First, I want to warn readers and commenters on my last Alexa post that I have gone through my post and the comments left and redacted the name of the person who has been accused of pretending to be Alexa. If it offends you that I have redacted his name on your comment and you wish me to remove it altogether, let me know, and I’ll do that.
In a world where, disturbingly, the repetition of something seems to make it fact, I will not host material on my blog that repeats this man’s name over and over. In my considered opinion, nothing I have read constitutes definitive ‘proof’ of his guilt.
Secondly, I’m astounded at what a great number of people consider ‘obvious proof of guilt’ and what they consider ‘appropriate’ response to be. It bolsters my opinion that some kind of ‘law, ethics and logic’ course needs to be compulsory at secondary school level and that you shouldn’t be able to graduate from high school without passing it.
The skeleton of any modern system of justice allows for the following rights of the accused:
- They are assumed innocent until proven, legally, otherwise.
- They have the right to know what they are being accused of
- They have the right to competent legal representation
- They have the right to have their defense against the charges heard by an impartial court.
- In most cases, they have the right to meet, or at least know the identity of their accusers.
- They have a right to challenge the veracity of the evidence &, in most cases, the credibility of their accusers.
- They have a right to demand that their accusers be held accountable for any false accusations made.
- They have the right to sue for compensation for any damages to them or their reputation resulting from a false accusation, should the charges against them be dismissed or not proved and the accusing parties be deemed negligent or malicious.
Frankly, it pisses me off to read people who are so concerned about their rights, show very little concern for someone else’s.
Thirdly, I’m also disturbed by what a lot of people consider ‘evidence’. Although some of it was quite legitimate – for instance, ‘Alexa’ DID claim to have qualifications she did not posses. The vast majority of the accusations being leveled at this person and the information being offered as ‘proof’ that the person outed was, in fact, the person masquerading as Alexa, are hearsay:
“Hearsay is information gathered by one person from another concerning some event, condition, or thing of which the first person had no direct experience. When submitted as evidence, such statements are called hearsay evidence. As a legal term, “hearsay” can also have the narrower meaning of the use of such information as evidence to prove the truth of what is asserted. Such use of “hearsay evidence” in court is generally not allowed. This prohibition is called the hearsay rule.”
For a more comprehensive explanation of hearsay, click here.
Fourth, I do not dispute that some of the things the person who has masqueraded as Alexa did were wrong, unethical and, in some cases, probably illegal. However, the despicability of his/her sins DOESN’T ethically justify outing someone who may, without some tangible proof to the contrary, be either entirely innocent, or only peripherally involved.
No matter how badly the crime offends you, it’s not okay to hang just anyone for it. And that, in a way, is what I think I’ve seen this week. A lot of people who feel the deceptions and manipulations perpetrated by ‘Alexa’ were so bad, that – hey, SOMEONE’S GOTTA PAY.
This week, I think I’ve seen some of the best and the worst of human behaviour on the net. But I have a few specific mentions:
To @SayNine : thank you for having the courage to be a lone voice in the wilderness, for recognizing mob justice when you saw it, and for saying so. I know you caught some flack of it.
To Joe Homeowner: I understand your outrage at some of the things done by ‘Alexa’ but your inability to separate your justifiable anger at the behaviour from your need to find someone to pay for it is frightening. It is representative of many people who believe that personal moral outrage justifies irresponsible and unethical on their part, in response.
To the young woman who claims she serviced a client recommended to her by ‘Alexa‘ and believes that person to be the man who has been ‘outed’. I don’t know you, but I sympathize with your distress. I am angry for you that the law doesn’t offer you some way to charge this person with fraud but, until prostitution is legalized in your country, you have no legal recourse. However, I’m glad you’re physically unharmed. Please don’t let people convince you that what occurred was rape. What happened to you was unethical, and probably some form of fraud. If you decide to pursue a career in sex work, please reconsider your methods for vetting clients.
To the outer of ‘Alexa’: I know you think you did the right thing, but I think it was irresponsible and I wish you had gone about it in a different way. What you did has had, and will have serious repercussions for certain people. It will also have deep reverberations around the sex-blogging community. People who don’t have any bad intentions, who are simply using pseudonyms to protect their privacy and want to express themselves freely, will reconsider participating in this milieu because of what you have done. You have, effectively, gagged a lot of people.