Looking down the road here:
At some point one or more men are going to agree that their behavior has been inappropriate and they're going to go for sympathy somewhat like the Menendez brothers did: have mercy on us, we're orphans.
The new thing will become "that was that atmosphere when I grew up, and it's all I knew, it's all I had as a pattern, and I, the sexual predator, am a VICTIM of the times in which I grew up."
This is coming as sure as the general business plan for companies these days is to get ten bucks, just ten bucks, from EVERYONE.
Meanwhile, the idea of innocent until proven guilty has been wholesale thrown out the window.
And what will the legal system do for you and me if we are accused? There's an outrageous and sad track record in this regard.
Look up the Duke LaCrosse team case. Look up McMartin Preschool. All accusations, lives ruined, no truth to the accusations.
The McMartin Preschool Abuse Trial, the longest and most expensive criminal trial in American history, should serve as a cautionary tale. When it was all over, the government had spent seven years and $15 million dollars investigating and prosecuting a case that led to no convictions. More seriously, the McMartin case left in its wake hundreds of emotionally damaged children, as well as ruined careers for members of the McMartin staff. No one paid a bigger price than Ray Buckey, one of the principal defendants in the case, who spent five years in jail awaiting trial for a crime (most people recognize today) he never committed.
And
"They're putting on witnesses who they know are lying. They concealed exonerating evidence. Don't we have enough criminal conduct by the prosecutors to put them behind bars?"
"It doesn't work that way," the lawyer laughed. "The law is just for the little people. When we break the rules we go to jail. When they break the rules they go to lunch...."
"But what about the law?" the woman gasped. "What about the Constitution?"
"I'm afraid that's just one of those nice, comforting fantasies like the tooth fairy. There are two classes of people. Those who hold power and those who do not. And in any dispute the guys who hold power will decide which way it's going to go....I hope you understand that this is not about child abuse, just as McCarthyism was not about Communists."
--- Eberle, Paul and Shirley. The Abuse of Innocence: The McMartin Preschool Trial ( 1993) (reporting a discussion between a friend of the Buckeys and a defense lawyer)
