In
one case, in a Third World country, if you accidentally killed
a pedestrian while driving your car, you went to jail for
certain for a year; this, despite the fact that by our U.S.
standards, the accident and death were entirely the fault
of the pedestrian. In the local law, Americans, as well as
local nationals, were held responsible and had to serve the
sentence. Contributory negligence by the victim was not a
defense. If you drove a car that killed someone, you went
to jail. That was it.
Those
facts alone were terribly upsetting to us Americans. We had
at least one American serving his year in a local jail at
the time. Suddenly a new development caused near hysteria.
Word spread that if an American woman was the driver, she
served her year in a house of prostitution for the local national
soldiers. The rumor included the assertion that the local
government will deny that this penalty will be used, but it
is still absolutely true.
I
checked the rumor through every possible official U.S. and
host-government channel. It seemed to be totally unfounded.
But it persisted unshakably in the American community. Finally,
I stopped all other work and started checking sources of the
story. As soon as I heard the story again, I asked the woman
to please reveal her source. She did.
I
checked with the woman she named and on back to the original
source. Within a month I had checked the story back to the
same original source through three series of informants: a
jolly U.S. Air Force captain.
In
the Officer's Club at the bar, the night that I finally tracked
him down, he admitted somewhat sheepishly that he had not
expected to involve the entire community. Only his wife had
been his target, and even with her, it had only been an offhand
remark, half joking one day after she had dented the car.
Above
from page 208
Dr.
Robert L. Humphrey's
VALUES FOR A NEW MILLENNIUM
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