What I see in CoulsdonUK is a strand of thinking from the UK that I find baffling. It's like they would be betraying Meredith, her family and the Queen herself by supporting Amanda Knox. I don't understand the view. I can not comprehend it completely. Amanda after all is human first; shouldn't there be concern that the verdict is correct on that grounds. It seems with this strand of thought Amanda and Raffaele do not matter. That only Meredith and her family are important.
I alluded to that earlier, because it's something I see a lot. It's particularly prevalent where there has been a successful appeal against a conviction, even where the original conviction has been a blatant miscarriage of justice. How dare anyone acquit this person, my child's memory has been sullied and s/he has been denied justice, and so on.
I don't think I've ever seen a reaction from the victim's family which has said, now we realise that the accused person didn't do it, our sympathies are also with them and their family for their ordeal, and we hope the case can be re-opened and the real culprit apprehended as soon as possible. I don't think I even heard that after the original acquittals in the Damilola Taylor case, even though that is
exactly what subsequently happened.
I'm afraid I'm often reduced to impotent shouting at the television to the effect that what bloody good do you think it's going to do your son/daughter to bang up the wrong person for the murder??
This view is hardly unique to the UK, though. Hasn't Alt+F4 been harping on this notion constantly throughout the thread?
I have to agree, although it's something I see a lot, it hadn't occurred to me it was a peculiarly British reaction.
Some people, for whatever reason, seem to think it's absolutely necessary for every pro-innocence person to reiterate again and again that Meredith is the "true victim" before the discussion can go on about whether Amanda and Raffaele might not also be victims, too, albeit lesser victims. To them, even considering that these two people might be innocent is an insult to Meredith unless you couch it terms of how horrible this all must be for her family, and how insensitive it is to question whether her family might be wrong. Frankly, I find it bizarre, and I tend to think it's more of a ploy to derail the discussion than anything else.
I see that a lot in the posts at PMF. Well, of course Meredith was the innocent victim of a particularly brutal and harrowing murder, and the thought of that must haunt her parents every day of their lives. It pretty much goes without saying, though it doesn't hurt to say it from time to time.
But what the hell does that have to do with justifying attempts to pin a spurious conviction on a couple of other innocent kids, no matter how stupidly they behaved in the days following the murder?
Rolfe.
