More to the point, the row started because of nasty allegations calling Prince Andrew a proven sex offender.
1. He had an acquaintanceship with a man who was later convicted of sexual offences - which is not a crime
2. He has since also been accused - which does not make him guilty
3. He has not even yet been questioned
I have tweeted at length about this too.
An ordinary person will spend time with hundreds of people in a lifetime, a person in Prince Andrew's role will encounter thousands. If you think you KNOW the people around you, you're an idiot. Every rapist, murderer, child molester, whatever was someone's relative, friend, co-worker. If you think that "they must have known" you have got to be crazy.
I've lived a fairly sheltered life - I have spent years stuck at home as a full-time mum and now as a carer. When I have worked it has never been with lots and lots of people. But can I say I have never associated with a person who has groped, molested or raped? Of course I can't! I knew fairly little about most people I worked with. I didn't know if they were married or had kids or spent their weekends in babygros and adult diapers.
I've never done well with friendships but the few people I would count as true friends I know only a little better. I am aware I know what each person CHOOSES to present to me, that I only see the tip of the iceberg about another person's personality.
As for relationships I've done even worse but the fact I ended up as a single mother, twice over, is pretty indicative that you can be fully intimate with someone and still not know them.
There are allegations that Prince Andrew has failed to co-operate with the FBI...there are also counter claims that the FBI has not attempted to contact him. Either way, his co-operation is entirely voluntary at this point. Who knows where the truth lies?
Meanwhile, it's hard for the US to take the high ground after refusing to extradite Anne Sacoolas, wanted in connection with the death by dangerous driving of 19 year old Harry Dunn. Nations have a tendency to protect their own - just the way things are. Briton's expect the nation to come to their aid when they're jailed abroad or whatever - and I've tweeted at length about how dumb I think that is too.
The fact that Prince Andrew knew someone who turned out to be a sex offender is, imho, not particularly meaningful. You honestly expect any of the royal family to know everything about everyone they know?! That's not even a thing that regular people with far smaller circles of acquaintance can be expected to know.
As yet there's no proof he knew of any wrongdoing or committed any crimes himself, only allegations - hence my arguing for due process. The other tweeter brought Savile into it and I pointed out that the two cases are entirely unalike as Savile is dead and there can be no case brought against him...and that is where it all started - with the assertion that a complaint filed does not equal proof of guilt "that's what courts are for, not social media" - mind you, you can't argue with the type of idiot who actually believes 'there's no smoke without fire' (probably thinks they sank a real ship for the film Titanic an' all...)
My tweets on this read as follows (copied & pasted direct):
- I'm blocking you for defending witch-hunt and thinking due process is an optional extra. Moron.
- I have no sympathy for Savile but we have a legal process for a damn good reason. THAT is what I am defending.
- If YOU would expect a fair trial, a weight on evidence rather than hearsay, DEMAND that principle is applied for others
- Every person who supports trial by media deserves (IMHO) to be accused of heinous crimes they didn't commit.
- I think my abhorrence of this comes of being bullied at school. Especially by teachers whose word was law.
- My daughter too got punished for being in fights... as the victim of a persistent bullying campaign.
- [This tweet is edited as it involves an allegation of child sexual abuse as told to me but turned out to be false] I reported it, as you do. Police got back to me: Kid didn't have a stepfather. Kid had a history of not knowing fact from fiction, and a psychiatrist.
- I blocked the kid. But I know others who believed them.
"In the year to the end of March 2017, the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) estimated:
- 20% of women and 4% of men have experienced some type of sexual assault since the age of 16, equivalent to 3.4 million female and 631,000 male victims
- 3.1% of women (510,000) and 0.8% of men (138,000) aged 16 to 59 had experienced a sexual assault in the last year."
So if one in five WOMEN will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime how likely do you think it is that those acts were perpetrated by just a handful of 'monsters' you personally will never encounter? I'm not going to go so far as to suggest each victim has a separate assailant but we're still not talking about a small group of serial rapist and gropers. We're talking about a significant number of people here - do you even know which of the women you know have been sexually assaulted? Do you even think they would share with you? An awful lot of people never tell their nearest and dearest such things. If you don't know the victims in your life how do you expect to know the perps? Do you think they're easily spotted by their sinister moustaches and black hats or what?!
I am an exceedingly opinionated potato and I believe a lot of things about a lot of people, usually based on little more than intuition. I try to be careful about how I express those opinions, if I even do.
I don't even have much faith in due process. But it's the best we have - we all deserve a fair hearing and assuming someone's guilt based on social media bullshit and the tabloid press is just DUMB.
