So long as it concerns the sphere of private interactions there is nothing you can do i’m afraid. Should or ought or otherwise.
As the law stands, the law has no right to sanction you before charges are made - which is what happened in this case. THIS is what “Innocent upon proven guilty” refers to.
Whether private individuals can jump to conclusions and shun you, not give you business, treat you as if you had done a thing or not, that isn’t within the remit of the law - because this stuff is them using their freedom as if their right. People can disassociate from each other for any reason they like really and that includes believing things which are yet unproven to be true.
Now if damages can be proven (outright defamation, libel) you can sue people in civil court for it and that will usually put a stop to it (but only so much as you are punishing it) but as for the stopping the whole "people jumping to conclusions and joining in witch hunt mentality) there’s nothing you can do to stop people doing this proactively outside of restricting personal freedoms.
It’s not ideal, but it’s how it is. 90% of the stuff concerning these kinds of cases has NOTHING to do with how the actual law works and everything to do with how private individuals behave and the social punishments they visit upon people as a result of their ignorance.
So I agree in that you’re talking about the right target here “We, as a society” that’s the issue. It’s not the courts, the powers that be, the law, because as regards to what their remit is, they’re doing it properly. The issue is “wider society” loves to behave like this.
And it’s not restricted to “one side” as well. You see this kind of harmful and nosey speculation on all sides of the political spectrum. You see it with people snowballing about additions to games/media such as “LGBT stuff” and flapping their hands about “where it leads”.
Humans LOVE drama and love an excuse fabricate outrage, I suspect because out lives (by and large) are so cushioned these days, it’s a way of inserting “controlled unpredictability” into our lives to make them dynamic.
I’ll check out the reocmmendation. Mikkelsen is a fine actor. Loved him in Hannibal.
It also also happens less than “the internet” seems to act like it does. If we take the tone of this thread as a snapshot, it seems to a vast majority of people here the very idea that an accusation could be true is complete fiction, so it would seem they imagine that false accusations are everywhere they look.
Regarding my own situation, i’d had to weather the rumour thing. As I mentioned in my post where I spoke of my career in education and as of yet not falling foul of this sort of thing (despite working with a lot of women, including in a 1:1 capacity) I mentioned two times where female students developed a wierd fixation on me and in one of those cases, although not outright accusations of misconduct, one of then did begin a process of alluding we had a level of contact that was fiction which they started to communicate with others in the group.
The difference is the way I conducted myself up to that point and consistently so meant I could easily show evidence so as to “at the first hurdle” of it being brought into my awareness, I could instantly expose it as fiction before my superiors had an opportunity to even ask me further questions about it.
So yes, more rumours may as of yet afflict me, there’s always the chance, but I take a lot of small, sensible steps to render such potential rumours baseless from the word go.
I don’t have to reply, Baltic already did that for me.
