Once the finger is pointed, the accused always is guilty

The Boston Herald

All it takes is an accusation. "He did it," someone says, and he did it. That's it. End of story. He can deny doing it. He can say, "It never happened. It wasn't like that. Let me tell you my side." But no one will listen. He's this century's witch. Once someone points a finger, once someone even hints, he's guilty as charged.

Case in point: Quincy Mayor James Sheets. Last week, some 50 - count 'em, 50 - Quincy High School cheerleaders wrote an angry letter to The Patriot Ledger accusing the mayor of screaming epithets at them during a Feb. 12 basketball game. Fifty kids can't be wrong now, can they? They said the mayor joined in with rival North Quincy fans in jeering at them: "You're all ugly," "1-2-3-4, get the horses off the floor" and "You're all pigs, oink, oink."

"I can understand kids doing it because that's how kids will be, but not an adult. That type of behavior is totally wrong, and he should apologize for it," wrote Quincy High cheerleader Erin Nichols. Sheets, in the meantime, was stunned. "I didn't engage in any of those chants," he said. "I sat there and cheered my son, and that's all I did."

Sheets' son, Luke, is co-captain of the North Quincy team. Sheets, who sat with North Quincy fans to watch the game, insisted he was so absorbed in the game and so focused on his son's performance (North Quincy lost by one point) that he didn't even hear the North Quincy fans jeering Quincy's cheerleaders. Right, said the cheerleaders. Sure, said the public. Who's going to believe the mayor when 50 girls say it just ain't so?

Enter, a videotape. That's right. Film and sound, the only thing that could - maybe, just maybe - clear the mayor's name. Incredibly the videotape was shot by Sheets' wife, Joann, who was sitting in another section of the gym. It shows the mayor doing exactly what he said he was doing - sitting in the stands, gazing at the North Quincy team bench, absolutely absorbed in thought, while near him a group of teen-age fans are screaming nasties at the cheerleaders.

Told of this tape that proves the mayor right and them wrong, the cheerleaders changed their tune, but not their song. Now they are claiming that though they never actually heard the mayor jeer them, they saw him with the rowdy crowd. "It's our belief that he was standing and clapping while those other guys were chanting ugly things at us. He was egging them on," the cheerleader's captain Amy Murphy insists. The squad wants an apology from the mayor. Unless he gives it, they say the mayor will not be welcome at Quincy High's graduation.

So he's guilty, anyway - damn the evidence. Though the tape says he isn't; though his niece with whom he was sitting said he never shouted anything insulting. "He cheered stuff like `Go North,' and `defense,' but he was sitting down when the fans said the offensive stuff," Lara Rines said. Though a North Quincy student who sat one row below him said, "When he goes to these games, he's completely into them, not the crowds around him." Sheets has been vindicated, but . . .

And what if there had been no videotape? If Sheets' wife hadn't been pointing the camera in his direction at the precise moment he was alleged to have been screaming, what then? Then the mayor would have been run out of town. Then the witch would have been burned at the stake instead of just made to walk on hot coals.

We pride ourselves on being modern, educated, brighter and more fair-minded than our ancestors. But are we? Once an accusation is made, the burden of proof still falls on the accused. A child says a teacher did this or a baby sitter did that, and it's up to the teacher and the baby sitter to prove they did not. How do you prove what you did not do?

Sheets had the best proof possible: pictures and words. He showed them to the press. He should be in the clear. But the accusations linger. The damage has been done. For no matter how good the evidence, there will always be people who insist they saw the mayor clapping and heard the mayor jeer.