Noel Clarke sexual harassment allegations, suspended by BAFTA

[Cwenthryth]

www.theguardian.com/culture/2021/apr/29/actor-noel-clarke-accused-of-groping-harassment-and-bullying-by-20-women

🤬🤬🤬

Especially galling that BAFTA was seemingly made aware of this before giving him his very recent honour. I watched his acceptance speech and found it really moving in terms of celebrating a working class black man’s success in a historically white industry. Turns out he’s an (alleged) sexual abuser. Fucking great.

Assuming this goes to trial, even if he is found innocent (which I doubt) his career is well and truly screwed because of this scandal. I'm surprised he's got this far in the profession anyway - I watched the Bulletproof and Visionpoint series, and frankly, sexual shenanigans apart, he won't be a loss to the acting profession. Couldn't act his way out of a paper bag. And his writing is no better.

[quote Unsure33]@Constantcrayfish

Apparently he showed that alleged video and then I would have thought it would have become a crime so it should have been reported.

The journalist was not saying he was innocent , she said it should be dealt with in a court .[/quote]
I understand what Sarah Vine is saying. It’s been all over this thread. The point I was making is that it’s clearly not going to be in court.

As several posters on here have made clear, including me, the majority of the things Clarke is accused of are not outwardly criminal (you make the same point yourself in your following post) or would struggle to reach a threshold for charging. The police turned away attempts to report him. So he never will be found guilty in court.

They are however the sort of things that get you fired from jobs after an investigation, which is what has happened here. The Guardian investigated, in depth. Far greater depth than most HR teams would manage. A huge number of women have come forward, some of them prepared to be named, with very similar stories. On the balance of probabilities, there is truth in this.

If Clarke wants his day in court, he can sue the Guardian, and can sue the named accusers.

@Chienloup

Chris Evans also set up a camera in the women's toilets at his production company.

I hadn’t got heard about that one. I’d ask how he got away with his behaviour for so long but meh patriarchy

@PaddingtonsSister

Trial by social media and mumsnet Not great justice

Most of the time that's all the justice there is.

My daughter has just reported her ex for something else. She reported it at the urging of a victim support group that the police had previously put her in contact with. The woman police officer took it very seriously. A male PC called her a day later to say that they would log it, do nothing and directed her to a domestic abuse helpline. Again.

It's so wrong that women victims are expected to do the hard graft while men get away with it time and time again. I'm furious right now and wish I was more articulate and could join others in trying to change how the world works. Technically domestic abuse, sexual harassment, stalking and coercive control are illegal. In reality a tiny percentage of these men ever have a price to pay. It sickens me.

Chienloup

For me it is not a trial by media.

It is a public service announcement.

Praise be.

As others have said, if it is untrue he can sue.

It's so wrong that women victims are expected to do the hard graft while men get away with it time and time again. I'm furious right now and wish I was more articulate and could join others in trying to change how the world works. Technically domestic abuse, sexual harassment, stalking and coercive control are illegal. In reality a tiny percentage of these men ever have a price to pay. It sickens me.

When I was signing up with Rape Crisis I said similar and was told that women very often feel responsible, not for what has happened to them but for preventing it happening again. But there's very little we can do.

I hope your daughter will be okay, and you, it must be very hard for you too

I understand what Sarah Vine is saying. It’s been all over this thread. The point I was making is that it’s clearly not going to be in court.

As several posters on here have made clear, including me, the majority of the things Clarke is accused of are not outwardly criminal (you make the same point yourself in your following post) or would struggle to reach a threshold for charging. The police turned away attempts to report him. So he never will be found guilty in court.

This is such a good point. Saying men can only be accused in court and not in public is effectively saying women should just keep quiet.

This sympathy for the accused rather than the victims reminds me of the parents of campus rapists in the US, lamenting that their sons will suffer the rest of their lives due to a youthful mistake.

The "trial by media" thing is ridiculous.
I don't recall anyone saying that when Jeremy Clarkson was fired by the BBC for hitting the producer. At the sympathetic end it was "JC is provocative and went too far". Don't recall anything about his life being ruined and the assault needing to be proved in court.
Framing the situation with Clarke as "innocent until proven guilty" makes it all about him. Turn it on its head. How should employers protect their female staff from harassment at work? What is appropriate action to take when an employer is notified that a male member if staff has been inappropriate with many female employees?

I find the 'trial by media' thing ridiculous.

We don't try every single mistake a person makes, we make our own minds up based on the balance of evidence we see and hear.

If we were going to convict someone, of course we'd need to have evidence beyond reasonable doubt.

Luckily he’s not being tried or convicted or sent to prison though is he?

If you’re sending your child to swimming lessons and 20 separate parents tell you the coach at one school was inappropriate with their child, would you send your child there?

Mistake my arse.

www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/noel-clarke-told-adam-deacon-24026377.amp

Noel Clarke told Adam Deacon to lick actress' face without warning her for 'real reaction'

Genuine question for the "innocent until proven guilty, a man's career has been destroyed" brigade:

If you owned a little cafe or something and were interviewing men for a position as waiter, and 20 women you knew said to you, "God don't hire that bloke, he leered at me/screamed at me/acts like a bully/constantly letches over girls" - would you go ahead and give him the waiter job, over all the other qualified candidates?

After all, he's not been convicted of anything, has he?

@SinkGirl

Luckily he’s not being tried or convicted or sent to prison though is he?

If you’re sending your child to swimming lessons and 20 separate parents tell you the coach at one school was inappropriate with their child, would you send your child there?

EXACTLY

@KarensChoppyBob

Mistake my arse.

I think my post has been misunderstood as being on Noel's side.... it's not.

My mum is one of those "trial by media" lemmings even when I told^^ her we knew of someone related to a family friend who'd been assaulted by Clarke. She's in her 60s and was teaching me about fucking feminism when I was a teen in the early 90s, so I am so very disappointed in her.

@Constantcrayfish

But I thought now the police are looking at some of the accusations?
And some of the allegations did appear to be criminal offences .

But If you are all saying that his actions not criminal then surely what you should be campaigning for is more protection at work and a change in the way these things are reported through the correct channels without fear , in particular in this industry .

Which goes partly back to my point about education and empowerment of younger people at work . So educating boys and girls( at school) about what is acceptable and what is not . If people are reporting things and nothing is being done then things need to change .

If someone went to the police but he was not actually breaking the law then what should they have done .

These are questions not accusations.

@SinkGirl

But is not the point that it should never get to the stage that 20 people have to get to that stage ?

@QuentinBunbury

But in the case of JC presumably it was assault so could have gone to court ? And that is exactly what employment contracts and staff handbooks are for so that behaviour does not have to be tolerated .

In this case if the very first person had had the method of feeling safe to report what had happened then it would not have got to further people being assaulted or bullied or humiliated .

Sad times for the industry bafta didn’t get a big audience this time maybe its the end of it

I tend to agree that we don't need to have a criminal court always to tell us if someone is a creep.

However, I think there are also some reasonable things to keep in mind with that. One being that when there is a criminal question, too much media speculation can affect how possible it is to investigate and prosecute a crime.

When we get to an environment where even an accusation is enough to sink someone without question, that can be abused - there have been a few examples of that kind of thing, like the Rolling Stone article a few years ago.

And it's good to have a healthy skepticism toward the media. Reading things in a newspaper is not quite the same as people you know telling you about something, and anyone who has been involved, even tangentially, in the media going on a smear campaign knows they can be pretty dodgy at times, and even dishonest. Even when they are quoting people it can be difficult to be sure they are giving the context in an honest way.

@Unsure33 “employment contracts and staff handbooks” are for employees. Most actors and crew aren’t employees, they’re self-employeed. And with IR 35, most production companies are likely to be especially clear that they’re not employees.

That doesn’t mean they don’t have legal rights at work, but they don’t have all the same rights of employees.

And FYI, not all employees have exactly the same recourse in law available to them - depends on your length of service (notably 2 years) and whether you have a protected characteristic. Some employers therefore get away with treating their new staff badly.

[quote Unsure33]@Constantcrayfish

But I thought now the police are looking at some of the accusations?
And some of the allegations did appear to be criminal offences .

But If you are all saying that his actions not criminal then surely what you should be campaigning for is more protection at work and a change in the way these things are reported through the correct channels without fear , in particular in this industry .

Which goes partly back to my point about education and empowerment of younger people at work . So educating boys and girls( at school) about what is acceptable and what is not . If people are reporting things and nothing is being done then things need to change .

If someone went to the police but he was not actually breaking the law then what should they have done .

These are questions not accusations.[/quote]
It’s never going to be possible to make reporting this sort of thing “feel safe” in an industry where the majority of staff (and especially the low level staff) are freelance, reliant on word of mouth and reputation for their next job. There’s no way for these women to report things without it detonating their burgeoning careers, especially when the person abusing you is the director and / or producer. There’s nowhere to go.

What it will take for a change to occur is for it to be utterly unacceptable to treat others this way - for men to know that if they do treat others this way, they will never work again. They need to be afraid of what will happen to their own careers, rather than these women being the one with that fear.

We had decades where these men had no such fear - that is starting to change because of all of the brave women who’ve spoken up about men like NC, and it’s about fucking time.

Studios need to be accountable for what happens on the set of their productions, when they become hostile working environments. So that they will come down hard on any whiff of this shit.

It also relies on film studios / organisations like the BBC to actually act when they become aware of issues. The fact that the BBC continued to hire John Barrowman when there was extensive evidence that he is going around sexually assaulting colleagues on set is utterly baffling and disgraceful.

@IntermittentParps

ITV have done 5 night dramas in the past, can't remember the name of the last one but it is not a one-off. There was that thing about the uni lecturer whose student tried to seduce her husband. May have had Surann Jones in it...? [vague]

Wasn't it Katherine Kelly?