Stumpy, I can see how you are just thinking that what I see or feel about people hiding the truth and my examples here are because I am stuck in PTSD. Do I battle with it?, Yes and I am working on it. But it isn't blinding me to reality, it does, however react to the reality poorly. And because I do have it, I am cautious about how I proceed because I am fully aware that it can be used as an excuse against me, I hate how that can be a go to answer when I speak up. I am trying to have a life besides PTSD, it can be hard when faced with someone who is failing and will go right to it being my issue instead of his. At least both my husband and therapist sees it, my therapist wanted to call him with me but I feel that would only give him more reason to stick me in the mud even deeper.

What I am trying to convey here is the question of how someone can witness or know about something bad and not address it, allow it to continue, choose to ignore it. While I did give my personal accounts of experiencing forms of this myself, I also included examples where there are wrongs that are not reported, continue to take place and individuals do not speak up.

I understand what you are saying about our justice system and I can see why it is that way, after all there were times that people were falsely accused and were just hung or executed. So the fact that a person is innocent until "proven" guilty was meant to protect the innocent that may be unjustly accused. I also recognize that part of our system has also had to face all those people that have and still find ways to present a situation where they can sue and make money.

And it can be very difficult for someone who has a genuine injury due to a faulty procedure or genuine damage due to someone's negligence because of the obstacles put in place to protect against people who sue for anything or any reason.

But when we get angry or talk about someone not stepping in when they see abuse as was the case here, there is some hesitance because we have gotten to the point where in society today we have to truely think about the risks to ourselves when we DO step in to stop a situation like what happened here. And because I am older I can remember when people who ran to accidents to help someone trapped in a car before a car went up in flames or a situation similar and that person was sued because they caused further damage by the way they removed the victim from the car etc. It didn't matter if the victim was in immenent danger, or a person just quickly responded. So over the years it has been quietly suggested that it is better to not just enter into a rescue situation. So through the years there has been a growing message of what can happen if we decide to run to the rescue, we may become a victim ourselves. The younger crowd may not recognize this but those of us who are older can think back and see how a warning to all those who try to reach out has set in.

No good deed goes unpunished? Where do you think that came from?

Each and everyone of us can be a Monday morning quarterback and wonder why someone would witness this taking place and not intervene, or take so long to report it. And also we can wonder why young men failed to report thier own experiences for so many years. But, look at how many people refuse to believe that a man of this stature could do this. And there is actually a program called "What would you do?" that actually stages different scenarios of abuse to see how people react to it. I watched it a couple of times and it was interesting to see how many people chose to ignore certain situations and what they said when they were told it was staged and asked why they acted or didn't act.

Personally I think that it is terrible that people didn't speak up and I also think it is terrible that people can witness something like this and hesitate to get involved. But there are real fears that people have about being believed.

It is sad but I truely think that people just don't know how to react anymore.

I suppose that the only way we can promote people having the courage to step in, and report something disturbing is to show people that action will be taken no matter who is committing the bad act.

It is a very troubling topic.

Open Eyes