I'm not intimately familiar with MGs life beyond some of the media reports and exposes, so not pretending to have much insight into his case specifically. But there does seem to be a level of 'neurodivergency' there, a little like Ravel or Gascoigne, in terms of prodigious talent and footballing IQ combined with developmental 'immaturity' of a certain sort. Anyone who has an spld and is still fairly high-functioning in terms of education/job, will recognize that tendency to be able to see certain complex things very clearly and then miss blindly simple ones, albeit in different forms. That's different to someone like Best, who was highly smart across the board, but had specific issues with depression and associated addictive tendencies.
That doesn't mean in each case that you give any of them free reign to indulge in self-destructive and actions harmful to others - I do think its a net positive that we've begun to question that ' uncritical licence of genius', which has bene particularly, though not solely, extended to men. But I think -crucially, in combination with the facts as they've been established, rather than supposition or suspicion or innuendo or even common sense probability' - this should inform the nature of our judgement. Numerous people, including myself, have repeated what the status of the evidence as its been made public is. That doesn't mean anyone 'knows' he's innocent, which would be an almost impossible thing in the circumstances to demonstrate, but rather that two investigations have judged the evidence in favour of his innocence to be stronger than that indicating his guilt. In that context, what we know he's culpable of, based upon what each statement has indicated as well as clarificatory statements by the claimant on social media is of being a bad , insensitive, verbally unpleasant partner in the past. His first duty is to his partner but as far as any 'public' responsibility, working as a sportsman in a club which represent communities, all we can legitimately ask for at this stage is evidence of reflection and contrition to the extent that any of these people can be expected to serve as examples. Even this 'example' is something which has been disputed but it's legitimate to make that a factor for any public figure to a reasonable degree.
The opportunity for full evidence to be laid out and scrutinized by the court as well as in the public domain doesn't exist in quite the same way. So now we have someone perpetually guilty without the possibility of absolution or potentially proving his innocence, since anything contextualizing the materials in the public domain is probably (and people who have judged him still unequivocally guilty constantly refer back to 'probability' or likelihood) going to put his partner in a vulnerable position, even as, of course, details about his own not-illegal but toxic behaviour as a partner, or 'strange' sexual predilections might also come up. Whether any of that's the case, again, is only speculation, however. The point is that he's essentially barred through the process of pressure from people who, like all of us, don't know the context but have resolved that he's definitely guilty and cannot be swayed from that judgement and will act accordingly. None of this is about whether he gets to play for United specifically or about missing out on a potentially rekindled talent as a fan of the team. It's just disturbing that, knowing what we know, people not only want to bar him de facto form finding a club by threatening to harass clubs and/or organize boycotts as well as continuing campaigns of vitriol across social media, but that they would do this in the context of revelations about his potential vulnerability or neurodivergency.
Do people remember presenters being driven to suicide through social media pressure? Does anyone consider the potential moral implications of asking not for justice ( the investigation of a potential crime) and accountability through proper mechanisms, but through accusations which have become divorced from any evidence or principles of truth and falsifiability. We have previous cultural examples of scapegoating that I'm sure many of us encountered at school/college (Arthur MIller's Crucible, for instance). Yet it never seems to cut through every time we have one of these panics, whether it's about cults or suspected abuse and innocent people are hounded into depression or suicide. It's horrible to think about the memes and self-righteous statements that would be posted if Mason were to take his own life a week from now, even if further evidence emerged in the public domain substantiating his innocence.
One reason I'm so excised about this is I've served as a foreman on a rape case between a young male and female partner, been through the process of instruction by the judge and seen the ambiguities and difficulties in determining conclusive truths in these matters a lot of the time: through my family, I've also spoken to circuit Barristers in criminal law who have confirmed similar things. Beyond that, I've worked with young men similar to Mason (the way he's been described) as a support worker: men without his sporting talent or any 'exceptional' talent in any field but with complex needs relating to splds, and mixture of residual anger (through circumstances and neurochemistry) but also regret and desire to change. In some cases they were able to in fairly visible ways. In the course of that work I also worked with women who had been assaulted by their partners, so it wasn't one-sided. Whatever else it did, passing blanket judgement when it comes to things weightier than how ETH's setting up the team becomes a lot harder.
I've also seen people I know bullied on social media over what were confirmed to be false allegations, who've subsequently self-harmed and put their lives at risk. So, no, it's not about giving a 'rapist a pass'. I wish people would, as the cliche goes, 'take a step back' and think about what they're really affirming when they participate in these kinds of campaigns....
I've just edited and said to pm me (I can't start one with you for some reason), talk about rotten timing!