Thread by @soychicka

The principle of due process is enshrined in our judicial system.

Innocence until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt for the purposes of entry into the penal system helps to defend our democracy from falling to whims and desire for punishment at the hands of tyrants...

However, the social contract we have with each other rightly contains no such clause, leaving us free to befriend, judge, and avoid or dissociate from others based on our own analysis of their actions, using whatever sets of evidence we deem sufficient to pass judgement...

That's 'morality.'

And in cases where there is insufficient evidence to successfully prosecute a sexual predator, or where a wealth of riches permits a predator to plead to escape any real consequences for their actions because lawyers harass, threaten, or smear their victims,

the primary mechanism we have to protect those who may be future victims is precisely what @alandersh is complaining that he has been experiencing up in Chilmark...

It's a matter of morals, and if someone finds an attorney to be behaving immorally in the course of representing a wealthy client, especially when the victims being smeared are children, there is no duty to allow that attorney to cry "due process" or "I was just doing my job."

Revictimizing victims is immoral. Period.

And the social contract permits those who are immoral - or amoral - to be avoided. To be shunned. To lose their social status, because not only

And those who choose to continue associating with someone who wields these weapons over multiple child victims? They are opening up their own morality for inspection.

Perhaps they were directly complicit in abuse, perhaps they just tolerated it.

In any case, by choosing to interact with someone who chose to revictimize the victims of child sexual assault, whether for money or other personal benefit, means that individual can retain their power and position, which means they're an enabler of the victimization of children.

And it's time that we start enforcing that part of the social contract to break the cycle of child sexual abuse.

Of course, there may be victims who fabricate charges for political or retaliatory reasons, and those stories will quickly fall apart when victims refuse to lie to law enforcement - and we always need to consider the circumstances surrounding any accusation.

But when there are multiple victims, and the only way around the charges are to discredit all of them, the probability those charges are not fabricated increases exponentially.

Regardless, this?

This is not okay.
This is never okay.

And we need to hold all citizens to the same standard, whether they're lawyers, or business associates, grantees or friends of serial predators, or those reasonably accused of being such.

The social contract demands it of anyone with a social conscience.

Inspired in part by two articles, along with personal experience:
washingtonpost.com/opinions/is-al…

insidehighered.com/news/2019/07/1…