Re rape allegations... Shermer or Randi?

Correction: Thread title should be:



"Re rape or sexual assault allegations...does one believe Shermer or Randi?"



Which direction is the truth-o-meter pointing?



Article by Adam Lee (atheist writer and speaker)



Is there a "Wall of Silence" Around Michael Shermer?

Quote:

“Randi is quoted as saying: Shermer has been a bad boy on occasion — I do know that,” Randi told me. “I have told him that if I get many more complaints from people I have reason to believe, that I am going to have to limit his attendance at the conference. “His reply,” Randi continued, “is he had a bit too much to drink and he doesn’t remember. I don’t know — I’ve never been drunk in my life. It’s an unfortunate thing… I haven’t seen him doing that. But I get the word from people in the organization that he has to be under better control. If he had gotten violent, I’d have him out of there immediately. I’ve just heard that he misbehaved himself with the women, which I guess is what men do when they are drunk.”.....

Quote:

This would seem like a laudable concern for the privacy of rape victims, if you didn’t know that Smith intentionally came forward to tell her story. She wanted to go public to warn other women, precisely because she says she had brought this up privately with Randi’s foundation and they declined to act.

Quote:

UPDATE: There’s one more relevant piece of information that’s since come to my attention and that deserves to be mentioned here. According to a post Ophelia Benson published today (and alluded to in earlier remarks), around the time she was corresponding with Richard Dawkins to negotiate the language of their joint anti-harassment statement, he asked her to “dissuade people from spreading the ‘libellous allegation that Michael Shermer is a rapist or a sexual predator.’” She declined to do as he requested. * It’s worth comparing Randi’s paraphrase of Shermer’s explanation of his behavior – “he had a bit too much to drink and he doesn’t remember” – to Shermer’s own description of his encounter with Alison Smith as “sober and consensual”: “She was sober. I was sober.” If these are referring to the same event, there’s obviously a significant contradiction. Or are there other stories that we haven’t heard?

Link:

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via International Skeptics Forum http://ift.tt/1FPl9QR