For lack of a better term? I’m not sure what to call it. I started arguing with someone who was claiming you shouldn’t help people in public because it could get you into legal trouble. Without wanting to even get into the ethics of why you should help someone regardless, I brought up good Samaritan laws. This person brought up a guy in Illinois who was convicted as a sex offender for grabbing a girl by the arm and lecturing her for jumping in front of a car without looking both ways first. According to this person, holding someone underage, even for a moment, counts as imprisonment of a minor, and automatically gets you put on the sex offender registry for life.

Now, that seemed fishy, but plausible in an awful sort of way, so I did some digging. I found several sources that mentioned this story, and learned the alleged man’s name is Fitzroy Barnaby, the incident occurred in 2001, he was convicted in Cook County in 2003, and it’s a cautionary tale against being a good Samaritan (ugh). But I cannot find any court documents, nor can I find any original sources. Every source references a since-deleted article by the “Chicago Sun Times”, and Barnaby isn’t even listed on the Illinois sex offender registry. Was this whole story just made up? Or have records been sealed and scrubbed or something?

  • fizzle@quokk.auEnglish
    332·
    13 hours ago

    Common sense says you can’t get convicted as a sex offender for grabbing someone by the arm if you had reason to believe they were in imminent danger.

    These kinds of stories have been around since the dawn of time for all sorts of things. Whenever you investigate the details it turns out that either the story is completely made up, or the offense was much more serious than it sounded.

    Like the woman who sued macdonalds for getting third degree burns because their coffee was too hot.

    • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
      9·
      10 hours ago

      she had legit evidence,Her labias got fused her thigh, from the permanent burn injuries. at first when the news came to light years before the recent one, it was allegeded she was instigating it, but it wasnt the case.

    • DomeGuy@lemmy.world
      261·
      13 hours ago

      Like the woman who sued macdonalds for getting third degree burns because their coffee was too hot.

      Please never mention this story without pointing out at least one of the following;

      • The coffee was hot enough to cause crippling burns to her genitals.
      • McDonald’s intentionally had their coffee too hot to drink to keep customers from hanging out
      • the woman only asked for medical expenses and did not sue until her complaint was ignored.
      • the eye-popping headline number was calculated as something like one day of the company’s coffee profit.

      There literally isn’t an instance of a US company being sued by a customer more deserving of empathy and horror.

      • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
        4·
        4 hours ago

        AND McDonalds had been warned that their coffee was too dangerously hot on previous occasions, which they ignored, so it was entirely predictable, probable, and preventable.

        • Drusas@fedia.io
          31·
          7 hours ago

          The way they worded it made it sound to me, at first, that they were saying her story was made up. Upon a rereading, I can see that that’s not the case. However, the wording could be seen as a little ambiguous.

      • fizzle@quokk.auEnglish
        26·
        9 hours ago

        I doubt there’s anyone here who is not already aware of these details.