Thanks to the fellow I got in a tangle with yesterday for understanding why I flared up a bit. As or the sg guy - he makes it obvious that no one need pay any attention.

And I LIKED the joke about playing blues on a nylon string guitar. Something Davy Graham, Jerry Reed, and Charlie Byrd were all pretty good at. You could trust Charlie, though - can't vouch of the rest of us!   :-)

But the person who attacked Mary Christine - what in hell can that be about? You actually sit there and self-righteously hurl things at someone identifying herself as the mother of a victim here? Wow. Just wow. As I said before, attack me if you must. But you are going to have to live with attacks made towards victims if the allegations bear out (and believe me, much more is being said in private than in public at this point, and I don't think that the statements from the families of victims are just "hearsay," though I understand that unclear allusions to them from people like myself might be). PLEASE don't go there, people. DON'T ATTACK THE VICTIMS.

What is known is that Mary C. and Gary A are who they say they are, and they have communicated that their case was proceeding against Brosman. Until they feel they can tell us more details about the nature of that case, we are all speculating, myself included. If the timing of the impending revelations with the suicide don't raise suspicions, so be it.

I do understand the desire of some to withhold judgment until we hear a fuller explanation from the families of the victims identified so far, but the idea that we can ever get certainly from the legal process is very naive. I repeat that Jimmy Saville abused hundreds of kids over the years and was NEVER proven guilty of anything. Nor can Brozman be proven guilty,

It helped me a great deal to talk to a family member who is a practicing psychologist, just to get a handle on things. Leaving aside the fact that most of us knew Bob but not the victims or their families, what is known about predators is that they target the vulnerable. The fact that they are likely to come across as more apparently believable than the people they target is necessary to their survival, and we have seen that over and over and over.

Anyway, I shouldn't have gotten into trying to convince anyone of the facts of the case since even the most telling things I've heard are not a matter of public record. There are always going to be some who refuse to believe. My aim has been to let the community know that many in the musical community have accepted the allegations as true, and apologize for not being clearer at the outset that it is largely because of having heard things that aren't being made public yet. It seems reasonable that people could say, well, that being the case, I'll withhold judgment.

But it is NOT reasonable to suggest that people in my position should not speak out. It seems amazing in this day and age that such a thing even be suggested, especially here in Britain, where it doesn't seem a week goes by without another story of serial molestation getting the headlines. Some have gone to court, yes. Saville didn't, but others have - but only after decades of continued abuse. Did people who held their tongues about suspicions act responsibly? Not in my book. And the point here is not that the perpetrator is no longer among us, but that the alleged victims and their families are. And they are reading every word you post.