Phillip Schofield’s Predicament and Power Dynamics in Sexual Relationships

Yesterday I wrote a facebook post expressing sympathy for a TV presenter in distress. However, I didn’t know all the facts.

My status was this:

‘I don’t watch TV in the mornings, but if you read the papers, you can’t have missed the Phillip Schofield/Holly Willoughby story.

I don’t want to dwell on it as it seems a bit vulturesque, but I must say I do feel sorry for people when they are distressed. I only know what I’ve read in the paper for the last couple of days.

I find the breakup of friendships incredibly painful, and I know that they cause pain on both sides, so I empathise with people going through it. But in Willoughby and Schofield’s case, like so many friendship break ups, this strikes me as a misunderstanding rather than a fundamental difference or any heinous behaviour.

Certainly, there was heinous behaviour on the part of Schofield’s brother, who was found guilty of being a paedophile. But we can’t judge people by the crimes of their relatives. And actually, although Willoughby allegedly feels betrayed that Schofield didn’t confide in her, I can understand why he didn’t. He must have been terrified of the story hitting the headlines, and the repercussions for him. He must have hoped that perhaps his brother would not be found guilty, and that the story would not reach the papers.

Do we always confide in our close friends about terrible things our relatives may or may not have done? Not all of us, not always. And Schofield must have been aware that if his brother was found innocent, spreading rumours of him being a paedophile by talking about it to Willoughby would have been premature and potentially devastating. So he didn’t tell her until his brother was found guilty, and the story hit the papers.

How about the other alleged betrayal of Willoughby, Schofield, not confiding in her a while back that he was gay? Here, I feel more for Schofield’s wife. It must be horrific to find out that a husband you have been married to for years has never found you attractive and would rather be with a completely different gender. If you happened to find yourself in this unfortunate position - a position which must have involved some subterfuge and secrets and lies on the part of Schofield, but years ago, and strictly between him and his ex wife - it would seem like a huge betrayal to your wife to tell your friend that you are gay before you tell your wife. So I can understand why he kept this secret from Willoughby as well.

As for Schofield’s public statement a few days ago, to me it sounds like a plea from a drowning man. He has been through these two recent life events, and now he is facing losing one of his best friends as well as his job. I think he genuinely feels for Willoughby, and somehow wanted to make things right with a grand gesture in public, saying how much he cared about her. But again, he could do nothing right.

I wouldn’t have thought about it again but for seeing footage from the show in the papers today. Schofield looks as if he has been crying and not sleeping. His mouth is pulled down at the corners when he’s not speaking. He is constantly trying to make eye contact with Willoughby and making references to their past close friendship. He looks nervous and beaten, his arms forming a self-protective shield in front of him. She, by contrast, is avoiding eye contact with him and looks defiant. She looks more angry than distressed.

I think we should think about people who are obviously distressed. The warning signs are flashing in front of us. Back off. Show some compassion. Someone needs to put an arm around him and be his friend. Someone needs to explain to her that it’s not always possible to confide every secret in your best friend, however much you adore them. What are the risks of being too compassionate? You look wet. What are the risks of not being compassionate enough? Too dreadful to contemplate.’

I have not changed my mind about the need to be kind and compassionate in situations where it does not cede any rights of your own. Those who castigate kindness use the example of giving up control to our own safety, like allowing rapists pretending they are transwomen into female prisons, or cooing over the unhappy childhood of a serial killer. That is not kindness, it is at best gormless naivety and at worst thundering idiocy.

I’m also not talking about being a doormat. If someone does something outrageous to you, you have every right to argue with them about it and to tell others about it. No one should be gagged for fear of embarrassing someone who has behaved badly.

But kindness and compassion to those in distress who have not done anything wrong is, I believe, a cornerstone of our society and civilisation in general. If we lose empathy for each other, if we turn our backs to those who are suffering, we risk not only individual harm to those people - look at the number of people who kill themselves every year - we also risk turning society into a much more ruthless, cut-throat place where distress is a sign of weakness and must be hidden, and where the toughest - and not necessarily best people (Putin is tough) win.

But in this case I didn’t know the facts. Schofield had indeed been alleged of wrongdoing himself, quite separately from his brother, who Schofield disowned after his conviction for paedophilia.

Although you may not find anything in the major press about it (one suspects injunctions or super injunctions), Schofield stands accused in some quarters of grooming a young man after landing him a job on the morning TV programme he works on, This Morning, as a runner.

You can pick the details up on this for yourself by googling ‘Schofield’ and ‘grooming’. As I say, the information will be on chat groups and social media rather than in any major UK paper. The young man concerned is not talking about it now, whether through choice, a super injunction, or a payoff, we can’t tell at this stage. But the fact seemed to be that an 18-year-old was given a job on the show, and then Schofield had an affair with him. When the affair ended, the young man was seemingly upset and threatened to go to the press. Since nothing inside, it seems that some sort of deal or gagging has been imposed.

The law obviously provides crude protection against exploitation. If an adult has sex with a child, that is a criminal offence for which they are liable to be prosecuted in this country. But the law does not cover the nuances. Although it is legal for those above the age of 16 to have sex with each other, there are exceptions. It is illegal for anyone in a position of trust to have sex with anyone aged 17 or under in their care. If the young man involved was under 17, was he strictly under the care of Schofield? By all accounts, it seems as if he was 18 when he came to work at the TV programme, but if he had been 17 when the relationship started, there might be a problem. Schofield allegedly met the boy when visiting a theatre school of which Schofield is a patron. Was the boy *under the care* of Schofield? Strictly not, while he was at the theatre school, though it could be argued that when he came to London after Schofield had procured him a job he was. Legally, of course, this is a moot point. But in addition, ethical issues are not black and white, and do not strictly adhere to the tenets of the law.

The human brain does not mature fully until the young person is in their 20s. This is hard to believe when you are a teenager who believes you know who you are, what you want, and when you want it (usually NOW.) Teenagers arguably do not have fully developed impulse control. More importantly, their ideas and expectations about sex and love may be naive. They may conflate the two. Which 17-year-old hasn’t been flattered by the attentions of an older person they find attractive? When I started writing for the New Musical Express, aged 17, one of the staff members there kept trying to seduce me. Whether it was a casual tickle on the thigh - I had never felt anything like that before, and it felt like heaven - or asking me out or asking me to go away when he had a gig to review in Birmingham, it was clear that he wanted to have it off with me. I liked him a lot, I admired his writing, and I thought he was very physically attractive as well. But I was 17. I had only started my periods less than two years before. I looked so young I was not served in a pub the first and only time I went to one with a couple of NME colleagues.

In my case, I didn’t have any sexual contact whatsoever with this man I admired. The situation was clear-cut with me, he had a girlfriend and I didn’t want to be anyone’s bit on the side. Even when he asked me out a couple of years later, when he had left his girlfriend, I said no. Something stopped me. Perhaps I sensed that it was my body rather than my mind that he was interested in. Teenagers can be awfully stroppy about things like that. In truth, it was possibly because I never did casual sex, and I think that if someone has made passes at you from the first time you have met them, then they are unlikely to want to get to know you as a person first.

How glad I am I didn’t succumb. This guy was a bit of a hero to me. I’m pretty sure that if I had had sex with him, I would have wanted to be with him. But who knows what someone several years older is thinking? To them, you might just be a plaything.

Certainly the relationship between Schofield and the boy didn’t last as long as the boy wished. He was so upset that he threatened to go to the press. He left This Morning and went to work at Loose Women. Ruth Langsford, a different morning TV presenter, was seemingly disgusted with Schofield when she heard about this.

The problem is not just age, it is power. I was glad when I read recently that some universities are going to ban relationships between lecturers and students. How can this relationship ever be equal? The student is usually fresh out of school, and has only had experiences dating other teenagers in similar situations. The lecturer seems impossibly sophisticated in his or her position of power, with their erudition and confidence facing classes of students. Of course, it must be a big thrill to think that this person has chosen *you* out of a sea of other youngsters. But who knows how many others in that sea he has spat out? Some young people who have had affairs with their university lecturers allege that they have been downgraded when they ended the affair. An unscrupulous individual might well use their power for this kind of blackmail.

Physical and mental maturity are not the same thing. This is why it’s so horrific to read about child marriage in countries where it’s illegal. Even if the couple wait until the girl has started to menstruate before starting sexual relations, the man is usually much older. Sex is often extremely painful, especially if the child is small. Childbirth comes with vastly increased risks. What child is ready for either sex or motherhood? A child of 15 should be at school, laughing with her or his mates, learning, growing up. Even in the so-called advanced West, a teenager, it may be au fait with all sorts of sexual positions from giggling over manuals with their friends, but it does not follow that they are ready for sex physically or emotionally. Even when they grow enough to be ready physically, they will still be relatively immature psychologically. They may believe that sex leads inexorably to love and happy ever after. It is so much more healthy for a young person to be experimenting with sex with someone of their own age, who is in the same uncertain position, with regards to their future. Together or apart, they can work out their feelings. It’s not to say heart breakdoesn’’t happen when having relationships with people of your own age, just that it’s far less likely that one party will be using the other for sex in a recreational way with no intention of having a long-term relationship.

Someone 17 or 18 still has the world in front of them. Who knows what the young man who Philip Schofield offered a job to would have gone on to do if he had not met Schofield. When we are young, we are much more likely to make emotional decisions as regards our future, far more likely to make hasty declarations about moving somewhere far away, abandoning other opportunities, taking on commitments like the expenses of living in London.

It would be interesting to know whether Schofield met the parents of this young man. The Michael Jackson film has chillingly shown us that parents can be groomed as easily as children. I don’t want to make any comparison between the young children who Michael Jackson sickeningly assaulted - boys under 10 - and Schofield having a seemingly consensual relationship with a young man of 18. But the parents of any young person would be worried about their child moving away and starting a new job. Did Schofield give them the impression that he was going to protect their son? Were they horrified when they heard that he had had a sexual relationship with the boy?

One has to be careful here to not lapse into double standards. After all, it is common to see older men with young women -it has been going on for time immemorial. No one leaps to the defence of women over 18 who choose to have sexual relationships with older men. That too, can turn into tragedy - look at the saga of Anne Nicole Smith. In a misogynistic way, these women are called ‘gold diggers’ I’ve used the term myself in a jokey way.

The whole story story has shown how important it is to be responsible for our behaviour. Most people have been in relationships where one side is more deeply into it than the other. The key for adults is surely to be honest about their intentions from the start. That means telling the other person if you think you are just after a short, casual relationship. Of course, you can’t know until you are in the relationship, but as soon as you have an inkling, it’s better to tell them. Being led along thinking you are someone’s long-term partner and then being dumped is emotionally devastating. Adults of similar ages learn to deal with it. But those in power should think twice about embarking on jarringly uneven relationships with much younger individuals.

I would stand by Schofield any day for not being responsible for the actions of his brother and his right to have refrained from discussing that or his homosexuality with his co-host. As far as the relationship? It was probably legal, but it showed poor judgement on his part. And trying to quash the press from covering the issue is the wrong way to deal with it. What is needed is a mea culpa and standing back from the limelight.