Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: The woman in the Jevon McSkimming saga wasn't innocent here

So it turns out the woman with whom Jevon McSkimming had an affair, whose warnings police ignored and who police charged instead of investigating McSkimming, is still facing charges.

This is the news today. And the police are having to defend this.

Now, the charges don't relate to messages that she sent about McSkimming. Those charges have been dropped. They relate to messages that she allegedly sent to another policeman - the officer who originally arrested her - and the emails she allegedly sent to his wife.

Now, this is undoubtedly going to look bad for police because it will look like they are still persecuting a victim. But how about we take the emotion out of it and look at it again?

Just because Jevon McSkimming is a creep and clearly the villain of the story doesn't mean that she is necessarily innocent. I mean, look at the allegations. Allegedly emailing a police officer is one thing. Allegedly emailing his wife is something else.

And this is after some pretty bunny-boiler behaviour, including sending 300 emails to McSkimming and others over a series of years.

Now, there will be some people who have complete sympathy for her in this, who will say that the allegations show that she is a woman driven mad by being ignored and gaslit by the very people that she was asking for help.

 And that may well be true, and I suspect that it is, and I feel sorry for her, and I feel sorry for the horrible situation that Jevon McSkimming, the absolute creep, has put her in.

But I still don't think it justifies alleged lawbreaking as a response, because that logic is the very same logic that is used by the soft judges who read cultural reports about offenders' childhoods and then excuse them for what they did because of what was originally done to them when they were kids. Do you follow what I'm saying?

Now, having said all of that, if you're of the view that she only sent a bunch of emails, so who really cares? Then why do we have the law?

Now, that's a fair debate. We can have a debate about that law because not everyone loves the Harmful Digital Communications Act.

But if the law exists, and if you allegedly break that law and the police, despite realizing how bad it will look for them to charge you, still choose to charge you, then isn't there a case to answer?

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