Multiple eye witnesses help make the allegation credible, yes. Which would go against the idea of no allegations being considered credible by the general public. That was your opening statement.

> But I'd suggest stepping back and considering the overall point you're trying to make.

It's very simple. Some allegations are credible, and it is entirely reasonable for the general public to thing some allegations are credible and others not.

> You might start with a scenario which is, by construction unfair: a couple fights, she takes the kids, he shouts, she calls the police and claims abuse, he is beaten and arrested; during the divorce she uses the arrest as evidence of the abuse, and frames the beating as evidence of her husbands violent tendencies; the court accepts this argument and he loses the children, getting supervised visitation only 90 minutes once a week.

> Does that sound right, or fair to you?

It sounds like it has nothing to do with whether any allegation can be considered credible. It could be an argument against all allegations being considered credible and it can be an argument against people mixing up someone _alleging_ another is guilty and that person being _found_ to be guilty.

> all in seeming defense of the principle: we can and should considered guilty until proven innocent.

Perhaps try reading my comment again, and if after that and this extra explanation you still think I am claiming somehow that all allegations should lead to convictions or that all allegations are credible or that guilt should be assumed, then I have no way of reaching a consensus with you as to what point I'm even trying to make.

So... you're countering one strawman with another?

>I can't understand how or why anyone would want this to be how things work

It's a hypothetical scenario, a strawman, so of course not.

Is this actually how things work? Do you have any stats about wrongful accusations to back up your ideas? My personal experience from speaking to women who have actually suffered abuse at the hands of men is that the problem is very much the other way around - nobody believes them and brushes it off exactly as you are doing.

A strawman is when you misrepresent another person's argument. What I've done is present a hypothetical situation, apply the GP's prescribed view to it, and asked if it's fair. It is basically a kind of "proof by contradiction" where you assume the opposite of what you want to prove, apply it to a situation and show a contradiction, and so it must be false. I think it's a pretty strong, argument, actually.

Seeing something happen does make an allegation more credible; this is the whole point of, say, witness testimony. Why we are more likely to believe things which are attested to by others. Credibility is also an element of character and relation to the victim. If I told my parents I was mugged in an underpass on my way home, which explains why I don't have my cell phone, I'd be a little weirded out if they simply replied with "your allegations are not credible, that's a strawman."

>we can and should considered guilty until proven innocent.

Guilt and innocence in which epistemic context? Consider that there are both very well known cases of public opinion being wrong (and overturned by a court or other method), or the findings of courts being wrong (and overturned by public investigation and revelations). Guilt in one arena does not necessarily equal guilt in another[0], and I think that's part of the point GP was trying to make.

>a couple fights, she takes the kids, he shouts, she calls the police and claims abuse, he is beaten and arrested; during the divorce she uses the arrest as evidence of the abuse, and frames the beating as evidence of her husbands violent tendencies

You can't seriously accuse GP of setting up a straw-man, then relay an idealized (for your point) situation which is, to my knowledge, not backed up by any statistical power.

>Because this is what I'm arguing against, and I can't understand how or why anyone would want this to be how things work.

You're arguing from a view-from-nowhere, that is, you have already relayed the facts of an unfair situation and the legal consequences of that situation, without taking into account that the situation you relayed is a failure of the justice system, not only of the allegation. Your depiction of how a single allegation snowballs like that isn't impossible - but you haven't done anything to show that this is the result of most (or even a significant number of) allegations of domestic abuse.

[0] "In at least a wide variety of cases, our orientation toward testimony is a non-skeptical one: when someone tells us that P, we end up justified in believing that P. And ordinarily, if the speaker knows that P and tells us that P, we end up ourselves knowing that P. That testimonial knowledge is common is both commonsense and philosophical orthodoxy.

But we do not always take this kind of stance. Sometimes we interrogate testimony; sometimes we explain it away or demand proof. As much recent literature in both social psychology and epistemic injustice has shown, social and cultural factors influence the degree to which testimony is considered credible."

I can because mine was not a strawman, it was a variant of proof-by-contradiction: assume ~P, produce a contradiction, QED: P. I suspect you know this is a logically valid argument because you segue quickly to "statistical power".

It makes sense to question the frequency of things when talking practicality. I agree. I assert that most people have no idea what goes on in "family court", or the accoutrements surrounding it (like the police, or visitation centers, etc). The people who know are family law attorneys, judges, and those who've been through it. Maybe some others know: therapists, police officers, doctors.

But let me tell you, it's a cynical, brutal game of posturing that starts out giving the father every-other-weekend with the children. And it only can get worse from there. The wife's attorney's will generate any and all accusations to build leverage to take the children away; this gives them leverage for a settlement, because a trial can take years and 100's of thousands of dollars. The father must decide: take the deal, or not see your kids?

This is standard operating procedure in divorces in the united states, although I'm guessing you didn't know that. I'm just saying that my own experience has changed my perspective significantly - when I hear an accusation of DV during a divorce, there is a strong likelihood that we are seeing the mechanization of the attorneys. And they know, more than anyone, the power of an accusation regardless of it's truth value.

Some of the MRA movements are odious and/or ridiculous at times, but the problem is real.