....
I'm for god's sake NOT trying to cast Hobbs in any kind of good "light". I think he is, like JMB, a disgusting cockroach who, like JMB, was abusive to those weaker than him and hair-tigger tempered, and on a pile of drugs to boot. Like JMB, Hobbs is way up there in my opinion as a suspect.
Just FYI.
Just trying to keep it real.
In the interests of 'keeping it real'! Firstly, we now all know how well acquainted with cockroaches you appear to be and what you happen to think of these men whom you do not actually know in the 'real' world! :thinking::drumroll:
My first impressions of the two men were also interesting. JMB, larger than life and presenting as the stereo typical southern red-neck. High on my suspect list, as so many others had him. After all we only 'knew' the character as presented in Devil's Knot and the first two Paradise Lost films. Aside from the documentation on Cally's. Also then the loud mouthed character with a large internet presence and childish and vulgar handle. Longing for true justice both for his son and Chris's two friends. A true believer in the DP and a determination to see the supporters out. I asked a friend of his to ask him a question for me on the Hoax. I was firmly told to ask him myself and he would respect me if I showed him no disrespect. I did and his friend was right. Yeah, he was pretty vile and nasty to those who were rude to him! I just tried to steer clear except when he was very unfair, and that was not that often.
TWH, on the other hand, seemed to blend into the background. The only moment that stood out to me was when his then wife, extremely distressed, fled the court room and he seemed to be utterly clueless as to what he should do - almost as if he were a mere onlooker and totally detached from all that surrounded everyone else. An insignificant nonentity. How dumb was that?
JMB dropped down the rankings of my possible perps, farther and farther. TWH remained a nonentity. Then came the EDT fndings on 2007. A lot of things changed. I guess I had been around long enough to be considered a 'keeper' and I slowly started to get some private messages - some nice ones and some not so! I found that I was being contacted by some whom I never thought I would meet - even on line. By that, I mean people who I had never seen post on any forum but knew of from their involvement in the case. People, in my book, move from the virtual world to the real world when individual emails lead to telephone calls or snail mail letters or all three! I do not agree with all of them all the time by any means - but that is fine! We all have in common though a determination to see the resolution of this case in a fair and just way.
I have had no direct contact with TWH, nor do I wish to. My remaining time is too precious to waste on him, I would far rather spend it supporting others and hoping to see him finally be properly investigated and then either excluded or indicted. Should it be the latter then I do not actually mind if he is just charged, even without enough evidence to guarantee a conviction after all this time, as hopefully that would result in the State doing the honourable thing and exonerate the three.
So.... she didn't contact the authorities?
I however find it a bit odd that Ms Hicks can come out in 2007 talking about all this abuse she first-hand heard when Amanda was small-- IF you are saying she did not contact the cops when the abuse was actually happening.
"Becomes the norm" my *advertiser censored*. Any woman who can hear a child speak about being digitally raped (and all the rest of it) and then sit back and do nothing about it is utter scum. The end. Or she's lying to throw Hobbs under a bus. Which she had every reason in the world to do.
Like it or not, accept it or not, but if a young child grows up in an abusive family that is
their family they do tend to think that that is the norm! They have only grown up in that family and do not fully know nor understand socail dynamics of what a 'normal' family should be.
The other point you are tilting at is the lack of anything being reported to the police. When Steven told his aunt (who was more like a cousin in age) that it
HAD to be a secret. She, at that point, was not old enough to recognise that there are some 'secrets' that should NOT be kept. So it was that it slowly emerged and some members of the family became 'sort of' aware that something was 'sort of' not right!
The watch word of quite a few is for closed ranks and keeping up appearances. Crazy? Mad? Pathetic? Do not think that those who might have had a few clues have not, ever since, so wished that they had broken confidences or spoken out. Hindsight combined with survivor guilt. Far from making excuses for them, I, too, am appalled that eveyone seemed to be in some sort of denial that anything 'that bad' could be happening in their midst. Remember impoverished neighbourhood, both financially and educationally, as well as all allegedly being from the sorts of households which were firmly dominated by the man of the house. This is especially true of the Hobbs family, as I have been led to believe. Not only was the father apparently a former military man, slaughter house owner, restaurant chain owner but also the local preacher in a pretty extreme form of OT Fundamentalism - not sure if the speaking of tongues or snakes featured, but I got the impression it was pretty close! No TV and, all in all, very strict.
Most of all what, for me, totally demolished your argument of moral indignation, was your seeming 'defence' had an aunt in fact just made it up to get 'revenge' on Hobbs and land him in trouble.
There is NEVER a time in a moral and civilised society that it is either acceptable or justifiable to lie and publish detrimental and defamatory information about another. Even more so when the time may well come (we hope) where there is a trial. The statements could be shredded in court if they cannot be backed up. So perjury plus a brilliant defence strategy for any potential defence attorney - all but handed to them on a plate. Sewing jumbo seeds of credibility, to be harvested and cooked up as a concotion of reasonable doubt.....
If this appears inconsisten and all over the place it is because it is. I have been doing it in fits and starts whilsr watching the many ceremonies covering the 100th anniversary of when the lamps went out over here as we officially declared war on Germany. So the last hour and half has been typed with a dimmer screen and in candle light and a 'softened' picture on the TV. The War to end all wars. A hundred years of War and we still we seem to have failed to learn anything? Sadly wars seem to beget wars. The problems in the near and middle east stem from our (France, Egypt and us) carvng up the terrotories to the east of the Mediterranean with a total disregard for the wishes of the people who actually lived there. Something that is still going on to this day.
One wuote that did not come up in any of the services was the great one of Auden's "We must love one another or die." 'We' meaning nations as well as individuals.
Sorry for such a long post - I will try and keep quiet tomorrow! Glasgow did a great job with the Commonwealth Games!
