• LeylaLove [she/her, love/loves]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    Not Australian, but it’s a legal thing in America (for some crimes) where someone can get out of being liable for something if someone realistically should have stopped it. There are city clerks that have gotten out of embezzlement charges because their scheme was so obvious that someone should have noticed and stopped it long before.

    Doubt this applies to being a pedo, but this type of thinking is codified in law. We can be disgusted by a pedophile being a pedophile, but this is a statement that speaks to wider systematic issues.

    • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
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      1 year ago

      I’m American and I want an example of someone getting away with a crime because it was so obvious that someone should have noticed.

      • Not necessarily getting away with the crime, but I was referring to Rita Crundwell, a town clerk who embezzled over $53 million dollars over the course of 30 years. The town had a total population of 15k. She literally just wrote fake invoices for shit and deposited it into another account. Then proceeded to spend it a prize horse and mansion with absolutely no explanation of where the money came from. She still was held responsible, but got off fairly light because she was so brazen that someone else should have caught it earlier.

        Coincidentally, Ronald Reagan’s childhood hometown. Started during '83 as well.