Thread by @SecretDJBook

It’s unusual to do a MEGATHREAD from my bed at 6.30am but I couldn’t sleep for wanting to get something off my chest. It’s possibly the predominant reason why I am ostracised from my industry so completely - because I tried to start ‘Me Too’ in the music biz.
🧵🧵🧵...

I was encouraged to write this because my good friend Mr.C over on Facebook has taken it upon himself to try champion this - and firstly I felt I should warn him what happens (many consequences), but also it is apparent he isn’t aware at all of events that led up to this.

I essentially gave my work away and went silent on the topic as I believed women should speak about this, not men. But few did. I gave some of my work to a jobbing journo, Annabel Ross, who did what she could, I helped the BBC, but I have watched with a degree of frustration.

I also need to pipe up because there are some very dangerous allegations being thrown around, there are also people being named who have done nothing wrong, and we get to the point here - journalism matters.

Journalism itself is the story here.

I saw ‘Me Too’ and first thoughts were, “the film industry? pfft, that is NOTHING compared to the music biz” - because I saw things first hand. I was a working DJ when most of the worst predators were active.

This is one of the pillars the Secret DJ project is built upon.

The thing that tipped me over the edge was a Pioneer documentary, possibly well-intentioned but with zero rigour, that was providing a platform for Erick Morillo to whitewash his foul rep.

I just couldn't bear all these rich men boo-hooing about their celebrity. I felt sick as I watched Morillo play the victim and try to manufacture a past where he was a plucky little rebel beset on all sides by misfortune.

It was just dead wrong. All of it.

One of my first acts (and acts are important, more than words) was to try and do something about him appearing in my town at the IMS conference hosting a panel called ‘Safe From Harm’.

Safe from fucking harm?? Erick Morillo on a panel called safe from harm??? It was obscene.

I believe also very deliberate.

I contacted the wonderful Toni Tambourine who handles the PR for the conference and spent a solid hour trying to stop it. I hope Toni will corroborate although I understand if he will not. So few do. It could not go ahead. Then I heard those words “what proof do you have?”

What more proof is needed if someone presents, quite deliberately, as a ‘ladies man’? Quadruple spreads in magazines of scantily clad models draped on Morillo at great cost. What more proof is needed than naked women in giant champagne glasses at Pacha, two of them my friends?

So I successfully, via Toni and all credit to IMS, stopped him appearing. A small victory but it was clear that this was a campaign, and we would see not long after that the law was closing in on him. But a theme was emerging I’d see time and time again - deflection.

Our industry in general loves to wring its hands and clutch its pearls but they never ask me to speak. They never talk to the victims. And that is the epicentre of it all - to give voice to those who suffered. The machine is there to deflect. To talk but never act.

Never act.

Mr.C spoke how he was a plucky lone voice when Morillo died. He may be misremembering that I approached him (and others) around this time and he told me plainly that such things were “impossible” in our scene of “peace and love”.

In fact the only person who spoke up when Morillo took his own life on the eve of his interview with police was me. And I copped HELL for it.

I was all kinds of evil, speaking ill of the dead.

But the ‘princess of hearts’ bullshit spewing out of our biggest DJs was abhorrent. They actually said things like “say what you like about his reputation, he was a great DJ” etc etc. They literally dismissed the accusations. Sent a message that they knew, but did not care.

I will spare their blushes but I have the screenshots. People are allowed to make mistakes.

You know who you are.

I also reached out to many people in the biz, and was roundly rejected as a crank, but thankfully not by DJ Mag. Carl Loben is an excellent fellow and like most of us, fully aware of the antics of our worst. I was incensed by now at the wall of silence ...

so I put a call out publicly for any victims to come forward.

And this changed my life completely.

I challenge anyone not to be changed by listening to over a hundred women speak of their assaults and attackers.

I spent 2017 compiling evidence and data.

Because this is required by journalism. And you also learn that some accusations are false. This must also be said.

But the foundation of this all is victim testimony.

Gossip is verboten. It has no place.

There is only evidence.

But we will differ greatly if you think victim testimony isn’t evidence.

Let me illustrate a rough rule of thumb for you...

It’s a generalisation but if one person speaks of an attacker it is considered hearsay, sadly. Sorry but even if it is true, I cannot do anything if there is no proof. But if two people come forward about the same attacker, its unusual, and certainly merits more work.

If three victims who do not know each other speak of a single attacker - well. It’s nailed on. Later it comes to light. Everyone makes mistakes but a predator has a modus operandi. An M.O. They do it all the time. And where there are two or three victims there are always more.

I am not excusing the ‘one off’ attackers, I’m talking about the law and journalism. If I cannot stand up in court with it, I cannot print it. Because publications are not like social media. There are editors involved, and boards of directors, and lawyers.

Believe it or not we are professionals.

Members of our excellent union - the NUJ.

I'm not done. Musk has limited how long threads are.

Any comments will be lost, give me time...

PART TWO -
much of this was happening as the transatlantic think tanks inserted Trump and Johnson as a duo of liars with a mission to demonise the press. And it worked. It worked.

People started to see us as the enemy. I most certainly was the enemy of bad sorts.

Still am.

I started to get threats and be sent screenshots of some of the nasty whispering. But fuck that - time to publish.

Carl Loben once again to the rescue.

For reasons of space and legality Carl and I whittled-down the vast amounts of stories I collected to five. You must understand that victims frequently decide against publication when they want to, and they very much have that right!

Sometimes folk just need to talk about it. It was horrific sometimes to hear them.

Out of the huge amount of work Carl thought these 5 stories worked best for DJ Mag -

djmag.com/content/sexual…

I can’t speak for Carl but I genuinely thought the flood gates would open. After speaking to so many women and discovering it was far far worse and more widespread than even I imagined, but I for one certainly thought “‘hello, here we go” and ….TUMBLEWEED.

Except one. One bright spark read one of the fully anonymised stories of rape and went online and said “hey! That’s me!”. Yes, you are hearing that correctly, Steven John Proctor was so thick he actually publicly outed himself as a rapist.

A story that names no names, or places, or times - it is like a lock that only has three keys.

One of the keys is held by the victim, one by the writer, and one by the attacker. They are the only 3 people who can read a series of events and place themselves within it.

Proctor went online to stand up and identify himself as a rapist. Something he has, to be fair, made a profession of.
He’s been a professional victim for decades now. Ever since his arrest for rape and subsequent acquittal he’s been an ever-present champion for himself.

Remember when I said 3 victims is nailed-on? Proctor had SEVEN women come forward. I may go into more detail in a sub-thread but he is such a lowlife he actually takes energy from being named, he has no career anymore so it’s become his identity.

See him cosying-up to anyone who will ally with him. Lately with deranged online stalker Elliot Eastwick. Proctor is ‘known to police’ and sends death threats and makes podcasts with four entire hours full of drivel, he is just one of the ‘open secrets’ our industry enables.

Small fry really despite his prolific record. It’s the big dogs with money that are the real problem.

Because abuse isn’t just physical, it is an abuse of position and of power. It is using the workplace for sexual conquest.

It is using threats, both legal and illegal, to silence voices. It is about demonising those fighting and the victims reputations. And abuse is often more about power than sex. We’d just watched the industry close ranks with Morillo.

Now we’d see a more overt operation.

Thanks one again to Carl Loben, one of our self-appointed industry bodies appeared. Absolutely no way they would speak to me otherwise. I was delighted. This was actual progress.

The NTIA or ‘Night Time Industries Association’ was getting involved.

Little did I know what a colossal farce would unfold.

A fucktangular rhombus of pure shite was hoving into view.

There was to be ‘a hotline’ set up. I was over the moon, if not selfishly that I wouldn’t have to field all the victims personally anymore. I cannot lie it was utterly heartbreaking and something taking over my life. It certainly needed professionals to provide counselling.

Finally, there would be noise and there would be names being named by the bucketload.

Except there wasn’t.

After ‘launch’ I rang it. It wasn’t a dedicated line at all. It wasn’t even anything to do with DJs or dance music. They were using the number of an existing helpline.

There was no one manning the phones taking names and evidence. It wasn’t a machine for making change it was a device for minimising the problem. I was being managed. Handled. Dealt with.

And so were the victims.

The ‘problem’ was being mitigated. And you know what? The argument that there was counselling was fair, that was something rather than nothing. But it did precisely what this industry always does. It diverted away, it served very effectively to protect the worst abusers.

“You stop doing this now, we’ve got it now, this is how you do it. You be quiet now”.

And that was the first, and last time my industry did a thing.

As an aside -

I did mention that in hearing so many stories I also dealt with some complete fictions. One person called and when quizzed a little basically wasn’t attacked at all - they just didn’t like their ex. And this was quite chilling.

I am a journalist first rather than an activist. The other side of a coin always exists. One of the reasons I am writing this is that Mr.C’s popular post on FB contains some dangerous and wild inaccuracies and allegations from folks.

facebook.com/richardwestmrc…

I should perhaps now mention in my books when I spoke of ‘DJ X’ it was Solomun. This was a perfect example of how gossip differentiates from journalism. I enclose a bit here -

Ultimately, for there to be a crime there has to be a victim. And I spoke to dozens of people regarding Solomun and every single one of them referred to ‘seeing something online’. Eventually tracking it down.

As you can see here this is a construct, this a concerted attempt to insert a narrative that doesn’t exist. It's pointing people towards actions and then re-labelling them as something sinister.

It's old fashioned character assassination.

Similar with Jackmaster.

On Mr.C’s thread there are people calling him a rapist. This simply never happened. It was a very silly mistake and thanks to absolutely dreadful management was blown way up into something disastrous.

And once again I copped for it.

I wrote a measured article about it and his management saw to it that I was roped in to the debacle by simply having the nerve to talk about it in a rational manner. I was actually defending him if they bothered to actually read it.

Shutting up is where the rewards are.

Jack was innocent of any illegality he made a daft mistake, it wasn’t the M.O of a predator at all. And he suffered terribly for it when he got such bad advice.
This whole thing can be extremely dangerous and this is why we MUST have journalism instead of trial by social media.

By now not only was I exhausted,this was when my DJ bookings started not just drying up but disappearing, I also felt this was something that needed women’s voices. It’s a bit daft having men bleat on about it so I very much wanted to shut up now and hand over.

So I did.

SO at this point I will take a break.

Any comments will likely get a bit lost when I come back with the third portion of this tale, but it needs a part 3 (and 4!).

Maybe I will do that separately, as we have barely touched the surface really.

PART THREE.

Enter, Annabel Ross.

Annabel is a solid journo and I gave her what I had -

x.com/annabel_ross

Unfortunately I only gave her some of what I have got, because always and ultimately it is about victim consent. Having been robbed of consent already it is double wrong to speak of their struggle without permission.

Some, like Proctor's were vocal in numbers.

Fine about me talking. Encouraged it.

Other victims are more isolated and wary. And rightly so. It is their story alone.

So I tended to find that the other journos were either only interested in big names, or had their own agenda.

I never got paid, but these others were career journos.

I am sure Carl Loben will back me up and attest I waived all fees for this work.

But when capitalism is involved things get distorted.

And then the BBC got in touch.

And things got even weirder.

Once again, I was delighted. FINALLY its going mainstream. Years of labour on this coming to fruition.

"hello. we are doing a piece on DJ sexual misconduct"

"SO great to hear this, I've got a list!"

"Oh no, sorry, we are only doing Tim Westwood".

"what?"

"but I've got dozens of DJs, some way bigger than him, and well over 100 victims!"

"ah great, victims of Westwood?"

"well yes, he was mentioned"

"...and they have to be black"

"pardon!?"

"we only want to hear from women of colour..."

Once again. Flop. They weren't interested in the story, they were MANAGING something again.

It was about their liability.

I gave what I had, I did all I could for their documentary and again all for free and without credit.

It was better it existed.

bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0c…

They were extremely specific. Because they had a tight specific brief.

Head off the Westwood scandal.

Proactively create the narrative.

Ignore anything wider or potentially even more libellous.

Put out fires.

Handle it.

I truly felt lost. Everywhere I went I was constrained by what I could say in terms of victim consent but there was still lots of solid story.

"who is the biggest DJ?"

this was always the question. In our deranged americanised world even the news is ranked by celebrity.

And the big papers would say "our readers don't know who DJs are" and I would try to explain that things have to start somewhere but when they do, an avalanche will start.

I work in the music industry, was in bands and studios long before the DJ thing.

Electronic Music is just subspecies of a much wider biz.

A much bigger problem.

The issue is "it's a party, stuff happens. People are on drugs".

Granted.

But shouldn't it be safe to WORK in a industry?

So I tried to make it about that, if only to be heard.

A workspace.

PART FOUR -

So at work I’d see someone like Russell Brand.

Allegedly he was working too, for MTV, but he was off his chops every time I saw him. Properly out of it and clearly a dirty rotter.

It's not the punters who must deal with it, it's the workers.

And by now wherever I spoke up there would be the usual suspects. Men with dark secrets trying to blacken my name. Sometimes just straight white men who were becoming more and more bewildered at being asked to behave, enemies of 'woke'.

As COVID came along the world SPLIT>

The polarisation of the Culture Wars served these predators well. More and more the worst of us sought solace in the far right. I mean, lots probably don't even vote but they know where they are safe, they know which side of the fence is theirs.

I'd get attacks and threats just on principal from generally right wing men.

It's not for me to judge them.

It's not for the victims to speak out.

Unless someone is convicted in court for them there is no crime and more than a few of them are fine with a conviction too.

I'm evil. I'm doing this for the money (ha, if only!) I'm 'bitter', its 'a beef' - every kind of daft mitigation in the Trump playbook to shut me up and demonise rational voices.

The cost to me of all this has been everything.

I tried to warn Richard/Mr.C - you have no idea what is coming.

Or how damaging false accusations can be.

But most of all, nothing exists without the victims.

If we are not speaking to or advocating for them there is nothing.

The bottom line is - everything is gossip until there is actual victim testimony. And then there is further consent required to speak of what happened.

I would never go after anyone if I hadn't spoken to someone they harmed.

And then I challenge anyone to do nothing.

Any rational human being with a moral compass would want to do something if they have heard the things I have.

I know what I signed up for.

But listen up, and thankfully now I am nearly done...

When you hear the whispers, think twice. Almost anyone with a bad word about Secret DJ Project can be traced to someone I've investigated or written about.

I'm no angel, I'm a human being with faults but this is ultimately a story about journalism and a concerted attack by men (both small and pathetic and hugely rich and famous) on the truth. We live in an era where absolute scum are made heroes and folk who tell the truth are now the baddies.

I exercise rigour and caution. I investigate, document and broadcast fully ready to stand up in court. And this is why I'm still sitting here cheerfully unlitigated against.

You can't sue the truth.

But they can make you poor and unpopular.

I'm OK with it. I'm a big boy.

But do me a favour, if you can't bring yourself to believe me, think about the various editors, journos, lawyers, publishers and even police investigators I've worked with over the years and have been part of this project.

They don't put my stuff out unless it is ironclad. They legally cannot.

If you can't trust me yet, trust them. Trust the process. Trust journalism.

If you think you know better, you are truly lost. One of 'them'. A Trumpy lost cause. And there's no working with that.

Top Tip for dealing with a MEGATHREAD 🧵🧵🧵

This is the last post.

Click on this then scroll all the way up to the top and it will eventually unfold.

Excelsior!

@threadreaderapp please unroll this monster.