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At the very least these accusations can have lasting impact on the accused by costing them their job/livelihood. If it is a scorned former lover with no legitimate gripe, those people need to be slammed. I don't care one way or another about Hardwick per se, but the entire movement has been distressing because any person can use it as a means for revenge for any purpose under the sun. It is just hard to trust a lot of these allegations because of these attention whoring statuses. If someone was truly sexually assaulted, roast them. But we need to really define sexual assault to some of these people because a lot of the stories I have heard are not that.

I think that because we are now being told that the only acceptable response to a woman accusing a man of (insert horrible thing here) is 100% belief, it's going to lead to an unfortunate backlash. Yes...idiots with an agenda will never see this for what it is, but middle of the road people who can imagine themselves being accused of something they did not do AND being told there is no defense they can offer will eventually see this spiderweb for what it is...or at least what it could easily become for anyone unlucky enough to be caught in it.

People understand the absurdity of the witch hunts and how the accused were simply guilty...and claiming innocence only made them guiltier in the eyes of the accusers and the general public. That's what we've got now. Hardwick came out and essentially denied much of what she wrote, and he was blasted HARDER for having had the gall to defend himself. there were folks on line LITERALLY saying "that's exactly what an abuser would say!!!" Well, isn't it also what an completely innocent person would say as well...?

FWIW, I have two other thoughts on this. First, I'm not sure if there's been any guy thus far outed like this who came out and said, "Nope...didn't happen." If there is, I'm unaware of it. To me, that's a good thing for him because he's actually PART of that PC culture that has helped create the web he's now caught in. He knows full well that denying the accusation will go over like a fart in church and he still denied it.

Second, I think given much of what she claimed wasn't THAT bad (think Harvey Weinstein level stuff) if he had done it he would have been much better served to admit it, fall on his sword and give it a couple of years and rebuild his reputation. He had to have consulted a handful of attorneys before responding, so I assume that they decided on the road least likely to end him. But denying it hard had better mean he knows the accusation is complete bullshite, because otherwise he rises to the Lance Armstrong/Rafael Palmiero level of denying something and blaming people for accusing you only to then have to admit you lied about the denial AS WELL.

That's a hole that people generally don't really allow you to dig yourself out of...