THE NEED TO FORGIVE

Paul Ince - saved by football

The now retired footballer Paul Ince once said that, if it had not been for football, he would have probably ended up in prison. He came from a deprived background, ran with a rough crowd and, being black, he could not have expected favourable treatment from the justice system. Football, however, gave him direction and kept him straight.

Good for football, most people would think. People of colour often find that they stand their best chance of succeeding in life through sport because, being largely a meritocracy, they suffer less from discrimination than in other areas where prejudice holds them back. There is no shortage of racism in football but coaches who select teams simply cannot afford to be racist because so many top players now are black. Black former players are now moving into coaching, as Ince has done, albeit with painful slowness.

 

I use Ince as an example because any crimes he might have been tempted to commit would probably have been financial – robbery, drug dealing, burglary, etc – and not of a sexual nature. I am not saying that he is a saint in sexual matters. Like most young footballers he was probably tempted and may have fallen once or twice.

 

Other footballers have been tempted and caught taking advantage of their position as alpha males. Their crimes are unsavoury and I have no intention of defending them. What I think, however, is that they need to be allowed to re-enter society once they have served their punishment. If they do the crime they have to do the time but, once that has been completed, they have the same right to rebuild their lives as those found guilty of stealing money from old ladies or breaking and entering. 

 

Yet forgiveness seems to be in short supply when it comes to sexual crimes. Partly because it is such a horrible act and partly because it has been (and still is) so easy to get away with, rape is seen as the unforgivable crime. Those deemed guilty of it are cast into outer darkness and cannot be admitted back into normal society.

 

I have said before that one of the main reasons that it is so hard to gain a conviction for rape is that it is a crime that, almost by definition, takes place without witnesses who can corroborate one person’s story. Therefore, it tends to come down to one person’s word against another’s. That introduces doubt into the process and, inevitably, the accused tends to be given the benefit of this doubt. Add the sheer horror of undergoing cross-examination in court and many women are reluctant to even report instances of rape. 

 

This has resulted in the rise of settlements of the type used by Prince Andrew and his team of lawyers when he was accused of sexual exploitation by Virginia Guiffre (then Roberts, one of the many young women groomed by the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and offered up as gifts to men like Prince Andrew, whom he wanted to cultivate with “free’ sex.

 

This sex, of course, turned out to be anything but free. The prince denied even meeting his accuser but was not willing to go to trial. He was probably advised that she would be the one to benefit from any doubt around this case. The temptation to give a bloody nose to a privileged British royal might have been overwhelming for a jury in republican America so he settled and is now supposedly in the clear as a result.

 

Except that 'the clear' is anything but from now for a man accused of rape or sexual exploitation and who chooses to settle. A Scottish footballer called David Goodwillie was ordered to pay a woman who had accused him of raping her. He was not convicted of any crime but she sued him in a civil action and the judge ordered him to pay her the not inconsiderable sum of £100,000. That may seem like loose change for a big-time player but not for a lesser one like Goodwillie.

 

The incident in which he was accused of rape took place in 2011 when he would have been about twenty one. That is not an excuse – both accused and accuser were above the age of consent – but it does show how mistakes you make as a young man can come back to haunt you years later. The writer Val McDermid, who supports Raith Rovers, withdrew her sponsorship of the club after they signed Goodwillie.

 

McDermid said that the sight of Goodwill playing for her team made her 'sick to the stomach'. This seems to say that there is no way back for a man deemed to be a rapist. His previous club Clyde had said that he was entitled to rebuild his life after the court had ordered him to pay for what he had done to the woman who accused him. He had a good career there and was mostly left alone until he signed for Raith and McDermid had her say. Then all hell broke loose.

 

Men accused of rape do not help themselves by failing to show remorse for their acts. However, showing remorse is akin to admitting guilt in the eyes of a lawyer and they are probably discouraged from doing so as a result. This reluctance to admit guilt is probably increased by the intransigence of women like McDermid who seem determined to deny them a chance to rebuild their lives. They act as though Goodville and his like should be cast into outer darkness forever. 

 

Yet, if we are not to condemn all men deemed guilty of rape to a life sentence without parole, they have to return to society sooner or later. I use the word 'deemed' deliberately, as Goodwillie was never convicted of a crime, but judged responsible for a rape by a judge. Whatever happened with him and with Ched Evans, with Prince Andrew and Marvin Greenwood (who also faces charges of rape) there does not seem to be any way back for them once “deemed” guilty.

 

But every criminal who will be released needs to have the chance to rebuild their lives after they get out. Raith Rovers would surely not have cancelled the signing of Goodwillie if he had been found guilty of burglary, had gone to prison and then gone straight. Why should sexual crimes be treated differently to other ones? 

Edwin Lerner

My other blog is diaryofatouristguide.blogspot.com

UNWECLOME AND UNWANTED

Weinstein - villain of the piece

I saw Harvey Weinstein at Heathrow airport once whilst waiting to meet a group.  He is the only living film producer I would recognise – and I regard myself as a modest film buff – and the only producer whose name might have encouraged me see a film.  Others were just names at the start of the credits, money raisers, facilitators, maybe actors who had lent their name to a project and were being rewarded for their support before the really important person, the director, was acknowledged.  He (usually) or she (occasionally) was the creative force, the person whose skills might make you cough up ten pounds.

Directors themselves know it is not that simple.  They need producers to greenlight their projects and help realise their vision.  The producer usually stays in the background but almost invariably retains control over what is known as the final cut, what people actually see on the screen.  If the director runs off on a path which is creative but not commercial, it is the producer who reins them back in.  Occasionally these tensions explode and a director dissociates him (again usually) self from the end product.  Later a ‘director’s cut’ is released which is more in tune their vision, sometimes overlong and self-indulgent.  One of my favourite films Blade Runner can be seen in several different versions and its director Ridley Scott got himself a producer credit on the recent follow-up.  He knows that the director’s cut concept is often just another way to make money. It was probably a producer who thought up the idea in the first place.

All this makes producers powerful and sometimes tyrannical figures.  Weinstein, in my short moment of watching him, gave off the aura of someone who was entitled to respect and used to wielding influence.  This burly unshaven male, who did not need to dress to impress, was accompanied by a young ‘assistant’, attractive and obedient.  It did not come as a major shock when it was revealed that he did not take his marriage vows very seriously and had for decades been systematically sexually harassing and assaulting women who needed his help and approval.

In situations like this I often feel perversely sympathetic towards the man (inevitably) who has being doing the bad thing and disapproving of the women who have been done to.  This is often just sympathy for the mighty figure who has fallen into disgrace.  Weinstein’s wife has left him, his children probably despise him and the list of former associates, clients and ‘friends’ who have disowned him is stretching around the block.  When Woody Allen, whose career was rescued by Weinstein when he had sexual allegations of his own to deal with, used the word ‘sad’ in describing what he felt about the fate of his rescuer, he soon had to backtrack.  There is no mileage in anything other than joining the bandwagon at times like these.

Having said that, I would have wanted to thrash and castrate Weinstein if he had done even one of things he has been accused of to my daughter.  She is someone who can look after herself in most situations but this is easier said than done when your career is at the mercy of a powerful man.  Weinstein’s legal team seem to have become past masters at silencing people who have tried to expose him and he was ruthless in hindering and even sabotaging the careers of those who rejected him and refused his advances – or stood up to him in any way.  Some even decided that these advances were a price worth paying for his help and are now taking revenge.

What struck me in reading some of the lurid revelations was how unsatisfactory so many of these encounters must have been.  Most of us have experienced bad sex at some stage in our lives.  A combination of lust and loneliness, often fuelled by that inhibition remover alcohol, have taken us to places which we later regret going to and which we decide never to revisit, sometimes unsuccessfully.  Shakespeare, as usual, described it best in sonnet 129, ‘The expense of spirit in a waste of shame’.  This poem is surely enough to confirm that the sonnets are based on personal experience and that the great poet was not a faithful husband to Anne Hathaway.  Like many young men he had gone into marriage in a blaze of lust and found himself trapped and left to look elsewhere when the passion curdled.

Will learned to live together with his wife despite the loss of lust and decline of love because the demands of both parenthood and respectability enforced it 400 years ago.  Weinstein lives in an era when a marriage is not expected to last beyond the willingness of both partners to remain in it, which is often quite a short period in Hollywood.  I am not certain that this freedom actually makes us happier in the long run but, equally, I am certain that it is not one which we are going to give up anytime soon.  While most people do not lead totally chaste lives, most of us eventually realise that love is more important than sex in the end. 

There was no love, however, in the various sexual encounters this powerful man instigated and carried out in various hotel rooms with the knowledge and connivance of people unable to stand up to his appetites.  While he might lay off for a little while if a revelation threatened him he always returned to using his position and power to exploit women with his unwanted and unwelcome advances.  What seems most chilling about these episodes was how he seemed to get turned on by the fear they generated in the women.  While they might not technically qualify as rape in a court of law, they give us an insight into the mind of the rapist, turned on by fear and power rather than tenderness and companionship.

So, another month, another sexual scandal. I felt that Mark Sampson, who I wrote about last month, had been harshly dealt with.  He was a successful coach with a taste for tasteless ‘jokes’ who had the genuine support of many of his players but fell out with one of them.  He may be able to rebuild his career, whereas Weinstein’s reputation is surely too toxic for a comeback now.  In fact, I would rather be almost anyone on the planet than Harvey Weinstein right now. Still, this has to be said despite his good work as a producer, it serves him right.

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Today - 31st October 2017 - is the 500th anniversary of Luther's famous proclamation which started the Reformation.  No more sex scandals - I will write about this next month.

Edwin Lerner