Is a Rumor Enough to Go On?

A few years ago, the daughter of a family friend had twins. Shortly afterward, one twin died. Recently I heard that the twins’ father, who is now estranged from the mother, accidentally smothered the baby with his body as he slept, almost certainly while intoxicated. I asked if the father had been charged, perhaps with negligence or something similar. I was told that the mother of the children lied to investigators to prevent the father from being charged. Of course, the accusation could be gossip; though I don’t think it is. What is the best thing to do in this situation? NAME WITHHELD

You have three options. All of them are bad. The first is to take the rumor at face value and report what you know to the authorities, even though it would be almost impossible to prove and is potentially untrue. The second is to do nothing and live with a dark secret. The third is to try to uncover the reality of the situation before making any further moves, which would most likely entail confronting the mother about a subject she may not want to discuss or recall.

Because no option is positive, we must examine the relative downsides. If you go to the police, your conscience will be clear. But the domino effect would make an already tragic story much, much worse. First of all, your third-party information might be wrong — never ignore the possibility that gossip is false or incomplete, particularly when accusing someone of negligent infanticide. But even if the information is right, you would be placing the mother in jeopardy for having lied to the police, damaging a family that is already broken and further penalizing a man for something that’s almost certainly the worst moment of his life. Everyone in the family would have to publicly re-experience something horrific, and the child would still be dead. This is a purely punitive act. It would serve no one who’s alive.

If you do nothing, an innocent human will have died without retribution. That’s awful. But even if the account is true, the death was accidental and devoid of motive, and the perpetrator is already living with those actions for the rest of his days. And here again, there’s always the possibility that this gossip is flat-out wrong. Sometimes babies die inexplicably; that is the definition of SIDS. So doing nothing neutralizes the risk of creating a new problem that isn’t there. This is not a perfect option, but it hurts the fewest number of living people.

The third option is the most conventionally ethical: it provides the mother a chance to explain how such a rumor may have started, and it gives you an opportunity to do something that could help (if the rumor is true, the mother needs counseling and an opportunity to contact a lawyer). Of course, it could reignite the trauma without generating anything except another denial. You must also realize that having this kind of honest conversation directly involves you in the problem, which (depending on what you learn) might force your hand. Some states require citizens to report child abuse. Before doing anything, consider this question: Is this something you’re prepared to know the truth about?

This post deals with the ethics behind taking actions based on a rumor. In this article, the family friend of a couple is concerned that one of couple’s babies passed away because the father accidentally suffocated it while sleeping drunk. While this is very concerning, it is in fact still a very dense rumor. The anonymous writer tells the Ethicist a lot of clauses that could be false. By the tone he uses, it seems as though he is very concerned with the real story and does not care that this may all just be a rumor, for he has a set opinion on whether or not he believes the story to be true.

When answering the writer, the Ethicist solely sticks to the fact that this situation regards the death of an infant. He provides the person with three possible ways to try to solve this problem: tell the authorities what they think they know, do nothing, or try to find the truth before taking action. Through every option he gives, the Ethicist appeals greatly to the emotion of the concerned friend and of the family that lost a child. In the first option, he mentions that the friend’s conscious will be clear if they tell the authorities, but that they could potentially further ruin a family based on a rumor, for the mother would have to be charged for lying to the authorities and the father would basically relive his nightmare. His language shows that is appealing to the writer’s morals and ethics, for they must take into consideration not only that justice must be served, but that this all involves a close family who already lived though this terrible experience.

In the second option, he appeals directly to the writer’s emotion, stating that the child will have died “without retribution” if no action is taken. In this situation, the Ethicist is strongly taking into consideration that this innocent child died without a fight, again, appealing to emotion. He is appealing to the emotions of the person almost by suggesting that they alone will be able to give the little human a purpose. In the last option, the Ethicist asks if the person is even ready to know the truth, for if this course is taken they could find out the truth. He ends with a big appeal to emotion that I think is very funny considering the fact that not once did he really take into consideration that theoretically the situation of this baby does not really concern the writer.

Ultimately I think the options the Ethicist posed are good considering that the writer demonstrated concern for the situation, but I believe many things are faulty in his analysis of the situation. First of all, this may all just be a giant rumor simply fueled by the fact that a child died and the parenting couple separated soon after. I think it is the natural tendency of a human to put the blame on someone, and in this case, the writer is directly correlating the killing of a child with a separation. I think both jumped to too many conclusions, basing all of their arguments on the fact that the child is gone forever. I believe the Ethicist is wrong to say that the baby will have died without retribution if no action is taken because he does not take into consideration all that could have caused the death, and automatically gave the writer reason. What should be more questioned is exactly why the couple is now separated, but at the same time should be remembered that no matter how the child died, the couple could have split because that is an awful situation to deal with under any circumstances. Because this may all be a rumor and the baby and the parents are not even from that person’s family, maybe the Ethicist should have advised the person not meddle and should leave the situation alone. If they insist, they must first find out the reasons behind all actions taken by the family, before actually taking action themselves.