DETRACTION
### I. DEFINITION
Detraction (from the Latin *detrahere* = "to take away") is the unjust damaging of another’s good name by spreading true or false information about hidden defects of a neighbor.
For detraction to occur, the following conditions must be present: 1) an injury to reputation; 2) the absence of a proportionate cause that would justify revealing those vices; 3) the absence of the person defamed.
Detraction is formal when there is the intention to defame; it is material when it arises merely from thoughtlessness, excessive looseness of speech, or indiscretion. The disclosure without necessity of actually existing hidden defects is simple detraction or defamation; the spreading of false defamatory reports is calumny.
### IX. COOPERATORS IN DETRACTION
It is important to know the ways of cooperating in detraction, since cooperators share more or less in the responsibility and any obligation to make reparation. 1) Direct cooperators are those who incite others to defame, or who take the occasion to bring conversation around to the defects of a neighbor, or who express their own criticisms in order to move others to do the same, or who approve of defamatory judgments. By their instigation and approval they cooperate in an unjust action and are bound to make reparation by denying false reports or by speaking well of those defamed. 2) Cooperators also include those who inwardly take pleasure in hearing a neighbor defamed. They are not bound to make reparation; however, they sin by taking pleasure in another’s harm and in an unjust action. 3) Indirect cooperators are those who, having the power to do so, fail to prevent detraction; they sin by omission, gravely so when there is certainty that the detraction is serious and unjust, when it is concretely possible to prevent it, and when no serious difficulties intervene.
### X. REPARATION OF REPUTATION
1) The calumniator is bound to restore the reputation by openly confessing to having lied. 2) The simple detractor must use suitable means to restore the good name, bringing to light the good qualities of the defamed person. 3) Both the calumniator and the simple detractor are bound to repair all material damages that resulted from the detraction and were foreseen. While, however, the calumniator is bound to full reparation, the simple detractor seems obligated only to partial reparation, since the harm arises from two factors: the spreading of the report and the reality of the fault. 4) One is dispensed from making reparation of reputation: a) because of the defamed person’s consent; b) if the fault becomes a matter of public record through other causes; c) if the detraction has been forgotten; d) if the detraction has been repaired by other means, such as, for example, by a judicial sentence of acquittal; e) if reparation is materially or morally impossible, as in the case where the repairing detractor would suffer much greater harm than the defamed person (v. RESTITUTION).