Progress Now Action

On March 7th, 2006, we broke the story about former Independence Institute counsel Robert Corry's arrest and pending trial on sexual assault charges.

On April 24th, the Rocky Mountain News published a story that confirmed the bare facts but offered little else about the case.

In the United States, an accused person enjoys the presumption of innocence until found guilty in a court of law. Right-wing hack lawyers responsible for partisan attacks on affirmative action, "leftist" academics, and hate crimes law are still protected by that presumption of innocence. The charges against him and the ongoing court proceeding are a matter of public record, however, and it was in the public interest to disclose them.

In the last few weeks, various defenders of Robert Corry have kept up a thread of comments on our blog that I didn't even know was taking place. I was shocked to learn, just this morning, that a comment was posted by a person claiming personal knowledge of the case and both parties that identifies the alleged victim and makes numerous derogatory references to her moral character.

This is a major problem, as everyone reading this should know. We have deleted the comments which identified the alleged victim, right after sending them to the appropriate media. We've also retained a copy in case it is needed as part of the criminal case, but for no other purpose.

Without expressing my personal opinion of this (you can imagine), let me just say that we are totally outraged. We have no policy governing this kind of thing because we've never dealt with it before, but the comments in question were clearly made to smear the credibility of an alleged rape victim -- and to intimidate her personally by posting her name. It's totally reprehensible and I will not tolerate it.