NCR Carries Donna's Water: Donna's Defamation Case, Part II

Note: Shortly after this post was published, NCR edited one of the lines we take up below, "to clarify the source of the comment Provencher repeated," evidently in response to our incisive take-down. Instead of asserting that Donna was "repeating an earlier comment by a woman claiming to be a sexual assault victim," it now reads that she was "repeating an earlier comment by someone who had knowledge of an incident involving Mazzara."

This is an improvement insofar as it now clarifies that Donna did not get the story from an alleged victim. Nonetheless, this doesn't change our argument. We have already published a screenshot (see below) of Donna identifying the person who she claimed first made the claim, and we have published the screenshots of the comments Donna is referring to (which clearly do not bear the reading that Donna gave them). 

Does Donna mean to suggest that she actually got the allegation from not one but two different comments on the thread made by two different people (the person, whom we identify below as "K," whom Donna previously identified as the source, and also some other unidentified poster)? And that none of the scores of people participating in the conversation (and the hundreds of lurkers following the thread in silence) noticed the first defamatory comment? 

Even if there were a prior comment--noticed by no one but Donna--making the allegation, the result is still that she set out to brand a man with a scarlet 'R' based on a rumor she learned of through a Facebook comment. Donna-as we show below--set out explicitly to destroy this man's reputation (based on rumors), and she then refused to retract her comments. The man brings a suit to vindicate his name, claiming that the facts are on his side. In the middle of this NCR gives her a platform to continue to tarnish his name in front of a national audience.

Here is a serious question for Heidi Schlumpf and the illustrious editors at the National Catholic Reporter: Did you check your source's story at all before you gave her an unfettered platform? You don't mention any attempt to talk to the other side, but did you at least ask who made the comment that Donna says she was just repeating? Did you try to contact that person to confirm that they had made such a comment? Did you ask any details about the incident that Donna says this source knew about? You reported that the plaintiff in the suit against Donna "maintains that he never committed a rape and/or sexual assault during his time at Christendom, nor was he ever accused of or investigated for such a crime." Someone is telling a big fat lie. Did you do anything at all to make sure it wasn't your source?  


Donna has continued to spin her yarn, presenting herself as a poor, single mom persecuted for standing up for victims of sexual crimes. This time it’s the National Catholic Reporter that has sold itself to carry her water in a patently one-sided piece (they didn’t even claim to speak to the other side for comment, and they are open that the piece was funded by left-wing grant money[1]).

We won’t try correcting every point in this one-sided piece. Instead we will focus on two specific claims that it reports Donna made in their interview.

Claim 1: “'I never stated that any of these men were guilty of a crime or sexual assault,' said Provencher . . ."

She did, in fact, say that they were guilty of a crime or sexual assault. You can read the screenshots where she does so in our prior piece. But as a quick recap:

1. Donna explicitly claimed that at least one of the men in her list “raped several women” 
2. In this post, defending her labeling of fellow alumni who insist on due processes as rape apologists, Donna claimed that, 

People who . . . suggest that [name redacted], [name redacted] (who was expelled for rape and is still in this group), whichever [last name redacted] kid raped several women (before my time and I didn’t know him), [name redacted], [name redacted], [name redacted], and others were unjustly accused and the women were “not credible,” . . . are in fact, enabling such behavior to continue and for there to be more of the same.” 

For context: Rape is the behavior in question, and thus what she says one is enabling by defending these men. There is no reasonable interpretation of this line that doesn’t include the implication that these men are guilty of a sex crime.

But in private she was even more explicit about her purpose. In a closed discussion between CASC founders and supports a discussion of her defamatory comment took place. She wrote:

I want every one of these dudes to have a scarlet letter R.

Donna set out specifically to get every one of the men she named branded as a rapist. (This is exactly what we argued in our piece, “CASC: Advocates of Mob Justice.”)

Everyone in the group (including Donna) understood perfectly well Donna’s list to be a list of actual rapists (these are just a couple of many examples):

And they accepted this allegation as true, simply on Donna’s word, even when those who knew him found the allegation difficult to believe.

(The blocked out name is the plaintiff's wife and mother of his five children.)

Claim 2: “Provencher said she was only defending sexual assault victims against attacks of false accusations and repeating an earlier comment by a woman claiming to be a sexual assault victim. That alleged victim's post — and others — were removed by the page's administrator, she said.”

Although in the NCR article, Donna simply says that she got the allegation from another, now deleted, comment made by a woman claiming to be a sexual assault victim, in this private group, Donna says exactly where the allegation came from:

She is correct in telling NCR that the comment has been deleted; the whole dumpster fire of a thread has been taken down. But we have screenshots of it. So what did “K” actually write about the plaintiff? She mentions him twice (you can view the context of the comments at [2]):

Nothing in either of these posts is something that any reasonable person--let alone a professional journalist--would interpret as an accusation that the plaintiff raped someone. (In the second comment it is perfectly obvious to any reader with half a brain that ‘he’ and ‘him’ in the first paragraph are referring to “a man . . . accused of sexual assault,” not the plaintiff, whose comment “K” was attempting to explain.)

Donna’s “I was only defending victims” line only works, if there was at least an alleged victim to defend. But as is now perfectly clear, there is no alleged victim here. Let that sink in: No one had accused the plaintiff of rape. The entire allegation was fabricated from whole-cloth.

This takes us back to a point we have made before (See: CASC Advocates of Mob Justice): Donna is not a credible advocate for survivors of rape and sexual assault because she has fabricated crimes and victims to advocate for.

Donna remarks to NCR of her defamatory comment,

"It was more of a broader, sociocultural comment of 'Why are we always siding with the men in any kind of allegation of campus rape? Why are we defaulting to that, instead of giving the victims the benefit of the doubt?'"  she told NCR.

In this case the answer is very simply that there is no victim to give the benefit of the doubt: No one has ever claimed that the plaintiff raped or otherwise sexually assaulted them. 

But that didn’t stop Donna from wanting to make sure that the plaintiff had a “scarlet letter R.”

Then again, Donna is the one who wrote this about the success of CASC in controlling the media narrative:




You may also be interested in Donna on Rape Apologism and the Presumption of Innocence.

NOTES:
[1]

[2]