The Weinstein effect

Why not ? It is a legal possibility (Joint Enterprise) if someone has conspired in a crime but not actually carried it out. Clinton was on Epstein's private island and on his plane often enough to know what was going on and he said nothing. Trump was a close friend of Epstein too actually. 

Blaming Clinton's accusers is not a good look in the current climate incidentally. 

Replace Clinton with Thatcher and Epenstein with Saville of course...

Its not blaming his accusers to note they changed their stories under oath

I hate to say I told you so about a certain former artistic director...

Actually I don't.

All this "jumping on the bandwagon" is nonsense. These accusations are not new. Most of these stories have been around for years; it's only now they are hitting the mainstream media.

He's resigned before further testimonies emerge.

I wonder if what's really different today is that several women have stood up and admitted in public that they have been raped. Is this new?

These women having found the courage to do this may well help change things for the better. We will never stop rape entirely just as we will never stop murder. But I hope other women will find strength in this to stand up, report what happened and face their attackers in court. Other women who have been raped will see these powerful women who were similarly debased and it will help them realise it was not their fault. That they don't have to live with a terrible secret and have their life limited by it.

And of course if several women stand up to recount their experiences, the chance of a conviction is much higher.

I do hope something good can come of this and hope I'm not being naive.

Re Hugh Hefner I think he was more of a pimp than an outright abuser - the girls at the Playboy mansion were there to service the VIP guests and they knew it. It was a highly hedonistic environment, or so I've been told by some who experienced it.

On the other hand, I had personal experience with Bob Guccione and the Penthouse world and it was not like Playboy at all. Guccione himself laid down a strict code of conduct for all male employees vis a vis the models or any other female staff. Any man who imposed himself on a woman through conduct or language was terminated immediately. I saw it happen. Of course Guccione himself was above the law, so to speak, but I never saw him abuse his power or be disrespectful toward any woman.

That's the wording I was searching for and failing in this morning! Hefner as a Pimp/fostering a certain environment rather than implementing direct abuse himself- doesn't make him a stand up guy or anything but explains why he's also not the subject of any major scandals.

I see TV’s own Mr Selfridge, Jeremy Piven, has denied some accusations against him but I’d say his case isn’t necessarily strengthened by the fact that one incident is alleged to have taken place while he was at the Playboy Mansion. In that TV show he only ever deployed two expressions: happy and puzzled. I guess he’s giving it plenty of the latter now.

One curious thing about Piven is that he nearly died of mercury poisoning because for 20 years he ate a huge amount of fish. Well, at least that’s what he said when he bailed out of “Speed the Plow” on Broadway.

Well Jeremy Piven if he hasn't had too much fish lately maybe....

How is touching someone's knee 'sexual' assault?

If he's resigned over it, then it's not unreasonable to guess he might have more in the closet than "once touched the knee of a journalist who has been falling over herself to inform the world just how little she cares about it".

Also, it's all about context, and choice of words probably has a lot to do with it too. If you use the most basic clinical terms, you could probably make a full-on violent sexual assault sound like a relatively minor deal. "Touched the knee" is basic fact, you don't have to worry about people arguing the points there. But what if - purely hypothetically - the scenario is that a powerful man has invited you to a dingily-lit bar, sat you down in the corner, sat in a position that would make it difficult for you to get past, made it clear throughout the conversation just how important he is while looking at you in a way that indicates he's only looking at the body parts and not the person, and then he leans in and grips your lower thigh with his hand for several minutes ignoring the clear discomfort in your face and body language? "He was abusing his power." Was he? You can't prove that. "He was looking at me in a way that indicated sexual interest." Was he? You were imagining it. "He made it clear he was in charge of the situation." Did he? That's not what he says. "He touched my thigh." Did h... oh, he's admitted to touching your knee, you can have knee. There's a hypothetical scenario for you where "a knee touch" is undeniable sexual harassment that's nonetheless not quite provable in a court of law.