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

Centurions said:
If you have trouble with big words never be afraid of asking for help understanding.

Idiot.
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I wouldn't consider 7 years low TBH, getting out early because of "good behaviour" is another argument.
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You said this, you don't consider 7 years to be low, and then said you didn't write that.

Never mind having trouble with big words sunshine.
 
The meta issues I see here are as follows:

1) It's remarkable to me the lengths people will go to avoid admitting they might have been wrong. The irony is this very thread was started by a poster (@BlueHammer85) who began by being intrigued and impressed by Brand's willingness to take on the establishment and then changed his mind as began to witness more of the man's behavio(u)r and heard more of his rhetoric. This is an example of a poster who shows self-knowledge and vulnerability. Those are positive traits, the kind of traits I look for in friends (and hopefully display once in awhile myself). Yet the thread is (or was) chock full of folks who simply can't face that they may have misread a person in whom they placed trust or admiration.

2) The generalizations about "all" the press may have more legs and evidence in the UK than here in the U.S. (I said "may"), but they're still generalizations, and stupid ones at that. As a former member of the press and as one who still talks to reporters weekly in my work, like anything/anyone else, there are good outlets and bad, good reporters and bad. All-encompassing pronouncements about not trusting the press "at all" are inane -- where else will you learn about the world? Blanket-dissing the press isn't a sign of having a well-attuned bullshit detector -- it's a sign that you're a lazy sod who should read more, not less.

In short learning whom and what to trust is WORK. It takes time, mistakes, smarts, experience and wisdom. The second word in that list is key. If you can't admit them, you'll keep making them, and defending them.
 
The bbc are an absolute disgrace, why have most of these sexual stories involved a lot of cunts who worked for them. Savile, Hall, Harris, Peel, and a lot more know doubt and now this fucker. They all the employees come out and tell you yeah we’ve known for years should be sacked cos they are as bad.
 
It’s all in the timing.
I’m currently watching a program on RTE that is very interesting.
It’s called Dr. Cassidy’s Casebook and it is covering an awful lot of what we are discussing in here, regarding the objectification of women which leads to the abuse and assault of women.

Dr. Marie Cassidy was the state pathologist here in Ireland for years and was well known through the news. She would have forensically examined many a high profile murder case.
This program is not purely about murder and assault on women but is psychologically profiling those that serially abuse women and don’t see it as doing anything wrong.
They deny everything even when presented with evidence. They claim everything was consensual.
They don’t find anything wrong with what most normal people would consider unacceptable behaviour.

There are a lot of points being made here that strike a chord with what is in the news about Brand.

It’s horrific and enlightening at the same time and something I think any men that have access, should watch.

Maria Cassidy finally threw in the towel after the infamous Ana Kriegl case in 2018 over here, where a beautiful 14 year old girl was sexually assaulted and murdered by two 13 year old boys from her school.
The amount of porn and sexually abusive material found on the phone of one of the boys in particular, was staggering.

I think it is frightening how easily available this sort of content is to kids at very vulnerable ages. The normalising of objectivism of young girls is alarming.
Young boys think abuse is normal.
Young girls have fear of sex being what they see but think this is what is to be expected.

Getting back to Brand and it is purely coincidental, the timing of this program, but the profiling of the sexual predator is remarkable.

I do think with celebrity, there certainly is an element of hiding in plain sight. Being overtly sexual, normalising unacceptable behaviour is par for the course, but looking at the Vanessa Feltz clip posted earlier, nobody can tell me that’s normal tv.
It’s nothing I’d watch that’s for sure.
 
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Jaysus. You’ll all think I’m obsessed but I’m now watching Let’s Talk About Sex, which is s program based on the book that Richie Sadlier brought out last year.

Richie is an ex footballer and pundit, but he is a qualified psychotherapist who deals with children all the time.

He is advocating for a proper sex educational curriculum to be brought into the schools over here.

Some of his classes with the kids are very revealing about what the young generation are contending with.

I really do hope for a more enlightened Ireland for future generations.
 
bluethrunthru said:
Julia Hartley- Brewer has spent all day tweeting excerpts from her Talk TV show defending Russell Brand. Julia Hartley-Brewer has a 17 year old daughter........

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If only people had paid attention there, it was obvious he was a wrong-un.

Asking Vanessa Feltz for a shag?

He's not been right in the head for a longtime.
 
Can't stand the lanky streak of wet piss, if he's a comedian then we've all got a chance.

The one thing that really really really irks me is this clown has shagged Katy Perry, there's no chance I'm going near her now, have to let that one go now.

Sounds like he's the modern day Saville.
 
rickmcfc said:
Can’t wait for the smug prick to wriggle his way out of this dilemma with his prolonged fancy literature. Never known anyone who delivers wording the way he does to make himself attempt to sound more intelligent that he actually is.
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Joey Barton and Doggymore?
 
Says everything when people would accept a self-confessed sexual predator on mainline TV.

And those people tuned in for enjoyment.
 
mancity2012_eamo said:
Jaysus. You’ll all think I’m obsessed but I’m now watching Let’s Talk About Sex, which is s program based on the book that Richie Sadlier brought out last year.

Richie is an ex footballer and pundit, but he is a qualified psychotherapist who deals with children all the time.

He is advocating for a proper sex educational curriculum to be brought into the schools over here.

Some of his classes with the kids are very revealing about what the young generation are contending with.

I really do hope for a more enlightened Ireland for future generations.
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This is my sentiment. Social justice on the web means finding a target and laying into them. It's self-gratifying self-aggrandising entertainment.

Education, however, makes a difference in thousands and thousands of lives. I still marvel at the lessons my own education from family and state and books/other culture from my younger years has for me, deep into my 40's.

And one of those lessons was, any attempt to harness a crowd or a moment reveals how ineffective, fickle and unjust they are. And the attention span has never been shorter than today. Educating people is fairer and more liberating than trying to fix things via law. And nothing says to me, "I was valued, I have worth" like the work of society, parents and educators who told me I had to think for myself, and encouraged me do so. Those are the only lessons that really stick and resonate.

(Funnily enough, Eamo, I was minded recently to remember how this was my argument for my GCSE Humanities essays on Ireland. The past would never be changed. But providing honest education, and allowing the children to dream of and taste freedom from the troubles, would work.)
 
Summerbuzz said:
This is my sentiment. Social justice on the web means finding a target and laying into them. It's self-gratifying self-aggrandising entertainment.

Education, however, makes a difference in thousands and thousands of lives. I still marvel at the lessons my own education from family and state and books/other culture from my younger years has for me, deep into my 40's.

And one of those lessons was, any attempt to harness a crowd or a moment reveals how ineffective, fickle and unjust they are. And the attention span has never been shorter than today. Educating people is fairer and more liberating than trying to fix things via law. And nothing says to me, "I was valued, I have worth" like the work of society, parents and educators who told me I had to think for myself, and encouraged me do so. Those are the only lessons that really stick and resonate.

(Funnily enough, Eamo, I was minded recently to remember how this was my argument for my GCSE Humanities essays on Ireland. The past would never be changed. But providing honest education, and allowing the children to dream of and taste freedom from the troubles, would work.)
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Again, the only thing that has ever changed culture or governance has been social justice—most often “harnessing a crowd or moment”— the informal justice system based on collective action. It has existed for thousands of years before social media. Culture and governance doesn’t just change spontaneously, independent of people.

And social media itself is just another communication tool in a long line of them, all of which were called fundamentally destructive to society by some group or another (usually whichever one whose power was being threatened by their use by the common people), before eventually being co-opted by those same entities to try to remain in power. All were misused and abused by many entities. But they were all also used by the masses to both check the power of elite and increase the power of the non-elite (in cycles).

So am I not sure why people keep saying social justice itself is always destructive or that social justice on the web is simply self-gratifying and self-aggrandising. It absolutely can be. But it is not always that. Especially when it is the sole means of affecting change for so many people living in totalitarian regimes that control nearly all other means of public discourse and information sharing (public physical spaces, state-controlled media, state-monitored and censored speech, etc.).

Ironically, education has been and will continue to be a major driver of social justice in society, and the experience you describe contributes to the good work of social justice movements (some you have contributed to, perhaps unwittingly). We agree that education is extremely important, if for no other reason than to combat the dearth of critical thinking and reasoning skills that is so prevalent in modern society. And to address the sheer lack of knowledge of history that would help put current and future events in to context. Without that education, every tool seems completely novel and inherently dangerous, rather than the common element that has persisted through the last few thousand years: the people using those tools.

It all goes back to individuals succumbing to the simple state fallacy, where everything is either one thing or another; wholly good or wholly bad. Which is almost never the case. Binary thinking, often championed by the likes Russell Brand’s cohort, is a plague on society. And many malicious entities have done their best to amplify that binary thinking because it enables divide and rule tactics. Polarisation makes exploitation that much easier—they won’t fight you when they are fighting each other.

Now:

“Social justice is an evil scourge on society!”

“The formal justice system is inherently evil!”

“Social media is destroying the world!”

Then:

“Books (especially the printed bible) are satanic and heretical and will lead to mankind’s destruction!”

“Newspapers only seed discord, division, and plant dangerous, immoral ideas amongst the masses!”

“TV is scrambling the minds of the youth and society is on the path to collapse!”

The more things change, the more they remain the same.
 
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Crouchinho said:
These victims didn't go to the police and they all went to channel 4 and telegraph who decided they were doing their own criminal investigation?
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From what I understand the victims didn't go to the media, the media investigated and found them.

Now someone has come forward from before the dates of the investigation.
 
Summerbuzz said:
This is my sentiment. Social justice on the web means finding a target and laying into them. It's self-gratifying self-aggrandising entertainment.

Education, however, makes a difference in thousands and thousands of lives. I still marvel at the lessons my own education from family and state and books/other culture from my younger years has for me, deep into my 40's.

And one of those lessons was, any attempt to harness a crowd or a moment reveals how ineffective, fickle and unjust they are. And the attention span has never been shorter than today. Educating people is fairer and more liberating than trying to fix things via law. And nothing says to me, "I was valued, I have worth" like the work of society, parents and educators who told me I had to think for myself, and encouraged me do so. Those are the only lessons that really stick and resonate.

(Funnily enough, Eamo, I was minded recently to remember how this was my argument for my GCSE Humanities essays on Ireland. The past would never be changed. But providing honest education, and allowing the children to dream of and taste freedom from the troubles, would work.)
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Have to say, the two part series by Richie Sadlier was very good.

I don’t think any of us auld farts have a full comprehension of the sexual pressures and misinformation and normalising of abusive and illegal behaviour that kids as young as 8 or 9 are subjected to.
It starts out in readily available pornography, but the online behaviours they are witnessing are something that they have to make sense of themselves because there’s no platform for them to ask questions about what they are seeing.

Some Parents are more open and enlightened than others perhaps, but by and large without being able to stop kids seeing this stuff, there really is a need to educate them and discuss their understanding of sex and all related subjects.

Richie brought cameras into a school in Maynooth and the conversations about sex, gender, consent sexting and abuse as well as conversations about ethics and curriculum with politicians was very enlightening.

Look at the normalisation of unacceptable behaviour that we are now discussing about Brand and what he got away with on tv and in the public eye in general.

I’m the biggest advocate in here of innocent until proven guilty etc etc. We’ve done that to death in here today, but let’s look at the likes of his media persona in general.
How do we combat the normalising of objectivising of women and making this behaviour seem ok.

Education is the key I think.
If we can’t stop kids accessing this shit then educate them openly about the subject and every aspect of it in a way that helps them understand and cope with the world they will soon become adults in.

One of the most startling conversations on the program was where he discusses with a mixed bunch of 15-16 year olds, I would say.
He asks if a boy wants to choke a girl while having sex, is that ok.

He got a mixture of responses but girls in particular argued that if it’s consensual it’s ok.
Generally the responses from both sexes ran along the lines that if she wants it too, it’s ok if she doesn’t it’s not.
He pushes the terminology, they say abusive, but none of them say illegal, assault or anything along those lines.
Out of class in the program he says what is most startling is that none of them even questioned why are you including choking in a sex education class.
That’s what we’re dealing with when we are talking about pornography. That and the fact that a lot of what they are witnessing in pornography is most probably happening to a young girl that is in the sex industry, not through choice of her own.

Unfortunately that is the damning reality of the influence of pornography.
Education is the way to counter its influence.
 
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