Translated: I am a very unwell person who engages in knights-move thinking and wild nonsense like a schizophrenic and will actively seek out more things to ruin my life and head with instead of actually try to help myself because the fleeting feeling is righteousness is far more comfortable than doing the work of realizing you're just fucking wrong about the world
Jane Baker: “that dirty yid Zelensky”. With all due respect, ma’am, which is zero respect, you sound pretty weird, maybe even a little creepy. Not at all like someone who should be purporting to write authoritatively about ANYTHING. Your ideologies are twisted and inconsistent l would suggest some kind of professional intervention if I wasn’t pretty certain you were a Russtroll.
Men who quickly dismiss cases like this without any context, or often form a viewpoint before even exploring the context, need to engage in some self introspection and ask themselves why they’re so bothered before even knowing the case at hand
Yes I've been thinking that that needs to be the next approach: "whats at stake for you if Russell Brand is guilty or not?" "Why are you so afraid of men being accused of rape?"
To Kill a Mockingbird is a book (and later a movie) whose plot is centered on a story of a Black man falsely accused of rape by a White woman. The setting is Alabama in the 1930s.
> But I can tell you they’re going about their days in recording studios and publishing houses and TV studios and on theatre stages as we sit here now.
> And no one is saying a damn thing.
Uh-huh. Ouch. Spot on. Saw a tweet the other day that said: "I've had to see a tweet today from someone who assaulted me last year making the same cringe joke as every other male comic about how he's not the one being named. I'm not trying to generate a story here, but this is exactly what's happening."
But when did the press become the justice system? I mean we want justice for these women that Russell has allegedly assaulted. Will they get it now that the world is split, yet again, into us and them on an issue? Why wasn’t he arrested and charged by the police for these crimes if the evidence is so strong against him? Has he been charged? How will he have any kind of real impartial trial? So how will these women get their justice? You hit the mail on the head with your title. Except you didn’t mention the women whose chance at justice has been assassinated. This is trial by media circus. In the one corner the big news outlets and in the other the guy who has made a career from calling out their hypocrisy. David and Goliath. Well done 👍🏽
The justice system fails women. Many women don’t report their rapes at the time out of fear and shame. Particularly if the assailant is famous/high status. The ones who do face a three year wait and a 1-2% conviction rate. Victims are cross examined and pulled apart, their sexual history and drug/alcohol habits used against them. It must be nice to feel so confident in current legal routes to the “justice” you’re talking about. For nearly all victims of rape, those routes are dead ends. Nearly all.
I'm advocating for the women without a voice. Until the legal system is reformed, I'll continue to do that. If you're advocating for women to stay quiet unless they get a conviction, you are advocating for the silencing of sexual assault victims. This is where we are at the moment. I hope it will change.
I appreciate your taking the time to comment and I can see you care about this a lot. But in the case of Brand, speaking as someone on the front line of this, no one is pulling strings to make anyone write and publish this story. Brand's very expensive lawyers took this to the wire. He is no underdog. He is serving only himself. I'm sorry you can't see that. The stories of his behaviour with women far far predate any sort of interest he later showed in taking down the establishment.
Not to mention…have you read USA Today’s multi-year investigation into how rape kits don’t even get analyzed? That, in itself, is a crime. Justice system. That’s outright comical.
I know where you're coming from but don't rush to accuse. For decades, centuries, young women have put themselves in harms way hoping to catch the rich and famous boyfriend/husband and, more often than not, been disappointed. Whether that be simple rejection or abused and rejected. Often these young women are already victims of abuse or know no better. Some, no doubt, are calculating; the benefit outweighing the risk. However, one must not label all as being responsible for the situation they found themselves in.
Key phrase here: “Journalists carefully sift through rumour and third-hand accounts, track down the people mentioned in those rumours, discount anything that can’t be verified.”
I wish this were the case. You should amend that to say “credible journalists” because there are so few that are and so many that aren’t these days.
You seem to be saying that trial by media is OK. You seem to be saying that to be found guilty by media means you are actually guilty, no doubt about that, because media are such good investigators. Should we do away with our extraordinarily expensive legal system and hand the responsibility over to the media? Is finding someone guilty and applying the punishment before any trial has taken place now a legitimate role for the media?
First, there is nothing wrong with Brand's figurative use of the word 'baroque' (his Guardian columns showed an excellent command of language in a different league from Raeside's) and the failing jibe is indicative of the paucity of Raeside's case elsewhere. I don't know what is more squalid, slowing down Brand's speech in the first clip to sound like he's slow and slurring or her absurd belief that how she 'believes' actors playing anonymous accusers is enough to vilify a man as if due process is irrelevant. That's totalitarianism. I don't think even Jacob Rees-Mogg would be happy to sound this right wing. It's horrific.
It does not follow that those who value the presumption of innocence are in favour of crime. How disappointed you must have been that Kevin Spacey had a chance to defend himself - or is it just Russell Brand you think should be denied due process?
Pity theyre not so hot shot on investigating how the bombs get from our factories to be dropped on Gaza women and children. Or don't your pay bosses let you care about THEM. We all know who OWNS the media.
As someone who has been molested, who went to the cops and got nowhere and ended up suing successfully, I also used to think that courts determined truth.
Unfortunately, the system isn't really like that. There are a lot of factors that influence the likelihoodof prosecution. Including the fact that defendants having the ability to fund exceptionally resourced counsel reduces the changes of a conviction - which, in turn reduces the likelyhood of cases being tried.
Not what the TV shows tell us, but that is my lived experience.
If you really squint you can almost NOT SEE the consistent pattern of behaviour reported by multiple people over years and years. If you shut your eyes completely, you don't even need to know it's there. You can just blindly believe a person who has told you what to think of him from day one. The all-powerful truth teller somehow had gained a reputation for sexually assaulting women long before he decided to jump on the conspiracy train. But maybe that was just women pre-emptively blackening his character because they could see the future.
What these newspaper and TV exposés have in common, is that they are already investigations. The scrutiny has already been done and redone, tested by lawyers, combed through by editors, channel heads, lawyers again, lawyers again.
Journalists carefully sift through rumour and third-hand accounts, track down the people mentioned in those rumours, discount anything that can’t be verified.
Then, when a participant is traced and willing to talk, their accounts are corroborated by others who were there at the time of the alleged incident.
I’m reading this a year after you wrote it. I wish I’d read it earlier, it would have helped me understand an absolutely brutal experience I had after writing an opinion piece for a major news organization.
I wrote an essay about what it was like to report a rape and endure a trial, then went through an absolutely brutal fact-check over every word. It lasted for days, and the legal department was relentless. I’ve written for other media outlets and have never gone through such a ferocious grilling.
The day after they finally published it, the same organization let Trump lie with impunity about E. Jean Carroll.
I still don’t have the words which would adequately express my rage. But your piece does help me understand what I went through. It provides context, and I’m truly grateful. Thank you.
Russell Brand does not describe himself as a giant in the first clip. He is referring to 'Gulliver's Travels' whose metaphor he applies to those who gossip (and not the subject of gossip).
Well you're a moral coward who would let a pedophile used car salesman off because of a statute of limitations. There is a greater Law at stake which a judicial system cannot rigorously provide facility to in it’s current formulation. But sure, let's let the monsters live amongst us. That's worked out well.
His recorded behaviour strikes me of something wicked, the words and look in his eyes tell me he is capable, and the growing evidence tells me it's more than likely. Guess we'll see.
This is the outcome of a 4 year investigation.
This not an assassination; this is a man who’s past caught up to him, which is happening to a lot of men lately.
Their defense? The matrix. The left. New World Order.
Tough luck.
Take your pills. Any pills at this point. The absolute delusion you have cast for yourself is worrying
I'm not in thrall to Big Pharma.
Translated: I am a very unwell person who engages in knights-move thinking and wild nonsense like a schizophrenic and will actively seek out more things to ruin my life and head with instead of actually try to help myself because the fleeting feeling is righteousness is far more comfortable than doing the work of realizing you're just fucking wrong about the world
And yeah please take a goddamn pill of some kind
Jane Baker: “that dirty yid Zelensky”. With all due respect, ma’am, which is zero respect, you sound pretty weird, maybe even a little creepy. Not at all like someone who should be purporting to write authoritatively about ANYTHING. Your ideologies are twisted and inconsistent l would suggest some kind of professional intervention if I wasn’t pretty certain you were a Russtroll.
Angry? You must have misintepreted my tone. I was speaking facts.
Men who quickly dismiss cases like this without any context, or often form a viewpoint before even exploring the context, need to engage in some self introspection and ask themselves why they’re so bothered before even knowing the case at hand
Yes I've been thinking that that needs to be the next approach: "whats at stake for you if Russell Brand is guilty or not?" "Why are you so afraid of men being accused of rape?"
Why is a man "so afraid of being accused of rape"? This is to be taken seriously? You did not read To Kill a Mockingbird.
I don't understand your reply, could you explain please.
To Kill a Mockingbird is a book (and later a movie) whose plot is centered on a story of a Black man falsely accused of rape by a White woman. The setting is Alabama in the 1930s.
And how does it relate to Russell Brand being accused of rape?
“He declared himself so important to the world....” You nailed it.
Thank you.
> But I can tell you they’re going about their days in recording studios and publishing houses and TV studios and on theatre stages as we sit here now.
> And no one is saying a damn thing.
Uh-huh. Ouch. Spot on. Saw a tweet the other day that said: "I've had to see a tweet today from someone who assaulted me last year making the same cringe joke as every other male comic about how he's not the one being named. I'm not trying to generate a story here, but this is exactly what's happening."
That's how it is being female and it always will be.
But when did the press become the justice system? I mean we want justice for these women that Russell has allegedly assaulted. Will they get it now that the world is split, yet again, into us and them on an issue? Why wasn’t he arrested and charged by the police for these crimes if the evidence is so strong against him? Has he been charged? How will he have any kind of real impartial trial? So how will these women get their justice? You hit the mail on the head with your title. Except you didn’t mention the women whose chance at justice has been assassinated. This is trial by media circus. In the one corner the big news outlets and in the other the guy who has made a career from calling out their hypocrisy. David and Goliath. Well done 👍🏽
The justice system fails women. Many women don’t report their rapes at the time out of fear and shame. Particularly if the assailant is famous/high status. The ones who do face a three year wait and a 1-2% conviction rate. Victims are cross examined and pulled apart, their sexual history and drug/alcohol habits used against them. It must be nice to feel so confident in current legal routes to the “justice” you’re talking about. For nearly all victims of rape, those routes are dead ends. Nearly all.
As is the one playing out now.
Not if the women have been able to warn others about an alleged predator.
I'm advocating for the women without a voice. Until the legal system is reformed, I'll continue to do that. If you're advocating for women to stay quiet unless they get a conviction, you are advocating for the silencing of sexual assault victims. This is where we are at the moment. I hope it will change.
I appreciate your taking the time to comment and I can see you care about this a lot. But in the case of Brand, speaking as someone on the front line of this, no one is pulling strings to make anyone write and publish this story. Brand's very expensive lawyers took this to the wire. He is no underdog. He is serving only himself. I'm sorry you can't see that. The stories of his behaviour with women far far predate any sort of interest he later showed in taking down the establishment.
Not to mention…have you read USA Today’s multi-year investigation into how rape kits don’t even get analyzed? That, in itself, is a crime. Justice system. That’s outright comical.
Oh! That's really disheartening.
I know where you're coming from but don't rush to accuse. For decades, centuries, young women have put themselves in harms way hoping to catch the rich and famous boyfriend/husband and, more often than not, been disappointed. Whether that be simple rejection or abused and rejected. Often these young women are already victims of abuse or know no better. Some, no doubt, are calculating; the benefit outweighing the risk. However, one must not label all as being responsible for the situation they found themselves in.
Thanks for the essay.
Key phrase here: “Journalists carefully sift through rumour and third-hand accounts, track down the people mentioned in those rumours, discount anything that can’t be verified.”
I wish this were the case. You should amend that to say “credible journalists” because there are so few that are and so many that aren’t these days.
Loved reading this Julia, it felt a relief to hear it summed up the way you’ve done.
Thank you so much. x
You seem to be saying that trial by media is OK. You seem to be saying that to be found guilty by media means you are actually guilty, no doubt about that, because media are such good investigators. Should we do away with our extraordinarily expensive legal system and hand the responsibility over to the media? Is finding someone guilty and applying the punishment before any trial has taken place now a legitimate role for the media?
Are there any grey areas?
The length of the investigation shows how hard it was to find anything. It is not the trump card you think it is.
First, there is nothing wrong with Brand's figurative use of the word 'baroque' (his Guardian columns showed an excellent command of language in a different league from Raeside's) and the failing jibe is indicative of the paucity of Raeside's case elsewhere. I don't know what is more squalid, slowing down Brand's speech in the first clip to sound like he's slow and slurring or her absurd belief that how she 'believes' actors playing anonymous accusers is enough to vilify a man as if due process is irrelevant. That's totalitarianism. I don't think even Jacob Rees-Mogg would be happy to sound this right wing. It's horrific.
It does not follow that those who value the presumption of innocence are in favour of crime. How disappointed you must have been that Kevin Spacey had a chance to defend himself - or is it just Russell Brand you think should be denied due process?
Oh dear.
So no due process? No ‘innocent until proven guilty?” Why was the media the first stop, not law enforcement?
This isn't a court of law, it's investigative journalism. You can draw your own conclusions.
It’s also called mud-racking.
Pity theyre not so hot shot on investigating how the bombs get from our factories to be dropped on Gaza women and children. Or don't your pay bosses let you care about THEM. We all know who OWNS the media.
As someone who has been molested, who went to the cops and got nowhere and ended up suing successfully, I also used to think that courts determined truth.
Unfortunately, the system isn't really like that. There are a lot of factors that influence the likelihoodof prosecution. Including the fact that defendants having the ability to fund exceptionally resourced counsel reduces the changes of a conviction - which, in turn reduces the likelyhood of cases being tried.
Not what the TV shows tell us, but that is my lived experience.
If you really squint you can almost NOT SEE the consistent pattern of behaviour reported by multiple people over years and years. If you shut your eyes completely, you don't even need to know it's there. You can just blindly believe a person who has told you what to think of him from day one. The all-powerful truth teller somehow had gained a reputation for sexually assaulting women long before he decided to jump on the conspiracy train. But maybe that was just women pre-emptively blackening his character because they could see the future.
I'm not. I didn't say anything about Brand. I just told you about my experience.
Yes yes yes to this passage (below).
FYI I wrote about Brand and those who reflexively defended him here: https://mattruby.substack.com/p/why-no-one-trusts-the-media-anymore
--
What these newspaper and TV exposés have in common, is that they are already investigations. The scrutiny has already been done and redone, tested by lawyers, combed through by editors, channel heads, lawyers again, lawyers again.
Journalists carefully sift through rumour and third-hand accounts, track down the people mentioned in those rumours, discount anything that can’t be verified.
Then, when a participant is traced and willing to talk, their accounts are corroborated by others who were there at the time of the alleged incident.
It is ridiculous to say Rupert Murdoch is a reliable judge, jury and executioner. Absolutely insane.
That's why I never said that.
You talking about the same journalists that did such a stellar job on Russiagate? Why, again, do we put so little stock in journalists?
fwiw, I have no opinion on the Brand story.
Amen to everything you’ve written here. Thank you 🙏
Thanks, Tanya.
I’m reading this a year after you wrote it. I wish I’d read it earlier, it would have helped me understand an absolutely brutal experience I had after writing an opinion piece for a major news organization.
I wrote an essay about what it was like to report a rape and endure a trial, then went through an absolutely brutal fact-check over every word. It lasted for days, and the legal department was relentless. I’ve written for other media outlets and have never gone through such a ferocious grilling.
The day after they finally published it, the same organization let Trump lie with impunity about E. Jean Carroll.
I still don’t have the words which would adequately express my rage. But your piece does help me understand what I went through. It provides context, and I’m truly grateful. Thank you.
More fool you.
Fuck off Jane
Russell Brand does not describe himself as a giant in the first clip. He is referring to 'Gulliver's Travels' whose metaphor he applies to those who gossip (and not the subject of gossip).
I don’t think it’s fair that accusations, before convictions, should have the power to strip someone of their income or voice.
Well you're a moral coward who would let a pedophile used car salesman off because of a statute of limitations. There is a greater Law at stake which a judicial system cannot rigorously provide facility to in it’s current formulation. But sure, let's let the monsters live amongst us. That's worked out well.
Thanks Julia, a real pleasure to read, and no word of a lie!
His recorded behaviour strikes me of something wicked, the words and look in his eyes tell me he is capable, and the growing evidence tells me it's more than likely. Guess we'll see.