[WikiEN-l] David Hager is listed as convicted rapist

Mon Dec 5 03:03:44 UTC 2005

> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org 
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of JAY JG
> Sent: Monday, 5 December 2005 09:43
> To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] David Hager is listed as convicted rapist
> 
> >From: Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com>
> >
> >I responded to this user previously on the helpdesk.  The 
> issue is that 
> >David Hager was accused of marital rape by his former wife, 
> who got an 
> >article published in The Nation about this, among other places.
> >  Thus the allegations, true or not, are documented and citable, and 
> >thus cannot be removed as unsourced attacks.
> >
> >However, he should NOT be listed in any categories that imply he has 
> >been convicted of a crime, because he has not.
> 
> I've been have a months-long debate with another editor on 
> this topic.  I've been stating that we include people in 
> "Criminals" categories if they have been convicted of a crime 
> by an independent judiciary.  The other editor insists that 
> we have to decide (by some means) whether or not they have 
> actually committed a crime, conviction is not enough a good 
> enough yardstick.  I'd be interested in other thoughts here.

Prisons are full of innocent people. Just ask them.

If a person has not admitted a crime, then it may be that they did not do it
and the legal system made a mistake. It happens. Or that the prosecution
case accepted by judge and jury was inaccurate. Or the defence was
incompetent. Or that the convicted criminal has rationalised his crime in
his own mind to something else, something justifiable.

How can we possibly know?

If a person had admitted guilt, then there is no problem. We may describe
them as a criminal. But if they maintained their innocence and were found
guilty instead of pleading guilty, then we should use conventional phrasing
to indicate this, by describing someone as a convicted rapist, rather than a
rapist.

In a case like marital rape, where much of the evidence would neccesarily
revolve around the conflicting statements of the two participants of an act
presumably performed in private, then how could we know what did or did not
take place? We know that he was found guilty of rape, we don't know if he
did it. Best to stick to the facts.

Peter (Skyring)