For this current round of writing, I kept thinking that it would end up revisiting this post. I was having a hard time getting started, until I realized I had the order wrong.
Here is the first part, from June 2021:
https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2021/06/james-dewees-is-not-predator.html
In summary, there was an Instagram page that accused musician James Dewees of being a predator, and about the time that came out he was fired from two band, which seemed pretty damning.
I read those posts and found a lot of holes, but the biggest one was that even though the word "predator" was used, predatory behavior was not demonstrated. The premise was that he was using women for money, but it didn't really hold up.
Obviously there is a lot more detail in my blog post, but what is missing is what happened after.
The next day, there was an anonymous comment on my blog, saying they knew it was hard but I just needed to accept that he hurt people.
I have to approve blog comments before they are published. If there had been contact information I would have engaged, and if there had been anything new that seemed relevant, I would have published it, even if I immediately posted a reply questioning it. As it was, if repeating accusations with no backup was enough, I would never have blogged about it in the first place. I deleted.
The next day there was a similar, angrier comment about how dared I call myself a feminist. It was still anonymous and without any substantiation, so I deleted again.
I remember from those comments feeling sure that it was her, that there had never been a "they" (which I already felt pretty sure about), and that my analysis was correct. I did wonder if there would be any new posts on the Instagram. I think it was a few days later that I checked.
The entire page was gone.
Did I do that? I don't know. Maybe.
(Near the end I included what things were easy to document, and that it seemed like material harm could be demonstrated pretty easily, so that may have had an effect.)
Did it matter? Not really.
I mean, James wasn't suddenly back in bands, and as recently as December there was a post with someone asking about James and someone calling him a pedophile, even though that was never among the original accusations.
At the time, I did do some searches, and I did post a link to the blog in response to one tweet about the accusations. I got this response:
"I'm not reading all that, but I'm happy for you, or sorry that happened."
That was actually the first time I saw that one, but I have seen it many times since. It is a proud declaration of unwillingness to engage, except not responding at all would be more effective non-engagement.
It was more annoying because the person who posted it was not the one who asked; not saying anything would have been fine.
On a different level, it was worse than annoying, because it was so wrong.
Someone lied and damaged someone else's life, and not only did people not care about that, what they remembered was worse than the original lies.
I believe what I did was right -- even without it mattering -- but I also at times feel bad about it. The false ones are such a low percentage of accusations in general... is that even a good focus area?
Except, that is the one where I might actually have something to contribute.
In addition, I can't believe that the price of standing up for the wrongfully accused is harming others who have been abused. It certainly doesn't have to be.
A big part of that will be listening to accusations. That is important for the victimized, but that listening is also what allows the false accusations to unravel.
It seems obvious, but then we break into teams, where we like this person, or hate this person, or have unacknowledged bias against this person.
There is a lot to unravel, and I am going to spend some time on that.
Otherwise, the one thing I did differently before posting this was that I took the Word document that had all of the screenshots and quotes and saved it as a PDF, just in case anyone is ever interested.
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