On the 10th April, actor, producer and director Noel Clarke collected his Bafta, a prize bestowed to those deemed ‘Outstanding British contributions to cinema’. The same man who has 20 sexual harassment allegations made a speech that was called ‘inspiring’. The same man was honoured for his Bafta, even after these accusations came to light. Bafta had received anonymous emails and reports of Clarke's sexual harassment, verbal abuse and bullying spanning 15 years prior to the awards. Following the Baftas, the Guardian has published an in-depth article highlighting the ins and outs of Clarke’s abuse of power, which I really recommend you read. From 2004 to 2019, Clarke had harassed 20 different women all in the workplace environment and the Guardian spoke to all 20 women who were connected to Clarke through their professional lives.
As any coward would, Clarke denies the accusations. Perhaps even more cowardly, he and his business partner, Jason Maza, still went after a number of women once word of allegations caught wind. They made phone calls to some of the victims, threatening them not to talk to the Guardian, one of Clarke’s threats being ‘Do not entertain it. Just fucking – just please do not, that’s all.”
Bafta has since suspended the award but that doesn’t diminish the damage Clarke has already made and, if anything, the response from Bafta, from Noel himself and from those defending this sexual predator only highlights how entrenched sexism and misogyny is in society; a society where sexual assault deniers' voices are heard more than victims themselves.
The excuse the ‘not all men’ brigade habitually give is ‘why didn’t you just report it earlier?’, ‘why didn’t you just leave your job’ or ‘why didn’t you report it to someone above you?’. While we hear these lines of interrogation often, it doesn’t make the sting any less painful when woman hear ‘why didn’t you do something?’ Already being in a submissive and inferior position in the workplace, it’s difficult for women to speak out against their superior. I empathise with anyone who speaks up, reports sexual assault in the workplace or expresses any feelings that may diminish a man’s power, status or reputation. As women, we’re made to feel like we owe powerful men our silence, we owe powerful men the benefit of the doubt, we owe them our voices.
To belittle these women even more, Deputy chair to BAFTA, Dame Pippa Harris, claimed these women who Clarke sexually harassed simply made ‘assertions that Clarke had not behaved incorrectly’. This textbook case of ignoring and diminishing women, coming from another woman, just shows the extent people will go to defend powerful men, to protect their reputation at the expense of other women.
It's hard enough for women who are, only in the recent decades, making it in the film industry world. Add sexual assault in the mix, all you’re left with is women too afraid of rocking the boat to tell anyone in the workplace that she has been sexually harassed or bullied, let alone reporting sexual assault that has happened in the workplace by your superior. It gets extremely complex, as you can tell, to try report workplace sexual assault without the risk of losing your job. It’s equally tricky to report sexual assault without becoming branded as ‘problematic’ and ‘attention seeking’ or simply ignored, which is what happened to these 20 women speaking out against Noel Clarke.
Clarke holds considerable power in the film industry and was thought of as a 'mentor' for those wanting to enter into screenplay writing and acting. It’s textbook manipulation really, exploiting his relationships with younger actors who thought of Clarke as a generous mentor. Joking about having sex with them and then assaulting them, either verbally or sexually.
Clarke also has a strange obsession with nudity, regularly taking unsolicited sexually explicit photos and videos of women he was working with, forcing women to remain in his hotel room as he undressed for scenes and directing extremely explicit sex scenes (which many women said were 'basically porn') even though these scenes were never included in the final movie. One woman spoke of Clarke filming a naked audition, despite the prior written agreement that this audition wouldn’t be filmed. Clarke then kept access to the videos and shared it with colleagues, but he of course denies these accusations.
A lot of the women who Clarke bullied and harassed left the film industry as a result, one telling the Guardian that she had sought therapy because of the trauma of her experience while working at Unstoppable, Clarke's production company.
The Guardian even spoke to one of the woman's therapists to confirm her story. Despite 20 women coming forward, a real #METOO situation, the rhetoric that we shouldn’t believe these women still circulates
It’s infuriating enough that Clarke denies any allegations (except one, which is proof enough that he did this shit) but he also claims that some women were being ‘flirtatious and suggestive’ towards him. It's an oxymoron that Clarke denies sexually harassing women but gaslights them as the reason for why they were assaulted, placing blame on women for ‘flirting’ with him. Using flirting as a scapegoat for why women are sexually assaulted is bottom of the barrel behaviour, not only because it alleviates any responsibility from the man, but it indicates that flirting with someone means you want to engage sexually with them. To top it off, he claims they were ‘suggestive’, again gaslighting women as culprits in their own assault and fuels this backwards and sexist notion that any sort of attention women give to men is the equivalent to a ‘yes, you can assault me!’. It makes me question, what does ‘suggestive’ even mean? Are women not allowed to show interest in a man without the fear that the man will take it too far? At what point do men take innocent flirting to be a ‘yes’? Is flirting a death-sentence?
To take the cake, Clarke, like many other powerful men who believe they’re invincible, took the ‘prove it’ approach. ‘Prove it’, we’re told. ‘If you were really assaulted, where’s your evidence?’... like 20 separate cases aren’t enough proof. Clarke further gaslights his victims, making them work to put a sexual predator like him behind bars.
"They have to prove it. And I’m not trying to be that guy that like: hahaha I’m guilty, prove it. I’m not trying to be that guy. But they have to prove it"
It’s infuriating and frightening to think that men like this truly believe they can get away with years of sexual assault because they know women won’t be believed. It’s so commonplace in society that women aren’t believed, listened to and heard that men use this to their advantage. This, alongside the ‘she was asking for it’ rhetoric is extremely dangerous and damaging for women, all women.
It demeans any experience any woman gives of sexual harassment and places the power back to the man, who inherently controls the narrative. If you don’t want to be seen as an aggressor, an abuser or an assaulter, men can simply paint the picture of a ‘desperate and suggestive woman’, splash it over the media and erase any threat to their reputation. For us women, it’s going to take more than an allegation to wash away this painting, but when the odds are stacked against us, what are we supposed to do?
I’m relieved the Guardian are doing further investigations into Noel Clarke, especially in light of the death of Blessing Olusegun, whose body was deserted on a beach in East
Sussex last September and death deemed ‘unexplained’ by the police, meaning her attacker still faces no persecution), Sarah Everard and thousands of other victims.
The justice system is complacent in these sexual assault cases, especially considering these 20 women (and hundreds of others, some of whom are fatalities like Blessing) are still waiting further police investigations. With the ever growing #METOO movement, identifying and calling out workplace sexual assault should be more frequent but does not alleviate the ease at which women can call out powerful men. I can imagine the discomfort and anxiety women face in reporting their male superiors or colleagues in the film and corporate workplace. The first step to reducing this anxiety is believing women in the first place.
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