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Australian Football Hall of Famer Carl Ditterich played 285 games of AFL for two clubs in a career that stretched over 20 years, but his reputation is now tarnished and will remain so forever.

He has been charged with historic child sex offences for allegedly assaulting a girl under his care in 1985.

Carl Ditterich in the 1960s.Credit: Fairfax Media

Regardless of the verdict, the evidence, and the presumption of innocence, Ditterich, now 78, will always be linked to the charges through any Google search, which is enough to impact his reputation among some people.

Likewise, Cardinal George Pell, who was acquitted of charges of molesting children, will always be considered guilty by those who want to believe he was a monster, despite a High Court judgement that there was insufficient evidence to convict him and he was entitled to the presumption of innocence.

There is no legal term for this phenomenon, but there is one in the public domain – “mud sticks”.

Prince Andrew, who once had the affectionate nickname Randy Andy, has effectively been sacked from the Royal Family because of unproven allegations of predatory sexual behaviour with an underage girl.

Although he was never charged, he was not allowed to wear his military uniform at his mother’s funeral, even though he had carried out active service as a helicopter pilot in the Falklands War.

His cards have been marked without a trial.

The snowball effect of an allegation was tragically shown when Channel Seven named the wrong man as the offender who killed six people in a Bondi shopping centre, while thousands of people piled on to condemn someone who was innocent.

In Wales 23 years ago, Dr Yvette Cloete, a paediatric specialist, was forced to leave her house after vigilantes without the brains to use spell check mistook the doctor’s qualification for the word paedophile. The idiots then took it upon themselves to graffiti her house with the word “paedo”.

Despite Bruce Lehrmann’s sexual assault trial being abandoned without verdict, after the self-inflicted defamation judgement against him – albeit to the lower civil standard of balance of probabilities – he will be branded through history as a rapist.

On the other side, there have been people with power who have been able to live a lie for decades because their predatory behaviour has been hidden from public view.

Film producer Harvey Weinstein is a serial........

© The Age