For the record, I am both a victim of abuse and have also worked with and been friends with probably hundreds or thousands of other people in this situation. While Bowman may have been forgiven by Beach, or Beach may have supported him getting the job with the Oilers, and while Kennedy has said he's changed and helped out a lot, neither of these things are universal to every situation. If Beach forgave him, great. That's his own personal choice. It doesn't mean that any fans or other victims have to do the same, of which I might remind you there are at least two more that Aldritch was convicted of.
I believe in second chances and I believe in rehabilitation and not punishment, and if Bowman has met the criteria for that then great, I'd be more than happy to see him rejoin the industry and work his way back to where he was, or to go off and be a millionaire somewhere else. That doesn't mean I think he should be given a high profile GM job that pays a lot though. None of us know how true these things Bowman and Kennedy has said, nor do we know every thought and emotion that goes on in their heads or how his relationship is with Beach and the other victims.
People are upset that a millionaire is going to continue being a millionaire and that he's been given one of the best teams in the League to handle. I don't think there's any "rage baiting" going on here, except perhaps by some of the deleted posts in here about how Bowman did nothing wrong, or that it's Beach's fault that Aldritch went on to assault more kids,
This is not true and is dangerous misinformation. Victims are the hardest people to get to report a crime, and it's almost always someone else who has reached out to a victim and gives them support and the ability to get away from their abuser. You know what organization is often times great for doing that? The police. And don't get me wrong, American Police especially can be awful with victims. But they can also be good and even in the case of the situation that has been talked about here where the victim doesn't want to press charges or have any kind of investigation or support, calling the police still leaves a paper trail and allows for external investigations to be done that don't involve that specific victim at all, and can also provide evidence to be used.
Just because an investigation happens doesn't mean the victim is going to be publicized in the media or that everyone is going to know who they are. In super high profile situations like this one, yes it's more likely that happens since we're dealing with a high profile prospect of a sports team, but it's certainly not a requirement or part of the law and police investigate crimes that don't have victims or witnesses all the time. In many cases this is related to property, but you don't have to have 300 witnesses to car jacking to prosecute someone who stole 300 cars.
In any case the absolute best possible thing you can do in any instances of abuse is to give the victim support, follow up with them, and give them resources to escape the abuse. Calling the police, CPS, or other organizations that deal with the law, or shelters, rape crisis centres, or specific organizations in your area is one of the best things you can do for a victim, especially if they aren't being abused by a spouse/partner/someone they live with or has major control over them.
Yes, a lot of victims don't want to be publicized or tell anyone because of a variety of reasons. But that doesn't really help them, does it? As a victim your mentality often becomes that this doesn't make any sense, so it must either be something I'm doing, or there's some other reason for it. Because abuse doesn't make sense. We often think that if we just argue the point better, or if we stop doing the thing they're yelling at us for, or if we're just better in school or our job, or if we just don't report it as a rape and make them breakfast like we would after any other one night stand, that the abuse isn't really abuse after all, it's totally logical and we can cope with that better. You can be so gaslit by somebody that even the most basic of things become mistakes that you shouldn't make that justify your "abuse". This can't be abuse because they love you, they bought you a car, they don't make you pay rent, the birthed you, whatever it is. You hear it over and over again.
My point is that it's incredibly, incredibly hard for any one person to break out of those mentalities. The easiest way, by far, is to get support and to not be in that situation any more. THAT is why in a lot of cases (and no, not all of them) involving an agency or someone else is an extremely good thing to do. It forces the situation to change. If you have someone who follows up with you every week they're more likely to notice patterns of abuse and you're MUCH more likely to have evidence that doesn't just stem from your testimony and he said/she said talk.
The main place this can backfire is with spousal or domestic abusers who have much more control over your life and live with you, and therefore likely have access to you more than anyone else. But that's kind of a different story, because in this thread we're not talking about that.
The Blackhawks especially failed at taking these steps to satisfaction, and while Bowman is certainly by far not the only one to blame, he does share some of that blame. I wouldn't put him as the prime reason for any of this by any means, it's just a fact that no one really did what was needed to satisfaction when the situation happened.
I have to say that as someone who just read the entire thread at once it's pretty insane to me that people are crediting Bowman with the moves Tallon made as GM because he had so much clout with the organization that Tallon- the real GM- was forced to go along with his ideas, but 30 pages later there are people acting like informing his superior was the only thing he could do and that if he did anything else he would be fired by the president or something?
