Very true.
It's also much easier to distance yourselves when you don't know the person, or know the nuance. Yet we all have friends and family members who have done bad things yet we forgive and/or forget, because we empathise with the complex mix of circumstances that led to them doing those things.
It gets more difficult the worse the action, and the more distant the connection. In my job, one of the patients I have worked with the past few years is a convicted killer. Yet knowing his history and the circumstances, I know that he is isn't an evil person. He's a damaged individual who was in a near impossible situation, sought help but didn't receive any, and ended up making a decision that has cost him his freedom for decades, first prison, then forensic wards, and now he's still in the psychiatric system despite his criminal sentence expiring. He's genuinely one of the kindest patients I have worked with. I can't explain the circumstances for obvious reasons because they're fairly unique to his case, but what's sad is that some people are so black and white in their thinking they won't stop to consider what possible circumstances I'm alluding to because X simply = Y. On the flip side, there's a few staff, and plenty of "regular" citizens, who have respectable jobs and public image, and yet when you get to know them it's obvious they are narcissistic, manipulative and abusive and cause pain and turmoil wherever they go. I'd trust the convicted killer I work with, with my life, I wouldn't trust some of the staff with my car keys.