#JusticeForJohnnyDepp

An open letter to Johnny Depp

"Tell the world, Johnny, tell them, Johnny Depp,

I, Johnny Depp, a man, I'm a victim too of domestic violence,

and see how many people believe or side with you." - Amber Heard

Well, sir... you did. And they did.

A lot of people believed you from the start. People called them Deppford Wives and misogynists.

A lot of people came to believe you over time. The media wrote them off as fans and trolls.

A lot of people came to believe you during the trial, hearing your story properly, and with all the facts finally available to us. Still the media wrote articles about 'the internet' siding with you. Like we're not all individual human beings with eyes and ears and the ability to think for ourselves. They tried to paint it as a war of words rather than of evidence, and the public as idiot sheep who'd huddle together without discernment.

What it came down to was what seven people on a Virginia jury thought.

They believed you.

They sided with you.

Unanimously.

Sorry, I'm British. I had to.

I can't begin to imagine what it has cost you - physically, emotionally, psychologically - to do this. To lay yourself bare before the world. To have all the lowest points of your life scrutinised, dissected... I imagine you feared the world would judge you harshly, but you did it anyway. 

I am so proud of you.

Not to suggest that you were in any way selfish but I know you told your truth for yourself, for your kids, for the people who matter to you... but this has done so much GOOD. I have seen so many people, men and women, opening up about the DV / SA  / false allegations they have suffered. Men especially are often talking about it for the first time because of you. Whether they were fans before is irrelevant, you're a fucking HERO now.

I really hope you've made inroads to changing the dialogue. Everything has been skewed in favour of women for far too long. A lot of people couldn't even imagine that being the wrong mindset before this. People have seen for themselves how messed up it is that she was believed on her word alone; her word that didn't ring true and a lot of times lacked even basic logic. I suspect there's a long wad to go before there's any real change toward true equality but that's not your battle.

You've fought so long and so hard for this I really hope this is the end of your nightmare.

I wish you healing, rebuilding... I hope your ability to love and trust will recover in time because you truly do deserve all the very best.

With the greatest of respect,

Heggie

Further Ranting About A Twitter Rant

Today I got blocked on Twitter by some dumb c*** who accused me of defending Jimmy Savile. NOT what I was doing. I was defending, as usual, the principles of due process and 'innocent until proven guilty' - pointing out that there can't be a case against Savile because he is dead as the dead cannot present a defence.

More to the point, the row started because of nasty allegations calling Prince Andrew a proven sex offender.
1. He had an acquaintanceship with a man who was later convicted of sexual offences - which is not a crime
2. He has since also been accused - which does not make him guilty
3. He has not even yet been questioned

I have tweeted at length about this too.
An ordinary person will spend time with hundreds of people in a lifetime, a person in Prince Andrew's role will encounter thousands. If you think you KNOW the people around you, you're an idiot. Every rapist, murderer, child molester, whatever was someone's relative, friend, co-worker. If you think that "they must have known" you have got to be crazy.
I've lived a fairly sheltered life - I have spent years stuck at home as a full-time mum and now as a carer. When I have worked it has never been with lots and lots of people. But can I say I have never associated with a person who has groped, molested or raped? Of course I can't! I knew fairly little about most people I worked with. I didn't know if they were married or had kids or spent their weekends in babygros and adult diapers.
I've never done well with friendships but the few people I would count as true friends I know only a little better. I am aware I know what each person CHOOSES to present to me, that I only see the tip of the iceberg about another person's personality.
As for relationships I've done even worse but the fact I ended up as a single mother, twice over, is pretty indicative that you can be fully intimate with someone and still not know them.
There are allegations that Prince Andrew has failed to co-operate with the FBI...there are also counter claims that the FBI has not attempted to contact him. Either way, his co-operation is entirely voluntary at this point. Who knows where the truth lies?
Meanwhile, it's hard for the US to take the high ground after refusing to extradite Anne Sacoolas, wanted in connection with the death by dangerous driving of 19 year old Harry Dunn. Nations have a tendency to protect their own - just the way things are. Briton's expect the nation to come to their aid when they're jailed abroad or whatever - and I've tweeted at length about how dumb I think that is too.

The fact that Prince Andrew knew someone who turned out to be a sex offender is, imho, not particularly meaningful. You honestly expect any of the royal family to know everything about everyone they know?! That's not even a thing that regular people with far smaller circles of acquaintance can be expected to know.
As yet there's no proof he knew of any wrongdoing or committed any crimes himself, only allegations - hence my arguing for due process. The other tweeter brought Savile into it and I pointed out that the two cases are entirely unalike as Savile is dead and there can be no case brought against him...and that is where it all started - with the assertion that a complaint filed does not equal proof of guilt "that's what courts are for, not social media" - mind you, you can't argue with the type of idiot who actually believes 'there's no smoke without fire' (probably thinks they sank a real ship for the film Titanic an' all...)

My tweets on this read as follows (copied & pasted direct):

• I'm blocking you for defending witch-hunt and thinking due process is an optional extra. Moron.
• I have no sympathy for Savile but we have a legal process for a damn good reason. THAT is what I am defending.
• If YOU would expect a fair trial, a weight on evidence rather than hearsay, DEMAND that principle is applied for others
• Every person who supports trial by media deserves (IMHO) to be accused of heinous crimes they didn't commit.
• I think my abhorrence of this comes of being bullied at school. Especially by teachers whose word was law.
• My daughter too got punished for being in fights... as the victim of a persistent bullying campaign.
• [This tweet is edited as it involves an allegation of child sexual abuse as told to me but turned out to be false] I reported it, as you do. Police got back to me: Kid didn't have a stepfather. Kid had a history of not knowing fact from fiction, and a psychiatrist.
• I blocked the kid. But I know others who believed them.

"In the year to the end of March 2017, the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) estimated:

• 20% of women and 4% of men have experienced some type of sexual assault since the age of 16, equivalent to 3.4 million female and 631,000 male victims
• 3.1% of women (510,000) and 0.8% of men (138,000) aged 16 to 59 had experienced a sexual assault in the last year."

(Source: https://rapecrisis.org.uk/get-informed/about-sexual-violence/statistics-sexual-violence/)

So if one in five WOMEN will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime how likely do you think it is that those acts were perpetrated by just a handful of 'monsters' you personally will never encounter? I'm not going to go so far as to suggest each victim has a separate assailant but we're still not talking about a small group of serial rapist and gropers. We're talking about a significant number of people here - do you even know which of the women you know have been sexually assaulted? Do you even think they would share with you? An awful lot of people never tell their nearest and dearest such things. If you don't know the victims in your life how do you expect to know the perps? Do you think they're easily spotted by their sinister moustaches and black hats or what?!

I am an exceedingly opinionated potato and I believe a lot of things about a lot of people, usually based on little more than intuition. I try to be careful about how I express those opinions, if I even do.

I don't even have much faith in due process. But it's the best we have - we all deserve a fair hearing and assuming someone's guilt based on social media bullshit and the tabloid press is just DUMB.

On a teenage mother who has seriously f*ck*d up

Never one to shy away from the controversial this opinionated potato is now contemplating the Shamima Begum case...here's a few sources to get started:

• Plea for return: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-47260916
• Block return: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/shamima-begum-isis-bride-latest-uk-return-home-secretary-sajid-javid-syria-a8780401.html
• Could face prosecution: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-47237051
• Has given birth: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/feb/17/shamima-begum-who-fled-uk-to-join-isis-has-given-birth-say-family

Quick summary: Shamima Begum is a 19 year old British national who, 

having been indoctrinated, ran off (age 15) to support IS in Syria 

(as a jihadi bride). At 9 months pregnant with her third child

(her older two having recently died) she made headlines

for wanting to come home...despite still holding IS sympathies.

This has understandably provoked strong negative reactions.

But lets have a proper look at this, shall we?

First of all, does the UK even have the right or power to strip a citizen of that status? 

Begum is believed to be a British-born citizen, which in the past would have prevented the Government from stripping her of her nationality.
Only dual-nationals or those who had become British citizens— known as “naturalisation” — could be hit with “deprivation orders” removing their UK status.

It emerged the legal test to exclude the wife of an ISIS fighter from the UK is whether she is eligible to claim citizenship elsewhere. Her parents are from Bangladesh — raising the bar to re-entry here.

(Source: https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/8431345/jihadi-bride-exclusion-british-citizenship/)

I am decidedly dubious about this. Just because someone could potentially claim citizenship elsewhere doesn't mean that they should be obliged to...or that the other nation is obliged to take them surely? It can't be right to deliberately render someone stateless.
If Shamima's parents are indeed Bangladeshi she might've been entitled to automatic citizenship as a child...but she is not a child now. And are the parents STILL Bangladeshi or did they surrender their citizenship? Can Bangladesh be forced to take her? And does Shamima even have any links to the country?! There's also the point that her husband is a Dutch national; surely THAT claim would supersede her parents origins. 
One of the most disgusting things about deportation and 'repatriation' is the idea that someone can just go live in a country because they (or in this case their parents) were born there like they necessarily know anything about the language or the law or the culture of that place. We've found this 'logic' abhorrent in terms of the Windrush scandal. If anything we belong to the place(s) we were raised, the places we know - this idea of belonging to your ancestral nation smacks of the racist phrase "go back where you came from", whether anyone likes it or not she came from the UK.

Secondly the use of emotive and prejudicial language: a line in The Sun article cited above (about her desire to return to the UK) starts "shameless Shamima Begum whined..." EXCUSE ME? There's not even an effort toward impartiality here. Shameless? Right or wrong should she be obliged to express shame for her beliefs? Obviously I'm not gonna defend IS but "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" - it all just depends on your viewpoint. 
Condemning people on their actions is one thing but condemning them on their ideologies just increases feelings of disenfranchisement and people feeling marginalised and oppressed leads inevitably to more crime, civil unrest and violence.
Are sympathisers inherently evil? I don't think so. Every conflict in history has sympathisers on both sides. Also, she hasn't even undergone any de-radicalisation as yet. Whining? She's a bereaved young woman who has been through more in the last 4 years than most of us will endure in a lifetime. And we whine when the wifi is slow. A bit of perspective here would go a long way.

Thirdly, her age. She was 15 when she ran away, lots of 15 year olds run away from home. If they turned up again four years later how would we judge parents who did not welcome them home with open arms? Here we talking about a nation refusing to allow her home to her family. IF she is tried for crimes she will have to face charges as a minor - unless they can prove any of her actions since turning 18 was criminal.
The lack of understanding that she is a young woman who, whatever she may have done, was still legally a child when this situation started and she has had little chance to address. Frankly I'm astonished - can people not remember the shit they got up to in their teens? Can they not imagine having a teenage daughter they'd want treated fairly but with sympathy? I'm not one for fuzzy maternal feelings - if my kid got up to no good I'd expect them to face the consequences...but not this mob mentality.

Fourthly, the assumption of criminality. Maybe I'm wrong but I don't recall British citizens being ousted for having sympathies with the IRA in the not-so-distant past. If people are to be persecuted for their politics it at least ought to apply equally to all terrorist organisations.
Shamima left the UK to be a jihadi BRIDE, not (so far as anyone seems to have any evidence of as yet) to take part in any terrorist activities. Perhaps she can be charged as an accessory but that requires due process, courts, a war crimes tribunal perhaps. Stripping her citizenship is at the very least premature if she has not been convicted of anything.

Fifthly the rights of her child and her concerns as a parent.
One of the stupidest claims I saw argued (before her new son was born) was that she wanted to come back to give birth on the NHS. How dumb are people?! At nine months pregnant that was NEVER an option. She could neither have flown nor endured an overland journey.
A woman who has lost two children is going to be quite reasonably terrified for the wellbeing of her child. If she will risk coming home and facing prosecution and / or being stripped of custody of that child in order to ensure it's survival why should that be frowned upon?!
The child is born of a British mother and a Dutch father - he is an EU citizen, not a Syrian. Should he not have a right to life regardless of his parentage? There is enough criticism of EU nations not taking in Syrian refugee children - rejecting a child who has every right to be here is beyond the pale.

Shamima's second child, her son Jarah, died aged 8 months in December 2018 of malnutrition; her elder child, daughter Sarayah, died in January 2019 aged 21 months. Losing a child is generally held to be one of the worst things that can happen to you; losing two so closely together must be beyond words. Losing your existing children when you are pregnant with another must be terrifying. Losing your children when you are little more than a child yourself...well, I would have imagined that people could stretch to a little more empathy.

I shouldn't be astonished at how judgmental people are...humans are, in my humble opinion, bloody awful. Maybe Shamima Begum is an exceptionally awful person but everyone deserves a fair hearing and the chance of redemption. It says a lot about a society that we seem to be collectively willing to condemn her without trial...and to leave her child in danger. Perhaps there would be a security risk allowing her home but we have procedures in place for that. Even if she'd been a mature adult when she went out there she is just as deserving of justice through due process as anyone else; the child should not suffer for his parents mistakes.

UPDATE
Predictably Bangladesh denied she had any right to citizenship and the Netherlands (her husband's nation) blocked her too. This means that the UK had indeed made her illegally stateless - in all honesty, revoking someone's citizenship BEFORE an alternative citizenship has been set up is always going to be wrong.

On March 8th news broke that Shamima's third child - a two week old son named Jarrah after her firstborn - had died.
Given the predominant public opinion of her case I expected comments condemning her, calling it 'karma', maybe even saying her kid was better off dead than with her as a mother...
THREE CHILDREN DEAD is beyond anything most of us can imagine, and in three separate incidents in the space of three months is just too awful contemplate. No mother deserves that; no child deserves to die.
I was fully gearing up to unfollow people for the comments I expected to see, given the opinions expressed earlier in the case.
Actually, public opinion has swung about and the gov't - especially Sajid Javid - Home Secretary (Conservative) who took the decision - are now being heavily criticised for their harsh action. This only annoys me more because this was a predictable outcome. It was a bad call before a child died, and he may have died anyway, but the failure to see Shamima FROM THE OUTSET as a vulnerable young woman who needs help, rehabilitation and justice - for what she has done and what has been done to her - utterly appals me.

A tweet from Anna Soubry - MP for Broxtowe (Liberal Party):

"It was wrong to take away Shamima Begum's British citizenship

in the first place @sajidjavid must now restore it

& she must be able to come home.

Shamima Begum is our responsibility

whatever she may or may not have done

however abhorrent her views"

A tweet from Twitter user @0Calamity:

"I don't care how unpopular this will make me.

Shamima Begum was groomed as a 15 yr old,

and after, effectively, being a sex-slave, has now lost her third child. And our govt.'s response is to persecute her

instead of seeking to rehabilitate her. Hard to find words."

The top listed response to this (from @MickDavies1968) reads:

"It shows the sorry state of this country

that you felt the need to include your first sentence."

And that is absolutely it - where the hell are we if the perceived unpopular opinion is one of compassion and the hope of redemption??? Why did it take the death of her third child to change public opinion?!