Anonymous Tip: Worst Accountability Partner Ever

A Review Series of Anonymous Tip, by Michael Farris

Pp. 225-228

Just to mix things up, Peter and Aaron are meeting on Saturday this time, because they had to miss their Friday meeting so that Peter could meet with Gwen about the motion to dismiss. Of course, this also means they have to meet early—6 a.m.—because Aaron wants to spend his Saturday with his children.

Aaron starts out by asking Peter about Gwen.

“How’s your week been—especially with Gwen?” Aaron asked.

“You don’t beat around the bush, do you?” Peter responded with a slight smile. It was an increasingly sensitive subject—one he had begun to dread talking with Aaron about.

“Sorry,” Aaron said, looking hard at Peter, trying to discern his emotional condition. “But I’ve really been praying for you this week about all this, and I just want an update.”

Peter sighed. He knew Aaron was truly concerned for him.

“Well, on the personal front, things are going OK, I guess. It’s hard for me, but I haven’t changed my views.”

And that’s it. Really.

I’m starting to think Peter and Aaron may not understand how accountability partners are supposed to work. I mean good god, Peter flat out lied to Aaron. Things are not going “OK, I guess.” The previous day he greeted Gwen with a comment on her looks, potentially arranged for his office assistant to be out when Gwen had to come to the office, and sat and held her hands while praying with her, and then kept holding her hands for a good while afterwards. That is not “OK, I guess.”

Aaron next asks about how Gwen’s case is going. This makes me wonder about how confidentiality works for lawyers. But you know, Peter doesn’t care about ethics anyway, so I suppose that’s irrelevant. Peter says it’s not good, and mentions the motion to dismiss.

“Tell me about it,” Aaron said.

“I’m glad to,” Peter said, “but I thought we were supposed to be talking about spiritual issues.”

“Well, the way I figure, this is a spiritual issue. Handling your relationship with Gwen is the most important thing that is going on in your spiritual life right now, and I think it is good for me to get some idea of the context.”

“OK. That makes sense.”

No it doesn’t. It doesn’t make any sense at all. If Aaron is this concerned about Peter’s relationship with Gwen, he should be insisting that Peter pass Gwen’s case on to another lawyer—ideally someone more qualified. Peter can’t control himself around Gwen, and he has already seriously hurt her with his confusing advances, by acting like he’s interested in her—because he is—while telling her he can’t marry her because she’s divorced. He is engaging in sexual harassment and Aaron, his accountability partner, seems more interested in getting the latest scoop on one of Peter’s cases than he is in Gwen’s wellbeing.

Anyway, Peter gives Aaron the background of the case. Several commenters have suggested that Farris goes overboard using conversations between characters for exposition—in other words, to explain legal issues, etc., to the audience. But what’s weird here is that all of this has already been explained. I mean, Peter explains to Aaron what “exigent circumstances” are, and I’m pretty sure we’ve already had that explanation twice now.

The other thing is that Aaron plays vapid-Gwen during this conversation, at one point saying “go on, professor” and at another point failing to pronounce exigent circumstances. I get the feeling Farris is downplaying everyone around Peter in order to make Peter seem Extra Specially Intelligent and Smart. I really wish he would knock this off, because it’s getting more than a little bit annoying.

Oh, and there’s this rather strange exchange when Aaron is trying to understand how exigent circumstances work:

“Would bruises be enough?”

“Severe bruises? Probably.”

I’m sorry, but severe bruises would only “probably” give a social worker exigent circumstances? Peter is giving us some pretty serious insight into Farris’s mind here, and it’s not pretty. Peter also adds that he doesn’t think social services should be able to “rely solely on an anonymous call.” I understand that anonymous tips are given less weight than tips where the tipster is willing to give their name, but (a) he doesn’t know that this tip was anonymous and (b) it’s important to remember the various factors that might make someone afraid to give their name when making a report.

Next Aaron asks if there are any holes Peter can work with, and Peter explains that “the CPS lady” gave Gwen two different stories about when the tip came in, and why that’s significant. Peter mentions the hotline report, and tells Aaron he thinks “the report is phones” but has “no way to prove it.” Interestingly, he did not tell Gwen these suspicions the last time he spoke with her, and I know, because I was checking. He said he believed Gwen, but didn’t mention that he thought it possible that the hotline report record could have been tampered with.

Anyway, Aaron perks up at this.

“Is the report computer-generated?” Aaron asked.

“Sure,” Peter answered.

“Too bad I can’t see the hard disk of their computer,” Aaron said.

“Why? What good would that do?”

“I could tell if they made any changes in their report after the original information was keyed in,” Aaron replied.

“You could? How? I thought that once a file has been saved, it overwrites the old version of a file and only the new file is saved.”

“That’s what my fellow computer geeks and I want you to believe,” Aaron said, filing broadly.

And at this point, Aaron gets technical, but it’s nothing we don’t all know already. Aaron tells Peter he’d need “the actual hard disk,” not just a copy of the file, but that he could use that to check if the file had been changed at any point. Peter starts freaking out he’s so excited, and he declares this “an answer to prayer.”

“Gwen is going to be thrilled. I sat her down yesterday and prayed with her about this, and we asked God to open up a way to get the truth to vindicate her.”

“That’s great,” Aaron replied, “provided . . . ”

“Provided what?” Peter asked.

“Provided that they changed the records. There is a possibility that the hotline report has never been changed, isn’t there?”

Aaron Aaron Aaron. Some accountability partner you are! What he should be saying is “provided there was someone else in the room when you prayed with Gwen” or “provided you maintained some distance during the prayer.” Or, better yet, “You prayed with Gwen? Peter, I’m seriously concerned about your ability to maintain personal distance here, I think you need to hand her case over to another attorney.” As a number of commenters mentioned on last week’s post, this sort of prayer is actually a very intimate experience.

Anyway, Peter says he doesn’t think there’s any possibility that the record wasn’t changed, because (a) “I can’t believe that Gwen ever harmed Casey” and (b) “I can still smell a rotten fish” and (c) “those CPS workers are lying again. I can feel it.” In other words, Peter very much believes in going with his gut. We know, though, that Gwen isn’t the most stable person—but then, I suppose Peter doesn’t know about Gwen’s almost-kidnapping, or the time she almost ran away with Casey when he left her alone in Dr. Schram’s waiting room for a few minutes.

With all of this out of the way, Peter and Aaron finish their meeting.

They only had time to read the assigned chapter in Proverbs, have the briefest discussion and a quick prayer. As they walked together, Aaron said, “Would you like to come over and tell Gwen what we talked about?”

“To your house?” Peter responded with too much enthusiasm.

“Yes. Gwen is coming over for the day. I guess Casey’s dad is going to exercise visitation today and Lynn didn’t want Gwen to be alone. And she wants to ask Lynn all about homeschooling. She seems intrigued with our kids, and Casey is starting kindergarten this fall, so she’s got a ton of questions.”

“Sure, I’d love to come over and tell her.”

“And I can keep and eye on you when you do,” Aaron said, throwing his arm around his friend, giving him a quick jostling hug.

Oh dear. Aaron, you are so fired from this whole accountability partner gig, because you are doing a shit job of it. Seriously, this is a terrible idea. I understand that Peter is probably excited to tell Gwen about this development, but he really should wait until Monday or, if he must, pick up a phone and call her. He’s supposed to be keeping his interaction with her purely professional, and it is not professional to show up to your client’s friend’s house when she happens to be over so that you can talk to her.

It almost feels like Aaron is engaging in some match-making here. But then, given his earlier comment about Peter needing to book the church for a wedding “in six months” I shouldn’t be surprised. What Aaron has apparently not considered is that it’s not only Peter’s spiritual state that is at stake here—remember that Aaron doesn’t want Peter to change his interpretation of what the Bible says about marriage based on carnal desire rather than spiritual conviction—but also Peter’s ability to uphold the ethical standards of his profession. And if Aaron doesn’t know there are ethical no-nos involved in a lawyer dating his client, Peter really ought to tell him.

The other thing is that no one is considering Gwen’s wellbeing here at all. Did Aaron stop to consider that Gwen might not want Peter thrust in her face while spending the day with Lynn? That perhaps Gwen is looking for a safe place to relax, and that Peter is not a safe person for Gwen at this point? Nope. Nada. And that makes Aaron’s shit job at being an accountability partner only worse.