Kevin Driscoll
The case of Kevin Driscoll, accused of rape and currently under house arrest in Oregon, USA is a men’s rights issue going begging. The evidence against him is so bewilderingly thin, and the severity of local law enforcement’s response so untoward, that this case promises to be a watershed moment in the advancement of men’s rights, if only the opportunity is not missed. The issue of his actual innocence, and the legal presumption that he is innocent until a trial determines otherwise are both at play here. It is evident that local law enforcers are not even paying lip service to the latter.
One may ask what relevance this has to us in New Zealand. The unfortunate truth is that developments in how police conduct themselves and how prosecutors are incentivised often find their way from the United States to here, and if we don’t take an interest in what’s going on there, we will shortly be living under the same rules here.
Kevin Driscoll is currently under house arrest for a January rape that on the face of it appears highly dubious, he has lost his job over it, his reputation in the small neighborhood he lives in is ruined, his mother has been bankrupted, he is about to follow her and his house is in foreclosure. Charges were laid against him in spite of the fact there are serious misgivings about the accuser’s account of events and reliability, and in spite of the fact that there are witnesses and video footage that favor Kevin’s version of events and contradict the alleged victim’s. He has been denied his liberty in spite of the fact that he remains legally innocent, and is obviously not considered a material threat to the public (otherwise he would be in jail).
All any of us needs to do is e-mail the DA, the prosecutor or any of the other individuals listed on Angry Harry’s site here:
http://www.angryharry.com/es_Kevin_Driscoll.htm
Keep your message brief and civil, and use no threatening language. Don’t engage in any running commentary with them if they respond – your objective should only be to let them know that you are concerned and that yet another pair of eyes is watching them. (Don’t try to convince them of anything in an email- they are well accustomed to people appealing for them to change their minds, and equally accustomed to ignoring them). The one thing that most encourages honest conduct is the gaze of many eyes.
Also, always CC other parties when sending emails to officials/media. It lets them know the communication is being witnessed, and makes them think twice about deleting the message unread. Fidelbogen at the Counter-Feminist (http://counterfem.blogspot.com/) has provided the following email address to CC to if you want your communication logged:
It also lets him see the state of play in this campaign, and perhaps pick up some useful ideas/information to be put to further use. He assures the content, identity and e-mail address will remain confidential and will not be divulged to third parties. He’s been maintaining a daily update on developments in the Kevin Driscoll case for the past week.
This is how wars are won – by victories in key battles. We do not need to go fighting to free every man on doubtful charges. We only need to make a sufficiently loud noise on a small number of cases, exposing any chicanery going on to as wide an audience as possible. The noise that has already been made will already have had a restraining effect.
Men’s News Daily has published this about the case only a couple of hours ago:
http://mensnewsdaily.com/2009/10/21/a-da%E2%80%99s-guide-to-convicting-a-man-of-rape-guilty-or-not/
This case has already taken on an international dimension, with appeals to concerned men to make their concern publicly known already launched in England and Denmark. Momentum is steadily gathering pace within the United States outside of Kevin’s immediate area. If we can’t be bothered to write just one e-mail to help rescue someone being persecuted by awful laws and over-zealous prosecutors, then I’m afraid we deserve what we get. As the saying goes, if we don’t hang together, we will most assuredly be hanged separately.
I notice that – right on cue – The New Zealand Herald published an editorial today fully endorsing the proposals for change in how sex crimes should be dealt with in court-rooms.
These are the changes that effectively make any man accused of rape guilty until proved innocent, his prior history can be introduced at trial, his silence can be judged as incriminating and his right to confront his accuser denied, among other things.
These are your basic rights as a citizen being trashed, and this newspaper doesn’t think this aspect of the proposals worth commenting on. It’s sole concern is with ease of conviction, and it makes no apology for this single-mindedness, justifying that the proposed changes ‘are no more than appropriate’. Just why they are appropriate is not elaborated on – apparently making the claim is sufficient in itself.
It even goes so far as to intimate that men found not guilty at trial in the past were in fact guilty – and it makes this statement baldly with nothing to support this assertion. The presumption of guilt is already being applied retrospectively. It’s a little hard to take this paper’s earnestness about the justice system seriously when its respect for prior verdicts is unfavorable whenever alleged rapists are found to be not guilty – but full marks for its consistency. Apparently the only right verdict in a rape trial is one of guilt. It doesn’t seem that long ago that we all rolled our eyes at the mantra ‘all men are rapists’, but here we have a national newspaper going public with this same sentiment.
This is the same newspaper that rarely publishes anything on false rape accusations in spite of the growing evidence of its frequency, and to this day I have still to find any detail on the sentence imposed on Nicola Allison May for claiming she had been raped by a police officer a couple of years ago, and initiating a manhunt in South Auckland for 3 days (the NZPA did have a photographer at the court-rooms who presumably took these photos).
Just why it’s impossible to find any detail on the sentence she received remains a mystery, and I suspect deliberately so.
It’s ironic that so many of this country took to the streets in 1981 in enraged fury for the rights of black South Africans, but don’t seem to be able to recognize the same evil at work on their own shores when the discrimination is directed at male New Zealanders. It’s appalling to see a national newspaper similarly blind-sided by its own misdirected chivalry.
For a hint as to what these kinds of law changes will herald, read the above story about Kevin Driscoll who is to go before a court on November 3 in Oregon. All the indications are that this man is being tried for a crime that never happened, and that the behaviour of those entusted to prosecute the law is now a serious cause for public concern.
I remember reading a German professor describing the events leading up to Hitler’s complete take-over, and although it seemed a little exotic to me at the time, now I recognise it all too easily. He said that the changes didn’t happen overnight – they happened in dribs and drabs, no single one of them being so provocative as to stir up public outrage, but all the same there was a growing sense of unease. He said he kept consoling himself that if the government went too far, others would surely not stand for it any more and set things back to rights – but all of a sudden it was too late. Once that point had been reached there was no going back, and everyone was compromised together.
Comment by rc — Mon 26th October 2009 @ 9:46 pm
Whilst searching once more for the Nicola May sentence, I found this beauty.
Here’s the key sentence:
“Senior investigators estimate that between 60 and 80 per cent of rape complaints made by women are false.”
This is New Zealand police talking, and the source is attributed to the New Zealand Herald (!!)
And on these breath-taking numbers, a current editor wants to make it easier to put men away on allegation alone. Time I updated my passport.
Comment by rc — Mon 26th October 2009 @ 10:14 pm
It’s about time Feminism was declared a Hate Group and the worst of them dealt with severely, especially those encouraging gender eugenics.
Comment by SicKofNZ — Tue 27th October 2009 @ 4:28 am