Posts by Russell Brown
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Hard News: Narcissists and bullies, in reply to Emma Hart,
The thing is, there is no easy fix for this, not even close. And I’m really, really leery of “but this piece of legislation will fix it!”, which, let me clear, I’m really aware is not what you were saying. I just want to make it icy-clear that the problem is not cyber-bullying. It’s rape culture. It’s rape culture that made these men think it was okay to brag about what they were doing, regardless of the format they did that in.
True. But social media is currently enabling some really awful intimidation of kids who are trying to talk about this. There's a reach to this that is actually new. NB: I know more than I can talk about on this, and it's fucking awful. It's evil.
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Hard News: Narcissists and bullies, in reply to Alex Coleman,
jesus wept.
Just listened to the podcast of ‘Willie and JT’ I’m not going to link to it, but All the trigger warnings.
Okay, I'll link to it. It's here.
Feel free to leave a comment letting Radio Live know what you think.
But PLEASE don't listen to it if you're vulnerable. It's the most disgusting, inhuman extended act of victim-blaming I've ever heard.
The only upside is that the girl they're purporting to interview is an absolute champ.
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I can't talk about it, but let me just say what I know of what's going on in this crowd of kids is really getting to me. I can only guess at the pressure that's gone on the victims not to give statements. Fucking hell.
Someone has to stop this, and it seems to me that it's the rapists' parents who need to take responsibility and act.
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Hard News: Narcissists and bullies, in reply to TracyMac,
The fact these young women weren’t “brave enough” (FFS!!) to come forward is fairly likely due to the cultural bullshit about what consent actually means, and the perception that sexual assault is about strangers in alleyways, not “friends” who deliberately get you drunk so you can’t say no.
There's a lot of that roiling in the crowd in which these guys were active at the moment -- from confusion over the meaning of consent to outright attempts to protect the abusers. Sadly, a lot of the pressure on other kids to fall in line seems to be coming from young women. It's troubling.
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This, from Scuba Nurse at the Hand Mirror, about what we can all do to make a difference in the face of rape culture, is really good.
Edit: Oops! I see Lilith has posted this link already. Well, it's so good and relevant it go go in twice.
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Just to interrupt this depressing conversation with something good, I've heard something about one young person on the periphery of this standing up and talking about it in a way that makes me feel hopeful and impressed.
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Hard News: Narcissists and bullies, in reply to Lucy Telfar Barnard,
So, I don’t know if things are still managed in the same way, but it wouldn’t surprise me at all that with a more difficult case, with no voluntary witnesses, it could easily take two years and longer to bring an investigation to the point of arrest.
I'm unconvinced that they have been actively investigating for the past two years. The difference between their first and second statements yesterday leaves me very dubious about that.
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Hard News: Narcissists and bullies, in reply to Lilith __,
I get that some people here enjoy speculating and arguing the toss, but when it's on the subject of serial gang rape of girls?? I want to throw up, and I'm not even getting triggered. Spare a thought for the survivors, eh?
Yes, and I'd again ask everyone to bear that in mind. But I did explicitly question the police's actions in the original post, so discussing that is relevant.
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Hard News: Narcissists and bullies, in reply to Matthew Poole,
When you’re worried about lawsuits for defamation, quite easily.
Hardly. I made a conscious choice in the original post, to call rape, rape.
The chances of a successful defamation action are less than zero when the plaintiff has repeatedly described himself as a rapist.
It was pissing me off on Radio NZ this morning that they kept talking about "group sex".
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Hard News: Narcissists and bullies, in reply to BenWilson,
This defense means that in order for this charge to stick, there has to be some evidence that they made no efforts to establish the age of the victims.
On Hales' Ask.FM page he states that one victim was 14 or 15. That'd be a start.