Evil flourishes when good people look the other way.

— Julia Baird

SOMETIMES a dying town is thrown a life line. Everybody cheers. Then on a matter of principle, someone cuts the life line. Everyone is hurt, angry. Who can condone the rape of a young girl, no matter who the perpetrator is? Yet what if sticking to your principles hurts many others? The town turns on the victim. Couldn’t you grant the rapist some slack, just this once?

It's not a real place, Beartown. The town was invented by the Swedish novel