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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsS.F. women's rights advocate accused of raping wife
While attorneys for a women's rights advocate and prominent Twitter engineer accused of raping her estranged wife say the accuser is "out for revenge," a friend who says she was present after the incident said Friday that the wife just wants to teach her children that criminals must face justice.
Dana McCallum, 31, was arrested Jan. 26 on suspicion of rape. She was charged a few days later with five felonies: three counts of spousal rape, one count of false imprisonment and one count of domestic violence, according to the San Francisco district attorney's office.
McCallum, whose legal name is Dana Contreras, had been separated from her wife for about a year but maintained a polite, and at times sexual, relationship with her, authorities said.
She went over to her wife's two-bedroom home in San Francisco the morning of Jan. 26 while she was highly intoxicated, according to Erin Caton, a friend of the wife's. Her three children and one of their friends had let McCallum in without realizing she was drunk, Caton said, so the wife steered her into another room, where McCallum allegedly attacked her.
" The wife) called me that morning and told me that she had been raped and asked me what to do," Caton said. "She was crying nonstop."
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/S-F-women-s-rights-advocate-accused-of-raping-5396746.php
JJChambers
(1,115 posts)Jesus Malverde
(10,274 posts)"I'm just disgusted that, you know, this is going on," Runfola said. "Dana is an employee [at Twitter] and is about to come into a large amount of money. ... This whole thing is about money."
The couple had been separated, he said, but were still having sexual relations. McCallum served her wife with divorce papers the day before the incident, Runfola said.
http://www.sfexaminer.com/sanfrancisco/transgender-womens-rights-advocate-and-prominent-twitter-engineer-charged-with-rape/Content?oid=2761316
Donald Ian Rankin
(13,598 posts)This accusation may be true, or may not be; the good one can do by vigorously taking the right side, whichever it is, in something like this is far less than the pain caused by weighing in on the wrong one.
Jesus Malverde
(10,274 posts)Donald Ian Rankin
(13,598 posts)I think that if someone studied this - I haven't, and actively don't want to - you could probably be more than 50% sure whether it's true or not.
But it's like gambling on a coin toss, where the coin is slightly but only slightly weighted in your favour, and where you win doughnuts if you get it right, and lose dollars - lots of dollars - if you don't: falsely accusing someone either of rape or of making a false accusation of rape are things I think one should go to great lengths to avoid; the possibility of making a true accusation does not make it worth while.
Jesus Malverde
(10,274 posts)Society dictates we stand with the victim until proven otherwise. Anything short of that revictimizes the victim.
Donald Ian Rankin
(13,598 posts)The nearest thing to "society dictates" is the dictum of "innocent until proven guilty", with the burden of proof squarely on the shoulders of the accuser (we don't know who the "victim" is, but we do know who the "accuser" is), so that claim is clearly completely false.
On the other hand, "innocent until proven guilty" is a legal doctrine; it doesn't mean that people accused of crimes actually *are* innocent, or even that citizens should necessarily treat them as such, just that the state should.
"We should treat anyone accused of rape as guilty until proven innocent" is a position I strongly disagree with, but it's not *factually* wrong. But "society dictates that we should treat anyone accused of rape as guilty until proven innocent" *is* not just factually wrong but a complete reversal of the nearest thing to an official stance society has on the issue.
Jesus Malverde
(10,274 posts)And some good points.
JJChambers
(1,115 posts)Haven't you seen the statistics posted in so many other tape threads? Victims VERY rarely make false accusations. This case is almost certainly legitimate rape based on the statistics alone. Don't defend rapists here, whether the rapists are male or female.
Donald Ian Rankin
(13,598 posts)Heidi
(58,237 posts)I'm sort of at a loss. Scotch? Masking? Measuring? From scrap booking to home interiors to sewing, we little ladies of GD are waiting with bated breath.
Response to Jesus Malverde (Original post)
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seabeyond
(110,159 posts)AngryAmish
(25,704 posts)CFLDem
(2,083 posts)Disgusting
Warpy
(111,270 posts)Anything that happens in bad straight relationships is also going to happen in gay ones.
Good things happen in good straight and gay relationships.
The only things different in same sex marriages are the personal plumbing and the paychecks, two male paychecks going a lot farther than two female paychecks. Everything else is the same both good and bad.
Jesus Malverde
(10,274 posts)Heidi
(58,237 posts)redqueen
(115,103 posts)Sounds like at least one of her children heard way more than just a quiet "no".
That poor child.