[Northkeep] And from CNN this morning...

Marc Carlson marccarlson20 at hotmail.com
Thu Nov 13 08:14:23 PST 2003


Alton,

First, I think your idea that we might find a way to show some support to 
the shire that this is happening definately deserves discussion (i.e it's a 
good idea, but I'm not sure what we can do really).

Second, and this is just my take on these things - while I am myself a big 
proponent of "innocent until proven guilty" I have observed that our 
societies (both SCA and mundane) don't believe in this.  We, as a whole, are 
quick to judge and condemn based on nothing but the accusation that 
something has been done.   [As an aside, this is a -very- medieval 
perspective :)  ]

Now, I admit I may be a bit sensitive to this sort of thing since witchhunts 
are a major area of reserach for me (it's just not as sexy as "shoes") and 
in the past I have been falslely accused of "stuff" (not stuff of this 
caliiber, thankfully, but stuff nonetheless).  Sometimes people are 
mistaken, sometimes people misunderstand what they are seeing, or what they 
a re doing, sometimes people do bad things to other people  --  these are 
pretty clearly demonstrable facts.  Now, since I'm not God, and all knowing 
in who's naughty and who's nice,  I would prefer to rely on evidence to see 
whether someone's guilty.  It's a flawed system admittedly, but is less 
likely to screw over someone who might be innocent than the "kill 'em all, 
lGod will know his own" approach :)

Finally, you are right - no matter what the truth, these situations do make 
the group as a whole look bad - particularly since people as a whole ARE so 
quick to condemn.  I'm not sure what can be done to minimize the dangers of 
this ever happening again - unless we want to mandate that all children's 
activities whether official SCA ones, or even unofficial ones by people 
connected to the SCA have multiple adults present at all times, for the 
protection of the adults as well as the children (which has its own flaws 
when it comes to day to day practice).

Marc/Diarmaid

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