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No. The difference is that when I say "whatever," I am trying to say that I am pretty close to indifferent about whether you call what he did "sexual assault" or "attempted rape." I really don't think it makes a difference. If the difference between the two is that you would need to know something about his state of mind and that he intended to rape her, I agree that it would be hard to ever prove that. If you care about the difference, just pretend I said the other term instead. It makes absolutely no difference to the point I am trying to make.
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Right. But it makes a huge difference in the conversation. You're throwing around an accusation that someone intended to forcibly penetrate somebody. If you do not see how this differs from the accusation that someone forcibly groped and attempted to disrobe someone, I'm wondering where you were during Crim Law class. (This may highlight the fact that I am highly defense oriented, partly by early training.)
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I think she said, "I believed he was going to rape me." That assault was broken up by Judge. If you believe that testimony, it is what normal people would reasonably call "attempted rape." That's all I meant, and I think it's fairly describes what she said.
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I have believed all sorts of things were occurring and been wrong numerous times. (This often occurs in courtrooms, where you think you're watching a juror buying into this argument or that, and later find out this person thought 180 degrees differently than your assumption.)
You can believe someone believed something was happening. And I believe Ford believes she was the victim of an attempted rape. But that belief is not fact. It's just a belief. And those beliefs alone (both my belief that she believed she would be raped, and her belief that she would be raped) do not logically support an allegation that the thing believed to have been attempted was the thing actually attempted. People are notoriously unreliable narrators, particularly when speculating.
(Had Judge said he agreed with her, different story. Statistically, it would be of significance that two people seeing the same exact event developed the same assumption. I'm not sure it's enough to state there was an attempted rape with confidence, but it would probably be enough to get both statements into evidence.)