The Lost Girls - please read

[uwe]

Who, BTW, had to make a "guilty" plea to be released from prison.  Arkansas couldn't bear the thought of being sued by the men who were innocent children it railroaded on its 'righteous' witch hunt. If you watch the "Paradise Lost" documentaries, skip to the last one first.

Yeah, that left a sour taste. And the way authorities used a hovering death penalty over one of them as a bargaining tool, horrible.

[Pilgrim]

This is a perfect example of how social media can be bad for everyone.  The last thing Jackie or anyone else needs is to get into a "she said - she said" exchange in social media.  It will end badly, as just about all such exchanges do.

It was A. Lincoln who said "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool then to speak out and remove all doubt?"

This is just such an event - on ALL sides.

[godofthunder]

  Horrific but I'm not surprised, even to my young eyes the whole Runaways thing seemed odd. I hope Jackie finds some healing.

[uwe]

Assuming that my former teenage fantasy/legal colleague is right, she perhaps stayed silent for way too long?

It's hard for me to say who is wrong and who is right here. I don't doubt for a minute that Fowley, given half the chance, would have molested one of the girls under his patronage, but whether Cherie, Sandy (never one to take much interest in hetero-sex) and Joan (ditto) sat there and watched, who knows? Subjectively, Jackie might have indeed seen something, but she was drugged out of her mind and barely conscious. Not remembering much of the rape (which I don't doubt happening) and having a vivid recollection of who was actually in the room doesn't necessarily go too well together.

Doesn't excuse Fowley or any other bystander who just watched.

[Dave W]

From the original article:

Currie claims that she spoke up and stormed out of the room.

Currie says the girls, who were then all 16 and 17, never talked about how to handle the rape. There was no decision or strategy. The unspoken rule was simply, “you forget it and you move on,” Currie explains. “I pushed it out of my mind the best I could.”

and this footnote:

Currie found another way to shield herself from Fowley: beginning a relationship with Anderson. “I believed in a way that I was protecting myself because he wouldn’t let something like [the assault on Jackie] happen if I’m with him,” she says.

There were other witnesses, including Krome, who place Currie there. And then there's the part about Currie's book and Jackie's threatened legal action which caused Currie to get affidavits from two witnesses.

So I just don't believe Currie's denials now.

[Dave W]

They would have ended up in prison like the West Memphis Three, who were definitely innocent.    I'm not sure those Duke guys were.  I do know they were privileged jock slime balls bound for Wall Street who had to take a very slight detour.

Jameis I won't comment on.  I'm a Gator, we have enough problems of our own.

The Duke guys were fully exonerated by the state attorney general. Nifong, the prosecutor, who withheld evidence that proved their innocence, was disbarred and briefly jailed. That's almost unheard of. The accuser has a long criminal history and is now in prison for murder.

I have no love for frat boy party jocks and their culture, but I absolutely despise dishonest prosecutors.