Boredalt wrote:
Doubt is fine. Doubt is good. Doubt usually helps both sides come to the truth of it. Doubt is not an excuse to suspend common sense, pass the buck, or to create myriad scenarios to give the cowards vindication for inaction.
Questions do not deprive him of his Fifth Amendment rights. Saying that an innocent man might suffer damage to his reputation from questions that might also apprehend a sexual predator is a good argument to convince oneself that doing nothing is not cowardly.
Hmm. By this, even if McQueary went to the police with what he saw, "even asking questions" would be wrong. Is this seriously what you're proposing? Also by this, McQueary is not cowardly, as you earlier suggested, but realizing he is the only witness, he knows the police would need something more solid than him personally seeing a man he knows very well butt-fucking a child before he says anything. A good argument to convince oneself that doing nothing is not cowardly.
Cowardice can take form as an excess of action just as easily as a deficiency. There is such a thing as fear of not having all the answers, or being powerless. As everyone knows, that is familiar to me.
Boredalt wrote:
But allowing the police to conduct an investigation isn't assuming anything. Let the authorities find the truth.
Aestu wrote:
How?
Torture, of course. Isn't that what they always do? Or a witch hunt? Your question implies that you don't trust the authorities to conduct a fair investigation. This would be another argument to convince oneself that to do nothing is not cowardly.
The question was rhetorical but worthy of a response. How does one go about getting the facts?
This is where the spirit, if not the letter, of habeus corpus comes into play. Produce the charges and evidence or go home. In this case, the bare minimum I would accept would be, literally, the body of the abused. Produce the victim.
If all that can be said is, some kid - where do you go from there?
Boredalt wrote:
You either don't have friends or loved ones you trust, have incredibly shitty ones, or you're arguing just to take play DA. Is there no one you know with certainty would never come to you with such a tale?
Of course I do. Just like everyone else. Life would be a simpler affair if fools and bogeymen were friendless and unloved...but it is not so.
For what it is worth, my own family and loved ones would agree - "Condemn not a man on the account of only one witness" was something my parents quoted often as a fundamental of Mosaic Law.
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What actions are appropriate? Apparently, going to the police if he's the sole witness would be wrong, so what's a chickenshit to do? He's already passed on the opportunity to stop the crime in progress or immediately call for help. Now, he's talking to you. And you don't trust him to tell the truth, don't believe a sole witness should be enough to initiate an investigation, don't trust the authorities to conduct a fair investigation if they started one, and believe the potential damage to the reputation of the accused carries more weight than the potential havoc he may be wreaking on the lives of children.
If your associate took appropriate actions after talking to you, great. If your associate did nothing, and then you did nothing, there would be more kids out there with torn up assholes shitting some sicko's spooge...and it would be because your associate and you were cowardly. Everyone at Penn State who actively suppressed this, or who heard of it but did nothing...ALL are cowards who let other children be assaulted. Every last one of them share the blame for every victim after 2002.
No. It is his cowardice and not mine. Two wrongs sometimes makes a right - not this time, because we cannot take the first wrong as a given. The only man who can take that "wrong" as a given is he who saw it with his own eyes.
A coward cannot be trusted. Anyone too feeble to do what he knows is right is, at least, lying to himself - I would not honor such a man. Thus your argument as to "implicit trust" vacillates.
