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Labour activist says she was raped at party event but told not to report it
Westminster harassment scandal grows as Labour activist Bex Bailey chooses to speak out - after being told it would 'damage' her if she reported being raped.....
No investigation. Just her admission. Posting it here for the Brits and the European crowd to offer their comments.
Westminster harassment scandal grows as Labour activist Bex Bailey chooses to speak out - after being told it would 'damage' her if she reported being raped.....
Jonathan Walker
OCT 2017
A Labour Party activist has revealed she was raped at a Labour Party event - but told not to report it. Bex Bailey, a former member of Labour's ruling body the National Executive Committee (NEC), said she spoke to "a senior member of staff" in the Labour Party, "but it was suggested to me that I not report it." She added: "I was told that if I did it might damage me". Ms Bailey was the representative of young people on the NEC from 2013 to 2016. She revealed the incident and chose to speak publicly rather than anonymously in an interview with BBC Radio 4's PM show. It follows concern over what some see as a culture of harassment at Westminster. She told interviewer Carolyn Quinn: "I was seriously sexually assaulted at a Labour party event by – it wasn’t an MP – but someone who was more senior to me. Asked what had happened to her, she said: "I was raped."
Ms Bailey said she did not inform police "for all the reasons that I think a lot of women don’t report this. I was scared, I felt ashamed, I know that the Labour party, like any family, loves a good gossip and I didn’t want people to know, and I also was worried that I wouldn’t be believed if I did." But she did report it to a senior member of the party a couple of years later, she said. "It was only a couple of years later when I had summoned up the courage to do it that I did say to someone what had happened." She said she had chosen to speak out and to do so publicly because things had to change. There have been a series allegations about abuse or harassment at Westminster, including:
- Midland MP Mark Garnier, who .represents Wyre Forest in Worcestershire, admitted calling his former secretary “sugar tits” and asking her to buy sex toys
- Former Cabinet Minister Stephen Crabb apologised for sending sexually explicit texts to a 19-year-old woman after he interviewed her for a job.
- The Guido Fawkes website claimed Tory aides had compiled a spreadsheet of 36 Conservative MPs - including 20 ministers - accused of inappropriate behaviour. The Conservatives declined to comment.
- MPs including Cabinet Ministers were named as sex-pests to avoid by female staff in a WhatsApp group, the Sun has revealed.
- MP Chi Onwurah told MPs about problems in a Commons bar, saying: “I knew a number of researchers - male and female - who had been made to feel deeply uncomfortable in the Sports and Social club here by Members of Parliament”.
And Labour Birmingham MP Jess Phillip told MPs she had heard male colleagues complaining of a witch-hunt. She said: “As I walked here today I overhead two male colleagues walking through the halls whittering about a witch hunt that was going on in Parliament.”
No investigation. Just her admission. Posting it here for the Brits and the European crowd to offer their comments.