figmentPez
Staff member
Investigations are difficult, and it's not big stars I worry about being taken down unfairly, it's the shadow this might have on smaller businesses, churches, etc. Not that I'm by any means sad that women are able to come forward about this stuff, but I honestly am worried that the "easiest" route will still be taken, it will just flip from automatically assuming the accusations are false, to automatically assuming that they are true, sometimes to the point of pushing people out of positions in an attempt to preempt accusations because of stereotypes.
At my church one of our previous youth directors was accused of having porn on his church computer (not like child porn, or anything illegal, just immoral in the eyes of the congregation). No investigation happened. He was just asked to move on. As far as I know no one knows if he actually did anything wrong, and adults involved do know that they'd heard some of the youth saying they wanted to get rid of him because he wasn't doing things the way they liked. (The bubble-suburb produces some highly entitled brats of children, and I've heard teenagers threaten to make false allegations.) The youth director wasn't fired, exactly, things were just arranged for him to find another job.
Not long after that, one of the adults, who had worked with the youth since before I was at the church, stopped volunteering. From what I can gather, he was asked to stop working with the youth simply because he's never married, and because he's a single man that makes it easier for there to be scandal. I know at least a half-dozen men and women who have maintained friendships with him since their high school days. I've never even heard a hint of anything inappropriate, and I know a lot of people from both genders who love and trust him. Still, as best I know, it was strongly suggested that he stop volunteering, because it looks wrong for a retired single man who never married or had kids to be working with high schoolers. That's it, just because of stereotypes and fears.
If things are going to change, I want them to change for the better, and not just to another form of bad. I'm not going to argue if it's "better" for a "few" scapegoats to sacrificed than for vicitims to not come forward at all, because I don't want to accept that it has to be one way or the other, but from what I've seen there is a very real danger of that being exactly what happens, because I've seen that already happening. Those two stories are from my church, because I know people there who can tell me enough to know that these stories are reasonably accurate, but I've heard similar stories from schools, businesses, and other places around here. People still want to sweep such accusations under the rug, and that seems to be what happens, a lot.
