[Ponte Alto] Safety after dark

[egeorges]

As someone who spent my first Pennsic in the swamp with a mercenary camp,
and has spent other Pennsics on the Serengetti playing with "royalists"  I'm
going to make a plea here -- I don't think anyone here is disputing or
impugning the honor of folks who don't play regularly in the SCA, or who
live in the "swamp" at Pennsic and I hope we all have enough sensitivity and
sense to avoid having this conversation devolve into that kind of
foolishness...

Many of you have heard me say this in the context of being Baronial
Chatelaine -- There are as many ways to play this game as there are people
playing it.  Though many of the folks in the swamp play this game
differently (and some really don't play at all), that's not the issue here.
Sexual assault is not a game.  It is a crime, and this person is a criminal.
This has nothing to do with the status of honor, chivalry and courtesy in
the SCA.  This has to do with a guy who is a criminal abusing the
environment of our game (in all its diversity) for his purposes.

This is not about our game.  This is about an individual's crime.  Put any
group of 13,000 individuals together in one place and some of them will be
criminals with intent to commit crimes.  It doesn't matter what the
environment is, not to the criminal.  He'll use whatever opportunity is
available to him.  It would be regrettable to find out that one of our
members is such a criminal, and such a criminal, once found out, should not
be permitted to remain a member.  But the SCA's values of honor, chivalry
and courtesy cannot be expected to reform a person who is already bent on
criminal behavior.  All we can do as the SCA is protect our members from
criminals who seek to abuse our environment.   Personally, I think that
means being more vigilant about your own personal safety at Pennsic, and at
all events for that matter.


In Service,
Luce Antony Venus