That's real-life for you. No human being alive has a fault-free inbuilt ability to detect the trustworthiness or not of another person. It's a wild myth tied to our self-centredness and arrogance that we genuinely believe we can tell if another person is a "good guy" or not. The evidence is all around us. Bad people fool good people all the time and they do it effortlessly because the simple real-world trust is that nobody can tell what's in another man's soul no matter how well you think you know someone. I'm so tired of hearing people brag about how good a judge of character they are. You hear it in business all the time, whether it's hiring someone or doing a deal, "I just wanted to see the whites of his eyes to see if I could trust him". It's all utter BS.
I suppose people vary wildly in their willingness to trust people they don't know, for instance, pro athletes, but forums like this one exist to, among other things, give our opinions -- often without
tons of facts. This thread is a pretty good example of that.
I don't think I expect a hell of a lot from these people who exist in a different world than me in many or most ways. I've commented lately that I think Urban Meyer is a total fraud and bullshit artist. Another was Watson, who I thought seemed like the most gentle and decent of souls and I formed an (evidently) false-but-strong impression. There are likely millions of Texans fans who are struggling with that same realization right about now. It sucks when your heroes turn out to be bad guys or highly-flawed human beings. Who knows? Maybe Meyer is actually a wonderful dude with a heart of gold. Maybe Jack Easterby isn't the power-mad weirdo he seems to be, either. We're all just guessing.
I suppose it's easier to assume the worst about people, so as to never end up feeling foolish, but I don't think I can afford to be mistrustful of every person I see and hear because life is too short to be that negative all the time.
Watson fooled me and it'll likely happen again. I thought he stood out as an exception and I went with my instincts, but next time I might wait for the fog to clear a little before I open my pie hole.
One thing I think most of us can agree on is that this is one strange, ugly story and won't have a Fairytale ending for anybody involved except the Lawyers. Lots of wrongness for everybody to try and learn something from.