Thread by @rubytrubes

This is about Dan Wootton and the things he has done that have been covered up by News UK are MIND-BLOWING

https://twitter.com/imshanereaction/status/1679212637266014226

I know this because I went out with Dan between late 2009 and early 2013. The worst period of my entire life where I was stalked by him, to the point he had all the passwords for my social media accounts and email without my knowledge, until I caught him out….

… when I found that my Gmail account was being regularly accessed from the News of the World office, where he worked at the time. I was an idiot though and allowed myself to be emotionally bullied into not leaving him. But then I found out more….

While Dan was in New Zealand visiting his family I stayed at his flat to cat sit and one day while doing some laundry I found a hold all, stuffed down the back of the washing machine. It was locked with a padlock so naturally I wanted to know what was inside it and I…

… I found an external hard drive. On it I found a video of one of Dan’s supposed friends - a sun employee - having sex with his boyfriend. The video clearly was made in secret and filmed from afar by a hidden camera. In the same folder as the video I found a transcript…

…of an MSN conversation between the colleagues’s partner and someone called ‘Martin Branning’ whereby an arrangement was indeed made to make the sex tape in secret, without his colleague’s knowledge in exchange for £500. I knew instantly that ‘Martin Branning’ was Dan…

I finally got the courage to get out of the relationship and a couple of months after leaving him I randomly bumped into a guy I had briefly dated around the time I met Dan, in a bar. He asked me what was happening in my life so I told him about the break up and…

…and the first thing he asked me - without me saying a word about it was ‘what’s the deal with this Martin Branning guy?’. Literally chilled me to the bone because it was the first time I’d ever heard anyone else say the name out loud. And it was equally disturbing as my…

…first discovery. ‘Martin Branning’ had been messaging this guy encouraging him to try and hook up with and make sex videos with several people, including one of my long term ex boyfriends, and Dan himself, for money. He had no idea that Martin Branning was nothing…

…more than alias, and that he was chatting online with Dan himself, using a fake profile. At this point I knew that if I’d randomly bumped into one random person from my past who bought him up, that the Dan/Martin thing went much, much further…

…and I was right. Fast forward to February 2020 and the night that Caroline Flack died. I didn’t know her but I’d met her once or twice through Dan and she just seemed like an incredibly nice human being. Like many other I was absolutely sickened by Dan’s fake tears…

…over her death, so emboldened by a few drinks I took to Twitter on my old account and told the story of what I found in the hold-all behind the washing machine over several tweets. Within a few minutes of the tweets going out I was contacted by a mutual friend of mine and…

… and his who, on behalf of Dan, put a ton of pressure on me to take them down. Which, regrettably, scared about the consequences from Dan - because he is TERRIFYING - did. But I shared them because I knew if I did, that *someone* would recognise the Branning name….

…and I was right. They’d been seen and shortly after I received the following message from a former colleague of his who told me that he and a number of other colleagues from the Sun had been harassed by ‘Martin Branning’. I’ve cropped the image to protect the…

…identity of the sender and I will never, ever publicly reveal any of the names of the victims I know of without their explicit permission, so don’t ask me. Since this all happened I have spoken to other victims and several journalists but - for whatever reason - …

…fear of Dan’s litigiousness, fear for their jobs, wanting an easier life, toxic masculinity (?) - getting this story out has felt like the longest slog. But it needs to be out there and I’m not deleting these Tweets this time.

Since 2020 I’ve personally spoken with the police about some incredibly serious allegations against Dan - nothing came of it but I shared details of everything I know and I know others have spoken to the Met about things he has done and so far it has gone nowhere….

But I’ve learnt more. About the abuse of colleagues who were bullied and paid off by News UK to protect their star, until, I guess, he was no longer worth the investment of what was being spent to do so.

Just to be clear, I’m not alleging that his employers knew all about everything I’ve tweeted about here - as I’ve said, I know many of his victims have not come forward - but they did know about about at least some of his problematic behaviour and they protected him