I just watched the Walliams programme and...

[Headtorch]

I don't think it was that bad?

Maybe with all the hype I expected it to be on the RB scale, but it isn't.

Undoubtedly a sleaze and probably several cases that could be brought for workplace harassment, but as terrible as I expected. Enough that those companies should refuse to employ him though, which they have, now it's come out.

Which I guess shows how low the bar is.

I saw the video of him humiliating a 16 year old on stage earlier. The poor boy desperately trying to stop Walliams exposing his genitals on stage in front of an entire audience. It's really upset me as I know how that would impact my teenage son. He should be prosecuted for that, sexually assaulting a child. And it wasn't a one off.

Yeah sucking on a 15 year old's breasts when you're in your 30s is totally normal....

It was a grim watch. Revolting man, abusing his position to take advantage of teenage girls, and then continuing to use that position of power and wealth to try to silence them.
It struck me that one of the women said he basically begged her for sex and tried to get her to feel sorry for him. That was exactly the ploy with the injunction, please hide my identity or I will harm myself. It is, at best, manipulative.

@Someonesomewhereinsummertime agree - wonder if the RB verdict is a reason DW’s legal team didn’t appeal against the lifting of the injunction, given the deadline for this was the same day as RB was sentenced.

Because of RB people have become desensitised.

I'm sure that a lot of media execs after Jimmy Savile thought 'phew, that's over, anyway it was all in the past, things are different now.

Except that DW, RB, PS, HE and no doubt many more show us that it isnt different now.

Organisation execs have to wake up to the fact that celebrity power corrupts. You cant wait to act until there are complaints. You have to assume the worst and put safeguards in. This means chaperones, it means paying attention to whispers, it means fewer parties, it means strict rules which are applied to all.

@mummabubs ITV News and the Guardian would have published sooner but the injunction stopped them. Once the injunction was lifted, they couldn’t reasonably wait that long before publishing; the timing was rather out of their hands.

I agree, he’s more ‘dirty old man’ to be avoided rather than a dangerous rapist.

there are millions of dirty old men. He’s just with his money and fame he could reel girls in.

We are looking at criminality though, if as a society we think it is unacceptable then the law should be changed to raise the age of consent.

As a children’s author he had a responsibility not to overstep his relationship with his young fans and Ithink it’s right that he has been cancelled but I’m not sure it was criminal.

I think it is depressing that our bar is now so low that some people are trying to defend this as "not that bad."

If your 40 year old mate Dave enjoyed the company of 15 and 16 year old teenage girls you would presumably think it was disgusting and that Dave was clearly a wrongun. Even if he waited until they were "legal" to have sex with them.

David Walliams sexually assaulted a 15 year old child and that's apparently "not that bad". The programme clearly showed an established pattern of grooming.

He's disgusting and even if he doesn't get prosecuted for it, I don't want to see predators like him on TV.

Indeed. Behaviour can be legal (though some of the allegations do amount to criminality IMO) but still disgusting, reprehensible, entitled and a complete abuse of power.

If anyone hasn't seen his 'hide the sausage' segment.

Young people often do not have the emotional intelligence and maturity to know when they are being groomed or manywhich is exactly why DW targeted them. It’s disgusting behaviour and should never be excused.

Exactly. Especially on a predominantly parenting website! If people who are parents, many of whom will have children of that age, are saying “oh well it’s not that bad” no wonder people out there who aren’t parents, who don’t understand how young these teens really are, have had no issue with it for so long.

(Obviously I’m not saying you have to be a parent to get it, but it helps)!

Sexual activity with a 15 year old was illegal then, as it is now. It’s CSA. Let’s call a spade a spade.

Good point.

He stated he thought one of them was 18, but he knew exactly how old she was when he started messaging her two years ago so I don't buy that. In any event with someone who was clearly very young any decent man would have checked.

No. Any decent man in his 30s would not have sex with a girl who looks "very young". Checking her age to see which side of the age of consent she is is not what I'd describe as decent.

There is illegality here. He sexually assaulted a 15 year old.

With RB, remember that the dispatches documentary was 3 years ago. Women came forward when they felt confident to do so because they saw other women had spoken up. There may well be other women come forward about DW now.

The laddish laughing about it from Jonathan Ross and Matt Lucus was sickening.

In fact, all of it is sickening. People always know and these bastards are allowed to get away with it.

All it shows to me is that there's lots of types of abuse.

Like with domestic abuse... people used to just think that was physical violence and we now know there's coercive control, mental, emotional, financial and sexual abuse as part of it. None of it is ok. Look at the impact on those women in DWs documentary. It wasn't minor. Your first sexual experience, after telling a man you thought was a mentor, that you had suffered sexual abuse as a child, was that same man immediately after sticks his tongue down your throat and sucks your breast.

My child is 15. It makes me sick.

He certainly deserves to lose his career and his reputation as a bare minimum. I hope charges will follow.

Don’t do that. ‘dirty old man’ minimises what he did and is an old trope that doesn’t actually capture what this man is accused of doing.

He knowingly exploited his position of power to target young and therefore more vulnerable girls. He coerced, manipulated and groomed. What is alleged to have happened to the 15 year old is child sexual abuse. Clearly.

We shouldn’t compare one type of sexual assault with another and downgrade one to something that sounds just a bit off. Just label his behaviours clearly.

Would you say ‘he’s just a little bit punchy’ and to be avoided, he’s not a serial killer. No. You’d say punching people is a crime and not ok. Full stop.

Don’t minimise these women’s experiences please.

💯

Well said @ThatsTheLot

@ThatsTheLot how many of us have had a grim experience as a 14 / 15 / 16 year old. I would guess most of us. I think back to situations I was in and I feel totally grim. A young girl is not going to outsmart a grown man.
women don’t seem to pass knowledge on to the next generation of females though. My mum / aunties etc never warned me. So each generation has to discover ‘dirty old men’ the hard way.
it’s grim, it’s wrong but it’s imbedded in society. Like I say, there are millions of them - probably billions.

I would argue that this was humiliating and illegal too.

Well he clearly did given all the fuss he made to suppress it. And he was there.

One thing to notice is that as he gets older the "girls" don't. He's clearly attracted to very young women. Someone who pushes the boundaries like that is very likely to have crossed them too. Presumably if he police do arrest him, his online activities will also be investigated. At that point it would be surprising if they didn't find anything... questionable.

Until 2004, it was legal for newspapers to publish photographs of topless 16yos. Im not saying this to defend The Creep.. but a reminder of the culture then. Just over 20 years ago.