Read this long essay, An Unbelievable Story of Rape. Or don’t. Some of you might think it’s just a little too believable, and would rather not suffer through the misery.
Here’s the short version to help you decide. A young woman with a troubled history is attacked in her apartment one night. She’s in shock. She reports the crime to the police. The police pick at little discrepancies in her story, pressure her to recant. Full of self-doubt and stress, she does…she wonders if maybe she dreamt it all. The police drop the case, and then decide to prosecute her for wasting their time.
Later, in another state, more diligent police officers track down and ultimately arrest a serial rapist. In his room, they find his “trophies” — he collects underwear and takes photos of his bound and terrorized victims. And there in his collection, they find a photo of a young woman they don’t recognize.
Guess who?
It’s a terrible story of gaslighting and a criminal justice system that would rather sweep crimes against women under a rather large and strangely lumpy rug. This is the story of false rape accusations a lot of people would rather you didn’t hear.
Another horrifying example of the toxic combination of coercive interrogation and biased police.
Causes of Wrongful Conviction.
The police were biased for a reason.
“The two women who had helped raise Marie talked on the phone. Peggy told Shannon she had doubts. Shannon said she did, too. Neither had known Marie to be a liar — to exaggerate, sure, to want attention, sure — but now, both knew they weren’t alone in wondering if Marie had made this up.
“On Aug. 12, the day after Marie reported being raped, Sgt. Mason’s telephone rang. The caller “related that [Marie] had a past history of trying to get attention and the person was questioning whether the ‘rape’ had occurred,” Mason later wrote.
“Mason’s report didn’t identify the caller — but the caller was Peggy.”
I hate cops, for the same reason I hate all thugs and gang members, but in this particular case their behavior was understandable.
Sure, totes understandable. We got Peggy who does not believe in rape happening, so why should the cops believe in rape happening? I mean, it’s not like it’s their job to investigate whether a crime has happened or not. Really, some person who gives them a phone call is much more qualified to make that decision.
+++
Waiting for Penny L to explain to us how everything that happened to this woman was just worth it and how she was totally not harmed by reporting…
For joel, from the article:
The police disregarded physical evidence in favor of their own biases. So no, not understandable.
Won’t go there. Can’t. It never changes, except for the worst.
I find it extremely telling that very the second comment here– regarding an article which describes, in detail, the extent to which police will go to coerce a rape victim into recanting and the way people in a victim’s sphere will automatically cast doubt if she’s not perfect in every possible respect– is focused on making apologetics for the extent to which police went to coerce a rape victim into recanting and complete obliviousness to the way gaslighting works.
Why are you putting more stock in a single gaslighting phone call than in the entire body of evidence, joel? Why did the police? Why would someone, who by their own words never had considered the victim a liar before, decide to go out of their way to cast doubt on her claim of rape rather than trusting her, believing her, and supporting her during the investigation?
And Bill Cosby is countersuing at least eight of the women he raped.
So the message is basically “stay quiet ladies, no one will believe you anyway, and if you manage to make the charges stick you’re gonna be sued by your rapist or the cops who are meant to protect you.”
*spits*
#6 should read “that the very second ” not “that very the second”. Fuck you, Typos, I was too choosing my words carefully.
One of the most chilling parts of the article for me is this:
So up to 9 other rape victims were disbelieved by the Lynwood police. But the one false rape accusation that was made in a Rolling Stone piece last year was national news for weeks.
FTA:
No, joel, I don’t agree their behavior was understandable, and it sounds like Sgt. Mason himself recognizes that now. A tip from her foster mothers impugning her character is certainly something they should have taken into evidence… and then weighed alongside the rest of the evidence, and pursued an investigation to gather more evidence. Instead they used it as an excuse to coerce her into a false recantation.
Also, two of the “thugs and gangsters” you hate so much, Det. Galbraith and Sgt. Hendershot, were the ones who had the dedication and skill to put together the evidence, find the rapist, and get him locked away, protecting all the other women the predator would have attacked.
Joel:
Oh the fuck they were. How does it feel to be justifying rape culture, Joel? In case you were unaware, that’s exactly what you are doing. The cops are supposed to investigate, not take the word of random family member / neighbour / whatever. When cops are more comfortable confirming their personal biases, you get victims being trod on, and innocent people being railroaded. So what then, Joel, you just say “yep, reasonable, so yay” ? This is the same reasoning that left Holzclaw at large for so long – oh, addicts, sex workers, women with criminal records, who the fuck is gonna believe them? Most people don’t think twice when confronted with the old standard, b!tches be lying, and yes, that is one massive problem.
It’s also beyond absurd just how much most people do not want to think about a crime, when that crime is rape. Any other crime, people are happy to dissect to one end and down the other, but rape? Not so much.
I’m trying to figure out why this story is unbelievable. Is it because in some other state police did diligent work and actually caught someone?
Nope, sorry, not reading it. I’ve had enough of vitamin Rage today.
Onamission, #4 & #6, caine #11: the gaslighting phone call was from someone who knew the victim better than anyone else: her foster mother. And it wasn’t just a call:
“She called police to share her concerns. Mason then came to her home and interviewed her in person. When she told police of her skepticism, she asked to be treated anonymously. “I didn’t want it to get back to Marie,” Peggy says. “I was trying to be a good citizen, actually. You know? I didn’t want them to waste their resources on something that might be, you know, this personal drama going on.””
Granted, everything the cop did after that – the threats and coercion to get Marie to recant – was evil. This man should not be working in law enforcement, or really any job that requires dealing with people. But I still insist that a decision to drop this investigation was understandable.
I must say that, at the very least, the other cops did their job properly. And the fact that Sgt. Mason is feeling contrite and admits to fault is *much* better than what is usually the case for these kinds of events. But that is small comfort for the 9 women who were dismissed and thrown to the wolves by this office.
it’s… ugh
Fuck you, rape culture apologist
Nope, unless the cop was a misogynist asshole, which you admit he was. The following are the only reasons to drop a rape case before a thorough investigation:
.
.
.
.
.
*crickets chirring*
joel, I seem to have read another article than you did. In the one I read, even the police whose decision to drop the investigation you now defend as “reasonable” admitted that the fucked up big time, that what they have done was wrong on many levels.
I haven’t read the article. Reading the synopsis was enough for me to know what I was going to get into if I did (also I had just prior read an article about sexism in Extreme Metal and failed to follow the advise of the person who posted it and promptly read the comments), and as gijoel stated, I had enough vitamin rage for the day. That being said I have one nit to pick with joel’s position that the cop’s decision was understandable because her foster mother called to inform the police that her foster daughter was just attention seeking: that does not sound like the statement of A) a person who knows the victim very well or B) one who cares about said victim’s well being. Yes people do some pretty stupid and fucked up things for attention, and if that woman was even remotely the mother she should have been even as a foster mother, she should have stayed the fuck out of the police’s business and not gone out of her way to undermine her foster daughter’s attempts for justice, or if it turned out to be a false allegation, let her get nailed for it in proper due course. What she did resulted in a pretty fucked up result and there is nothing “understandable” about it.
Lastly, just having someone in your care does not mean you know anything about that person. Claiming that her status as Marie’s foster mother means she should be given more credence in this case is beyond stupid. There are plenty of well meaning and decent parents who ultimately know nothing about their kids, so that rational is bad and without evidence.
@Tashiliciously Shriked, the cops actually working the case still didn’t do anything about Sgt. Mason.
That was a heavy read.
But here is the unsurprising ending:
Despite the reviews’ tough language, no one in the Lynnwood Police Department was disciplined.
Of course not! Cops on camera shoot people and they don’t get disciplined.
Joel:
:sigh: I’ve been reading you for a long while. I had thought you were better than this, better than settling for status quo toxic sexism, better than settling in to willful ignorance. Welcome to the endless ranks of rape apologists, Joel.
Oh, and just for the record, that whole “the person who knew her besty best best, her foster mother!” is absolute crap. You don’t know (nor do I) what that relationship consisted of, what the dynamics were, or how honest foster mom was about anything. Most of the regulars here are aware of the horror story my childhood was, but from the outside, why my family was just fuckin’ perfect. I was being raped, and the adults in my life were aware of it, and I was often described to people outside the family as having an extreme imagination, prone to fantasy, and a child who lied, all the time, about everything. That’s not uncommon when there’s serious dysfunction happening.
On top of everything else, the victim whose account was dismissed was apparently this serial rapist’s first victim, attacked before he had perfected his methods of minimizing DNA evidence. Not only was that victim victimized twice, but at least four other women who he assaulted over the next three years might have escaped unscathed had that first report been properly investigated and the perpetrator arrested.
FRom the text it is clear that the foster mother had only been her foster mother for a short time.
That a teenager had been dumped on her when she was expecting a baby or toddler.
That the young woman subsequently dumped her and moved out.
And then they spend an afternoon together with the new foster kids and then the ex foster mother thinks the victim was trying to get attention.
Sorry, but that sounds:
1) not like a very close relationship
2) somebody projecting their own guilty feelings when she was not coping well with the whole situation.
And it still does not explain why the police simply ignored the solid physical evidence of bruises and vaginal abrasions.
Assuming that any family member knows a victim very well is a mistake. Assuming that any family member is acting in good faith is a mistake. Assuming that all family relationships and dynamics are wonderful, close, and great is a mistake.
From the quotes given by Shannon, it is also quite clear she had many preconceived notions about the way a true rape victim would act, and those lead to her doubts.
She wasn’t acting the way she expected her to act. Which was sadly ignorance on her part, seemingly expecting her to act like a victim in a movie, acting sad, and scared and looking troubled. The bedding story certainly doesn’t make me question the validity of her story either, and I am not sure why she took it that way. It just speaks of more mistaken ideas about how rape victims are supposed to act. If anything, the anger attached to it would make me wonder if there was a real problem behind it.
The same goes for the gut feelings of Peggy, as described in the article. Feelings based off experiences watching Law & Order, thinking she was not acting the way a true victim would act: “She seemed so detached and removed emotionally.” Both had poor reasoning based on incorrect notions they had in their head, and they reported them, and the police seemed to think they were worth listening to.
joel @ #14:
Well, if her ex-foster mother said she must be lying to get attention, that has got to be the god’s honest truth, then. Never mind the part where both foster parents said that Marie hadn’t been known to lie. No need to complete an actual police investigation of the existing, already collected evidence, no need to take into account the wrist abrasions and vaginal bruising, ex-foster mom says she might be lying and foster mom’s phone call trumps all, investigation over, the end.
Sounds reasonable. Totes. I am sure the exact same exemplary standards would be applied to claims of mugging, battery, or attempted murder, especially if the victim was a dude. I will definitely take into consideration, if I need to report a crime in the future, the fact that the word of people who used to live with me and weren’t even there when the crime took place will be given more weight than my own account of my own experience.
Travis:
One of the detectives who came to interview me in the hospital said something similar to me, along the lines of wondering why I wasn’t very emotional. It was brought up again later, by the D.A., saying it wouldn’t help that I wasn’t having a sort of breakdown at that point.
Because being in shock is never ever quiet, right? What fucking idiots.
Caine:
I am not at all surprised to hear that. It is so frustrating that these preconceived notions of the correct patterns of behavior continue to exist. I was talking to my girlfriend about this, she is in medical school and they recently had a section about dealing with rape victims, how to react and what to expect. They really stressed that one should not have these expectations. From this story it is also clear police guidelines exist saying the same thing. But when it comes down to it, maybe people default to the idea that people should be emotional, and something is amiss if that is not the case.
Afraid that I an going to go off topic here so you have fair warning.
Expecting people to be “emotional” after surviving a traumatic event can pervert how people view that event.
Yes, this is extremely anecdotal but it still scares me.
In 1984, my college had a speaker who survived Auschwitz working as a sonderkommando. He gave a rather gruff testimony about what he went through four decades before. (Needless to say, it was grim. Look up what sonderkommandos were forced to do.)
After the speech was over and walking away from the auditorium, I could over hear some of my fellow students (Mostly white and most middle and upper class.) talking about unconvincing he was. The reason why, he did not break down while recounting what he went through. Never mind that this happened forty years earlier. And he would not have survived if he were to break down.
It is as if too many people expect survivors to be at and stay at being on the verge of breaking down if not falling apart within their sight.
Travis:
Just so. When it comes to cops though, if you’re emotional, that works against you as well because it’s often put down as hysterical attention seeking, and a person is told “you’re very emotional, you need to calm down”, which I’m sure I don’t need to say is not fuckin’ helpful.
During my years of advocacy, I found [most] medical personnel to be light years better to deal with than cops. Having to do rape exams is extremely tough on those who have to do it, they feel as if they are violating the victim all over again, and it’s important for those who do exams to have good support themselves. You’d think cops would have a handle on the infinite variations of how people respond, but so many of them default to stereotypical ideas. Medical people see people reacting and responding every possible way, so permutations don’t strike them as terribly odd.
Rowan:
In my case, there was a lot of physical damage. I wasn’t thinking about much of anything outside of pain. Really, no one needs to be a rocket surgeon to figure that out.
In your job, I expect you see all manner of people reacting differently in a situation where a decision needs to be made on whether or not to put an animal down. It’s simply not reliable to make judgments based on reaction.
This video is a pertinent one to this particular case. Behaviour which is allowed to slide, slide, slide, sexist thoughts going unchecked and more, it leads to adults (men and women) who think and behave like the cops and the foster mother did in this case. Once again, I’m sad to remark that there was very little commentary on the video, especially from men. Whenever there’s a post or a video that deals with the basic everyday that girls and women can expect, no one wants to pay attention, and then they wonder why shit like this keeps happening.
Blunted or flat emotional affect is a classic symptom of trauma. Social workers and healthcare workers have been trained to notice it, but I doubt most police training programs spend much time on victim psychology.
While I was reading the part of the article talking about how Marie’s demeanor kept changing when the police brought her in for questioning, I kept thinking, of course it fucking did. Here you have a traumatized victim, who is also a past victim of child rape, who is also a young person shuffled inexplicably from family to family throughout her formative years, trying to get heard and believed by people she hopes she can trust, people she needs to trust, and figuring out she’s got none of the above. Not heard, not believed, no one she can trust, rejected again, betrayed again, in the process of realizing all of that while traumatized, and she’s supposed to stay at an emotional constant?
In her shoes, I’d probably be simultaneously wracking my brain trying to figure out exactly how I was expected to act so that I could get what I needed, while consumed by panic, in the process of shutting down because of all the horrible. Marie says as much later on, the way she describes what sounded to me like disassociation. I don’t see how anyone couldn’t tell what was happening with her unless they started out with the belief that she was the bad guy and allowed that bias to taint their every perception. That’s the only way, to my mind, the interference from the foster mom got taken seriously rather than dismissed as so much meddling. They already didn’t want to believe Marie. They were already predisposed to treating rape victims like criminal offenders.
Travis @26
There is no “right way” to act after a traumatic experience. There are a number of common responses, yes, but no “right way” to act. Some get angry, some “shut down”, some try to pretend that it didn’t happen (denial), some have complete breakdowns, there’s a whole range of perfectly normal responses.
FTA
Isn’t that normal for a teenager?
Because nobody ever, ever tries to pretend that “nothing happened” in an attempt to erase their trauma, amirite?
Sounds like she was particularly attached to that set. Again, this isn’t exactly an abnormal reaction, particularly for a child who’s been through the foster-care system. When all you have is, like, your blankets and some clothes… you know?
Because you just want to get things back to “the way they were before”.
Travis (same comment)
And some victims do react that way. The mistake that the foster-mums and the police make is expecting every victim to react in exactly the same manner. I can almost understand it in the foster parents, but the police have no excuse for not being aware of the full range of trauma responses.
Also, “detached and removed emotionally” — yeah, that’s kinda what you do when you’re trying like hell to pretend that the trauma that just happened didn’t really happen to you. It’s called dissociation.
Caine @32
Oof. Yeah. That… yeah. No. Doesn’t help. Gives the abuser reinforcement. It’s one of the reasons I don’t trust the police. Sorry, having trouble finding my words right now.
Tethys @35
YES! THAT!
As someone in the Metafilter thread on this article pointed out, Marie was disbelieved both for being too emotional and not emotional enough:
@Caine, #33-
Yes. It’s astounding the number of people who bring in a dog for a possible euthanasia… and ask for the nails to be trimmed. Or the people who cannot/do not want to see that something is drastically wrong with their animal. And you have the people who, upon hearing their animal has an incurable cancer who have an absolute meltdown in the exam room, and that who just accept it.
For myself, I’ve had to euthanise several of my own pets/foster animals. For the first few days I’m able to keep my “I’m a vet tech” hat in place….. and then I completely lose it. I often seem totally unaffected at first, because that’s how I handle horrible news. But it does effect me, and I do eventually have a more ‘typical’ reaction… but I also have that reaction when I’m *alone*. I do not have grief meltdowns in front of others.
Soraya Chemaly in The Nation last year: How Did The FBI Miss Over 1 Million Rapes
this is so infuriating. and not because it’s outrageous but because it’s *normative*. it’s the baseline, average experience that rape victims experience when reporting – you’re probably lying until you can produce photographic evidence. if there had been no photo of maria, there would have been no justice for her either. gah. and i can’t help but notice that the women who were taken seriously in colorado were *mainly* older women – not adolescents or stereotypically young and attractive. the 26-year-old that was the initial contact with one of the (also female, which i think is telling) cops was noted as trying very hard to memorize specific details (like the pink camera), thus making her pointedly more trustworthy than average. the fact that the older women in the story are apparently not questioned to an extreme extent when they make their claims? that points to some really telling and really squicky kinds of thoughts about the way that cops and society in general think about rape. like, nobody normal wants to have sex with a 50/60-year-old so if they were attacked it must be by a deviant rapist, right? but those flighty young women just made shit up or regretted a one-night-stand. (please note that i do not think this myself, i am just remarking on the way that there is not the same level of scrutiny from the cops, as elucidated in the reporting, on the older women as there is on the younger women – maria for sure, and also the 26-year-old, who the journalists go out of their way to reiterate that the cops found her trustworthy due to her attention to detail, which seems to imply that normally the assumption would be that she would be unreliable and not serious??) all of this is just horrible. our justice system seems to be broken from top to bottom and it’s hard to see a way forward. other than sharing stories like this as far and wide as possible and getting into all the epic internet flamewars that i possibly can with people who think this kind of kyriarchal bullshit is somehow justified. it’s just so exhausting. i love reading the regular commenters here. you guys are fighting the fucking good fight.
Yep, people react differently in real life than they do in movies*. And everybody reacts differently. I’m completely calm in moments of crisis, at least I appear to be. Friendly, focussed. No matter if it’s happening to me or to others or if it’s a fucking hurricane. It’s a great skill because no crisis has ever been solved by having a meltdown.
Sure, once everybody is safe I’ll have my breakdown. So fuck anybody who thinks that there’s ONE reaction to experiencing a crisis, trauma or assault and that it looks like on TV.
That young woman, Marie, she must be one of the toughest people to ever have lived. She made it through a childhood and youth without a real home and family and she still became a pretty well adjusted young woman. And then this was used against her, her personal history of growing up in foster care, something she had absolutely NO control over was used against her. She can’t have been raped, she must be lying because she’s a troubled teen.
*Have you ever noticed how women have babies on TV? Everything is fine until they suddenly break down and know that labour has started and then they can’t even walk anymore? Nope, not like real life at all.
Even if she were a pathological liar who regularly experienced vivid hallucinations, I still don’t see why the police shouldn’t check the physical evidence.
One thing that was highlighted for me was that the short term foster mother had some ‘experience’ with mental health issues in young people and still leapt to the same conclusions about the ‘over’ (and then ‘under’) emotional state of her one time ward. Even people with some training and background in mental health will not be trauma experts and they will get it wrong.
Again it was this hateful hyperskepticism – don’t believe the young woman, because she’s a woman but accept everything a ‘friend’ tells you because ‘why would *they*lie?
It was also incredibly sad that the two women detectives who actually pushed on with the case were described as caring about rape victims because they were wives and mothers. Or maybe they were just good detectives in a field where that’s a rare thing?
I saw a TV report by Jana Wendt many years ago. She was interviewing a female rape victim who was expressing relief that her rapist was locked up in prison and could no longer get at her. The reporter seemed extremely sympathetic and praised the victim for her courage but wondered what the situation might be like when the rapist was finally released. The victim said she was very nervous about what might happen, but took consolation in knowing that while the criminal was in jail she was completely safe.
“Oh,” said the reporter (as near as I can remember), “Didn’t you know? The rapist was released from prison this morning!” A look of horror and fear spread across the stunned rape victim’s face. [And that’s where I turned the TV off.]
Not a GOOD reason.
Competent police should never be biased. They should have taken that phone call as one piece of evidence deserving of no greater weight than any others, and, had they done so, it would have been obvious early on that the evidence in favour of the victim telling the truth vastly outweighed any evidence against, at which point in time they could have safely disregarded the phone call.
Understandable only in the sense that the police conduct in this case was grossly incompetent and unprofessional, and we can understand how this happened because we know that grossly incompetent and unprofessional police conduct with respect to rape cases occurs far more frequently than it should.
Even if someone had a history of “exaggeration” and “lying”, it doesn’t automatically mean that this time, they’re not telling the truth.
A lot of people overlook the fact that in the classic tale of the Boy Who Cried Wolf, the townspeople *screwed THEMSELVES over* by not believing him the last time. If the setting is anything like the typical small town/village, the boy’s sheep would have been a major part of the local economy, and their loss to the real wolf likely means at least several villagers are going to starve/freeze to death the next winter.
Flip sides of sloppy, shallow, inept thinking.
Hindsight fallacy. The townspeople made a rational inductive inference. How many times does Lucy have to snatch away the ball before it becomes irrelevant that she might not the next time?
But that has nothing to do with this case. First, Marie was known not to be dishonest. But even if that weren’t the case, it doesn’t matter because, as the outside investigator said, the police “ignor[ed] strong evidence the crime had occurred” … and instead focused on “bullying”, “hounding”, “threatening jail and a possible withdrawal of housing assistance if Marie failed a polygraph” … “These statements are coercive, cruel, and unbelievably unprofessional …I can’t imagine ANY justification for making these statements.” This is nothing at all like the townspeople in The Boy Who Cried Wolf, who repeatedly gave the boy the benefit of the doubt even after he had repeatedly lied, and laughed at them for believing him.
Something told me that Giliell, the rape denialist, would bring me into this discussion.
I don’t think this is true. The article describes some horrific behaviour, both on the part of the perpetrator and the police. But if there is a silver lining, it is this:
It is one thing to say that the criminal justice system, broadly speaking, has issues dealing with sexual assault (and not just against women). It is quite another to take this specific case and say the people invoved with it just didn’t care about rape. I don’t think that assertion is backed up by the facts.
Final question for Giliell – the rapist in this case got 327 1/2 years in prison for his crimes. How many years would he have received if his victims had not reported their assaults to the police, waited years and years without telling anyone, and then finally sent out a tweet or two?
Forgot this little tidbit –
Database of unsolved cases…how would the police have one of those if rapes never get reported to them?
Penny L, you still don’t seem to understand the fact that WE. ARE. NOT. SAYING. NEVER. TELL. THE. COPS.
We are saying, that we totally understand why someone wouldn’t tell the cops (because they don’t want the added trauma of being called a liar by the very people supposed to protect them, etc).
We are saying that they ARE NOT TO BLAME FOR ANYTHING if they do not tell the cops.
We are saying that we totally support anyone who DOES tell the cops, and that they need that support pretty badly as evidenced by this case.
YOU want to pin some blame for the rapists behaviour on a victim who does not report.
YOU are the one ignoring the huge pile of backlogged rape kits and ones that got destroyed.
YOU are the one crowing about one of very VERY few convictions as if that proves going to the cops is *always* the right choice.
YOU are the one ignoring the fact that even most rapists who make it to trial do not go to jail. This case was a rare and beautiful exception on that front.
Note that Maria, one of the victims, was charged with a crime for reporting what happened to her. So not only do rape victims face questions about everything from their mental health to their sexual history, they also face the possibility that they will be charged with a crime if they report that they were raped. Yes, of course it would be better if every woman were the platonic ideal of bravery and reported anyway, but if you can’t sort out why some women (and men and people of other genders) might fail to report there is something wrong with your empathy.
This case was unusual…unusual in that the police were diligent enough to eventually catch the criminal.
Penny L likes to quote specific cases to support their argument yet the Case of B in my sexual assault going through the entire court system and coming out unscathed is suspiciously unaddressed.
Again, I stress that Penny L has not been a good faith actor in the weeks they’ve swooped in to casually victim blame repeatedly.
Rowan, #52
You’re speaking way too clearly there for Penny to understand.
Penny L, liar and bullshitter.
YOU don’t know that the initial response by the cops was why women don’t report rape, as they are seen as liars and bullshitters by the misogynist police force? What delusional world do YOU live in, and what are you doing to REWARD women and the cops who believe them? Nada, nil, zero, zilch, zip. All talk, no action….
Amphiox, I always thought they screwed themselves over by putting a child in charge of the sheep when they thought there might be a wolf about… And by not coming running when they heard the flock being ripped apart. Sheep can be pretty loud when they want to be.