The arrest this week of a deputy charged with rape is just the latest in a long list of harassment
One of the most watched series on Netflix in recent months in the UK was ‘Anatomy of a Scandal’, a fiction in which everyone is handsome, the houses of dreams and in which almost the only convincing thing about the images is the plot: a former conservative Minister and MP is accused of rape. It is possible that, aside from the decorations, some British viewers today barely notice the difference when they switch channels to watch the BBC news, for example.
Political class sex scandals are nothing new in the UK. Extramarital affairs, secret children or sexual practices that would raise eyebrows have been tabloid fodder for the past few decades. The now ex-wife of the resigned Health Minister Matt Hancock knows this all too well, who had breakfast last year with the images of her partner doing more than kissing an employee in his office. Hancock, fair to say, apologized for breaking physical distancing rules amid a pandemic.
Everything would remain in the realm of gossip if it weren’t for the fact that the constant stream of revelations and accusations pouring out of Westminster goes far beyond the possible indiscretions of politicians’ private lives and into the realm of crime. Up to 56 delegates have been reported to the Independent Complaints and Claims Commission (ICGS) for inappropriate sexual conduct, ranging from harassing comments to allegations of harassment, assault or payments in exchange for sexual favors. One of the most serious was known this week with the arrest of a Conservative deputy charged with rape and sexual assault. The events apparently took place between 2002 and 2009, when the victim, today also a politician, was a minor.
In 2017, when the level of scandal reached such a point that the press renamed parliament ‘Pestminster’, after the pun between ‘plague’ (plague or plague) and Westminster, no one was surprised that the House staff would secretly created a WhatsApp group where they mentioned and warned other women about the sexual predators they were working with. As if the ghost of Benny Hill, the king of the sexist comedy that haunted women in lingerie, haunted the halls of the honorable building, messages from those in attendance warned against such a deputy sheriff because “he has long hands,” or did not ask. to enter alone in an elevator with so-and-so, or in a taxi with the other.
Since then, many have denounced the sexist culture and harassment they have experienced in parliament, both at the ICGS, created in the heat of the #MeToo movement, and in public. “It’s not uncommon for young female workers to be cornered by a drunk MP, a pat on the butt or an indecent proposition,” said researcher Becky Paton, who worked as a parliament assistant, at Open Democracy. Harassment occurs at all levels, as the Deputy and Secretary of State for International Trade Anne-Marie Trevelyan has acknowledged: “I have witnessed and been the target of misogyny many times,” she recently told the press, revealing that she had been put ‘back against the wall’ by a Member of Parliament years ago.
The victims are not just women. Scottish Nationalist MP Patrick Grady was accused of groping two male attendees at a Christmas party in 2016. Conservative Rob Roberts was banned for six weeks for repeatedly approaching a staff member. And party colleague Imram Ahmad Khan was expelled from the party last month after a court convicted him of sexually abusing a 15-year-old boy in 2008.
But despite tools like ICGS, little seems to have changed in the corridors of Westminster. Khan is just one of three Tory MPs to become ominously famous for their sexual behavior last month. Neil Parish was twice caught watching porn in Parliament and David Warburton is under investigation on three charges of sexual harassment, including stepping into a woman’s bed naked. But the list of recent years is long: former Conservative minister Andrew Griffiths sent more than 2,000 sexual messages to two women in his constituency and was later convicted in 2020 of raping his wife. In the same year, Conservative MP Charlie Elphicke was sentenced to two years in prison for sexually assaulting two women. He chased one of them as he ran through her house, yelling, “I’m a naughty Tory!” Another who watched porn in his office – and lied about it – was Damian Green, who was also Theresa May’s No. His then defense secretary, Michael Fallon, also resigned for rubbing two journalists on the knees.
“Despite the growing number of female MPs, Parliament still looks like a man’s club,” Labor MP Nadia Whittome said in a column in Gal-dem magazine. Each new wave of scandal, he recalls, “is followed by promises of action, but then very little changes and silence falls…until new revelations come to light.”
Source: La Verdad
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