How to deal with the Elie Wiesel accusation

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A woman has accused the late Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel of groping her some 28 years ago, one of many women speaking out in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein revelations about their own experiences with harassment and assault.
Accusations like this seem to cause people to retreat to their corners and stick to their guns. The reactions I've seen tend to be either "wow, what a scumball" to "she's just a publicity-seeker ruining the reputation of a man who can no longer defend himself".




The truth is that there's no way for sure to know the truth. I take this accusation with a little grain of salt, because there's been no pattern of accusations against Wiesel before, no hint of this sort of behavior. But I'm not willing to dismiss it out of hand, either. The misogyny evident in some of the comments from her detractors is disturbing. A woman who makes this sort of accusation should be taken seriously. That doesn't mean we automatically believe her, but we can't just dismiss her account..

And what if it's not true? That doesn't mean she's lying. She could sincerely believe her account, the mind filling in details from an accidental brush over 28 years.

But it might be absolutely true. He might actually have grabbed her sexually. And that leaves us with another fallen hero. Another man who turns out to have been a sexual predator.

Ultimately, we need to take a wait-and-see attitude. See if other women come forward, if there's a pattern to his behavior. I don't think we should let one unsubstantiated accusation ruin the way we remember Wiesel. But neither can we just ignore it. For now, that means living with that doubt and having an asterisk next to his hero status, so to speak.

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