Brendan Cox

[SusanBunch]

So he has been accused of groping a woman in an American bar, grabbing her hips and bottom and thrusting his thumb into her mouth after she repeatedly told him no. This is the second round of accusations. In 2015, before Jo Cox was murdered, there were newspaper reports that he had voluntarily left his post at Save the Children after more than one co-worker threatened to make an almighty fuss about his conduct. Obviously these allegations have yet to be proven in a court of law, but it doesn't look great.

It will be interesting to see how this pans out. He has traded on his saint-like image since his wife died and the left-wing press love him. He often portrays himself as Dad of the year etc and I think he even did a live chat on Mumsnet. But now it appears that this is a man who assaults women while his wife and small children are at home. It's interesting that the 2015 story was not raked up more when he put himself in the public eye. I wonder if he can survive this.

I think the other problem is that the victims are not coming forward (to the press) themselves. These are old stories where they actively avoided publicity to protect their work place. This will only have legs if there is more information provided, otherwise it'll just die a death and many people will remain unaware.

You can see the point of not coming forward. Looking at how much unthinking support there is for Brendan Cox, then anyone blowing the whistle could face significant vilification. It's the kind of thing that could easily end a career.

Agreed.

There are ways that you can report it anonymously and leave it on file for the police as intelligence. Contact your sexual assault referral centre. They take a witness statement but the police can only contact you via the centre. It's up to you what you do later but at least it's on file.

Also I wonder if very dedicated women working for charities doing important work may feel an additional emotional burden around pursuing it. This can apply in lots of other settings too but they may fear that if they report the colleagues they worked with, the people in need helped via their charity or their overall type of cause may suffer loss of donations or even the charity sector suffer as a whole. A bit like the pressures of reporting abuse within a political party perhaps.

These areas can attract very principled people who want to help and change the world, then when they are abused in that setting they may feel pressure not to pursue it because they know there are already people out there gunning against ‘their cause’ for eg uk-funded international aid agencies (or political opponents to their party) who they know will seek to capitalise on the personal pain of the women who have reported abuse in their workplace (or use of a service/charitable aim) and then their abuse will become used for political point scoring.

(I hope this is just my emotional projection and is not a barrier to reporting if all other things are equal in the balance, because the horse has truly objectively already bolted on this one. #metoo is a recognised truth in every sector and arena of life, because it articulates the age old truth that male violence and sexual entitlement are a reality for both female service providers and female service users in every sector of their life, and always have been.
.. but I am just thinking that there the very reasons and ideals that draw some women to work in these areas in the first place, may also work to mitigate against feeling able to do something to report personal harm they have experienced. (Which is in no way saying it’s all an easy thing for women to report abuse in workplaces where they don’t have the same emotional investment in a ‘cause’.) because the power dynamics working against them are depressingly similar across all sectors and workplaces.

to all affected.

Given the position of influence he is in, as a result of the sad loss of his wife, I find it very telling that he set out to deceive everyone from the start over the writing of the book he claims to have written in his wife's name. He didn't write it. A ghost writer did. He was happy to lie about that, and very explicitly did. What else has he lied about?