I've read it suggested that some (but obviously not all) WikiLeaks participants preferred having such a controversial and high-profile figurehead because it encouraged anti-WikiLeaks organizations to focus on smearing him rather than digging up info on people who are actually integral to WikiLeaks' ability to function. The idea being that, yeah, Assange may attract controversy (which is true regardless of whether or not he's guilty of the crimes he's being charged with here), but an organization that gets as much institutionalized opposition as WikiLeaks does has to have a sacrificial lamb if they don't want to be destroyed.
As for Moore—putting up bail money isn't objectionable. His opinion on the case may be unseemly, but a case this high-profile is going to generate a lot of unseemly opinions in both directions. The public does not have a way of knowing whether or not he engaged in unconsensual sex. What we
have is just piles of irrelevant, distracting information:
he's the figurehead of a group that various government agencies want to discredit;
she wrote her Master's thesis (in part) on the use of rape as a weapon in promoting matriarchy.
Her teaching career included two charges of sexual harassment against a student for "looking at his notes" rather than directly at her, thus implying the intent to marginalize and discredit her gender;
his nomadic lifestyle was used against him to attempt to deny him the option of bail.
His gender is notorious for their proclivity to sexually assault others;
her country is suggested to be socially, politically, and occupationally mired in male privilege, but that the public recognition of this fact has resulted in powerful weapons to point the finger at men, through the use of
härskarteknik ("master suppression technique"), which have closed off public discourse through over-use and over-application.
All of this is irrelevant to the question of whether he's guilty or not, which we cannot know. Democratic concepts of justice would have it that he's innocent until proven guilty, but rape is a particularly noxious crime, and its victims have a history of mistreatment and misrepresentation by the system that's supposed to prosecute on their behalf.
It's an ugly situation.
