They’re searching, hunting through the crowd,
They’ll find you – eventually,
It doesn’t matter if you did it,
They’ll twist your words
And chisel at your actions
To form the perfect argument
To frame you as the witch.
I was just watching the documentary about Operation Yew Tree and I found it really interesting to see how people dealt with the accusations.
For those of you not in the UK, this was a police operation that was launched after the death of Jimmy Saville to find other men who had committed sexual assaults on minors.
However, the whole thing became a bit of a witch hunt and there were lots of men that were arrested when there wasn’t any solid evidence that they had done anything.
Now, I’m not commenting on whether or not it was right that these men were publicly identified before they were charged as I think that there is an argument for and against that, and I don’t feel that I’m educated enough to put forward my thoughts. But I did want to comment on the way in which the men coped with the accusations, as I think that’s a really interesting thing to come out of such terrible circumstances.
Some of the men were obviously very angry, and I feel that I would be really angry if I’d been publicly shamed when I had done nothing wrong. But there were people who really took it in their stride and kind of accepted what was happening. They weren’t admitting guilt, but they were just allowing the police to do their jobs without fighting.
I found this really interesting as it’s human nature to fight when we feel wronged, but perhaps for a happier life, we should just go with it and stay quiet. And the man who did just sit quietly, had far less bad press than those that fought.
When you recover from any form of addiction you are told to ‘let go and let God’ and I see that as being very similar; we learn that we can’t control people, places or things, we can only control our own reaction.
I like to think of it as being a fish and it is far easier to swim with the current than against it.
Much Love
Rachel xx
Margot Kinberg
You bring up several really interesting points here, Rachel. You’re right that people often spread the proverbial net a lot wider than it needs to be spread when something like the Saville case comes up. And it’s not hard to see why. At the same time, though, it’s easy to just assume that some one ‘has to be guilty’ even if that person is innocent. It requires a balanced way of thinking, and not everyone can think that way under the circumstances. I’m not sure what I would do if I were falsely accused of something heinous like that; probably I’d fight it. It’s
patientandkindlove
It must be awful, because once your name has been linked with something like that, there is always a shadow hanging over you.