Why Konstantin Kisin says libel risk kept allegations quiet

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

1. 54:04

   comedy circuit and we know i think from some of the evidence and core that he his activities were known to the people around them. And of course, they would have been because of the way that he behaved. And so the fact of the matter is that there are lots and lots of people for the reasons that Francis articulated who turned a blind eye, and maybe we will discover even facilitated his behavior. And yeah, Tom, to your point about, you know, the split between the narratives here, it's been quite amazing, because I tweeted yesterday, what I just said, which is it was extremely well known and people who don't understand british libel laws in america go why didn't you say something before well it's because in britain if you make an accusation of serious of a serious nature against somebody they will sue you for libel which by the way

2. 54:56

   russell brand did and silenced people including one of his victims It's to the point where, to this day, she's legally not allowed to say anything to anybody about her claims. If you make an accusation against somebody, you then, if they sue you, you then have to go to court and prove in court that the allegation that you made is correct. now if you're someone who knows this because a friend of yours um you know i i have a friend for example who was a victim of his and that's how i know but it's something very widely known like on my facebook i have uh still have a lot of comedians that i'm friends well friends on facebook they're not huge fans of of uh of my evolution since we knew each other but nonetheless and you know i see lots of women going like of course we all knew and in fact female comedians

3. 55:50

   in the uk have a whatsapp group in which they share things of this nature to warn fellow female comedians of potential risks and potential predators so this was something that was an open secret and that put a lot of people in a big dilemma as they saw it was never a dilemma for us russell brand invited me on his show many times i i never wanted to have anything to do with him because it was clear to me that all of this would inevitably happen and also it was just the wrong thing to do to associate myself with somebody about whom i knew this kind of thing but a lot of people were not in that position where they knew somebody who'd been affected or whatever and so and then and then the other thing on top of this is you had covid which just totally broke everybody's brain made everybody extra conspiratorial extra suspicious and one thing i

4. 56:41

   will say is i do think there is some truth to the argument that people have made which is if if brand had remained on the right side of the political tracks if he continued to do you know those beautiful pictures that have come out in the last day of him you know uh having his arm round Owen Jones, doing, you know, conversations with Ed Miliband, you know, being this sort of communist adjacent lovey. If that had continued, there's a possibility that he actually would have been allowed to get away with this for longer. I do think it's true that him being in such a focus when it comes to these allegations is partly about the fact that he changed his political allegiances and became troublesome to the establishment. But the fact that that is true does not mean that he was not guilty of the things

5. 57:32

   of which he's now been found guilty. And people need to be able to delineate those two things.