Well....it’s hard to believe anybody could do that to their family, so it’s hard to blame anybody for not being able to say someone is 100% guilty without all the facts. I think it’s great so many slid off the fence right from the get go, but I don’t see the point in continuing to rub it in to those who didn’t. jmo
Oh no. For me it has nothing to do with rubbing it in. It has to do with hypocrisy and cruelty.
Because in every case there are varying opinions and sometimes surprising conclusions. Some are right about what happened right off the bat and others aren't. For example, I was stunned that Katlynn Cargill had been involved in drugs. When posters suggested that I was defensive for her.
I was also super shocked that Jessica Ridgeway's killer was a teenager. Some astute posters had that sense early on and that seemed impossible to me.
No, I understand that we all aren't going to be accurate in our first impressions and probably the majority of the time I too need more to form a strong opinion.
In fact, this was actually one of the few cases where it was certain to me very early on.
It was also the first case where I saw such intense victim bashing and support of victim bashing via tons of "likes", under the guise of being "open minded" or on the fence (which mostly seemed to consist of only supporting arguments about how evil or bad or unstable Shanann was. Isn't on the fence supposed to be about both sides of a case and not just one?).
This case was obvious, IMO. There was an incredible amount of facts. But most important, logic had to be thrown out the window, including (but not at all limited to) things like you noted today- how a guilty person and how an innocent person respond, essentially. And how parents who are bonded and love their kids react when those kids are missing or have been killed.
More important, it became quite clear as time went on, since there was no logical alternative, IMO, as to how this man could possibly be innocent, that fence sitting and open-mindedness was actually primarily fueled by petty, mean girl gossip, cruel and baseless innuendo and the nasty whisperings of one who clearly loathed Shanann and had every reason to make things up or view things from a dysfunctional, distorted perspective.
That was unique about this case and it was utterly destructive to the family who knew about it and suffered. That upsets me.
To ignore all facts and logic as not enough but give massive, and what I think was incredibly undue consideration to nasty gossip and ridiculous judgment of an average mother, was born of pettiness and hate, IMO and so it's hard to swallow when we now see posts about, "yeah, can you believe this guy?"
No. That was the whole point. And why it was so wrong, I feel, to embrace that bashing of poor Shanann since there was nothing logical to point to her. Nothing at all except ugliness.
I can't imagine how that destroyed her family.
I don't feel I'm rubbing anything in. I feel like I'm standing up for not embracing the irrational, petty, and misogynistic bashing of victims. I hope I never see that again in the world. I mean I know we will to some degree but hopefully at least not at the level we saw in this case.
Finally, now that we have "all the facts", what is really so new? It seems like we had almost all of the facts. Not as fleshed out but we knew most of what had gone on. And what had not (like sadness, grief, concern or worry for his missing and then dead babies). As someone said, there was no real smoking gun. It's just a cumulation of circumstantial evidence that was already there.
The only thing that truly changed that was significant was the guilty plea.
In fact, right before it, some seemed to be so confident that he wasn't guilty that they fully expected a plea to lesser charges. Based on nothing at all but what I've described above.
So if in the future a guilty plea is what's needed despite a mountain of evidence, in order to conclude that there's really no
reasonable doubt, because some feel drawn to blaming a victim, we are in trouble in this country when it comes to our justice system.
Because what else truly changed to slide people off their purported fences (which seemed more like heavily weighted teeter totters), besides the guilty plea?
