Talk:2007 De Anza College rape investigation

Front pager?

This article is terribly written; what's the deal with the "Timeline" section? Why would this be on the front page?63.227.209.251 14:11, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

I agree. I've placed cleanup tags on it... maybe somebody w/ more time than I can do some major work to fix it up.Soojmagooj 14:34, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

63.227.209.251, I guess it is because very few places have the information in one place. If you look at all the forums, or other sites they are all talking about it but failing to find the information. Here it is placed in one article. Many of the news reports don't even mention the second rape and I am currently trying to find a printed report beyond a video report that there may well be more alleged victims. As events change, so will the article. Perhaps you could help. PEACETalkAbout 15:33, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

63.227.209.251, I noticed you noted terribly written but not factually incorrect. Which gave me encouragement to go out and see that else I could find. Thank you.PEACETalkAbout 17:19, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

References

References should be cleaned up by wrapping them in {{cite web}} or {{citation}}. I have done 3 references with longest URLs so at least layout is not broken (at 1600*1200). Shinhan 19:51, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Cleanup template

In this edit: [1] User:Shinhan said s/he thought the cleanup template should be changed to 'proseline' because that's the closest description of the article's deficiencies. I agree, but I don't think we should lose sight of other editorial problems, notably WP:MOS issues (including, but not limited to, wikilinking in headings which is not standard), and overall style (too casual and editorial in nature). Anchoress 21:48, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

BLP

I'm mentioning this on the WP:BLP/N - the tone here is salacious, and I'm not sure we should be talking in this way and degree of detail about living people caught up in scandalous events. We're an encyclopedia, but this reads a bit like tabloid news. Wikidemo (talk) 21:08, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Illustration - what is wrong with lead paragrap

To illustrate what's wrong with this article I'm going to pick apart the lead paragraph from the current version of the article:

• On March 3-4, 2007,

specific date is unimportant

• a 17-year-old high school girl was at the home of one of the players of the De Anza College baseball team,

perspective is wrong - we should be describing the importance of the event, not telling this as an evocative narrative. Wikipedia is about the encyclopedic importance of a subject, not the experiential details. However, the importance of this story cannot be the rape itself - we do not cover the rape of a single underage girl, which cannot in itself be notable or otherwise valid as a wikipdeia subject. The importance here is the phenomenon, i.e. the public outcry, the notoriety of the story, the protests, and the refusal to prosecute. Those things are only marginally and indirectly related to whose home it was, the age of the victim, and the narrative experience of her rape (so to the extent they are valid at all they should not be the lead sentence of the article)

• where about 50 people had gathered for a birthday party.[1][2]

size of crowd is not relevant to encyclopedic nature of event, that is a news detail

• Her blood alcohol level (BAC), following the alleged incident, was .27, aa level at which a person can be considered unconscious, intoxicated.[3][4] -

no reliable source (one cited source is just alcohol statistics, another is a blog summarizing what an editorial said a protester claimed at a rally. The fact is a salacious detail that without context is misleading because counterintuitively, the extreme drunkenness of a victim makes a claim of rape more, not less, plausible. It is also strongly defamatory because it paints the victim as having loose morals or poor judgment (an underage girl getting drunk at a sports team party). A clear BLP violation

• She was unable to remember what happened to her that night.

""Two sources given are both dead links. Doubt that if fixed they would support this statements. Even if it could be sourced, it is important only to an assessment of guilt, which is speculation and not the point of the article (i.e. a news detail, not an encyclopedic fact)

• She awoke at a local hospital having been brought in by some good Samaritans, who informed hospital staff that the girl had been raped.

colorful detail only. For encyclopedic understanding it does not matter where she woke up, who brought her in, or who told what to the hospital staff. Two cited sources are dead links and probably don't support this statement.

• Police were summoned and an investigation initiated by Santa Clara County deputies on March 4.

Date, police activity unimportant. Only one useful detail, that SC deputies investigated

• Some of the partygoers refused to cooperate.[5][6]

Sources are dead links but cannot possibly support this statement. The news accounts all say that witnesses claimed or police say that certain people did not cooperate. No news story cited says it is a fact, only that allegations were made. Reporting derogatory accusations as fact is BLP vio

• The San Francisco Chronicle reported that at least three men, including two baseball players, had sex with the victim, while as many as ten others watched and cheered.[5][7][8][9][10]

Nearly all sources are bad links. However, many are clearly bad sources, because none of them report on the subject of the sentence, what the SF Chronicle reported. Only the SF Chronicle directly is likely to support that, which may be an allowable piece of original research if true. However, that is an inherent BLP violation. Either it is a fact that three men raped a woman while ten others cheered, or it is simply an unproven piece of reportage. If it is a fact, it should be reported as a fact, not the coverage of a fact. But that fact is probably BLP violation because, without identifying the specific people who did it, it casts blame on all present. If it is not a fact but a mere claim by a newspaper, it is a salacious allegation, which is a BLP problem as well. however, it is unlikely that the Chronicle actually reported that this happened. It is almost certain the Chronicle, consistent with its other coverage, simply said that some witnesses claimed this. However, other witnesses claimed otherwise. So this statement is misciting the sources, and reporting unproven allegations accusations as fact, a BLP violation as per the comment about the victim's drunkenness.'

• Eventually, three 20-year-old women from the De Anza College soccer team peeked through the French doors and saw what was happening to the girl.

The age, gender, sports participation, and name of the team of the apprent rescuers are colorful, and evocative details that have nothing to do with the subject of the story - simple news fodder.

• They managed to break down the door and rescue the teenage victim.[11]

"managed to" is color commentary and probably not supported by details; it implies things that are irrelevant and unlikely to be supported by the citations. Fact of breaking down door and rescuing is important only to the rape. We are not or should not be covering a rape here, but rather the phenomenon. In that sense, details of rescure are utterly irrelevant.

• The three women state that she was so intoxicated she appeared comatose, was unable to stand and had to be physically removed from the home. The women claim they asked for assistance, but none of the men present helped. They monitored her breathing on the way to the hospital, but she appeared lifeless and her eyes were shut.[7]

What witnesses state is not relevant to encyclopedic subject. Even if true, these facts as to the effects of the victim's intoxication, and their inherent confirmation of the claim she was intoxicated, are not relevant. Other facts are colorful narrative details, and unproven allegations by witnesses as to what certain bystanders did, and the problem with those is discussed above. The only relevance is that these witnesses confirm the victim's drunkenness, which is an unproven derogatory statement per the above. The sentence claims that the woman appeared lifeless. How do we know that? Reading between the lines (the article should be explicit, not force us to do that), certain witnesses stated soon after the event, according to some news account of what police or someone else claimed, that the victim appeared lifeless. So what? Further, the sentence is in the present tense. As of my writing this comment (December 13, 2007) or the editor's insertion of the comment (unknown date but could figure it out with considerable effort) or the reader's reading it (unknowable), we cannot possibly know what witnesses are currently stating. The only possible interpretation is that this is a synthesis of what certain witnesses told police or others, according to some news account. However, as explained above, other witnesses have different stories. In this way, the article is making interpretations in its coverage, which is not allowed. At any rate the source given is not reliable, so all this would be disallowed even if it were relevant. Though in a major newspaper, the source is to an editorial, not a news story, and the editorial is only offering conjecture about the incident. The editorial is not fact checked as a news piece would be and it repeats facts out of context without really establishing that they are true (it clearly is loose about the veracity of facts)

• The case gained national attention after Santa Clara County District Attorney Dolores Carr’s decision not to try the rape case, bringing about criticism and continued backlash from protesters locally and nationally.[12][13] [14][15]

This sentence is the only relevant sentence in the lead. Even here, though, the identity of the DA is not the issue (and is a subtle derogatory statement about the DA), but rather that the DA's office did not try the case. However, regarding sourcing, the first of four is clearly a bad irrelevant cite - it merely points to the home page of the district attorney's office, not to anything in particular. The next two, to what are clearly editorials (unreliable sources), are dead links. Only the last one, a local Fox news affiliate, is a pretinent, reliable source

Salvageable material out of lead

The only salvageable material out of this lead is as follows:

• The [insert corrected article title here] is an incident that took place in 2007, in which members of the De Anza College baseball team were accused of raping a high school girl at a birthday party held at the home of a team member. The case gained national attention after the Santa Clara County District Attorney decided not to try the rape case, leading to criticism and continued backlash from protesters locally and nationally.

Anything further would require finding new sources, verifying sources, proper citations, and vetting for relevance and BLP violations - i.e. a complete re-write, which is the responsibility of proponents of the article, not the responsibility of people who are on BLP patrol.

The article gets worse from there. A similar approach would eliminate entire sections, and probably 80-90% of the content would have to go, leaving an article stub. -- Wikidemo (talk) 13:50, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Complete rewrite

• OK, I've completely blanked and rewritten the article into a stub. I ended up resourcing most of the article, because San Diego Mercury Observer doesn't allow free access to its archived material. As a result, I couldn't access large portions of the orginal citations. Please note that I did this only as a stop-gap measure, because I agree w/ Wikidemo that the thing should go. However, I did give it a good faith effort to write something less problematic. I did not alter the title, something that I feel must be done, because I was afraid that I would interfere w/ the Afd. I also went into far less detail, because at this stage the facts are too unclear for us to give the matter proper encyclopedic treatment. Please feel free to criticize here or further edit. I do hope no one will feel it necessary to outright revert. :) Xymmax (talk) 16:40, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Grand jury

I'm a bit confused as to the purpose of the grand jury. I thought the usual purpose of a grand jury was to decide if there is enough evidence for a trial (supported by the article). Why/how then did she present evidence to a grand jury but decide not to prosecute? Does this mean the grand jury found there wasn't enough evidence but she was still allowed to prosecute despite this finding or that they found there was enough evidence but she decided not to prosecute? Nil Einne (talk) 14:11, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

As I understand it, different states within the U.S. have different rules. The grand jury certainly can be used as you have described. I don't know what happened in this case, but the possibilities include: 1) the grand jury thought that the evidence it heard wasn't pursuasive 2) the prosecutor saw something in the way her evidence came out (whether it was testimony of the witnesses or the alleged victim, or something else) that made the prosecutor feel there was an incurable defect in the case or 3) the prosecutor may genuinely feel there's a question of guilt. I believe that in most states, even if the grand jury feels that there is not enough evidence that there is a mechanism by which the prosecutor can bring the charges. However, there may some political risk in doing so. I don't know if that helps or not, but I hope it does. Xymmax (talk) 17:34, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Dead link

During several automated bot runs the following external link was found to be unavailable. Please check if the link is in fact down and fix or remove it in that case!

• http://www.sfgate.com/cg
  • In 2007 De Anza rape investigation on 2011-05-26 02:43:28, 404 Not Found
  • In 2007 De Anza rape investigation on 2011-05-27 15:01:38, 404 Not Found
  • In 2007 De Anza rape investigation on 2011-06-15 12:45:36, 404 Not Found

--JeffGBot (talk) 12:46, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

2016 Stanford Rape Case

"Presiding Judge Aaron Persky was criticized for allowing photos of the woman at a party, and denying other victims from testifying, [12] and is currently facing a recall attempt for allegations of misconduct in another rape case which occurred on Stanford Campus. [13] http://www.recallaaronpersky.com"

The above was added in response to the 2016 trial of Brock Turner. The first part references a link that does not properly substantiate that the judge was criticized (by whom?). The second part is factually incorrect: He is not facing recall; there is a petition on change.org and the D.A. has publicly stated that recall is unwarranted. It is also inappropriate to link the petition like some kind of advertisement. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kgr123 (talk • contribs) 18:40, 8 June 2016 (UTC)