Hi SD.
I was under the assumption that BR had owned a pair of high techs, but that the footprint could not be connected to him as the boots were 'missing'?
I don't know about that one way or the other, but I seem to recall John describing them.
YES! That's exactly what I meant ... I was begining to think I was incomprehensible?
No, I seized on it.
A few things to keep in mind, Tadpole--
1) The BBC (British Broadcasting Company) reported these depressing figures:
--About 80% of rapes are not reported.
--Of the 20% reported, about one-third are not recorded by police.
--Of the ones recorded, only one-fifth reach trial.
--Of those that reach trial, half are convicted.
Now, if you do the math on that, that means that out of every 100 rapes, 1.3 result in a conviction. The reason I mention all this is to show just how hard it is to detect sex crimes, and how much harder it is to punish them. And these victims were all ADULTS, presumably in full control of their faculties. Imagine how hard it is for children!
2) I'm going to lay this on the line, and you can make up your own mind. For some people, professional and otherwise, physical findings are not enough to say for sure that a child has been abused. You have to interview the child, and do it in a certain way, so the interviewer doesn't put ideas in the child's head (which is what happened with the McMartin case). Now, until he answers the question himself, I'll give HOTYH the benefit of the doubt and say he's one of these people. (Though how he explains the injuries is beyond me!) And for what it's worth, I can see the value of that approach. But there are a few things wrong with it. One thing is the difficulty in detecting abuse, which I just outlined. Sometimes (far more often than we'd like), it's only after death has occurred that abuse is detected. (Ask Hedda Nusbaum about that!) And that leads into the second problem: dead men tell no tales. We can't interview JB, because she's dead.
So, and this is STRICTLY my opinion, the IDIs can claim there was no abuse (at least, none from the family), but until they can give a plausible explanation for a worn-away hymen and layers of tissue sloughed off the inside of the vagina, they have about as much chance of convincing me as I have of bench-pressing an aircraft carrier. The Ramseys tried to claim that repeated use of bubble bath caused the inflammation, but that wouldn't account for everything else.