Dan Wootton trending on Twitter...

[LookItsMeAgain]

I was wondering why this name has been popping up on my "Trending for you"on Twitter over the past while

https://bylinetimes.com/2023/07/17/gb-news-star-dan-wootton-unmasked-in-cash-for-sexual-images-catfishing-scandal/

Wow is all I can say.

Just wow!

Oh I can do that for you - None of it was declared illegal in a court so it’s all fine until the point that happens.

Heh, nice work.

Exactly! This is what we were all told repeatedly after the alleged shenanigans regarding Huw Edwards. If it doesn't involve crim prosecutions it doesn’t count apparently. Yet goalposts seem to change when it's a nasty GBNews/Sun person 🤔.

Nobody has convicted him. No one has said what he has done is illegal. We're waiting to see what the Met and the various lawyers come up with.

What I have read is not good, I will await developments.

He does sound like an awful bully though.

Christ, the nuance really isn’t that hard to understand is it?

HE - horny man using service for horny people to obtain photographs. Not illegal, morally ambiguous and depends on how sanctimonious you are about the sex industry.

DW - Routinely treats people like shit and makes his living encouraging people to treat others like shit too. May or may not have broke the law. So far not illegal but undenied evidence of a hypocritical shyster and behaviour that again is morally ambiguous and depends on how sanctimonious you are about bullying.

Not mutually exclusive opinions and different people have varying degrees of strength of opinion.

what’s emerged as the weirdest part of this thread is posters consistently making a conversation about the people having a conversation rather than the actual topic.

You’re not in a court of law, you do realise?!

DW’s entire modus operandi is ‘guilty until proven innocent’.

Our most shameful export.

'HE - horny man using service for horny people to obtain photographs. Not illegal, morally ambiguous and depends on how sanctimonious you are about the sex industry.'

Horny man. Wtaf am I reading. This 61 yr old man allegedly exploited teenager and young adults paying for sexual images. Allegedly using his power and identity to get access. Now I don't know about you but that isn't 'horny' it's a gross power imbalance and fucked up behaviour. You make it sound like he was caught looking at readers wives.

'DW - Routinely treats people like shit and makes his living encouraging people to treat others like shit too. May or may not have broke the law. So far not illegal but undenied evidence of a hypocritical shyster and behaviour that again is morally ambiguous and depends on how sanctimonious you are about bullying'

Allegedly.

But I know which I find far more shocking and abhorrent

If half the stuff I'm reading on twitter is half true then Wooton is in deep doo doo that will make Hew Edwards seem like a Saint in comparison.

Twyford
Doesn't an Executive Editor carry any responsibility for the paper of which he editor if there are other people described as editors, then?
(How many executive editors do they have? I can see that James Slack was appointed deputy editor-in-chief in 2021, Victoria Newton is editor-in-chief...)

Presumably the editor-in-chief and deputy editor-in-chief (at least) were both senior to Wootton? Part 2 of Bylines' expose confirms that Victoria Newton (mentioned above) was Wootton's boss from Feb 2020.

I still haven't seen any evidence whatsoever that DW deleted his tweets on Huw Edwards - or that he 'tormented' Caroline Flack. Quite the opposite. We've even had a poster implying that DW harassed Caroline Flack's former fiancé - when it was the other way around. As for the rest - I have no idea - I barely knew who he was two days ago.

'A Saint in comparison'. Jesus. The enabling and minimising of his alleged activities is appalling.

'We've even had a poster implying that DW harassed Caroline Flack's former fiancé - when it was the other way around.'
It's frowned upon to point out embellishments/made up shit. We must believe anything folk decide to spout and Twitter is apparently The Gospel. Who knew.

After his time is 'done you can have him back to go to live in Hobbit land.

Perfectly put!

What are you reading? Facts dear. If horny offends your sensibilities then just replace with ‘driven by sexual desire’ 🙄

it's a gross power imbalance and fucked up behaviour.

Power imbalance? What power imbalance. Two people engaging in a legal transaction? One of whom has distanced themselves from the claims? Nobody can tell somebody how to spend their legally obtained money when it comes to the addict element.

You make it sound like he was caught looking at readers wives

it’s pretty much the 21st century equivalent. So far I haven’t seen you express any concerns around the sex industry, but given the strength of your disgust I’m sure you regularly speak out against regulation of it. Surely it’s not just a tool for you to ‘win’?

Look, if you’re truly concerned about power imbalances, the allegations (so far no denial which is important) reveal abuses of power far beyond anything that has come to light about HE. For one his behaviour hasn’t been enabled and validated by his employer paying out hush money to make it go away.

Don’t be tempted to use hypocrisy just to win a thread.

It’s just pointless to own an error when other posters refuse to acknowledge that though isn’t it?

Shame. It really inhibits any sort of adult discussion don’t you think?

No one here is convicting Dan Wootton of anything.

Are you making up your own definition of words? I've noticed that's a thing with Dan Wootton and tetchy Tories.🤔

'We've even had a poster implying that DW harassed Caroline Flack's former fiancé - when it was the other way around.'

No, you haven't. You've had an observation that he has frequently been embroiled in acrimonious litigation. This is a demonstrable fact.

Wootton is now claiming another would-be harasser is out to destroy his life; a harasser who just coincidentally is hammering Wootton with a similar set of claims to those Flack's fiancé made, albeit the Judge found against him. As for the Sun defamation trial, it's interesting how many people care to dismiss that judgment out of hand because a US court happened to come to a different conclusion. Then there's a growing list of names testifying to his relentless harassment of them, one of whom coincidentally mentions the name of Flack in the same context as her own experience.

The least damning thing that can possibly be said about such an unfortunate track record even for a journalist is that an extremely murky miasma certainly seems to be following him around.

And these types are always the ones to cry 'foul!' when, as inevitably happens, someone turns their own shit back around on them.

Good. Couldn't happen to a better person.

Woo-hoo. Part 2. I bet there's some good stuff on this one. Off to read.

Is that it? 3 years investigation and he was a bully. Well, no shit, Sherlock.

Part 3 had better be a real humdinger.

Let's really compare Huw Edwards to Dan Wootton. Huw Edwards has always seemed to be a very decent man and a serious journalist. Even before any of us knew he was the "presenter" in question some of us wondered about the allegations, especially when the young man involved said that it was all ridiculous. Then we found out it was Huw Edwards and it was pretty shocking. I definitely felt sad and that was that. I also doubt he'll ever work in the way he did before. He's been "punished" for what he did although we don't know exactly what he did. Personally, I'm very judgey about men having any form of sexual relationship with someone decades younger than them but not in an "I'm going to scream about this on Twitter" kind of way. I have, of course, just done it here though, so bad Mouse.

Dan Wootton has never seemed to be a decent man and has never been a serious journalist. To suggest that his "journalism" comes from the sewer is an insult to sewers. He is a nasty shit of a man and anyone and everyone who's had to work with him seems to agree with that. Right now we don't know exactly what he has done but we do know he has done something not least because he's pretty much admitted as much himself. Many of us are glad that he's been caught doing something because he has spent his career being vile about people. It's nice that he was nice to Caroline Flack. He was and is an utter cunt to and about other celebrities, some younger and more vulnerable than others.

Yes, that's right. I called him the C-word. The C-word is often a lovely warm and beautiful word when we're talking about women's vulvas and vaginas but it is also the best and worst swear word going when we need to express just how low and disgusting we think a.n. other person is. Wootton is that a.n. other person. Wootton is a cunt. I am happy to be dismissed by the "those nasty left-wing people only want right wing people to be CANCELLED!" (I'm pretty sure Huw Edwards, establishment personified isn't exactly left wing, but there you go). I think they're full of shit too.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if the second part of Byline Times story was largely true. The Sun has been notorious for its culture of bullying for years, as have other newspapers.

Why haven't they followed up the catfishing story with more evidence, though? They didn't provide anything to show how they made the connection between Wootton and the alias or what they meant when they said there are multiple co-conspirators. Who? What was their role? Why haven't they gone back to Wootton's ex to clarify if it's true that they sent violent threats to Wootton and were reported to the police? There is a lot missing from that story that needs to be clarified.

@GlorianaCervixia I think I read how someone found this out, I'll see if I can find it.

"The fourth victim said: “I received a friend request from a girl called ‘Maria Joseph’. Immediately she was very flirty and, having just come out of a messy break-up, I didn’t have my wits about me as much as I should.
“‘She’ soon started to send me semi-nude pics and swapped to email and phone. Her number was a New Zealand number as she said she’d just come back from a year over there. As more pics came through, she started to request them from me, which I duly obliged (fortunately I kept my face out of).
“Then she started to send ones she’d already sent, which she brushed off with ‘obviously I’m talking to a few guys at the same time’. At this point, I’m being super careful and start to snoop further into her profile. Catfishing wasn’t really a known thing back then, but I knew something was up.
“We had five friends in common on Facebook – Dan plus four others. When I clicked the others, the only common link was Dan.
“Then a video came through of her having sex with a man. However, I recognised him as someone from a reality TV show as he’s a friend of a friend. This made me realise I knew the identity of the girl [and that it could not be legitimate].
“So with this, the NZ number, the sole common denominator, I was sure it was him. So, I messaged ‘Maria’ to say ‘Hi Dan, interesting way to get dick pics’. The next day, the profile was gone."

Obviously , this is just someone's account and not actual hard evidence . Can deleted profiles be recovered? If this were me and I had suspicions of this being cat fishing, I'd have taken screenshots, hopefully the 'victims' have done so and it's all part of the evidence handed to the police.

Aw the poor menz are just 'sexually driven' they can't help themselves poor loves!

'Nobody can tell somebody how to spend their legally obtained money when it comes to the addict element.'

Enable and minimise, lovely. Why on earth don't you question this stuff, young vulnerable people being allegedly exploited by rich privileged older blokes is not ok. It is not all just lovely sexy horny behaviour, it is fucked up and wrong.

As for calling me dear it wreaks of misogyny but if you've been conditioned to think men can do no wrong and women pointing it out are the baddies then I can't help you. Do better.

Thank you for that.

I would like to know if the journalist saw the number and confirmed it was a New Zealand number and if the rest of the story had checked out. Overall, I wish this had been reported more deeply because there are too many question marks for me to form an opinion on the veracity of it. I hope another media organisation will look into it.