Rethinking
This is either one of the most shocking scandals
[JS]
in entertainment history,
that particularly this person was wrongly accused
of child molestation,
– or –
It is one of the most monstrous acts imaginable,
that particularly this person
who wrote more about children’s happiness than anybody else
actually abused them.
You might say: This is a bit crass. But it sometimes helps to sit with the discomfort of what we’re actually saying.
This is not an artificial binary between a saint and a sinner. There is no middle ground between abusing a child and not abusing a child. The ambiguity lies in persona, in boundaries, in perception – not in the core truth.
And if one of these versions is true, then someone made it true. It didn’t just happen by accident, by misunderstanding, it was an active choice. It means harm was done, either way. So we should ask: Who, and why? What happened? [JS]