Russell Brand - everyone knew

[Mooshamoo]

I was watching the comedian Katherine Ryan say to Louis theroux that a British comedian is a sexual perpetrator. It is now believed that she was talking about Russell brand. She said on the video "when it eventually comes out about these type of people, Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, this unmentionable British personality, it turns out that everyone knew. Everyone knew. ".

I was wondering did anyone on here on mumsnet know anything about Russell brand? A lot of us lived in London when her was living there. And many women on here would have been a similar age to Russell brand . I lived in London for a year and I saw Russell brand out on a night out once. That was the extent of it. I was wondering did anyone on here have any experience with him, or know about a friend/acquaintance that had any experiences with him.

All these are are allegations.
Katherine Ryan is being lauded for what exactly -
Blind belief in salacious allegations are ridicuous
He is innocent til proven guilty in a court of law end of.

Rape apologism is disgusting.

You just don't want to admit you put this sleaze ahead of women, end of.

There was always someone considered a pervert who lived down the road, I mean everyone knew at least one. I grew up in a fairly middle class area.
I remember all kinds of abuse that wouldn't be ok now though including regular physical abuse of children. Boundaries have certainly changed since then

It was believe me. It was totally normal. Sorry to burst your bubble there. It's not so common nowadays but it was historically

Allegations with enough proof to reach the high bar for publication in a major newspaper and on a UK terrestrial broadcaster.

There is nothing blind about believing these women or the investigative journalists that printed them.

They aren’t lies pedalled on unregulated content aggregators like You Tube and Twitter - that’s RB’s modus operandi.

And as has been said as infinitum, there is no way that 99% of the men who walk free from a rape trial are innocent - the criminal justice system is not fit for purpose to try events where it comes down to ‘he said, she said’. Largely because of the double standards we see with Brand himself - toxic masculinity lauded as bantz. Stud v slag.

Nooo don't have a go at Stephen Bartlett!

I remember all the magazine stories about 18 year olds saying how they just fell in love with their teacher at school and now they have 3 children (slightly paraphrasing)

Mandy Thomas and Bill Wyman

It was gross actually in hindsight. Although this story shows the world hasn't moved on that much

Gosh that’s some change in the law you’re proposing there. No naming by the papers until something is proved in court? So the papers are totally gagged? Sometimes we get irresponsible journalism but I’m not sure I’m seeing that here. The remedy is to sue for libel, which RB in particular is extremely well placed to do, something the journalists in this case will have no doubt taken into account already.

I don’t agree they are just rumours until proved in court. That’s very minimising.

It wasn't normal and very disapproved of.

@Messyhair321 - I'm not saying it didn't happen. But this was permitted by adults. There were plenty of older creepy men and foolish adults.

I however remember many people did not approve of these creeps. Most decent people would have seen it for what it was and fathers drove them away in my experience.

I think he has a condition for sure. Possibly bipolar or ADHD, what we do know is that he has an addictive personality & that was known prior to his fame given his drug addiction & recovery. So then his manager later sent him to a sex addiction inpatient clinic. So he did transfer this addiction elsewhere. I imagine that this was never really solved - it is a lifelong problem. It became part of his persona & saleability. Everyone was making money from it. Not sure if his management company really understood this.

That's not to say that if he raped someone that's ok, just clarifying. The higher ups will decide whether this was the case.

But looking at it objectively you can see how this situation unfolded.

Yes! This ^

That was definitely not my experience growing up in the 70's & 80's. I lived in a fairly middle class area. It was totally normal for girls of 15 to go with older men of mid to late 20's. Parents were of the generation that thought it was better than being involved with immature boys.
The pervent around neighbourhoods was definitely a thing, & we were just advised to stay away from them. But people knew who they were. I even spoke out about one actually. A well known older man who played with himself when he was talking to you. He'd also engineer getting young girls alone in order to do this.
I was badly treated for speaking out. How dare you was the message. It certainly wasn't accepted as the truth, even though everyone knew him & what he was like. I got into trouble, as wrong as this was it was normal if you rocked that boat you got burnt.
I'm glad I did say something though, it would have made him think twice because he knew people knew because of it.

You know that at least one of the journalists are known to be unreliable? They've have had to take their names from the record of this investigation because they were sued for wrongful reporting? They ruined someone's life because of their slanderous reporting in the papers? It's all over X (Twitter) the victim has gone public with her story. She's saying that the journalists are unreliable.

I don't doubt that there were 15 year olds being targeted but come on. These were shitty families who were misogynistic and couldn't believe their luck when an educated or older man picked up their child. It says volumes about the family. Most of society did not hand over teenage girls to older men. Yes I remember it, but the families involved always seemed not to have cared. Most people did care. They still do.

None of that is relevant, it’s just sounds like excusing rape. I have ADHD, my mum has bi-polar, we haven’t hurt anyone.

So he did transfer this addiction elsewhere.

Yes, to raping and abusing women and girls.

No actually that wasn't how I experienced this. I had loads of friends & they were all from well educated middle class well off families who didn't have social issues that you are describing. They were all involved with older men. This was early 1980's.
The girls were all at school doing what was then O levels.

I would never have told about my rapes and child abuse because of people wouldn't have accepted it as the truth...including family amd police.this was 70s 80s. I would have been deemed attention seeker and ostracized and at that time men were allowed to get away with a lot under many guises and take what they want.

I very well remember it being considered fairly normal for teen girls to go out with much older men too, sorry. It wasn't just "misogynistic families". The tide had def started turning in the 80s when I was a teen, (when at my school, there'd been a number of very middle class sixth formers going out with much older male teachers, incl in their 40s, some of them very grim, but they were considered responsible citizens!) and by the mid-late 80s most of us thought it was completely disgusting, but I wouldn't say it had been "disapproved of" in the same way until then really.

@Messyhair321 - well. I disagree. It was an age when some girls could be palmed off. But like you, I lived in a nice middle class area. And I knew of one girl where this did happen. Her father was a sexist pig. Yes he had a lot of money but that was irrelevant.

This is about family and their expectations of girls. Where this happened it is a strong reflection on family culture. That culture is misogynist. It still exists of course.

One of my friends was delighted when her older, 30 something boyfriend was chased away by her father with a cricket bat. He knew what this man was. And she did not have the maturity to tell him no.

You are wrong

A regular event with the unkempt hair poster they interpret what they read/see/hear to fit their own made up version.

A "teen girl" might be 18 or 19 though. There is a diff big difference between that age and 16. I was a teenager/early 20s in the 80s and while it may have been fairly normal for an 18 or 19 year old to go out with an older man it was very disapproved of if the teen was only 16 years where I lived.

It is connected with families and how they think. Today we condemn this by forbidding child marriage, investigating force's marriage and schools have to report if girls disappear to other countries to get married to older men. The driver for this stuff is always what the family believes is acceptable; and the girl will have been taught effectively that this okay. Either by design or sheer negligence

I was a teen and young adult in the 80s. I appreciate that may have been your experience in the 80s and I'm sorry for that. However, just because it was your experience it doesn't mean it was normal or considered okay by most people at the time. It sounds like you and a lot of people you know were abused and that wasn't considered OK then anymore than it is now.