Dave Lee Travis

[limitedperiodonly]

He didn't get it, did he?

My personal view is that a suspended sentence was in order for the level of the assault and the fact that he has no other convictions.

But that speech on the steps of the court moved me to touch him, and not in a touchy-feely kind of way.

I dunno about you Petula, but I somehow manage not to squeeze junior colleagues in the chest when they are on a fag break.

I would never tire of kicking him very hard where it hurts.

This ridiculous show trial is no comfort to them and it's not going to make men behave any better either.

But it might be of comfort to DLT's victims.

Because rightly or wrongly men think that a women who doesn't like them can lie and they can find themselves suspended and their career in ruins, even if they haven't done anything.

It probably happens very rarely, it needs a very cold heart and a very very steady nerve to keep up such a lie, but men are still nervous.

Well, women are pretty nervous that they will get assaulted. Which of course happens far more often than the false accusation.

It's a pointless, trivial sentence, because it's a case that would probably never have come to trial if he hadn't been famous.

Could be... but to me that says that we should be taking it more seriously, not less.

99.99% of women who have been abused by a sexist twat of a boss. Have absolutely no chance of any come back.

They do, but things are so stacked against women in the workplace that we shut up and put up. Far too often.

This ridiculous show trial is no comfort to them and it's not going to make men behave any better either.

I've taken comfort from it. It's helped me to see that 12 people also felt that it was assault.

It makes make bosses afraid to recruit female workers, it makes male co workers nervous around female colleagues. It doesn't change attitudes!

Only if they are incapable of not grabbing a co-workers breasts for 15 seconds, and to be fair, not many women want to work with such sexual incontinents.

It doesn't make young men see that this behaviour is fundamentally wrong. It doesn't make men understand why it upsets and frightens women, because nothing equivalent happens to them.

Then they are fucking stupid and probably shouldn't be allowed out on their own, let alone in a workplace with actual real human beings.

Because rightly or wrongly men think that a women who doesn't like them can lie and they can find themselves suspended and their career in ruins, even if they haven't done anything.

What a complete crock.

It probably happens very rarely, it needs a very cold heart and a very very steady nerve to keep up such a lie, but men are still nervous.

It certainly happens more rarely than women being sexually assaulted in the workplace and the perpetrator getting clean away with it, wouldn't you say?

And actually, I find the number of women saying that the way that DLT has behaved is acceptable really worrying.

I can't decide if it's because:

Those women have been sexually assaulted so often at work that they have developed a thick skin about it. Minimised it to themselves and each other so well that it really feels like it's no big deal.

They have never been sexually assaulted in the way at work and so just don't believe other women who have. unlikely

They are in some way colluding with the men who do this. In a weird Stockholm Syndrome way.

Puffins, I think the downside of Yewtree as an umbrella phrase is that many have latched onto the "it was different in the old days" and think it's 16 year old groupies in the 70s who were willing to go down on 19 year old sexy celebs who have decided to call assault 40 years later to get some attention and maybe some money to glamourise their later years...

Those people are not reading the details of the cases. Here, it's clear there was no "groupie" interaction, a nearly 30 year age gap, a difference in power at work and a straight out assault.

I'd like to think if someone came on MN asking what to do about a senior visitor to work who assaulted her years ago in her first job, she'd be supported to report him if she felt able to do so.

(Not saying the groupie situation was all fine and dandy, to be clear)

Aren't these men tried under laws that existed at the time of the offence?

Yup.

It makes make bosses afraid to recruit female workers

No it doesn't.

The same was said about the Equal Pay and Sex Discrimination Acts which were passed in about 1975. Those two particular Acts are still not effective, but at least they lay down a marker.

Employers adapt. When I started work it was okay to smoke in the office and drink at lunchtime. It's not now.

There are also many other laws governing insider trading, acceptance of gifts etc. I'd say that in some cases employees have had a rough deal from their employers. But those are the rules and you adapt or perish,

And it's not new. Over 100 years ago we banned match factories from exposing their workers to dangerous chemicals that rotted their bones. And it protected weak young women after they bravely went on strike. Look it up

i would have thought that hiring managers would be far more wary of hiring men who commit sexual assaults

So, the "it was different then" thing is meaningless?

I think that people who stick up for blokes like him can't think very much of men as a whole. It's not difficult to refrain from physically touching your co-workers. I manage it every day and I am surrounded by people I wouldn't chuck out of bed for eating Doritos.

I've always disliked DLT - he was an arrogant so-and-so throughout his career. Steve Coogan must have drawn from him for Alan Partridge.

Aren't these men tried under laws that existed at the time of the offence?

Yes crotchmaven.

That was the issue with Max Clifford. The judge made it plain that he could only sentence according to the rules at the time.

So making someone suck your cock in 1978 wasn't rape then. But it is now.

At least he gave the highest sentence he could.

He's a man and he got it.

the thing that was different was that women didn't feel able to object or report, despite the laws

i do wonder whether some of the women objecting to the historical reports and saying "it was different then" know that some of their closest male relatives behaved in that way and it's easier to excuse it on that basis than to face up to how their behaviour might have felt to the victim

Why on earth would it make bosses fear recruiting female workers?! What does it have to take for the problem to be seen as something other than a female one? I'd rather there wasn't a generalised backlash at all, but if there's going to be one, lets not make women's employment potential take another blow.

But, but, but - if it was a crime then, why the "it was different then" cries? And why aren't the likes of Jeremy Vine reporters shutting down those claims in a flash? Why is equal air time given to "each side" when there is no equivalence. That is something that riles the hell out of me and why I can't listen to much that is on the radio and TV.

That utter twat Kate Copstick was on Jeremy Vine the other day, passionately arguing how ridiculous it is to convict men like DLT, and that having your tits groped is nothing to get hot under the collar about.

She was also on the radio a few months ago when all the Savile stuff was current, saying that if a dirty old man groped her NINE YEAR OLD she wouldn't call the police.

Horrible woman.

Some of you are forgetting we still live in a country where golf clubs and the church are still voting to treat women as equal. Where the police still think a 14y girl doesn't deserve protection if she's 'not a nice MC girl'.

Far to much needs to change in the here and now, before historical cases make sense to many people.

i totally agree elephants that it doesn't solve all the problems we still have. but i don't think it makes things worse, and i don't think it's a reason not to pursue the charges

Dont know if you've seen this. Fucking grim, says it all really

IT WAS AGAINST THE LAW THEN!!!

And yes, there is still a way to go. Somthing that still doesn't make sense to me. I don't see anyone treading lightly around my views.

I don't think anyone on this board has forgotten any of that Elephants. The Rotherham clusterfuck amply demonstrates exactly what various agencies think of dispossessed young people.

None of this detracts from the experiences of women from 20, 30, 40 or more years ago. None of this makes it ok to tell women who were sexually assaulted that they shouldn't bring their cases, shouldn't tell their stories.

What crimes that are against the law now, but are glossed over by the police, could I commit tomorrow and sit tight for 20+ years until they became more publicly distasteful?

Sadly, it's still likely to be a crime against a more vulnerable person.

I think they should tell their stories and repeat them often. Only by hearing from their mothers, wives and daughters are men going to realise how much of this goes on and how much it hurts.

Only by hearing other people's stories are women going to truly understand it's not their fault, their not alone.

Only by hearing a DFs story and imagining some one laying a finger on my own DDs do I begin to understand (because I, somehow don't seem to attract this shit from men).

Yes, Stories should be told, repeatedly and loudly. Unfortunately sometimes I think concentrating on the minute detail of one story as you have to for a court case, distracts from the wider issue and drowns out women's common experience.