Of course neither have been proven guilty as of yet, but at least one of them, Seligmann, is no peach. According to Raleigh's News & Observer, he was arrested in November on assault charges in Washington and was sentenced to community service.

Here's hoping for a final arrest and some speedy justice.

-- Sarah Elizabeth Richards

Have you also posted the prior record of the (ahem) exotic dancer/college student/mother of 2?

And may we assume that by "speedy justice" you mean innocent until proven guilty, right?

Or is your blurb just another bullshit, one-sided Broadsheet diatribe v. men in general?

so I don't know what happened, but I've read the post-indictment remarks of the two defense attorneys, and they are confident that their clients will walk. Almost as confident as Kobe Bryant's attorneys in his rape charge. Vamos a ver.

From a local NC affiliate reporting on the story:

'New information about the victim has been divulged, concerning charges arising from an incident that occurred several years ago. According to a 2002 police report, the woman, currently a 27-year-old student at North Carolina Central University, gave a taxi driver a lap dance at a Durham strip club. Subsequently, according to the report, she stole the man's car and led deputies on a high-speed chase that ended in Wake County.

Apparently, the deputy thought the chase was over when the woman turned down a dead-end road near Brier Creek, but instead she tried to run over him, according to the police report.'

Trying to run down and kill a cop. Wonderful

... but that has no bearing on whether or not she was raped, so why bring it up? If she'd accused the cab driver of raping her, then it might be worth hearing about.

In contrast to the first post above, I was going to note that I'm surprised by the constant use of the word "stripper" here. I was happy to see the NYT said something like, "the woman is a student and mother of two who was hired as an exotic dancer." That's a fair, factual statement. To constantly say "the stripper" strikes me as wanting to imply negative things about her (not because I personally think there's anything wrong with being a stripper, but because we all know society's view on raping sex workers).

I guess you can't make everyone happy, but since this is Broadsheet and not Silly-Men-From-The-80s-Still-Threatened-By-Feminists-Sheet, I expected a little more progressive language.

And for those who delight in pointing out the woman's police record, don't forget one of these upstanding young men beat a man in DC this past November, so...none of these folks are clean. Their records all cancel out and everyone can just shut up about it already.

1.) Stop attacking the victim. Be glad instead that circumstances have thus far allowed you and your loved ones to avoid being rape victims yourselves.

2.) Stop attacking the Salon.com writers. If you want to soapbox, start a blog. They are free and easy to use. Maybe then your own literary talents will generate a paycheck. Until then, try to a.) stem your jealousy that these people are published journalists and b.) stop using your ideological differences as a motivation to attack them.

3.) Stop raping women! (Just throwing that last one in for good measure, in case we've got any rapists amongst the Salon.com readership.)

Agreed on all counts -- especially #3. (I think we've got at least a couple of aspiring rapists on here.)

Actually, since theft is a crime of moral turpitude, and since it occurred within the last 10 years, her theft of the cab may well be admissible as evidence to impeach her veracity. That's how it'd go down in some states. As to NC, I don't know.

Regarding the young man not being a peach - he was sentenced for that crime, so it seems fair to bring it up and evidence of his anti-peachiness. No one has mentioned whether or not the young woman was convicted of this cab incident. Has she been?

I'M THE DECIDER!!! (just kidding)

Seriously - enough is enough. Call her a woman, a complainant, an alleged victim, and alleged survivor but I cannot remember the last time I read about the lawyer/doctor/teacher/realtor/bus driver who was raped. Stripper is not her identity. It is what she does to make a living. Can we please stop using her profession as a means to lessen the severity of the allegation? (Whether the language is intentional or not, it still has the same affect.)

but it has a lot of bearing on to what degree her account of her experiences, in this situation or any other, can be assumed to correspond to historical reality

Do you really think that the lacrosse players' guilt or innocence can be determined by evidence of the victim's wrong doing in the past, in an unrelated event? If so, that logic is fascinating. Seems like if you apply it across the board that you could find redeemable historical villians like Hitler, Mao, Mussolini, or George Bush, who may have done at least one decent thing for another human being prior to their acts of barbarism.

It speaks to her credibility. It is relevant. The stripper's past history is certainly as relevant as the lacrosse players' past legal histories.

Ironically, if she were accused of filing false reports about rape in the past, it might not be admissible due to current rape shield laws.

Good call on stripper language. The guy was convicted of assaulting a man and yelling gay slurs at him. So can he be called a gay basher? Guilty of a hate crime? I guess we will find out as the media continue to wrestle this story to the ground.

Someone called "theft" a crime of moral turpitude. Ok, so what is misdemeanor assault? A fight? Boys will be boys? Or a hate crime? Does this mean that this person has a propensity for violence?

The rhetoric on both sides got way too heated in this case, way too fast. Most of the facts--including the woman's version of the story--are not known. The information we do have about the alleged crime is from the defense attorneys. As an attorney myself, my job is to zealously represent my clients, so I know what they are up to. People on this message board and on talk radio have already picked sides--they take what the defense attorneys say as gospel. Others are taking what the prosecutor says as gospel. Right now we do not know. Fewer facts are known about the woman's side of events.

As a lawyer, I prefer never to try my cases in the media. But in a rape case, defense attorneys know there is an advantage to smearing the alleged victim. I hope anyone, including the men among us, can agree that smearing an alleged victim in the press is abhorrent. We have a justice system that allows a judge and jury to hear the evidence and decide the outcome. Sometimes the wrong decisions are made, but in my experience juries are intelligent and capable of sifting throgh the evidence. It is essential to our system of justice that we not taint this process by smearing either side in the media. The prosecution must now make this choice. Can they win this case if they do not go on offense with the press? My guess is that they will disclose some details and withold others, and this approach will fail.

Most rapes are still not reported to police. And who can blame the victims, when they see what happened to Bryant's accuser and Tyson's accuser and this woman? I do not know if Kobe Bryant raped that Colorado woman, nor was I in the room with Tyson and his accuser. Tyson was convicted, the charges against Bryant were dropped. But the message that is always sent is that if a woman has a history that anyone finds morally reprehensible, she loses. That is why we have rape shield laws.

Have women fabricated charges of rape? Yes. But do any of you really believe this is something that happens more than 1% of the time? I hope not.

Let us also remember that men are raped too. And there is an even bigger cultural rule that men must never speak out about being raped, or they will face humiliation, ridicule and gay taunts.

And on race and class, both play a role here, both in our perceptions and in what actually happened. I am not willing to accuse anyone of racisim in this case because we have no evidence of that. The vile, mysoginistic email may yet sway me, but that individual has not been accused of a crime. But just ask yourselves how your reaction, your neighbor's reaction, and the media reaction would have been different if 40 black guys had a party and a white exotic dancer said she was raped. Do you think it would be the same, or different? Would the media reports about the two guys who were arrested be the same, or different?