Topics Ethics

Question If you know that your step son has committed child abuse, but you care for the well-being of the two (now adult) young women you know he abused and you feel that to pursue justice would cause not only the young women pain, but his father (who you also love) and his mother too, should you pursue justice anyway? Should you alert the child protection agencies in his area when you discover he has married and is expecting a child? If you discover that your much-loved brother abused your much-loved sisters many years ago when they were all children and the abuse has clearly caused deep emotional scarring and long term mental illness, should you punish your brother? Tell on him to his wife? Alert the social services to the potential danger his children might be in? Can you rationally forgive him? Or your step-son for that matter? And if you take steps to inform the authorities about them, how do you face your other family members who in both cases are vehemently opposed to this course of action? I know that there are issues about feelings and revenge here but I am really not interested in them - it is knowing what I "ought" to do, if anything, that I am wrestling with! This story has taken over ten years to mature and I have not yet reached a conclusion about what the "Right Thing To Do" might be. Perhaps you can help...

Accepted:
September 6, 2008

Comments

You raise a lot of issues here, but let me say something about the fiat iustitia, ruat caelum principle, the idea that you must pursue justice though the heavens fall, which you certainly touch on in an interesting way. There are clearly circumstances when righting past wrongs judicially seems besides the point, since it would be in no one's interests to do so, or so it seems. It might not be in the interests of the parties concerned anymore, but on the other hand the deterrent effect on other potential criminals is an important consideration, the fact that even after a long time a court can punish someone for his past egregious behaviour may give a potential child abuser pause for thought. And that may help vulnerable people in the future.
On the other hand, there are your relationships with family members which will be irretrievably damaged by bringing such a charge, and the suffering that that would cause, which certainly needs to be taken into consideration. Only you can say where you think the balance lies here between your public duty to society and your private concern to maintain family links and the suffering that breaking them would cause for a lot of people who are entirely innocent.
People often poke fun at the idea that justice is worth pursuing even in circumstances when it has no obvious effect on anything else, and consequentialists, those who think that we should give the consequences of our actions a leading role in assessing their moral worth, often criticize punishment when there is no discernible benefit to anyone resulting from it. There has often seemed to me to be something very satisfying about justice being played out, even when it affects someone whom one otherwise likes or respects negatively. For religious people this role is no doubt carried out by God, and perhaps in our fallible way we should try to pursue it as far as we can, since without a strong human demand for justice it is difficult to see how the weak are to be protected or the guilty constrained from their evil deeds.