there is a case or survivors understandably do not want to relive the trauma as legal proceedings necessitate). Even worse, our society tends to fall in step with court rulings, interpreting “not found guilty by a system that requires irrefutable proof” to mean “innocent”.
Societally, we need to believe & trust survivors. Criminally, fine, whatever, burden of proof on the prosecutor. But out here in the world, the burden of proof needs to be on the perpetrator. Leave the talk of “accusations” to the legal system. If a survivor says they were sexually assaulted, that is what happened. This is the only way to stop condoning sexual assault and to stop perpetuating a rape culture. No exceptions.
If you are tempted to mention a perpetrator’s “reputation”, don’t even bother. I don’t give a rat’s ass about reputation and public image when billions of people are experiencing sexual assault all over the world with very little consequence to perpetrators or the way we think about this issue as a society.
And before you even think the words “false allegations”, do some reading about how rare that actually is. Also note that this returns to my point about leaving criminal investigations to the [admittedly incredibly problematic] legal system and working as a society to ensure that sexual assault is never dismissed or condoned or disbelieved.
So to bring this back to the point of the original post, i don’t think it’s at all reprehensible that he would bail Assange out, but i think it needs/needed to be accompanied by a very strong message that Moore believes the survivors and that his financial actions are in no way condoning sexual assault.
[As usual, i am speaking primarily from a Canadian-tinged-by-US perspective.]
