Martha and Me (and Starmer and the Scum)

 

I don't have Netflix these days, partly due to the cozzie livs and partly due to the fact I have no desire to give some of what little money I do have to transphobic pricks like Ricky Gervais or Dave Chapelle, so I haven't actually seen Baby Reindeer. But I have seen the poster for it, and when I saw it it's fair to say I did a double-take because really, what the fuck? That looks like me, right? All the way down to the shade of lipstick, fat forearms, three-quarter-length sleeves and the cropping of the photo to hide a high forehead. There I am, walking to the supermarket of a Monday evening, confronted with what looks to all intents and purposes like a picture of me caught in the act of suffocating a Borrower. What is going on here? 'A captivating true story'? I've never even met this Richard Gadd bloke! Why would Netflix want to do me like this? Most of the stuff I've been most scathing about has been on Amazon Prime...

Obviously I Googled the show as soon as I got home. This was a little more reassuring, as while the Wikipedia entry informed me Gadd's show was semi-autobiographical, I didn't recognise anything of my own behaviour in that of his self-insert's antagonist, Martha: all my experience of stalking has been on the receiving end. But it didn't reassure me much, because I know the modern-day media environment too well to kid myself that the true-crime-brained gumshoes of the Internet weren't going to burn lean tissue long into the night trying to track down the 'real-life Martha', and all it would take to make my life even more of a living Hell than it already is would be one dickhead posting a pic of me side-by-side with the poster online. Sure, Gadd himself had pleaded with fans not to engage in digital vigilanteism, but when has pleading ever stopped the mob? 

In this version the part of Richard Gadd is played by a Fire Ant figurine

So, to my shame, I have to admit that I was somewhat relieved when the real Martha, Fiona Harvey, announced herself to the world via the medium of an interview with Piers Morgan. Only somewhat relieved, though, because I knew the resulting spectacle would be far from edifying and, more than that, I consider it irresponsible journalism. The kind of stalking which Harvey claims Gadd is unjustly accusing her of engaging in (as opposed to the sort of stalking engaged in by the kind of reporters employed by the likes of Piers Morgan) tends to be the result of a form of romantic obsession called limerence, and it is, to say the least, not mentally healthy behaviour. Revealing Harvey to have been the inspiration for Martha in this manner, whether or not she volunteered her identity readily, is extremely reckless as we don't know what Harvey might try to do to Gadd, or to herself, never mind the fact that it presumably leaves her open to reprisals from members of the public looking to punish the villain from one of their stories. In the past, actors have been abused and attacked by members of the public just for playing villains in TV soap operas: it's all too easy to imagine the bloodlust that might be inspired in the kind of person who does that if they found themself face-to-face with a real life television villain. 

Not that Martha is the only villain in Gadd's series: as well as experiencing stalking and sexual assault at the hands of Martha, his protagonist is also assaulted by a theatre producer, called Darrien in the show, whose identity, according to the presenter Richard Osman, is something of an open secret in the comedy industry. Tellingly, Osman doesn't say whether or not the real-life Darrien has faced any consequences, although Gadd's friend Sean Foley ironically wound up having to go to the police due to being misidentified as the culprit by the online investigators. If I had to guess, I'd imagine there have been no consequences for the real rapist: my own experiences in the poetry scene have taught me that most of the real dangers escape any reprisal beyond being outed on a need-to-know basis by the whisper networks. I'd like to think that's what Osman is referring to when he says everybody knows the identity of the real-life Darrien. 

One reason for that, of course, is that rape is effectively legal in the UK. As the campaigning organisation Women Against Rape points out, only 6.5% of reported rape cases result in a conviction, 45% are no-crimed, and 90% of rape victims never even bother reporting their crimes to the police. And why would they, when doing so can leave them open to the charge of making a false accusation? The stigma of being labelled a false accuser is compounded by the fact that the police follow a policy of prosecuting victims who are unable to bring a successful prosecution against their rapists, and allows the same organisation that for years protected the likes of Wayne Couzens and David Carrick to bully women and girls into dropping the charges. Women Against Rape met with the then Director of Public Prosecutions and current Leader of the Opposition, Kier Starmer, asking him to end this damaging practice - but instead he rejected their advice, and doubled down on the existing policy of prosecuting victims. With a record like that, is it any surprise that Starmer provided such a cheery welcome to the Tory turncoat Natalie Elphicke, who allegedly interfered in the trial of her rapist ex-husband, and is on record as having said that his only crime was 'being attracted and attractive to women', and made disgusting comments about his victims? Between that and his work defending Silvio Berlusconi, anyone might think rapists are Kieth's kind of people. No wonder he's dogged by those rumours about Savile and Worboys...

So it's beyond ironic to see Starmer, or someone in his office, trying to present himself as a victim and steal a little valour from Gadd by briefing the press about his own harassing emails from Harvey - which I assume is what happened, because as undoubtedly unwell as Harvey may be I don't think it's likely she would willingly tell the Sun about how fun it was for her to call Kieth a 'stupid little boy' and 'a free loader on the public purse'. It's hard to say what's more sickening about this really - the blatant attempt to ride the coattails of a media sensation, however sordid, is of a piece with the cargo-cult Blairism of pretty much everyone buzzing about the LOTO office these days, and of course there's the fact that whoever leaked these emails on Kieth's behalf is more than happy to throw a mentally ill woman even further under the bus than Piers Morgan did, but for me it's definitely the simpering attempt to present this man who has done so much to make life worse for rape and sexual assault survivors as the real victim in all this, while Gadd, who has much stronger grounds to feel ill will towards Harvey, has shown an admirable degree of empathy and forbearance towards her. 

It certainly makes me feel much less bad about writing that poem where I describe Starmer allowing his body to be used as the flesh-vessel for the spirit of Jimmy Savile to fuck the corpse of Maggie Thatcher, anyway. Maybe I should email it to him. At least The Sun won't be able to make sarcastic remarks about my 'punctuations' (yes, the spelling of 'Cercle' is deliberate; ask Nadhim what it means). You'd think at least one of their subs would have heard of Muphry's Law...