OK - your challenge for the day.
You live in the UK. You get a letter informing you that you are required to attend for jury duty. As opting out is difficult, you turn up accordingly.
You get there, lo and behold you are under consideration for the trial where they will decide whether Paul Gadd (also known as Paul Raven, also known as Gary Glitter) was guilty or not of sexually assaulting two girls aged 12 and 14 between 1977 and 1980.
You are still willing to sit on this jury? Which means essentially you have no preconception one way or the other about the guilt of the accused and are prepared to listen to the evidence and decide accordingly.
This despite the fact that the aforementioned Gadd/Raven/Glitter has previously been convicted of having child pornography on his computer.
This despite the fact that the aforementioned Gadd/Raven/Glitter managed to get kicked out of Cambodia (a country which just about tops the list of countries in the world known for child prostitution).
This despite the fact that the aforementioned Gadd/Raven/Glitter was also convicted in Vietnam of sexually assaulting two girls (I believe aged 11) .....
Good luck. I couldn't do it. I personally think that there is no smoke without fire, and the only problem with the evidence is that there isn't enough of it and it is a very long time ago. As they recently convicted the publicist, Max Clifford, on eight counts of sexual assault between 1977 and 1984 (only one of the victims was younger than 16, but the point about the age and volume of the evidence is relevant), that may not be a problem, although it is better to have eight witnesses than two to give the evidence more weight. Guilty people do get off occasionally - John Gotti managed it twice, and there are dozens of people in the US in particular who are absolutely sure that Casey Anthony was in no way innocent!
Before he was arrested on his own account, Clifford informed the media that a number of his clients had rung him and stated a concern that they had slept with "groupies" way back when, and "nobody ever asked for birth certificates" (i.e. a 14-year-old may well have looked and acted 18 - in passing from my own teaching years I can remember during my teaching days in the 1970s girls skipping school to hang round hotels where some idols of the day were staying. I cannot imagine a 14-year-old looking anything much more than 15!).
Interesting how the past can come back to haunt you. Whether the "groupie" phenomenon is still happening now, I have, incidentally, no idea. But the advice is to be cautious. I will leave the still extant "groupies" to decide whether they should come armed with their birth certificates .....
And then there was the recent story about Rod Stewart. Having swallowed so much sperm that he had to go to hospital to have his stomach pumped.
He, of course, denied it, and it did seem unlikely (I have heard the same story about the British singer, Marc Almond, in the 1980s - as he was/is Gay, it may have been possible, but I still wouldn't give it too much credence).
What intrigued me was during his interview with the American television interviewer, Katie Couric, Stewart implied that his concern was what his children, who are now in school, might think ....
A quick flick back with relevance to the above-mentioned Max Clifford. Whether this was strictly publicity I do not know, but there was the famous interchange with an interviewer some years ago when Rod Stewart was asked how many women he had slept with, to which he answered (I cannot remember which) either "Hundreds" or "Thousands".
This could have been braggadocio, boasting, publicity, it all goes with the pop star image (well they were all sleeping round in those days) usw. Then again (and personally I tend to believe the "then again" - that was his reputation throughout the 1970s, true or otherwise) ....
Given that this comment was accurate one wonders what he might have to tell his children (at least the ones who are still in school) one day about his past. And for that matter did he check (or need to check) the birth certificates? In favour of the argument that it was all image and publicity (and hence to be taken with a pinch of salt) is the fact that few if any people have come forward years later with stories about "my night with Rod Stewart", or maybe that article/book is still due to appear ....
No comments:
Post a Comment