What if a company was committing crimes against children ...

Suppose you discover that one of your co-workers has broken the law. And suppose that the particular crime you discover is directly related to their job. What would you do? If they're taking the odd box of staples home from the office then the answer is probably different than if they're raiding the company bank account.

But what if your co-worker's job involves the care of children and the crime that they have committed has those children as its victim? At what point would you call the police? Is there a scenario under which you would not answer 'immediately?'

Let's just say that there is a hypothetical company in which, instead of calling the police, the reaction of company officers to discovering these crimes is to go no further than notifying their senior management. In itself, that may seem an inadequate response, but suppose even further, and I know this is a real stretch, that on receiving that notification the reaction of the senior management was not to safeguard the victims and protect other potential victims, but instead to focus on preserving the reputation of the company.

I know this is starting to sound ridiculous but suppose even further that some time later, evidence of the crimes becomes public and it starts to look like there were not just one or two isolated incidents, but that crimes against children are being perpetrated by company officers all over the world.

Perhaps documents emerge to show that multiple members of senior management were aware that this was going on and not only did they not scramble to stop it, but even went so far as to try to cover up the details.

Imagine further that documents begin to appear that give the distinct impression that the current CEO was personally involved in the cover-up and himself chose to protect the reputation of the company rather than victims of the crimes. And then imagine that the response of that CEO to all this information finding its way into the public domain is to say nothing much and carry on as if all's well.