My View: What I see as the Heart of the Matter

[taura_g]

The last line on drwex most excellent summation of his views is what I wonder any social community can come to some basic agreement of...

If we cannot find a way to work with each other - despite our different frameworks - to deal with an abuser and social gatherings then we have a pretty deep problem.In my LiveJournal alone (and I certainly don't have

Comments

[crazybone]

I struggle with this. I was raised in a religion that is really big on forgiveness and redemption but I was never really that good at it. I would let most things go eventually but, certain things were beyond the pale. Sexual assault of adults or children was one of these. Like most people a significant amount of this has to do with my personal feelings, outlook on life, and the experiences of those close to me. I've seen a bunch of people get off with a slap on the wrist for things like this way too often for second chances to be a default option.
Honestly I'm kind of envious of people like smacaski who have the ability to forgive, but not forget.
I might feel more confident in the forgive part if I had more faith in the accuracy of the evaluations for treatment programs for individuals such as these.
As it is, my experiences have told me it's pretty easy to "pass" these tests if you want to do so.

Of course, it's easy to be hardliner on a stranger rather than your best friend right?
That said, a general rule I have for people I'm close to is if you own your damage and are actively taking steps to work on it then you still get to be part of my life in some way. This might be phone and email conversations only or me going to their place alone. However, without clearing a much higher bar than that I would not feel comfortable giving them access to other people in my life or my communities and thus probably won't be allowed at my house.