Thread by @ClaireBerlinski

If I may, I'd like to suggest that Americans read the verdict--in full--of Justice William B. Horkins, who presided over the Jian Ghomeshi trial. You may find it by scrolling down here: globalnews.ca/news/2598453/j…

It as as powerful argument as we will have about why it is better that courts--who are trained to try cases like this--adjudicate these disputes, as opposed to "internal cororate investigators," or "Title IX coordinators," and above all, "the media."

But even the authority of a skilled and a legitimate court of law was insufficient. The judge ruled--calmly and dispassionately, that in a case based entirely on the complainants' testimony, it was quite a problem if they serially and seriously perjured themselves.

"I have no hesitation," he concluded, "in concluding that the quality of the evidence in this case is incapable of displacing the presumption of innocence. The evidence fails to prove the allegations beyond a reasonable doubt.

"I find Mr. Ghomeshi not guilty on all of these charges and they will be noted as dismissed."

If you read the full document, so well certainly be shocked.
Your sense of "the victim: and "the perpetrators" may well be reversed.

Yet Ghomeshi’s tepid, pathetically apologetic bromide has already cost Ian Buruma his job.

It has generated a storm of criticism, prompting a detailed apology from the NYRB’s publisher. What editor now with a family to feed--what woman too, for that matter--

would commission a (better, one hopes) article? No less one that fails to embrace #metoo as "entirely a good thing?" (Buruma insists that it is, even though clearly it is not; even as Ghomeshi’s confessions call to mind the soul of a man emerging from a Struggle Session.)

It's hardly a parallel that could have escaped Buruma, of all people. From Buruma's own description of these Struggle Sessions:

From Ghomeshi:

Acquitted.
Of all charges.
By women who were perjurers at best, criminal conspirators at best.

Yet Ian Buruma has lost his job--for allowing a man to apologize, snivelingly, for crimes he did not commit.

And why does Buruma find himself out of a job for "editorial misjudgment:, while Ian Remnick of the The New Yorker does not?

Ronan Farrow is a product—a prototype—of the 1990s incest hysteria.Mia Farrrow coachd and rewarded Dylan for telling the story Mia wanted to hear.

Dylan was treated by a series of therapists steeped in the notion that incest is commonplace and children never lie about it.

But Ronan's brother emphatically affirms that Dylan was coached, threatened with the withdrawal of maternal affection if she didn’t say what Mia wanted.

Ronan's brother reports, too, that Mia was extremely abusive. We do not know if this is so, but we do know she was enraged with him, publicly, for saying he did not believe Dylan was sexually abused—and that Dylan’s memories are physical implausible, given the circumstances.

Soon-Yi confirms the brother's portrait of Mia as abusive. Logic suggests this is probably so: Usually, daughters are not so angry at their mothers that they seduce their mothers’ boyfriends. Something was clearly wrong in that family.

The courts found no evidence that Woody had sexually abused Dylan, and ordered that he be allowed to visit her. Dylan believes, despite this, that she was molested by Woody in the attic and that the sight of a train set triggers the memory. Perhaps that is so.

But it is also an archetypal example of the kind of “recovered memory” typical of that era—and as the reversal, one by one, of those convictions showed, and as study after study made clear, such events may be genuinely misremembered if one is told often enough they are true.

During the daycare panic, children told stories of being taken to outer space in hot air balloons, of other children being dismembered in front of them and fed to sharks, of witches flying around the classroom on broomsticks.

The public was told, “believe the children.”

Juries were under massive pressure to convict. Subsequently many reported that they had simply given in to pressure from other jurors. (People started looking at the convictions more closely, in part, because jurors had guilty consciences.)

Many of the accused were sentenced to multiple successive life terms—with no corroborating physical evidence of abuse, no adult witnesses, and children who believed their teachers had killed their classmates (none were missing) and flown on broomsticks.

Woody did, unquestionably, violate the incest taboo--if perhaps not with Dylan. Mia, Dylan, and Ronan hold as the *central* belief of their lives that Woody molested Dylan--and got away with it owing to his wealth, power, and the esteem for his artistry.

For many critical years of Ronan's childhood, this was the central conflict of his life: It was the dilemma faced by many children of divorced parents—being forced to “choose sides”—magnified to harrowing dimensions.

But how could someone like Farrow,

in his genuinely tragic psychological position, possibly be a dispassionate reporter in case after case that recapitulates the dynamics of this family romance?

His mental world is populated by male perversity, abused women, and men (especially in show business--oddly enough).

Men who use their fame, money, and power to get away with sexual outrages.

The other siblings say taking Mia’s side was the key to sustaining her affection (and of course, Ronan had no father). The withdrawal of that affection was a constant threat, his brother affirms.

To a child there is no threat more terrifying.

Ronan’s obligation to "believe the woman" was clearly a matter of the most primitive survival. It is unsurprising this family tragedy now dominates his view of the world.

But assigning him to report on these stories is as inappropriate as assigning me to review my own book. It is something an editor obviously shouldn’t do. It is unethical.

David Remnick, however, still has a job.

Buruma does not.

How does this make sense?