I can tell that kids can have stupid ideas entering certain age, I already dealt with some minor incidents. As a survivor and mom of a soon to be teenager, I went to his teachers and trainers and told them that I want to be informed imediately if he shows any signs that he could be inapropriate with any boy or girl so I could react. Yes, I still have ongoing issues with my own trauma and this was "only" inapropriate and unwanted touch - after well over 25 years and I somewhat am a control freak over this. But I have reasons. The boy who assaulted me was 13 and wasn't bad person, I knew him for a long time before and we were friends. But at some point his life got messed - his dad passed away in an accident and his mom couldn't handle 3 teenage boys herself. I think noone ever told him about personal boundaries or sexuality and that his needs or frustration can't be relieved by assaulting another person. It is possible that my mom, whom I told about the situation, was the first person to speak to him about this topics. I don't know what she told him, but he never came near me after this. There was no legal action, it was long ago in a country that only now starts to treat this type of cases with care so that victim isn't harmed more by investigation than by the assault itself (I'm lawyer, trust me I know something about it). I don't know what would happen to me if my boy did something like this to another person. I also don't want my boy's life to be destroyed because of this kind of behaviour. But kids are kids, you can talk to them and explain, they still can do stupid things and they won't think or understand the impact of their doing or think that they can be exused because of whatever. I would probably be like this mother you described if my son did something wrong, but I also know a mother whos son attacked almost every of his classmates, including trying to choke a girl and bragged that he won't face any cosnequences. She reacted only when we told her that if his behaviour doesn't change, we will inform the wellfare care and they could bring her to the court and she could loose custody over her child. Before this she argued that her son can't be agressive and that he is a victim because he is from another country and even tried to threaten us calling the police to the school. So what I want to say is that these cases have to be handled with utmost care and at the same time I believe that telling lies will be discovered sooner or later. If Desyatov's case is ongoing since December 23, it's possible that they have strong eveidence against him. BTW Bella removed comments from her SM.
TBH I worked on cases when fired women (on purely substantive grounds) sued us (my employer) and tried to prove that they were subjects of various types of misconduct. None of them won, although their cases could look strong if described by them to a person who didn't know the whole picture (for example yes: she got scolded, yes, her boss told her some harsh things and maybe even yelled at her but it was because it was one of another time when she wasn't doing her job properly, ignoring previous talks and warnings, so her boss lost it because this time her mistakes had consequences for the company). I also defended my employer in countless personal rights cases that initially looked bad (because journalists I work with are kinda dumb and write things without consideration) but turned out well.That requires money and political will. In the absence of both, the problem everywhere is the balancing of the rights of the accused with the need to protect the unquestionably innocent and often vulnerable. After all an employer can fire someone sexually or racially harassing other staff without having to prove it in a court of law (unless the employee sues, and even then as I understand it civil law everywhere is based on probability, not nearly as high a benchmark as criminal.)
And we along with most Western nations also have that 'innocent until proven guilty' thing (which I think sometimes your country forgets, I have heard commentators saying the US is the only one who does when you didn't even invent it) so I and most folk here are at all not ignorant of it. But people are also arrested and held pending trial - which can take months or even years - for serious crimes, yes? Again, need for balance in an imperfect system, which will never not be imperfect because it deals with people. And people will never be anywhere near that which is why the cliche 'court of public' opinion doesn't and cannot ever be expected to hold to judicial standards.
My personal case wasn't brought to court because of this and change in PL is very slow. But we must remember that judges don't take sides - when we hear about a case, we probably hear about it from the victim's pov, so we side with them (just like people sided with Bella when Tsarevski went missing). It's only natural when you can relate to the victim, but 2 days ago was anniversary of Anna Halman's suicide. You can read about it in German https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suizidfall_Ania_in_Danzig, I don't have enough willpower to write about the details without getting sick, but there was strong support to Anna's abusers and some claimed they could behave the way they did, it was on Anna that she had exaggerated reaction.
This could be confirmation bias. You're more likely to remember the times he's happened to be right than when he's been incorrect
You're right that we often hear more of one side of a story, but history has shown us that some judges are very much capable of bias and having outdated views. To the point of misconduct and miscarriages of justice. They're human and capable of being bad and indifferent too.
Surely if there were similar allegations against him, there would be some sort of report of it somewhere and he would be suspended at this point?
How ridiculous. If we did this everytime an allegation of abuse came out then all public life would grind to halt. This is not an issue isolated to ice dance.
I don't know about other countries but in PL you became judge not because someone thinks that you are worthy but because you decided it's suitable careerpath for you and you were intelligent and hardworking enough to pass many exams. Moral qualities aren't really assesed because there are no means to do it. So yes, they are human, they can have not the best moral qualities. We developed whole complicated system to control the rulings and that's best thing we can come up for now.
I doubt that there will be any reports published in the case of an ongoing investigation and any provisional measures in place will not be made public. The allegations are not publicly known, so they may not require the temporary suspension as in the case of Desyatov.
There is no reason to make anything public until there is reason to take action against the person. If allegations are made public, reputation of the person is damaged and it won't matter if they are cleared of charges. I myself recently wondered why they are intervieweg certain person (not connected to FS) because I remebered allegations about them. I didn't remember that they were cleared of charges and felt really dumb when I checked it. You know, it works both ways, not all accused are guilty.
The tabloid has since retracted the "underage" comment, but has outed the victim.
The nationality of suspect and victim doesn't matter, there is no law saying that only the citizen's cases are investigated or that non-citizens get lesser priority. If the act happened in a country where it is penalized, it will be investigated and judged according to its laws. There is probably an agreement that allows croatian authorities to ask US authorities to help them with the investigation and later demand extradition. Sometimes ot is also possible conduct all the legal proceedings, including the sentencing and executing the punishment, in another country, but this is not my area of expertise and I only vaguely remeber that I had to learn about it during my studies.
I had a hunch that this could be the case, but as long as she didn't disclose, it's shitty what they did.
I respect your legal expertise and experience. However, this is a general observation that can not be stated with accuracy unless you cite irrefutable studies and the parameters of those studies. While I can't quantify numerically, surely we are all aware of reported legal cases in which either blatant or procedural miscarriages of justice have been proven, and the falsely accused have been released after years of incarceration! It is best not to generalize regarding 'how often' miscarriages of justice may or may not occur without qualifying with specific studies, globally, nationally, regionally (and if civil or criminal, etc).
