Julian Assange: WikiLeaks founder hits out at rape smears

[cal04]

Julian Assange: WikiLeaks founder hits out at rape smears as Swedish warrant for his arrest is withdrawn
Julian Assange's supporters are quick to point the finger at American intelligence agencies and say they were expecting slurs after he posted 77,000 Afghanistan war documents online
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/aug/22/julian-assange-wikileaks-afghanistan-logs


(snip)
Gavin MacFadyen, director of the Centre for Investigative Journalism, and a friend of Assange, said: "A lot of us who had any notion of what he was doing expected this sort of thing to happen at least a week ago. I'm amazed it has taken them this long to get it together. This is how smears work. The charges are made and then withdrawn and the damage is done."

(snip)
"It seems an unusual time to embark on a career of multiple rape," said Guardian journalist David Leigh, who has worked closely with Assange over the recent WikiLeaks Afghanistan documents. "He certainly didn't come across as a violent man, not in the least. Julian was clearly preparing to release more sensitive documents."

(snip)
Kristinn Hrafnsson, a colleague, of Assange's, said he had not known of the charges "until he read them in the rightwing tabloid Expressen". Hrafnsson said: "There are powerful organisations who want to do harm to WikiLeaks."

[xchrom]

1. Recommend - you can't just erase charges of rape and molestation.

The accusations are surgically produced.

[tblue37]

2. The same sort of smear happened to Al Gore. Now some

people will always assume that both of these men are rapists.

[tavalon]

3. No need to assassinate if you can character assassinate.

[Marie Marie]

4. Every time there is a false accusation of rape

it not only leaves a mark on the person being accused, it also hurts every real victim of sexual assault in terms of being believed and taken seriously. No wonder more rape victims are reluctant to report this crime.

[bemildred]

5. Well, it's still a taboo.

People go off the deep end about it. People use the threat of it or being accused of it as a weapon. And you are absolutely correct, every time someone does that it makes it harder for people who really are victims of sexual violence to get a fair hearing, and the taboo aspect makes people not want to talk about it to start with, and getting involved with our corrupt, horribly expensive, and disfunctional legal system is very intimidating too. And let's not even start on the media treatment of this stuff. Who wants to be the center of a media witch hunt?