[Northkeep] And from CNN this morning...

Graue, Chris Chris.Graue at benham.com
Thu Nov 13 09:18:59 PST 2003


I read the SCAToday.net articles on this matter and the personal responses
to it... there is no reason anyone should think this person is guilty just
because he was accused of something (even as horrible as those accusations
are). I feel this way even though I am a single mom who is scared as hell
something might ever happen to my kids. Until it is proven, we should all
just wait to see and hope it isn't true... what else CAN we do? I am ashamed
to read messages that people have posted in anger at this person even though
nothing has been proven. For a pessimist, I have an amazingly optimistic
view on "innocent until proven guilty".

As far as prevention, I think 2 adults being present during events like this
may be a good idea.

Chris

-----Original Message-----
From: Marc Carlson [mailto:marccarlson20 at hotmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, November 13, 2003 10:14 AM
To: northkeep at ansteorra.org
Subject: RE: [Northkeep] And from CNN this morning...


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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