In his video statements, Russell Brand has attempted to explain allegations of sexual assault made against him as a conspiracy involving what he calls the “legacy media” and a “collusion between big tech and government.”
Brand seems to believe that he is a victim of #MeToo activism – the social movement and awareness campaign against sexual abuse and sexual harassment, in which people publicise their claims of sexual abuse or sexual harassment by powerful figures often in the entertainment industry.
Brand has not been charged with any offence but a detailed four-year investigation by the Times, Sunday Times and Channel Four has led to claims from four women of rape, sexual and emotional abuse during his heyday as a television and radio producer and star of several lightweight movies between 2006 and 2013.
Since then other women have come forward and the London Metropolitan Police have begun to investigate.
The origins of the MeToo movement pre-date the 2017 disclosures of rape and sexual assault perpetrated by movie producer, Harvey Weinstein but it was at that time, the MeToo hashtag found global expression.
Weinstein is serving a 16-year jail sentence in California for rape and sexual misconduct.
But there is another instance in the UK which continues to cause outrage and frustration.
We are little more than a month shy of the 12th anniversary of Jimmy Savile’s death. The 84-year-old’s garish gold coffin had been put on display at the plush Queen’s Hotel in the heart of Leeds. Locals shuffled past to pay their respects.
On the day of his funeral, thousands of Loiners lined the streets and clapped as his cortege wound around the city streets. The seven pallbearers who carried his coffin into St Anne’s Cathedral for the funeral service were Royal Marines.
A year before his death, Savile had been described as a “prodigious philanthropist” in The Guardian.
A year after his death, the awful truth had emerged. Savile had been a prolific pedophile for more than 60 years with hundreds of victims, possibly thousands.
Savile’s misbehaviour was an open secret to his colleagues, producers and management within the BBC.
In 1978, the frontman for the Sex Pistols, John Lydon, then performing under his punk appellation, Johnny Rotten, was interviewed on BBC1.
“I’d like to kill Jimmy Savile. I think he’s a hypocrite. I bet he’s into all kinds of seediness that we all know about, but are not allowed to talk about. I know some rumours,” Lydon said before adding, “I bet none of this will be allowed out.”
Lydon was right. His mention of Savile did not make it to air.
During a comedy act in Edinburgh in 1987, an American-born Scot, Jerry Sadowitz, referred to Savile as a “pedophile.” Sadowitz’s show was recorded but the album was withdrawn from sale amid fears of legal reprisal from Savile.
Sir Jimmy Saville – he was knighted in 1991 and technically remains a Sir as knighthoods cannot be posthumously revoked – would not rest easily in the grave but he had made it to his death with his reputation as a loveable scallywag who raised millions of pounds for various charities intact.
The official count totalled 450 victims of Savile – 82 per cent of them were female and 80 per cent of the total were children when the offences occurred. That figure accounts only for those who chose to come forward. The real number will never be known but 1000 child sexual assault victims would not be hyperbole. There were 31 individual allegations of penetrative rape as well as discretely acknowledged claims of necrophilia.
Back then even Savile had his defenders after his death. Savile’s nephew, Roger Ford, weighed in, arguing Savile’s reputation had been sullied.
“I just get so disgusted and disappointed by it. The guy hasn’t been dead for a year yet and they’re bringing these stories out. It could affect his legacy, his charity work, everything. I’m very sad and disgusted,” Ford said.
“I just don’t understand the motives behind this. I just think it’s very, very sad you can say these things after someone’s died and the law says you can’t defend yourself when you’re dead.”
In the UK and across the world, the prevailing question was, how could this man have committed so many offences over 60 years with impunity?
The answer, in part, was that there were multiple failures in policing. Two separate investigations by police, the first in 1958, went nowhere. In 2007, Savile was interviewed under caution in relation to an allegation of sexual assault of a minor at the Duncroft
Approved School for Girls in Surrey in the 1970s. In 2009, the Crown Prosecutor determined there was insufficient evidence to proceed with a prosecution.
There were further allegations of sexual abuse at a home for children on the Channel island of Jersey. Savile was not charged but had been interviewed by police.
This case was different. The children’s home had been the subject of awful allegations of rape and sexual torture. Over several editions, The Sun reported that Savile had attended the home and that he refused to assist police with their inquiries.
Savile responded by calling in the Leeds-based legal firm, Fox Hayes.
“I feel as though I have been subjected to a long and drawn out mugging by The Sun newspaper. The only difference is that its journalists do not wear hoodies,” Savile said.
A spokesman for Fox Hayes said: “[Savile] has no recollection of visiting the home over 30 years ago and any such visit would have been unexceptional. Connecting Sir James to events at the home has caused him severe embarrassment and upset. The reported events are the antithesis of everything Sir James has worked tirelessly to prevent.”
And right there is another failure that led to an act of betrayal on the British public. The defamation laws in the UK, much like ours, afford protection to monsters like Savile.
So when Brand’s defenders come forward asking why now?
The simple facts are that a monster like Savile was a protected species due to his celebrity, his contacts with the rich and powerful, including the royal family, and his willingness to pursue legal action against anyone who sought to expose him for what he was – arguably the greatest pervert and sex criminal the UK has seen.
The profound emotional distress victims have suffered at the hands of Savile and their courage in coming forward, often without any prospect of receiving justice, should also be reflected on. Reporting as a victim of sexual assault regardless of age or status, is a most difficult undertaking.
Thus Savile went to the grave not as a sex criminal but, perversely, as a hero.
There was also the babble that Savile committed his crimes at a “different time”, a contextual nonsense that not only ignores the UK Criminal Law Act but imposes some murky moral grey area around the rape of children.
The lessons learned from Savile is that the shield of celebrity has come down and not before time.
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