A Scary Grandmother
Last year, January 2005, a schoolteacher in West De Pere, Wisconsin was charged with molesting a ten‑year‑old boy. At a hearing in June, 2005, the teacher pleaded not guilty. Finally on 1 December, 2005, the charges were dropped.
A local television news show asked people on the street what their reactions were. A grandmother responded that the teacher was guilty of something simply because of the charges. She felt that there was something real that caused the charges.
She apparently didn’t care to know about the sex hysteria that caused many people to be innocently imprisoned. Authorities, social workers; police; prosecutors; implanted false memories in children in the excitement of having their own lurid sex case. Some of these children were severely damaged. The financial costs to the accused were staggering.
Maybe this grandmother didn’t believe she could ever be a target of a false accusation. She is naive. While young males are the most common victim of the false accusation hysteria, grandmothers are not exempt. Once police and prosecutors convince themselves of a crime; facts do not matter.
This grandmother apparently was unaware of such concepts as burden of proof or beyond a reasonable doubt. The fact that she could be on a jury and find a person guilty simply because “something had to be there†is extremely frightening.
I wonder how many like her serve on juries. Juries that have incarcerated human beings for up to life simply because stereotyping and prejudging is easier than examining facts.
by Brian McCorkle
in category Rants
