LogFAQs > #926931422

banananor posted...

After reading the article in the previous thread, it's basically what I expected. It still makes me sad.

And not just for the victims. Alec had parents and friends, and they had to watch their son or friend continually harm himself and others.

Mental illness is the worst.

I think his victims knew that, too, and why it was so difficult to escape or find someone to help him. How do you draw that line between someone who is suffering from a disease and someone who is bad and needs to be avoided? Warned against?

I think the answer is that we need to be able to hold both ideas at the same time. If someone is sick with the plague, you should empathize and direct them towards help, but you also need to stay away for your own health. I think his victims just didn't realize this until it was too late.

Imagine if he had come clean publicly in 2006. Could he have recovered mentally, and eventually socially? Is that the goal? I don't know

I believe I read the same article: https://medium.com/@bombsfall/alec-2618dc1e23e
and basically feel the same way. In a sense he was a victim of his own illness. It's just sad for everybody. Also, his sister said he had improved while that article implies otherwise, so I dunno. From the sister's post it seemed like, "my brother did some messed up stuff a while ago, then got better, but his past came to light and he's dead now". If he was still treating others the way he treated Scott, then he needed to be called out. But if he had truly gotten help and was doing better, the whole thing's extra tragic.

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