Again, our knee-jerk response should not be sympathy and empathy for the accused, but rather the accuser.

No, our knee jerk response, as relatively uninvolved third parties, should be to wait for as much information as possible to come out.

But our default should be believing people who say they're sexual assault victims, because of the huge obstacles to reporting and the trauma associated with coming forward.

The people around the person who is alleging abuse should absolutely close ranks and support them. Everybody else however, should try to avoid adding more bias to a situation they don't know anything concrete about. Trying to counterbalance bias with your own bias just makes it harder for anyone trying to get an objective look at what information there is.