Not Just Fantasy: Navigating Deshaun Watson with Compassion
by Jakob Sanderson, March 12, 2022The process of proving each element of a sexual assault in court is an imperfect, insensitive, invasive, man-made creation to stand in proxy of being able to actually decipher the truth. Its stated purpose is to ensure the liberty of alleged perpetrators is not vitiated barring a degree of evidence that is often impossible to amass.
Tweets like Adam Schefter’s look past this reality. They perpetrate a damaging narrative that survivors of sexual violence are lying unless they are able to meet the legal burden of proof. They minimise the impact of life-altering trauma in favour of the perspective of a plausibly exonerated perpetrator.