Attorney Robert Michael Hoffman is a free man. Hoffman has been at the center of a bizarre case where multiple women accused him of sexual assaulting them. The complication in the case was that the women had answered his Craigslist invitation for rough sex. He insisted it was merely rougher than they anticipated while they said it was forced sex. The case began to unravel in September 2011 when six of nine counts were tossed by Judge Bruce Chan after a secret tape contradicted the testimony of two of the women. Now the remainder have been dismissed against the San Francisco attorney. Hoffman specializes in sexual harassment cases.
Hoffman placed ads in the “Men Seeking Women” for dominant-submissive sex that looked for submissive women who were willing to be controlled, hit, and treated roughly. Hoffman stated in the ad “I would love to dominate and humiliate and degrade you, privately of course.” He was later accused of sexually assaulting a 36-year-old East Bay woman, a 19-year-old San Francisco woman and a 25-year-old East Bay woman. The case raised difficult question of drawing the line between consensual rough sex and assault.
In the earlier hearing, one woman was shown a tape that contradicted parts of her testimony. A second woman was confronted with text messages where she refers to the encounter as consensual and has consented to rough sex on two prior occasions. Statements given to the police were found to be untrue.
Judge Bruce Chan had dismissed six out of nine counts in September 2011 after Hoffman’s lawyer introduced a secret sex tape and text messages at a preliminary hearing that contradicted allegations by two of the women. The tape showed one of the women having consensual sex with Hoffman, and the texts contradicted a second accuser’s claim that she had never sent Hoffman sexually explicit messages, according to prior news coverage.
The prosecutors has acknowledged that “New video evidence came to light at the preliminary hearing. The video evidence did not corroborate the allegations made by the victims in this case. Based on the totality of the evidence, our office re-evaluated the case after the preliminary hearing. Our burden is to prove a case beyond a reasonable doubt. Based on the totality of the evidence, we were unable to sustain our burden and dismissed the case.”
I am a bit curious why it took so long to dismiss the cases with the existence of such tapes and evidence. However, this prosecution has taken years and appeared to be collapsing from the start. What is missing is an account of why this evidence did not prompt this action earlier.
The case is chilling in another respect. Once an individual consents to rough sex, it will be difficult without a third witness to state beyond a reasonable doubt when the roughness became nonconsensual. The normal signs of assault like bruising are part of this particular fetish – making this a particularly challenging case for prosecution.
Source: ABA Journal
Who was that masked man?
“Probably the same kind of douchebag that would defend a woman who cries rape, when the sex was consensual, and see an innocent man go to prison for 20 years if he didn’t have that videotape.”
Where has anyone defended crying rape when the sex was consensual? You can’t point to it because it hasn’t happened, except in your own little imagination. Nice straw man. Do you think it’s okay to secretly videotape someone having sex without their consent? Are you one of those douchebags?
Michael Val:
Reduced to putting me on the defensive, accusing me by implication?
Jeesh, just cheap and nasty.
You are asking, out of context apparently now, whether it is ok to secretly v-tape someone having sex w/o their knowledge.
You also phrased your question quite intentionally as to be ambiguous of who you are taping, and under what circumstances.
No, I don’t think it is OK to secretly tape someone having sex without their consent.
But you have removed, and distorted the question so out of context to what we are talking about, so as to be intentionally meaningless but still quite inflammatory.
If we refer back to the situation we were originally talking about, where you are one of the participants in that sex, and you have a reasonable expectation that a false claim of sexual abuse or rape may result from your activity, then we are talking about relative moral outrage.
No, you shouldn’t tape someone having sex with you w/o their knowledge, but likewise no, a person you are having consensual sex with shouldn’t accuse you of rape.
Which of those are the bigger moral violations of trust?
Interesting thought SlingT raises here.
A man and woman are having consensual sex, the woman is obviously into it and having a passionately good time, closing in on “a happy ending”.
The guy, dirtbag that he is, says at the penultimate moment, “I want to stop now, please stop.”
The lady says, pun intended, “FU”, and continues to do whatever she is doing.
At that point, with the proper provable evidence, the man can cry rape, and have the woman charged with such.
Wondering how that would go down when it gets to the nitty gritty of law enforcement and jurisprudence.
Once an individual consents to rough sex, it will be difficult without a third witness to state beyond a reasonable doubt when the roughness became nonconsensual.
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first s&m and now three ways. buncha freaks
tonto, my viagra