abuse, callouts
regarding "i know people who were abused by this person, they don't want to say who they are and also i have no evidence":
how do we talk about the wide, blurry, nuanced threshold between "i believe the victims and stand with them" and "wow, what a convenient way to untouchably accuse someone i don't like of doing something heinous"
and please don't tell me the latter never happens. it might not be whole-cloth falsehood when it does, but i've seen small misunderstandings seed it
re: abuse, callouts, long
@typhlosion i was actually in this situation not long ago--where someone confided in me about something terrible that happened to them, and the entire event was traumatic enough that they didn't feel like they could give any additional details outside of that, and wanted to stay anonymous in case there was revenge from the people who abused them
i wanted to be responsible, so i tried to find ways to do my due diligence for their sake, and for the sake of anyone else who this person might have abused
what i ended up trying to do was to ask to everyone i could reach if they experienced abuse at the hands of someone, but only gave generic qualifiers like "they have a large audience", or "they are active still", etc...
the idea was to see if anyone would step forward about the same person without specifically mentioning who i was talking about until i had concrete evidence against them that i could dig into
i also communicated what i was doing to the person who originally contacted me
re: abuse, callouts, long
@typhlosion i agonized about how i could do right for someone who could have been abused in a way that was traumatic enough that they couldn't give any information about what happened, and also wanted to stay anonymous
i spent actual months trying to search for things on their behalf to try and unearth something i could confirm--anything to help them not fall under the clutches of this person's control again if news of their abuse got out and they suspected who talked
re: abuse, callouts, long
@typhlosion ultimately, i came up short
i didn't want to be disingenuous and continue anyway, so i gave an update to the original person who came forward to me a few months later and told them that i had tried my best, but i really couldn't continue without more information
i also mentioned that anything else they were comfortable sharing with me would help tremendously, and that i was sorry for failing them
when they weren't comfortable mentioning anything more, i told them that i unfortunately really couldn't do anything more with what they gave me, but if they ever felt comfortable enough confiding anything more, i would give it my responsible due diligence to help them again
i haven't heard from them since, and i still have no idea what the truth is