The 'me too' movement

[Skids]

[KenH]

[K]

Nationwide News & Anor v Geoffrey Rush

http://www.fedcourt.gov.au/services/access-to-files-and-transcripts/online-files/rush-v-nationwide

"The Federal Court has established this online file in view of the public interest. Documents will be placed here when considered publicly accessible."


A lot of exhibits...*

e.g. A randomly selected e-mail from Damian Trewhella, 1 Dec 2018:

"Dearest GR-

It's such an awful situation that the STC and Daily Telegraph have jointly brought about - utterly diabolical.

I sincerely hope you are holding up ok - it's a storm full of a lot of bullsh** that will pass.
...

We need to request extremely respectfully that you step aside until this matter resolves (it is not a resignation...)
...

Very best,
DT"


A text message from Geoffrey, 10 Jun 2016:

"... beloved Aryan Schone Mullerin (yes a complicated and obtuse jeu de mots, of course) - basically it's a spectacular near-homophone praising you as a delicious mysterious daughter of the Miller! - apologies for missing your opening last night ... but I was thinking of you (as I do more than is socially appropriate [emoji here]) - how is your Big Wheel turning? ... how do months fly so quickly by? ..."


* Exhibits A1, A2 & A3 are the 1st, 2nd & 3rd Matters, I think.

[David]

Very interesting, K, thanks. There’s one email there (I forget which pdf) that really lays bare how people get crushed by the huge corporations and sums of money that make up this industry: an executive producer apologising to a director (I think?) for dropping a production with Rush because the distributors are spooked.

I do sympathise with the view that this actually gives victims a great deal of power – that, by speaking up, they can have immediate and significant impact on the lives of perpetrators – but of course the problem with that is that all allegations (no matter how severe or credible) are treated more or less equally, and the only way we can be totally comfortable with that is to either always presume alleged perpetrators’ guilt or else consider the innocent ones to be collateral damage in a worthy cause. What’s even more alarming for me though is how humanity gets so thoroughly crushed under this weight of money and PR, and how alleged perpetrator and victim alike get forced into pantomime roles thoroughly detached from the complexities of interpersonal relationships.

The only thing that matters to these companies is the $ value of Geoffrey Rush vs the $ value of Geoffrey Rush the alleged sexual harasser. But people aren’t mere commodities, and there are more important things in the world than whether a film gets good box-office takings. It should be capital that serves humanity, not the other way around.

There have to be better ways of dealing with this entire phenomenon. Broadly speaking, we need:

1) Better preventative services to help people to recognise, control and (if possible) reduce urges to engage in non-consensual sexual acts, including teaching consent, empathy and healthy and positive sexual behaviour to everyone, providing easily accessible counselling services and targeting specific dysfunctions through interventions and specialised treatment.

2) A culture in which people can talk about such urges or perpetration or experience of victimisation openly and without stigma. This includes a recognition that sexual crimes are not "special" crimes, but rather one of many ways in which one person can harm another. This likely also entails a relaxation of defamation law to something more closely resembling the US model.

3) Processes for people who perceive themselves to have been victimised to, if desired, confront the offender and receive apology and/or restitution, and to be protected from them if need be. This may in some cases be an effective alternative to pursuing a legal complaint.

4) For those cases that do enter the legal system, a significant reduction in the stress and trauma required in order to pursue a complaint (including secondary victimisation through cross-examination and so on). Flexibility to enable restitutive justice where desired by the complainant.

5) Appropriate disciplinary measures for offenders who have been accused or found guilty of sexual misdemeanours, including proper rehabilitation and full reintegration into society after release (including being able to find work).

6) A cultural and (robust) legal establishment of a distinction between professional and personal life, such that employers or companies can no longer act as any kind of quasi-judicial mechanism for matters not involving the direct administration of their workplace. This might go so far as to include unrelated criminal or personal behaviour within the list of attributes for which it is unlawful to discriminate.

[Tannin]

You forgot:

7: Criminal prosecution of false claims.

8: A public register of former claimants to help employers, co-workers, and employees protect themselves against the risk of working with people likely to publish claims against them.* A statute of limitations should apply such that one no longer appears on the list after as suitable period, say 20 years.

The aim here is to provide a balance between the right of a victim of harassment to speak out (which is essential but has massive costs for the victim of the complaint, whether or not it is true), and the right of ordinary people not to be the victim of a public claim of sexual wrongdoing.

Right now we have an insane guilt by accusation system with near-zero cost to the false accuser and horrendous, life-changing costs to the victim. With every other sort of crime, guilt is determined by evidence, almost always given in public, and always weighed up and decided on by a court of law. There are all sorts of problems with the court system, as we all know, but it does at least try to be fair to all parties, or at very least it pretends to try. Our current system of trial by accusation does not even pretend to try to be fair.

* Think about it. Suppose you discover that the person you are working with has previously, in some other job, made accusations against co-workers. You need to know this so that you can institute appropriate risk management before it happens to you too.

[think positive]

But what if the compliant was warranted? Do they get taken off the list? These cases are not easy to prove, so point 8 will push victims back in the wrong direction.

The false claim on would need as solid a foundation as a guilty one.

Just how common are false complaints? Who would open themselves up to that sort of microscope unless they had too?

[HAL]

Which one is that?

[K]

Yes, defendants like to claim that they've been proven not guilty when they've just not been proven guilty to the legal standard required.

There are already criminal defamation laws, though they are seldom used.

[Tannin]

[ronrat]

I had a beer with a US (Californian) bloke in a bar of dubious repute in Thailand 5 years ago. He was over the noon as he he had just paid cash for a 2 bedroom beach side condo in Thaland . He apparently works in some large firm in Los Angeles and they had a new HR manager who was female. At the works Christmas booze up one of the girls he worked with said "Off to Thailand for Christmas again? Yep. The new HR Manager who was worse for booze blurted out in front of a dozen people. "Single men only go there to have sex with underage children:. She was asked to retract that remark and continued on with her assertion.

The next 2 days his lawyer submitted a claim for slander against the company and her. They pointed out this his brother had married a Thai lady, his nephews and nieces were half Thai and he was a keen golfer and he now felt besmirched. The horrified company settled there bit out of court and HR woman was dismissed without compensation. The woman fought it and lost and was forced to sell her house and he now travels business class to his condo every year


She left California because her reputation is poison and she is virtually unemployable in California as it made the papers.Her husband divorced her to retain his share of the property. This bloke I met was looking to an early retirement because he has plenty of money now and the firm cancelled all events involving alcohol

His Thai girlfriend probably loves it too as she gets to spend time looking after his condo while he is at work.

He got about 400 K US dollars and a condo costs him about 100k.

[thesoretoothsayer]

Amazing story.
Scary that an inane comment could result in someone losing their career and their home. She definitely deserved some form of disciplinary action but the punishment seems out of all proportion to the crime.

[David]

I thought the same (well, that was my second thought; my first was, when exactly did Elon Musk work in HR? )

[K]

[stui magpie]

[think positive]

As Stui says, this is a very pessimistic outlook, and implementing this would be so detrimental to real victims coming forward. I absolutely disagree with you that false claims need a register, it’s more likely that the perp is smart and goes one on one and there are no witnesses, he says she says, and not necessarily in that order.

In fact I’d say more men would be unlikely to speak up than women, as they might find it more embarrassing as well as humiliating.

Certainly proven false claimants should be prosecuted, but unless you are gonig to open the books on sexual offenders, your register idea stinks. Is it actually possible to get a look at the sexual offenders register in Australia?