The boy who cried big membership

In the court of public opinion, you are guilty as soon as someone levels an accusation at you, even if it is baseless. Not everyone thinks like that, but most do. They figure there must be fire there if there is smoke. Especially if it is more than one accuser. 
Politics is the ultimate court of public opinion. The whole process is based on that. So, when that is not on your side anymore, you are shit out of luck.

"Mr. Brown is entitled to a legal defense and due process, but he cannot lead us into an election as a result of these allegations," the statement read.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/patrick-brown-denies-sexual-misconduct-allegations-from-two-women-resigns-as-ontario-pc-leader-1.3774686

Did Patrick Brown get screwed over? Well, we probably wont know that for a year or two. Did he sexually harass two women, or more? We might never know the answer to that for sure, no matter what the courts decide. But in the court of public opinion, he was guilty as soon as those allegations were made.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/patrick-brown-speaks-up-says-truth-will-come-out-1.3792125 

He is now vowing to fight, and seeing that his political career is over anyway, he is speaking out, publicly.

In interviews, the women allege inappropriate behavior by the rising political figure throughout his tenure as an elected official.
One was still in high school when she says Brown, a well-known Barrie politician, asked her to perform oral sex on him.

Is it a crime to ask a woman to perform oral sex on you? It isn't. And if it was, then there are a lot more guilty men walking the streets free than there are spots in jail to house them. As long as you are just asking. Forcing, threatening,  physically dominating, anything like that, those are crimes. Asking is not. As long as you take no for an answer, if no is the answer.  If you are the woman, and you do it, and then regret it, that is regret, but also you aren't a victim. Not legally anyway.

http://www.vulture.com/2018/01/aziz-ansari-accused-sexual-misconduct.html 

It has been troubling to see the rush to judgement that we see taking place now. If secrecy and acceptance of bad behavior was the norm before, it seems rush to convict and brand anyone who is accused has become the standard way any accusation by any person---mostly women, play out. We saw that with Aziz Ansara, and I'm sure of the hundreds we are going to see come out this year, we will see 2 or 3 that were totally baseless, or as in the case of Ansara, just a situation that a women was convinced to do something, and regrets it. That isn't harassment. But why has Ansara been able to clear his name, so to speak, while others like Patrick Brown were taken as guilty and ruined on the spot?
Did Ansara sexual harass and violate this woman? If you go strictly by her account, I would say yes. So, its he said/she said in this case. But, the way its portrayed in her accusation, it was just a date, he didn't have any actual power over her, she was free to leave at any point if she wanted, and did eventually without him forcing himself further on her. Would I do the things he is accused of doing? No, I would not, but I don't view what he did as harassment in the strictest sense. The variables are somewhat the same as Patrick Brown's though, so why are there many people rushing to support Ansara, while there is virtually no one that thinks Brown was innocent here?

This blog isn’t about sexual harassment, or taking lightly any woman who claims their basic human rights were violated. If any man harasses or violates a women, in my eyes, they should throw the book at them and ruin their lives, as we see with Matt Lauer and Harvey Weinstein. This blog is only how we treat those who are accused, and why we treat some one way while others get different treatment.

Patrick Brown was never likeable. It wasn't hard to believe that he would sexually harass a woman. That doesn't make him guilty in a court of law, but in the court of public opinion, it certainly does. He looks like the type of guy who would be guilty of a thing like this. He is on the wrong side of the benefit of the doubt. Why do I say that?
One difference is that Brown preyed on very young girls, both 18 at the time, and got them drunk, then made his move. He was no teenager when he did this, and they weren't dates, but events where he calculated the way it was going to play out. That is much different than what Ansara did. You can read the account of how Brown did it in the article I linked above. It should be noted that both Brown and Ansara both stopped when the woman said stop. It appears the woman in Ansara's case just didn't put a stop to it when she wanted to, while the one in Brown's case did because Brown was much more aggressive in terms of how he was accelerating the encounter. He was on top of her and pinned her to the bed, if her account is to be believed. Brown hints that he is denying that happened. Again, he said/she said.

First, Brown was never known to be a "people person". To watch him, his abrasive nature, his pissy attitude, just rubs you the wrong way. He looks like he wouldn't take no for an answer. Pretty much, that is what he is accused of here. For a more concrete example, we only need to look at how he handled his brouhaha with Kathleen Wynne. 

 https://www.thestar.com/news/queenspark/2017/12/11/wynne-sues-brown-for-100k-in-libel-action.html

Deputy premier Deb Matthews has accused the Tory leader of behaving like U.S. President Donald Trump, whose penchant for prevarication is well known.
“There is a principle in Canada that you do not make defamatory, misleading comments about another political leader,” Matthews said in October.
“In Canada, we actually expect people to be honest. There is, south of the border, a change in that culture. I do not want to see that change coming to Canada.”

I'm no fan of Kathleen Wynne, and neither are most Ontarians. I have spoken about that before in other blogs, so I will just leave that as a statement of where I'm at. But, no matter what, in my world, you don't slander somebody and then insist on not taking it back, even when the proof is there that you have to be wrong and you are being threatened with a lawsuit. That is the position Brown was in with Wynne, and Brown was defiant in that instance. That is a sign to me. A sign of poor character. The kind of thing that leads you to believe he likely did harass those women who are now coming forward years later. He has a pattern. In a case that will boil down to he said/she said as to what happened on the encounter, I am inclined to believe the women in this case. They have more credibility, only because Brown has zero.

http://nationalpost.com/news/politics/patrick-brown-likely-inflated-membership-numbers-by-70000-says-ontario-pc-official

With Brown gone, his successor says the figure is actually far less — under 130,000 — and a party insider made a surprising admission about the discrepancy Monday, blaming it on creative exaggeration.
“The membership number was likely inflated for communications purposes,” said the official, not authorized to speak on the record about the topic. “We’re not going to defend the actions of the previous administration … Now people have the facts.”

One of the reasons Brown was tolerated for as long as he has been, when there was little to like in the first place was that he took a completely broken party, became its leader, and vastly increased their membership numbers in a very short amount of time. Or, so it seemed he had done that. Well, it seemed that way, because he claimed it himself and the party accepted it as fact.

Now that Brown is gone, and his career is over either way, its apparent he didn't increase the membership anywhere near to what he had claimed. What he did was make up numbers and scam the party. That came out a few days later. The party is in disarray because of it. Brown has no credibility whatsoever, so he is not going to get any benefit of the doubt on any matter. I'm sure that will be something that comes up in court when the lawyers of these women attack him. And rightfully so. In a battle of he said/she said, what he said is hard to believe without irrefutable proof, which he does not have. 

 https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/02/nyregion/donald-trump-tower-heights.html

Of course, we know of others who have this credibility problem. One very famous one in fact. Among the many lies that Donald Trump tells, the ones where the actual facts clearly show otherwise and only lead you to believe that anything he says is likely more fiction or deception than truth are... the size of the Trump Tower, the crowd size of the inauguration, and the viewer ratings of the State of the Union address. We could go on and on of the consistent lies he tells. 

 https://www.factcheck.org/2017/01/the-facts-on-crowd-size/

http://variety.com/2018/tv/news/trump-state-of-the-union-ratings-1202682703/ 

When you get to the stage where everything you say is probably going to be a lie, or thought of as probably a lie, or even just a gross exaggeration, it doesn't matter if you are actually on the right side of the ledger in any dispute. That is where Brown is, and where Trump is.

In the case of Brown, he is the boy who cried big membership, and now even if he actually sees a wolf, nobody would believe he did.

In cases like we see now, character and credibility will decide how you are judged by those that don’t have to use the rule of law and evidence to make decisions. In the court of public opinion,  Patrick Brown is now a sexual harasser. His lack of character in public got him that title, not his actions in private.
If your word is your bond, you have no bonds to call on when the shit hits the fan.