Dispatches/Sunday Times investigation: Russell Brand accused of rape and sexual assault

[Bazzmand Show]

Trump was not convicted of rape.
He was found not guilty.
Furthermore it was a civil action not a criminal action.
He could only have been fined, not jailed.

A jury found Donald Trump liable Tuesday for sexually abusing advice columnist E. Jean Carroll in 1996, awarding her $5 million in a judgment that could haunt the former president as he campaigns to regain the White House.

 

[ballbag]

As for how many social media followers he's got (as if that's some kind of barometer of his powers to topple the establishment), half of them will be bots on a retweet mission. He's a nobody. The only people who believe he's being targeted for being some kind of voice of the people probably have more bots than humans following them on Twitter too.

 

[SWP's back]

A jury found Donald Trump liable Tuesday for sexually abusing advice columnist E. Jean Carroll in 1996, awarding her $5 million in a judgment that could haunt the former president as he campaigns to regain the White House.

“
The filing from Judge Lewis A. Kaplan came as Trump’s attorneys have sought a new trial and have argued that the jury’s $5 million verdict against Trump in the civil suit was excessive. The reason, they argue, is that sexual abuse could be as limited as the “groping” of a victim’s breasts.

Kaplan roundly rejected Trump’s motionTuesday, calling that argument “entirely unpersuasive.”
“The finding that Ms. Carroll failed to prove that she was ‘raped’ within the meaning of the New York Penal Law does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape,’ ” Kaplan wrote.
He added: “Indeed, as the evidence at trial recounted below makes clear, the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that.

Kaplan said New York’s legal definition of “rape” is “far narrower” than the word is understood in “common modern parlance.”

 

[Trevor Morley's Tache]

In fairness, my best mate works in TV journalism for BBC and he says they do kind of choose their targets. I'm not talking about Brand specifically..

But the way these documentaries work is they basically decide who to go after, maybe on a tip off, and then they dig from there, I.e journalism. But when they say "6 women come forward" - well not exactly, they go through your past, start digging and approach the women and offer them incentives to talk. I mean, it's not realistic to think 6 women that don't know each other from incidents over the course of 20 years all suddenly contact the same production company at the same time. They're targeted and approached and offered incentives to give content on the person the production company is making a documentary on.

Of course, that's all OK, it's what journalism is. But what that also means is they pick and choose who to go after. That's why so many cases have been hidden over the years and some haven't.

So from there, you have to question why some people get brought to light and some get protected.

Whether you believe its a witch hunt against people certain political views or not, there's absolutely no denying that the media and corporations are selective on who they target and who they don't.

Personally I think Brand's past is catching up with him and there's a fair bit of truth here, but I'm just talking generally about how these things work.

Investigative journalism is fraught with danger. You only have to look back to the Watergate scandal to understand this.

I guess 'targets' are chosen by public interest first and foremost, but also on what information is available, and what the legalities are. They must also seriously consider potential repercussions.

 

[Mr Kobayashi]

I don't understand what benefit channel 4 would get by setting this up because they wanted to 'cancel' a former employee?

There isn't any.

Dispatches programmes are commissioned from external production companies with their own journalists.

The story would have come from those journalists and through the production company back to the commissioning editor of dispatches at Channel 4.

 

[MadchesterCity]

When my daughters 50 I’ll be happy if I’m still alive.

Same here, very unlikely for me

 

[denislawsbackheel]

A jury found Donald Trump liable Tuesday for sexually abusing advice columnist E. Jean Carroll in 1996, awarding her $5 million in a judgment that could haunt the former president as he campaigns to regain the White House.

As I said.
Not rape.
Civil court not criminal court.
No jail time possible.

 

[CarlosTevez'sEnglishTutor]

How about offering up a colleague to fuckin Jimmy Saville on air?

What a fucking ****.

Fair point, can't believe I missed this from my post. That was a chilling part of the documentary and very wrong. Clearly amplified by us all knowing what Saville was.

 

[SebastianBlue]

What I'm even more uncomfortable with, is how quickly we as a society turn allegations of a half famous person into yet another front of a culture war. The last dozen or so pages being a prime example.

Never liked him or his material, so never paid any real attention. For whatever reason, I thought he was 'left wing' 'anti-establishment'. But honestly never cared enough to really bother finding out any more. Now I read he is 'right wing' 'anti-establishment' and a conspiracy theorist.

Not that either is in any way relevant to his conduct or the allegations. But part of me thinks that it doesn'tmatter which side he falls on, the exact same arguements would be happening, in reverse, and completely bypassing the allegations themselves.

I don’t disagree that many things are now twisted to perpetuate the false culture wars (when, in fact, there is a class war being waged, mostly by the global wealthy on the global poor). But I don’t think this is necessarily an example of that.

One can both discuss the allegations and call out his grifting, which was originally very much on the left side of the political spectrum, then shifted heavily to the far-right conspiracy nutter brand (pardon the pun).

I keep saying the same thing in many different threads about many different subjects but it is an incredibly salient and important point in a world where everything is constantly being reduced to binary states to maximise polarisation (ironically, largely to facilitate the culture war):

Two or more things can be valid and relevant at the same time; the vast majority of states are not mutually exclusive. Complexity is inherent to life and we should not fall to the simple state fallacy where everything is either one condition or another. Most situations contain a multitude of conditions, each valid, though, not all necessarily equally important.

 

[Blue Lorry]

I agree that trial by media and the internet isn’t always ideal, however in so many of these cases in the last decade or so it’s been the only way as to compensate for the balance of power.
Those individual testimonies are abhorrent and fairly similar in the M.O., friendship and consensual initially which always gives more leverage to the, “Well why did you go back again?” as the usual default response to people who just hear the headline. I think C4 highlighted the mascara comment purposely and the “Even I can be good for a little bit“ to demonstrate his utter contempt for his victims and the narcissism that nothing will be done because he‘s being enabled left, right and centre - how must the victims be knowing that their abuse is part of his ‘alleged‘ comedy routines, he’s scum if it’s all true.
I have the utmost sympathy for the victims and his pregnant wife and children, this is horrific for them also.