I appreciate he and his legal team clearly fought to have the resolution permit him to publicly discuss the cases and settlement terms. It is important to protect actual victims of sexual assault, but it is also critical that we expose people who perpetrate these sort of fraudulent assault cases. Frankly, I wish prosecutors would file charges like perjury, false report of a crime, and potentially criminal conspiracy (where multiple people are involved) in these instances. Unfortunately, the first two are just misdemeanors in Florida, so there is little incentive to actually push those cases. But, I'd argue that's a short-sighted view.
Not only is this sort of conduct terrible for victims like Trevor Bauer, but these cases also have the consequence of feeding the false narrative that men in certain demographics (e.g., attractive, powerful, wealthy, famous, etc...) do not perpetrate sexual assault, which some of these "sexual assault deniers" believe. So when somebody is actually sexually assaulted by one of these rich/famous/powerful people, the public is more skeptical because these opportunistic, predatory women do exist (and there is apparently little effort to punish them).
Of course, men that are powerful, whether in the business world, or in the professional sports world, commit sexual assaults.
What percentage of these accusations are actually true, or end up being money grabs, is unknown.
But when it comes to people that have assets to be pilfered, I don’t think the false accusations are a negligible number. Because those are exactly the type of people that are going to get fleeced in this way. I’m not saying it’s a majority of the accusations, even versus the rich/famous/powerful, obviously not, but I think it’s a more significant number than anyone might conclude.
If I were a professional athlete or a very successful high profile business person with obvious significant assets, I would be extremely careful.
I can tell you that as a business person, I always control the situations that could sometime in the future be used against me. That sounds paranoid, but it isn’t.
For example, at one time I had to conduct a lot of entry-level interviews. At that time it was common to interview in a hotel room, as this was the most efficient and cost-effective and time effective way to conduct multiple interviews over a period of days as you travel.
Of course, I would always make sure to book a suite with a separate living and sleeping area. The interviews were held with the outer door propped open, the bedroom door closed, and I would always tip the bell person, and ask them to come towards the end of the interview to refresh the coffee or danish or whatever I had on the living room ****tail table. if a separate meeting room was available, I would book that instead, but that wasn’t always possible.
To this day, and this was like about 15 years ago, or longer ago, I think about that even with these precautions I could’ve gotten screwed.
If I had that position today, as unprofessional as it might seem, I would probably conduct the interviews in a quiet corner of the lobby.
As an aside, I can’t tell you that as I progressed upwards within the corporation, how many times women within the company would make advances towards me, and knowing I was married, it was flattering, but it had less to do with my attractiveness (or lack thereof) and charm, and more to do with the aphrodisiac nature of power to some. Can’t lie and say it wasn’t tempting, but as my father reiterated the common expression: don’t **** where you eat. Oh, that is so true. Obviously, I never took advantage of any of these “opportunities“. I valued my role as a provider, and obviously it would’ve been wrong anyway.
