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To be accurate we don't KNOW he didn't do it. We just know he won a court case about it, so that his accusers (or their attorneys) had to draft said statement, which contradicts their earlier statements.
That may well mean he didn't but could mean there wasn't enough proof etc.
Just like people being found not guilty does not actually mean they are not guilty.
It does mean he should be treated as innocent though you probably still wouldn't want to find out your daughter was dating him.
I did say rpgcodex had the best coverage. You should have read it.
This during a period she claimed she was warning everyone off of Avallone for being a sex pest.
I am a longtime member of the Codex as it happens. But i would point out if you look at Chris's own admissions he apologised for inappropriate sexual propositions and said there was some truth to the accusations.
The position seems to be he did do most/all the things in question but with consent. That the accusers public views shifted on that doesn't actually prove they are lying.
They may well be and indeed it is probably most likely but we don't "know" it.
Did she rationalize the events because she liked/loved/was in awe of Chris? Once emotion fell away did she see the truth?
Or was it just a vendetta? That seems most likely but we don't know it. I'm not taking issue with Chris being exonerated, some of my most favorite games he was involved in. Just being overly sure in our knowledge.
I'm really not buying into this mealy mouthed "We'll never really know" attitude. And I'm not buying into this framing of "Is she lying, or has her feelings towards a past event shifted over the years?" She told a material lie. To repeat.
Here she is saying at the event where Avellone "assaulted" her, he was being such a sex pest she, as well as other witnesses, immediately had him blacklisted. And then here she is, in a recording, after this assault and public sex pestery that was so bad a gaggle of witnesses was able to compel a blacklisting.
The discrepancy between these two accounts is not a matter of the mists of time altering our perspectives of past events. It's a material, bold faced lie. The gulf between them is irreconcilable and not due to the fragility of memory. And one of them is a contemporary recording of her, in her own words. Stop hedging.
Did you know many abuse victims lie that everything is ok? Especially when they have strong feelings towards the abuser? Do you know that they often overcompensate in front of other people?
Is it likely in this situation? Probably not. But its not impossible. I've worked with people who have been literally battered and still told their friends and family about how loving and wonderful the abuser was and helped them get jobs. So those statements are evidence she is lying, i agree. But they are not 100% proof. That is my point. That plus the settlement is strongly indicative. But people do settle because they feel its the best option even if they are in the right.
We roughly know she lied. But we cannot KNOW if the lie was the "he's great" part back then, or when she made the accusation or when she retracted the accusations after the settlement.
That is enough that Chris should not suffer consequences, but it isn't enough for us (in my view) to claim we have aboslute certainty.
Abuse victims are often not dealing with their emotions rationally, so if you see irrational outcomes it is not necessarily proof they are lying.
They may well be, and obviously the legal system has to err on the side of caution where credibility is concerned, but if you have dealt with abuse victims, you see a lot of lies in both directions depending and you can't necessarily discern the truth from them.
You keep ignoring the material portion of the lie, and defaulting to some incoherent "no perfect victim" rhetoric. Address the material lie, or just stop.
She claimed she did a thing, a material, specific thing, in 2012 at Dragon Con. That she got Avellone blacklisted from the event. We then know she networked in the industry, and even pulled Avellone into events, based on their meeting at Dragon Con in 2012, because it's recorded. Forget whatever apparent mush brain sexual assault victims suffer from which you keep proposing. Why would Avellone network with a woman who got him banned from Dragon Con 2012 for being a sex pest, if that actually happened and she's not telling a bold faced material lie?
Who knows?
Just to be clear I would say i am 85% to 90% on Avellone being the victim here.
But people do weird things. Maybe she lied about Dragoncon banning but told the truth about the rest. Maybe Avellone was very forgiving or really wanted to take their make out session to the next level. Maybevshe is confus8ng Dragoncon 2012 for Unicorncon 2013 or a vivid hallucination from when she was high on mushrooms.
My point is not that it is highly likely that she is lying about the situation, but that we cannot know for sure because people do weird, apparently fucked up decision making all the time.
Also to be clear anyone who claims to be sure he is guilty is even more wrong in my opinion. But, I haven't seen anyone saying that here.
Though see my reply to the guy saying it might be 50/50 where i am arguing that he is underestimating the chance of Avellone's innocence.
You're really grasping at straws. If there was overwhelming evidence of his guilt, would you be singing the "we can't be ABSOLUTELY SURE, guys" tune ?
Contrast that with your full-throated condemnation of his minor sins, which would have never come to light without the giant lies. Maybe he was on shrooms and had a vivid hallucination where he 'crossed the line'. Pray your every faux-pas never get put under the microscope like that.
Absolutely, above someone was arguing it was basically a coin toss on who to believe. I argued they were underestimating the likelihood of his innocence given the evidence.
I want Avellone to be innocent, hes been involved in some of my favorite games, and i would like him to get back to it.
But here of all places we should try to be clear about when we know things and when we can just be fairly, very or almost sure.
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