You're Burning The Wrong Witch – AGAIN

I see the topic of domestic violence has been trending on Twitter. How refreshing. What’s even more refreshing is the number of men who are talking about domestic violence all of a sudden.

I didn’t know they cared.

These are probably the same men who each week play football with their mates who they know can be ‘a little handy’ with their wives. Or who go to the pub on a weekend with their mate whose wife made some accusations against him but, no need to fear, he says she’s a crazy bitch so we don’t really believe her anyway. The same men who buy the records of men who’ve been accused of domestic abuse, or go and watch the films they star in. Not so worried about domestic abuse then, are they? But now suddenly these men, and women, who never talk about society’s most uncomfortable truth of male violence are outraged about domestic violence and have taken to Twitter to demonstrate it.

But wait, who is their anger directed towards? Surely it is Stanley Johnson who on Thursday night’s Question Time was referred to as a ‘wife beater’ by Yasmin Alibhai-Brown?

No, of course not, their anger is directed at a woman, the woman who was legally obliged, in her position of chair on Question Time, to read out a right of reply dictated by lawyers through her earpiece, or written down by them on a piece of paper.

She prefaced it with the fact she was not disputing what Yasmin was saying, and after she read it out, she gave a shrug, perhaps to show her indifference to what she had been forced to read for legal reasons which, no doubt, was still sticking in her throat. But perhaps Twitter would have preferred her to just screw up the piece of paper and say: ‘B*llocks.’

But that, for the legally untrained among you, is not how media law works.

The perpetrator of this particular crime is not Stanley Johnson, who I assume has been having a lovely, relaxing weekend, but a women who read out a quote from Stanley Johnson’s friends saying that his crimes against his ex-wife were ‘a one off.’

A one off. We’ve heard this phrase before somewhere, oh yes, when an actual perpetrator of domestic violence wants to minimise his crime. ‘It was a one off’ … ‘it only happened once’… ‘the red mist came down’… ‘she made me do it.’

That is what people have been getting so angry about – so what did you expect the on-the-record comment was going to be from his camp?

What those friends did by claiming it was ‘a one-off’ was inadvertently provide third party confirmation that it did happen, thus allowing Question Time to run with it.

So often, as we know, it is the woman’s fault – “why didn’t she leave/it can’t have been that bad if she stayed/she should have thought of the kids”. Very rarely is the man who used his fists held accountable for his crimes, by the police, by the courts, by his neighbours, or his fans.

And lo behold, it is the woman’s fault again. Not only have people been rounding on Fiona Bruce, but the domestic abuse charity, Refuge, for whom she is an ambassador, who had the audacity to point out that Fiona Bruce was legally obliged to read out a right of reply and have refused to throw another woman to the wolves to pay for the crimes of a man.

I have spent my life in newspaper legal departments, and the fact is, despite what social media would have you believe, you can’t just say what you like about people. Because if you do, and you can’t back it up it’s called defamation and slander. You might think that newspapers make up allegations against people every day of the week, but believe me, as someone who has spent a career negotiating for hours with newspaper lawyers, that is not how it works.

You will not believe the number of famous men who we know are abusers, we just don’t have enough evidence to stand up in a court of law to tell the British public about them. Would you like Stanley Johnson to have been another one of them? It seems Twitter would. Because the alternative to cancelling Fiona Bruce now, would have been cancelling Yasmin’s ability to speak freely.

That was your choice.

From my years of experience, I imagine this is how the pre-production meeting went with lawyers:

Producer: “Yasmin wants to bring up the domestic abuse allegations against Stanley Johnson.”

Lawyer: “Fine, has he been convicted of anything? Accepted a caution?”

Producer: “No.”

Lawyer: “Oh, has he ever been on public record making a comment about it?”

Producer: “No, but his friends have admitted it happened but said it was a one off and he didn’t contest that.”

Lawyer: “Fine, Yasmin can say it then, but just get Fiona read that out so we’re covered legally.”

And that is what she did. You see the thing about giving people who are not there to defend themselves a right of reply is, you don’t get to pick what that right of reply will be. And, you might not like it. But what giving someone a right of reply does mean is that you’re able to go ahead and air those allegations. A no comment leaves lawyers feeling a little nervous. Finding those quotes from friends kept the lawyers happy.

But perhaps the British public would have preferred silence instead – after all, we know that domestic violence thrives in silence and secrecy. And, let’s face it, ignorance is bliss when it comes to this subject. I don’t see people usually discussing domestic violence so freely on Twitter – except this is different, because there is a woman to round on.

I talk about domestic abuse a lot online, day in, day out, and it can often feel like a lonely business, so yes, it’s great to see so many people talking about domestic violence on Twitter, and we need men more than anyone to talk about it. But the result of all this making Fiona Bruce the real villain, will be this – the media will be more cautious about speaking about it again.

Run that imaginary conversation above again after all this has kicked off, and the result will be the producer saying: “You know what, after what happened last time, let’s just tell Yasmin not to bring it up.”

So well done everyone, you have once again burnt the wrong witch – even those among you who claim to be feminists. You’re not meant to know how media law works if that’s not your job, but what you have actually done is demonstrated your innate misogyny – that it’s far easier to police the language of women than hold a man accountable for his crimes. But then, ’twas ever thus.

We have a male violence problem, don’t shoot the female messenger for saying so.