Source: I've worked for a Corporate Liability Underwriter for nearly 20 years. My job revolves around contracts that provide security for financial damages to institutions, basically insuring anything that a corporation may be liable for. An underwriter basically analyses risk and builds contracts based around that.
I have a lot of experience with this kind of thing.
Happy to verify with Mods if requested.
BIG FUCKIN' DISCLAIMER: This post in no way claims that Doc is guilty of anything, nor that this is what definitely happened. This is just what happens in a large amount of cases.
Right.
Both of these questions are answered by the same thing.
Firstly, if you know someone is committing or has committed a crime, you are not legally obligated to alert the police.
In a situation where you become aware that an employee, partner or whatever has done something illegal or in general just bad for the public image of your company, you have a few options.
1) You alert the police and fire the person
If that person is a public figure, you now have a hot potato. The public is going to ask questions about how it happened and your roll in it. You are likely going to take a big hit financially. You now have to co-operate with the investigation. A lot of time and money and potentially irreparable damage regardless of fault or verdict.
You also risk a wrongful termination lawsuit if they are found not guilty. In fact, if it never reaches any sort of arbitration, settlement or anything of the sort you are now open to that.
The legal system is a fucking mess.
2) You silence it and move on like nothing happened
Risky move, because if someone does press charges, such as the alleged victim, then not only do you deal with the PR fallout from #1, but now you're also known to be aware an complicit in harboring such behavior. You could even be implicated for facilitating it.
It's a gamble. It's not one that many take because the fallout can be catastrophic (and also voids any sane insurance policy against PR damage).
3) You pay them out and remove them from the company
You aren't obligated to report it, but you know if you try to hide it and it comes out that you covered up a crime then you are more boned than a whore at a skeleton orgy.
You pay them out of their contract, so no wrongful termination. They are made whole. It costs you money upfront, but this cost is much less than the PR damage could cause. It's the best choice in a bad situation (financially, not morally).
The person is no longer your problem. Contracts are signed, NDAs etc etc so nobody can legally talk about it HOWEVER.
This is a big one.
AN NDA DOES NOT EXTEND TO CRIMINAL INVESTIGATIONS IN THE MAJORITY OF CASES.
If a crime has been committed, then often an NDA isn't going to do much. Something to remember is that every NDA is different, and an NDA is just a term for a type of contract. Each NDA will have reasons for it to be rendered void.
SO WHAT DOES THIS MEAN IN THIS CASE?
If, and again so you hear, IF he is guilty of the accusations, then Occam's Razor is probably the following:
The likely explanation is that Twitch didn't want to bring bad PR on themselves which could cost a crazy amount and even bring legal issues to themselves so they didn't want to go public.
They also likely didn't want to risk ignoring it for it to come out in the future and them being double fucked.
So instead they paid him to keep it all quiet.
All right, so now we can drop these questions and focus on the actual allegations at hand.
