[Late note: This post now makes it clear that Grothe’s intervention was successful in stopping the grope from being completed, taking this incident from assault and battery to just assault. See the comments for my thoughts on why the language used likely led to an assumption otherwise. –SZ]
Someone else stepped forward to say that they’ve been aware of the incident with Shermer groping a female TAM speaker (though not at TAM) for a couple of years. It isn’t anyone you’d expect it to be.
Barbara A. Drescher: Okay, people. Something occurred to me this morning that is a likely reason Carrie restricted her FB account. I’m sure that someone pointed out to her how easy it is to show that what she’s doing is driving by a personal vendetta and not concern for women or victims.
It IS easy. Just think about the incident she’s leaning on (the groping — hey, we could call this “gropegate”, but DON’T), who witnessed it, when it happened, and who organized the next TAM. HINT: it wasn’t D.J. But if D.J. is a misogynist, then so is anyone else who invited Shermer after witnessing the incident. In fact, according to everything said by that camp, so is anyone who invited Shermer after HEARING about the incident.
(FTR, the alleged victim described the incident to me herself a couple of years ago; it’s not the big secret that Carrie is making it out to be. It just hasn’t shown up in a blog post with names attached.)
The comment thread is here. It is a long trip down a deep rabbit hole, particularly toward the end. What stands out to me, as jaded as I’ve gotten on this topic, is that the people commenting there think this is helping…something…somehow.
So that’s two people who have heard a witness describe the sexual assault in question and one person who says the person who was alleged to have been sexually assaulted agrees that it happened. Both the witness and the person to whom the victim spoke are what I would qualify as hostile in this case.
What more evidence do you think people will require?
