I felt the need to reply to an article in the March 1, 2017 Port Townsend Leader. The headline read: “Inmate charged with child molestation, incest. ‘Jeremy Morris.’”

Whatever happened to the principle that one is innocent until proven guilty? But reading the article that was printed already has him convicted of the charges, just because he is serving time for an unrelated crime.

In a small town like Port Townsend, how can anyone have a fair and impartial jury with this kind of reporting?

Especially with this kind of charge, the public automatically condemns the accused after reading an article like you printed. The general public’s first thought is, “This person is a criminal, he has to be guilty.”

I know, I was that type of person until involved with the justice system and doing extensive research. False accusations of molestation are a frequent reality in the criminal justice system, especially when there is a divorce involved.

It is common enough to have been given a name: SAID syndrome (sexual allegations in divorce). SAID goes along with parental alienation syndrome (PAS), a disorder made up of a combination of brainwashing of a child by one parent to incriminate the other, which I know for a fact has happened in this case. The psychologists who discovered the phenomenon said any accusations of sexual allegations in a divorce need to be addressed in a discriminately different manner than the sexual abuse allegations in a non-divorcing family.

My point is, don’t jump to conclusions and convict someone on “allegations.” There is much more to this case than you know, and hopefully Jeremy gets a fair and impartial jury that will actually come to their own conclusion.

ANDREA BARNETT

Nordland