Exactly. I am puzzled why anyone is so offended that I or anyone else has an opinion. I'm a little old lady, living in Florida, have no power or authority to cause any arrest or other consequence to this man, who i BELIEVE has done these things. The police detectives who investigated Epstein also believed the multiple perpetrators mentioned by the women likely were guilty. Obviously they cannot just put this evidence out to the public. They rely on the prosecutors to do that. In this case, both the state prosecutor and later the federal prosecutor sabotaged the case. The state prosecutor tried to make a deal with Epstein for him to basically get away with everything he had already done, but, he was going to be required to register as a sex offender and that could have curtailed much of his ability to continue the behaviors. Epstein refused that deal, but then along came Alex Acosta and gave Epstein pretty much the exact deal he wanted.Sam the Centipede wrote: ↑Wed Feb 16, 2022 3:38 amWhat would constitute "proof"? With so many lawyers here, the focus tends to be on courts as the proving ground, but civil courts exist to resolve disputes, not to establish facts. If the parties cease to be in dispute, the court loses its role.Uninformed wrote: ↑Wed Feb 16, 2022 2:59 am LMK is right that Andrew has not been proven to be a perpetrator of sexual abuse, and it is extremely unlikely that the question will ever be resolved.
So those of us without privileged access to first-hand knowledge or reliable sources have to make our judgements based on the reports, analysis and opinions of others. We have no duty to anyone in forming those judgements if they remain private and with little impact on others.
Hence it's a Bayesian analysis, a weighting of beliefs, not first order true/false logic.
There is so much direct and circumstantial evidence (I'm not using that as a legal term) that Andrew is a bumptious, entitled person who abuses his privileged position. What precisely happened between him and Giuffre? I don't know, I don't care, but I believe there was much sordid behavior and he was a large or small part of it. And there is little or no evidence to the contrary.
I wouldn't hold up a placard accusing or defaming Andrew but I would quietly object if (hypothetically) any organization I was connected with invited him in. I think that's a proportionate response.
I think it's significant that Andrew received no open support from his family. Ok, they're a weird bunch, but I can only draw adverse inferences from that booming silence.
If you read the book this thread is about, you will find the detectives worked with the author. They go so far as to name names of the prosecutors who sabotaged the case, and they and the write have never been sued for it, largely because they have the actual email and other evidence of sabotaging the case. One of the best pieces of evidence that would have allowed the public to find out exactly who may have also been involved disappeared also due to sabotage either by the judge who granted the warrant, the judge's assistant, or a prosecutor. There were only a small number of people who knew about the warrant to collect Esptein's video surveillance equipment and yet when the police showed up to execute the warrant, that equipment had been hastily unplugged, the computers were opened up and left in a state of disarray, the hard drives were missing, and Epstein was already on his way to the airport. That warrant was based on evidence from Epstein's house employees who corroborated the presence of several men and women who the girls had all said were involved and the dates and everything from all witnesses matched. Epstein's employees told police investigators it was commonly believed by all the employees that Epstein had set up those video cameras and computer to collect and save he videos for blackmail purposes.
We will never know for sure, but I am not a prosecutor, I am not arresting anyone, and I have opinions about this case. If I was in a position to bring someone to "justice" then of course I would have to produce all the evidence that was so nicely disposed of. but I'm not.