Welsh politician Carl Sargeant has committed suicide.
If the allegations against him are found to be false, then that’s going to undo all the good work already done.
Do innocent people tend to take their own life shortly after being unfairly accused of things they didn’t do?
See the sad cases of Graham Smith and Jay Smith.
It seems that Carl Sergeant was never told what the allegations against him were, or who had made them.
No charges were laid with the police.
He was simply dismissed from a job he loved and did well, without a hearing, and without knowing what he was being accused of.
Another possible (and likely?) result, now that he’s dead, is that the investigation will be terminated as being “moot”, and the allegations will stand unexamined, and everyone will assume he was guilty and say what an evil vile pig he was, just because of the allegations.
Seems to me like it would be possible for that to happen - I mean, people take their own lives as a reaction to being bullied (which is not necessarily their personal fault), don’t they?
It’s really tough to say what should have been done differently, I mean, the allegations were only made a week ago, it’s not really surprising there’s been no hearing in that time. It’s not as though it had been drawn out for months with no answers and no chance for a defence.
I wouldn’t want to speculate too hard about reasons behind a suicide, it can be the snap decision of a moment.
Yep, and for this kind of thing it can be practically impossible to clear your name. I know if I were accused of this kind of thing I would be very pessimistic about my outlook, even if I knew I could prove I was innocent; people are always going to look at me differently regardless.
I don’t want to sound like I’m on the side of abusers, and obviously I reserve judgement until more details are released, but the sex scandals seem to have gone in a strange direction in the UK. Having heads roll for errors of judgement that frankly do seem relatively mild will only serve to make some people dismissive of the real phenomenon and the real cases of harassment or sexual assault.
I was watching the latest Have I Got News For You last night (yeah, I was most of a week behind) and I think it was Ian Hislop that said it wasn’t much of a sex scandal. Having not seen most of the reporting, I’m not sure how strange (or scandalous) it all is. I mean, the US has had blowjobs in the Oval Office, inappropriate behavior (and worse) with Congressional pages, strange behaviors in airport bathrooms, plenty of infidelity cases (with only the really weird ones, like Mark Sanford’s “Hiking the Appalachian Trail” or Elliot Spitzer’s prostitution scandal and super-uncomfortable press conference sticking easily in the mind), problems in all branches of the US military, and so on. Anything weird but consensual isn’t really the public’s business. Actual harassment (and I’m willing to define the term broadly) or assault is a problem. I’m just not sure how much has been immoral if not illegal and how much is just people getting into weird stuff in private.
Actually getting things wrong will probably hurt the perception of any other investigations.
I am guessing that one way of dealing with a brewing scandal is to admit to some forgiveable, minor indiscretion in the past. Then resign, get out of the public eye, before the serious stuff emerges and become the centre of a storm of protest. Scandals can be a long drawn out process. Party whips and journalists acquire a lot of material over the years that they cannot make public. I am pretty sure Hislop, with his Private Eye background, knows a lot about the worst offenders.
I don’t doubt that there is a great many more stories to emerge about the damage done by powerful figures who imagine their office comes with a ‘droit de seigneur’ over their sub-ordinates.
As for this case? There is not enough information to explain it.
I have to assume he was already depressed, because suicide at this point does not look good. And if the accusation is found to not be credible, his suicide works to undo the work he’s done.
I do wish this would be reported for what it is: an illness, and not a story that tries to make it understandable. Suicide is not some rational option to something bad happening to you. We’ve got to get that idea out of the public consciousness. It makes me cringe when people say they’d commit suicide if X happened to them.
That’s not to say I oppose suicide when you are in pain and dying, and you want to go out early. It’s not even to say anything bad about the people who commit suicide. It’s about the culture of it. It’s this idea that, after something bad happens to you, you will never feel better, so ending it is an option.
And, no, I don’t know how to square this away with the apparently effective strategy of pointing out suicide to show that bullying isn’t harmless. It sucks that death is the only consequence people care about. I mean, it’s the bullying and hurt it causes that is wrong, but the suicide is still not something that should be viewed as an option.
If this does get used politically, then I’d have to unfortunately request that the people who commit suicide because of sexual harassment also be brought up. And I would prefer neither be used in this.