Daisy Goodwin: Conservative mayoral candidate groped me

Rarely in life are we faced with a true moral dilemma, but when I heard that Daniel Korsky was the frontrunner in the race for the next election, Torrey Candidate for London Mayor, I didn’t know what to do.

My dilemma was this. Ten years ago, Kolsky did this during a business meeting at Number 10. downing streetput his hand on my chest and groped.

I don’t often remember clearly what happened 10 years ago, and this incident is one of them.

I was summoned to Downing Street during the Cameron administration to talk to officials about ideas for television shows.

I had met Korsky at a party and he had followed up via email. As I waited to see him, he took me back to the public boys’ school I had attended, sipping on the scent of Downing Street. It’s a sweaty combination of testosterone and socks.

Kolsky, who was many years younger than me, led me into a room full of portraits of Mrs Thatcher, and to my surprise, my sunglasses made me look like a Bond girl, He said he would put his feet on my chair when he met me. he sat down at the table.

I tried to turn the conversation into a TV I can’t miss exporting.

As we stood up at the end of the meeting, Kolsky put his hand on my chest to my surprise. I looked at the hand and said in the most bewildered voice: “Are you really touching my breasts?”

He dropped his hand and laughed nervously. It was a landslide victory that can only be described as a high dungeon.

Should I call attention to this man’s actions ten years ago, or should I do nothing? After all, what he did to me in Thatcher’s Drawing Room didn’t ruin my life.

I was shocked and surprised like everyone else at the time, but it wasn’t the end of the world. In the 1980s, when I was a young woman, I learned how to deal with unwanted advances from my male colleagues in the media by laughing them off.

It’s much easier to avoid getting hands on your legs or buttocks, or to pretend nothing happened, than to make a fuss.

I didn’t want to be the girl who didn’t get the jokes. I hasten to add that nothing really terrible happened to me before Kolski’s bizarre act, but in the television industry of the 80s and 90s, the kind of thing that today would be called “inappropriate” There was a lot of deeds.

But since the horrifying revelations about Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein and the growing MeToo movement, I’ve come to understand that “laughing off” this kind of behavior is tantamount to condoning it. I have two adult daughters and I would be very scared if a man touched them while I was at work.

But if women like me don’t come forward, incidents like this will continue to happen. I owe my daughters and their generation a voice.

And I am grateful not only to them, but to all decent men who would never dream of sexually abusing a woman in the workplace.

I don’t think masculinity is harmful, but some men are “rotten” to use the old term.

And I don’t think these men should be elected to positions of power when there are so many men of honor who don’t see power where they want it. Still, I hesitated before naming Kolski.

One of my friends who knew this story was very pessimistic about what was to come. “Of course I’ll be by your side, but I’m sure you’ll get a counterattack.”

Blowback is another way of saying “victim blame”. When I first wrote about this event to Radio Times in 2017, I didn’t mention Kolski by name.

However, I was still surprised by the reaction. I was on the front page of every newspaper and I couldn’t find a better word for how big I was. Perhaps that was the only picture they could find, but at the time I felt like they were suggesting that I wanted it by looking at me.

While things have changed a lot since 2017, there is still a tendency to ridicule and denounce women who speak out about sexual misconduct by men.

So often sexual events are not witnessed that it all boils down to “she said, he said” and all too often women are not believed.

Consider the Brett Kavanaugh case. In this case, a credible witness, Professor Christine Blasey Ford, testified that she was sexually assaulted by a future Supreme Court justice at considerable personal cost, but he was named anyway.

No wonder so many women find it easier to say nothing, knowing that their truthfulness will be questioned.

I have a judge friend who says that when a man and a woman know each other, it is very rare for a jury to find a guilty verdict for rape. So, given the potential impact, why am I speaking out now?

Part of Korsky’s campaign is to make London safer for women. I think this is the ultimate irony.

It sickens me to think that the man who groped me under Mrs Thatcher’s portrait should be someone we can trust to protect the opposite sex.

I’m not saying all politicians have to be saints, but I’m not going to put an arsonist in charge of a fire brigade.

My concern, and another reason I’m writing this, is that other people in positions of power may not be aware that Mr. Kolski could take this type of action. I think they know it and still decide to support him. Possibly, mentioning Mr Kolski’s name has landed him the Conservative candidate for mayor next month.

After all, a classified Hollywood tape in which Donald Trump boasted about “grabbing a woman’s pussy” didn’t stop him from being elected president. But I think voters need to know who they’re voting for.

Perhaps, like Trump, those who support Kolski know what he’s doing and decide it doesn’t matter. But I think men who don’t know how to control themselves should think twice about running for public office.

Maybe Kolsky will never do something so stupid again, and if he does, I’ll be the first to accept that people can change and even grow. deaf.

But if his behavior was part of a pattern, I hope other women will find the courage to come forward. It’s not easy to speak up, but my friends tell me how brave I am. But I don’t have the courage Rather embarrassing. But I also feel that if I don’t do that, I won’t be able to look directly at my daughters’ faces.

Women would rather be known for their achievements than their misfortunes, but ultimately I don’t think they should be afraid to do the right thing.

There should be no need to warn young women not to be alone with that man or to circulate secret WhatsApp spreadsheets.

Women and men of all ages should be treated with respect in the workplace, and no one should run for office if they don’t understand what that means.

“In the strongest terms, Dunn denies all allegations of improper conduct,” a spokesperson for Mr. Kolski said.