Harry Thompson’s Statement Addressing the Allegations [Video & Transcript]

Good evening. Good afternoon. Good morning, wherever you are on planet Earth. I’m now going to read to you my statement, which I posted to my Facebook page Harry Thompson – PDA Extraordinaire, yesterday on Monday the 26th of February, 2024.

Trigger warning: talk of rape, abuse, grooming, Jimmy Savile , and false allegations.

Content warning: very long piece of writing.

Without further ado, I present to you all my statement wherein I address the allegations made against me in early March 2023. Comments will be switched off to avoid digital warfare, which, if that’s your thing, can be had on other pages or groups.

I will now address each allegation one by one:

Rape: 1 accuser. This allegation is PROVABLY False. I had no idea I was accused of this crime until 4½ months after the smear campaign against me in early March 2023.

Grooming: 2 Accusers (1 of whom also made the rape allegation). These allegations are PROVABLY false. Both accusers teamed up and worked together during the smear campaign last March.

The Main Accuser initiated contact with me and messaged me incessantly and without boundaries for a long time before I responded to them. The Main Accuser would engage in sexually provocative communication with me on their own initiative, and would frequently ask me to visit them in their country.

I did visit them for one week, and we went halves on the flights and accommodation. This week was the only time the Main Accuser and I spent in each other’s physical company. The relationship continued after I returned to the UK, by which point the Main Accuser’s feelings for me had intensified. The Main Accuser made several requests for me to make babies with them, and a couple of times suggested I move to their country to live with them, which I told them I wasn’t prepared to do.

The Main Accuser would regularly reminisce fondly and poetically about the sex we had and in exquisite detail. There is even evidence of the Main Accuser laughing with pride about how we slept together twice on the first night—the significance of this is that months later, following our break up, this is the same night the Main Accuser would claim that the rape took place. All of the evidence before, during and after the week I spent with the Main Accuser points towards their being no “rape narrative” prior to our break up, because no rape took place.

Following my holiday with the Main Accuser in their country, the Main Accuser believed they might be pregnant with my child, laughing and joking about this to a mutual friend of ours. When the Main Accuser took a pregnancy test which turned out to be negative, they sent a picture of the result to our mutual friend, which was captioned with a mixture of sad and laughing emojis.

This relationship was an affair. The Main Accuser has a spouse with whom they have several children. The sex the Main Accuser and I had was consensual. We had sexual intercourse on most days during my visit to them, although many months later, following the break up, the Main Accuser claimed to a friend of theirs that the only time they and I had sex was the alleged rape on the first night of the holiday.

The Main Accuser had booked a flight to England to come and visit me for 2 weeks not long after I returned from my own holiday to visit them in their own country. The relationship ended after the Main Accuser asked me if they could bring their infant to England with them 10-14 days before they were due to fly out. I declined this request as it didn’t feel appropriate or comfortable to host a baby that wasn’t mine in my flat for 2 weeks, knowing the baby would have to sleep in bed with us the whole time.

The Main Accuser was manifestly upset that the romantic relationship came to an end, even trying to convince me their spouse was now okay with our arrangement, and trying to convince me to still allow them to come to England to visit me. The discontinuation of the relationship I had with the Main Accuser was largely initiated by myself. It was I who eventually blocked the Main Accuser after they started alluding to me in their online content in an attempt to discredit and undermine me, after they harassed and berated me for several days for not being a vegan anymore.

I deem it important to note that just before everything kicked off online in early March 2023, I streamed a live that was divebombed and heckled by several supporters of the Main Accuser, which resulted in my ending the live and deactivating my social media pages. Evidence exists of the Main Accuser coordinating this attack and gloating the moment I snapped: “we fucking got him”, they said, as I ended the live.

The description of the Main Accuser’s allegation seems to have changed as time has gone on, and those few who were told about it have interpreted it differently. The story of how this rape panned out has not been consistently relayed. The Main Accuser has also alluded to not realising the sex wasn’t consensual until much later on one hand, but then to people in private they have been describing a violent rape, of which both they and I were fully aware at the time. Both can’t be true.

And then we have the messages that the Main Accuser sent to a mutual friend of ours just after I returned from my holiday with them, detailing the same day and event but in positive terms. This shows how following the break up between the Main Accuser and me, they completely revised history. In any case, there exists mountains of various forms of evidence of enthusiastic consent on the part of the Main Accuser.

As for Accuser 2: this was a person 11 years my senior, with whom I communicated mainly on WhatsApp messenger for only a few months. The two of us collaborated on a couple of small projects but kept in contact with one another afterwards. No sexual activity took place between myself and Accuser 2; not even kissing.

But one evening, whilst Accuser 2 was drunk, they and I engaged in a flirty exchange over WhatsApp messenger whereby we both expressed our mutual attraction to one another. At one point, Accuser 2 talked about how they and their spouse have on occasion slept with people outside of their marriage. This gave me the green light to eventually go onto say, “can we have sex?” Accuser 2 declined, which I accepted.

The next day, Accuser 2 came to visit me at my flat for half a day. We went shopping for refreshments, had conversations and lunch at my flat for a few hours, before Accuser 2 left mine in the evening to return home. At some point during Accuser 2’s visit to my flat, they started acting strangely, burying their head in their hands and complaining of migraine type symptoms. When I asked them what was wrong, they said something along the lines of, “it’s just the way I feel about you”. I fetched them some ibuprofen to help with the migraine.

Accuser 2 and I fell out after they WhatsApp messaged me one day expressing their excitement that the Main Accuser was visiting me in England. I expressed to Accuser 2 that I was “slightly irritated” that my private plans could become public knowledge. Accuser 2 then became increasingly more angry, before (according to the Main Accuser) started spamming and harassing the Main Accuser, trying to convince the Main Accuser that they were being controlled and manipulated by me. The Main Accuser complained to me several times about Accuser 2’s behaviour, and eventually proposed that the two of us should block Accuser 2, which we did. Both the Main Accuser and Accuser 2 would resume contact after my relationship ended with the Main Accuser.

Accuser 2 was also responsible for propagating the meme that I was the “Jimmy Savile of the ND Community.” To put me in the same category as one of Britain’s most prolific child sex offenders, with a victim count in excess of 450 victims, whose sex offences spanned almost twice the length of my lifetime, is so grotesquely defamatory and uncalled for that I don’t even know where to begin… This is a man who would routinely lure children who appeared as guests on his show into the back dressing room with the promise of sweets, only to rape them and then make threats to them if they ever “grassed” him up to the authorities. How dare you compare rejection and miscommunication between adults to some of the most disgusting examples of child abuse and pedophilia this country has ever seen. Outrageously false statements such as this, including the vagueness of the allegations, caused people to speculate on whether or not any children had been harmed at my hands. A good friend of mine even had people asking them about this in their inbox at the time. I’ve tried to keep my composure and keep my emotions out of this statement thus far, but this bullshit claim makes me angry and sick to my stomach.

That I am (or was) under Police Investigation: there have never been any criminal charges or convictions against me, back in March or at any time in my life. There was never even an investigation because the alleged victim never handed in an official statement. A third party, acting on behalf of the Main Accuser, reported the rape claim to a Constabulary in a county in the North West of England – a place I’ve never visited let alone committed an imaginary rape in, and in a country the accuser has never set foot in.

This case closed down obviously because no crime had taken place in this jurisdiction. The third party (who has at this juncture spoken with me and has been informed that the allegations are false) then reported the same crime on behalf of the Main Accuser, this time to the country in which the Main Accuser is domiciled. Despite being asked multiple times by the police to submit a statement and evidence, the Main Accuser refused. I, on the other hand, was forthcoming with my evidence (which is, for the record, the Main Accuser’s evidence, too) and transferred to the police several of my best submissions from my vast database of evidence. Despite which, it was not possible to unfound this allegation due to the Main Accuser’s continued refusals to provide a statement. This allegation has now been declared “pending cooperation” and will remain so until the Main Accuser either withdraws it or pursues the allegation/presses charges.

For the record, I opened up a police case myself, and am lodged on the police system as a victim of stalking and harassment, perpetrated by the Main Accuser.

There is “Criminal Evidence of Harry” in the form of “a video which depicts a lack of consent and/or boundaries in a sexual capacity”: this allegation is PROVABLY False. This rumour was used to turn some of my friends and associates against me. When I finally discovered what the serious allegation against me was, 4½ months after the smear campaign in early March 2023, I simultaneously discovered that the so-called “criminal video” was actually one that I possessed myself. Whilst the video does depict both myself and the Main Accuser in a sexual capacity, it does not depict a crime or a lack of consent, and is nothing like the Main Accuser claimed it to be.

This Video I have handed in to both the police in my country and that of the Main Accuser, and the legal team who have been working with me. It is also worth noting that the date and timestamp of this 19 second video serves to discredit the rape claim made by the Main Accuser. The video depicts the Main Accuser asking me to perform an act of a sexual nature on them, seconds after the alleged incident.

What of the therapist lie? The Main Accuser claimed to multiple people, one of whom was Accuser 2, that a former therapist of mine contacted them to warn about my controlling and abusive behaviour. That therapist has come out and said that this is a lie and that they did not approach the Main Accuser to warn them of this as it is not their view of me. This therapist told me that if they are named, they will sue the Main Accuser for libel, that they are prepared to testify in a court of law that the Main Accuser’s claim was fabricated if needs be, and that they would issue me a statement refuting the Main Accuser’s defamatory claim which I could then pass onto the police. The police, for the record, now have said statement from my former therapist. Please can someone tell me why a licensed therapist would flagrantly violate client confidentiality in this fashion to a person they don’t know about a person with whom they’ve had a long-standing therapeutic relationship? It doesn’t add up.

That I “abused my power”: PROVABLY false. I was an Autistic Advocate with a relatively large Following on a free to access Facebook Page. I was hardly a CEO of a billion dollar corporation, threatening to fire their staff if they didn’t acquiesce to the biddings of sexual favours. This allegation was a gross exaggeration of whatever “power” I actually wielded as a published author and public speaker and content creator.

“Hundreds/several/lots of women coming forward, speaking out about Harry’s abuse”: untrue and/or misleading. This mantra became something of a meme which was shared far and wide and bandied about by several advocates, some of whom have large followings. The person who accused me of both rape and grooming erroneously stated during the smear campaign that their allegations were new only to them and were part of an ongoing pattern of mine. This misled people into believing that the others who had stories to share about me were also alleged victims of similar crimes.

The reality is a damn sight more complicated. Only one person accused me of both rape and grooming; NOT several. So who were these “other people/women” then? I make no bones about it: during my 6 years of advocacy, I did upset, annoy and anger a lot of people. I can be rude, antagonistic, snappy, blunt, critical and opinionated.

There were some examples of people who relayed their personal experiences of me being mean, unkind and insulting to them during an online disagreement, or when I attempted to convey advice to, say, parents of Autistic children in FB groups. Some of these were absolutely, 100% true and I have no defence for them whatsoever. I am accountable for the times I genuinely have crossed the line in my tactless communicating with people, and thus apologies have been issued, lessons have been learned and reparations have been made where possible and necessary.

On a similar, albeit, slightly different, note, a couple of former friends and colleagues made posts during the smear campaign in early March 2023, lending credence to the notion that “Hundreds/several/lots of women came forward, speaking out about Harry’s abuse”. I don’t remember ever arguing or bickering with these 2 former friends and colleagues, but because of the malicious rumours they heard and subsequently believed, they assumed that our perfectly smooth and jovial friendships were just a part of my sinister, manipulative plan to pull the wool over their eyes, etc. It wasn’t enough that we could have just enjoyed nice, innocuous friendships, because the narrative—that I am evil at my core—had been set.

That I “slept with my clients”: no, that didn’t happen; FALSE. I’m really not that promiscuous, as it turns out. I had 5 romantic and sexual relationships during my 6 years of advocacy – most of these women I’m still in cordial contact with. 5 women in 6 years: I’m hardly Genghis Khan or Tiger Woods… And for the record, in most cases, the people I ended up seeing initiated contact with me; NOT the other way around. These relationships were developed independently to my client base, although a few of the people I was seeing did attend the odd webinar of mine.

I hasten to add as well that I have not done a home visit consultation since late 2019, and I only did home visits for a few months. I visited a handful of families and you can ask each and everyone one of the mothers who will tell you: not once did I ever make a pass at them, let alone sleep with them. One Mother after a home visit messaged me the next day expressing they wanted to kiss me, but this was not entertained by me; no kiss ever took place. I eventually stopped doing home visits because I found them too much alongside the amount of talks, school trainings and other projects I was involved in, so I eventually stuck almost exclusively to online consultations from late 2019 until early 2023.

Other examples of my alleged abuse include my not believing that certain high profile Advocates in the community are actually PDA, which has its roots in differences of opinion as to what PDA actually is and how it ought to be characterised. I understand why this would be hurtful to someone – particularly a person for whom PDA constitutes a cornerstone of their identity—but I’m not sorry for holding these views, which I believe I have a right to hold. PDA research has barely begun, and no one has a monopoly on what it is; not I nor anyone else.

That I smeared one particular high profile PDA Advocate? Utterly untrue and unfounded. I confided in a few friends (in my typically emotional and ranty style) in private that I didn’t think this Advocate was PDA, based on 1. How they differed vastly from my own understanding of PDA, and 2. After staff members of a clinic who specialise in assessing and diagnosing PDA (who shall remain unnamed) told me that they thought this PDA Advocate – along with a couple of other PDA Advocates – were NOT actually PDA, at least PDA as they understood it. I repeat: I only shared these views with a couple of friends in private (admittedly, in a rather critical, emotional and ranty way), but my words made their way back to the PDA Advocate in question, who decided to cut ties with me (and I don’t blame them for this).

I admit I was being bitchy and gossipy here, but I did not engage in any “smearing”. I never wrote a post about this Advocate at all let alone one in an attempt to destroy their reputation, I never trashed them in private groups, and if I saw I was speaking at the same autism or PDA related events as them, I never “warned” the organisers of the events about them, and neither did I ever try and prevent others from attending said Advocate’s own events. I never tried to stop this Advocate from publishing books or disseminating content from their various social media platforms.

This Advocate, on the other hand, has for the past 5 years done precisely what they falsely accused me of doing. They have written multiple posts about me (not always naming me, to be fair, but making it obvious about whom they were talking), which resulted in people in the community being turned away from me. They have also, on numerous occasions, either instigated or permitted routine defaming of me in the private groups they run. I have tried my damndest to ignore this Advocate over the years and get on with my own life and advocacy since falling out with them, and I only wished they could do the same for me. They were also issued 2 apologies by me, one of which was admittedly made out of fear on my part, and because I was advised to by someone else. Therefore, this apology didn’t come across as genuine, which is partly what prompted me to issue a second. Despite this, this PDA Advocate has continued to come after me several times since our fall out in late 2019, exploiting every opportunity to write a defamatory post about me or completely undermine my character and reputation in general. If anyone speaks out in my defence or provides a more nuanced take on the situation, this PDA Advocate has a pattern of deleting such comments and blocking the people making them, thwarting any chance of reasoned discussion.

My issues around this Advocate were not borne solely out of a fundamental difference in our respective understandings of PDA. There are several people I am in contact with who have had to cut ties with said PDA Advocate, who claim to have been bullied or publicly shamed by them. One highly-respected and well-known Autistic Academic in our community had it particularly bad from the PDA Advocate in question. Due to the fact this Autistic Academic claimed that PDA was “poorly theorised”, in 2018, the PDA Advocate took it upon themselves to distribute a petition around the Internet with the intention of amassing enough signatures so that this Autistic Academic could be deposed from his position with a well-known Autistic organisation.

This PDA Advocate can always find a clever way to justify such actions, believing they’re doing so to protect their community, etc. But these behaviours that I have both witnessed and heard about first hand were enough for me to regard this Advocate as potentially unsafe for the community. But regardless, I have largely kept these views to myself and a handful of close friends, unlike the PDA Advocate, who has spent the past 5 years determined to turn as many people away from me as possible.

When I first entered the online PDA world, I recognised I didn’t fit in. Initially, I didn’t regard this as a problem with the community itself; I thought I was the fault; I thought I was the problem. After working closely alongside clinicians who study, assess for and diagnose PDA, working with countless PDA families and reading as much on the topic as I possibly could myself, I soon came to realise that PDA was incredibly under-researched, a relatively recently “discovered” clinical entity, and that absolutely anyone remotely interested was scrambling to either explain their theories around PDA or profit from it in some way.

There are several drivers towards demand avoidance, and PDA demand avoidance has its own unique, distinctive quality. “How many people self-identifying as PDAers are aware of this?” I thought to myself. PDA also relates to a constellation of characteristics, and is not solely defined by its main criterion: demand avoidance. So many people, apparently, assumed that just because they were demand avoidant, this must have been enough for them to self-identify as a PDAer, ignoring the fact there is an entire profile to meet as opposed to just one criterion, and that the type and quality of PDA demand avoidance are just as important as its frequency and pervasiveness.

For these reasons alone, I decided that perhaps it isn’t entirely possible for an individual to self-identify as a PDA person this early in the game, and that it might be wise to wait until we have a more solid understanding of PDA. This is an incredibly controversial position to take in our community, where the social model of disability is generally held in higher regard than that of the medical. And for the record, I am 100% pro self-identification when it comes to other Neurodivergences. I believe society should cease to pathologise natural variations in human experience, and that allistic mental health professionals should not have a monopoly on who we are. But given that PDA is so little-understood, newly identified and under-researched, it does bother me how vulnerable it is to corruption. If we had a clearer sense of what it is, I would be all for self-identification. I am worried (as our other clinicians who would be too scared to say this publicly for fear of backlash) that the original essence of PDA, outlined by Elizabeth Newson, is being diluted by people in the adult online PDA community who could have been fed a version of PDA that isn’t quite representative of this essence.

My views around PDA and self-diagnosis are more relaxed these days, but they were never an obstacle when it came to my interpersonal relationships. Several friends of mine self-identify as PDA and do not have an official diagnosis, and this doesn’t affect our friendship in the slightest. Again, I am not the PDA guru. I have opinions on what I think PDA is and will advance my argument for this as coherently as I can, but I could be wrong. Other PDA Advocates and PDA Organisations and charities have their own views on what PDA is and isn’t as well. Whilst it is well within our right to differ in our own understandings of what PDA is, I think the disparity here is also what gives rise to the conflict and confusion within the community.

I do not believe I have ever interacted with another Advocate in my 6 years of advocacy who hasn’t held negative opinions about at least one other advocate, and who hasn’t engaged in a bit of gossip and bitching. I have been guilty of this, too, admittedly, and this is something I’m sorry for and have sought to rectify, but I don’t think it’s fair that only I should hold myself accountable for this, when it is absolutely part of on ongoing problem amongst several if not all advocates in the community.

One thing myself and the admins of the Harry Thompson: Falsely Accused Facebook Group want to clear up: not a single one of us, myself included, financially profits from the Zooms we provide people with. They are done 100% free of charge, as and when I or the other admins are able to do them. No one is “forced” to attend these Zooms, either. We either offer them, which people are free to accept or decline, or people simply ask to attend one directly.

Well, there you have it. That is my side of the story, most of which, for the record, can be substantiated by reams of solid and undeniable evidence, so you don’t just have to take my word for it. For those of you who are either interested or not wholly convinced by what I have written today, I refer you to the Harry Thompson: Falsely Accused Facebook group—the link to which can be found in the comment section—where you will have the opportunity to attend a Zoom presentation, whereby I recount my side of the story accompanied by the evidence which I cannot in good faith show here on my public page.

This is the last time I will address the allegations on my page. If any of you have any questions, again, please join the Harry Thompson: Falsely Accused Facebook group.

TLDR; I have NOT raped anyone and I am NOT a rapist—the evidence for this is clear.

I have NOT groomed anyone and I am NOT a groomer—the evidence for this is clear.

I can be a rude, opinionated, abrupt and snappy arsehole, and I have upset people with my words many times in my life. I am accountable for the times I’ve taken things too far and become insulting and mean, but there are other times when highly rejection sensitive individuals are simply inconvenienced by my blunt and straight talking style on my live streams, in my comment sections or at the events I’ve spoken at. I am sorry when I realise I have been genuinely verbally harsh to someone, but not when a person is just offended by my bluntness.

I have been unprofessional and unboundaried throughout the years of my advocacy, talking to far too many people and oversharing, especially at the beginning. There are plenty of things I said and did, which 1. I wouldn’t say and do now, and 2. I should have thought about more prior to saying and doing them.

I have had a lot of growing up to do. I spent most of my 20’s with a platform and relatively large following, and didn’t have the luxury of making youthful mistakes away from the spotlight much less away from social media.

I continually work on myself, attend regular therapy sessions, self-reflect, journal and strive to become a better person. Self-improvement means a hell of a lot to me. I am the kind of person who learns through direct experience. I do sometimes require a stiff natural consequence to give me a kick up the backside, however much it hurts, which is why I regard the past year for me as being both the most painful and the most important for me in my whole life.

I am not evil, sinister, predatory or monstrous. I am vulnerable, naive, mischievous, impulsive and inclined towards controversy and iconoclasm. I am fully aware I can be a difficult, selfish, and uncooperative person. I am in touch with my various flaws and imperfections. I do not regard myself as a perfect angel, an innocent victim or morally superior. I have made so many mistakes in life let alone my advocacy and I’m sure I’ll make more mistakes in the future. But I promise I will learn from them and try not to repeat them again. Nothing I do comes from a malicious or intentionally deceptive place. I make honest mistakes. I can be reactive, but this comes from a place of neuroticism and trauma; not because I’m some calculated sadist.

I’m really not everyone’s cup of tea. I think it’s a habit among human beings to view those who disagree with them as somehow dangerous and untrustworthy, when the reality is, they just see the world differently. There is no pressure for people who don’t like me to consume my content or follow my page. Feel free to block me and then you’ll not have to hear from me anymore – simple!

Remember, in a court of law, I am innocent until proven guilty. I was subjected to a trial by social media. The accusations were vague and those making them used threats, emotional manipulation and public shaming in order to recruit people to their side, and used the same tactics on anyone who dared to question much less challenge the narrative they were trying to set in motion.

When you separate the fact from fiction, and remove the provably false allegations from the equation, all you are left with is an outspoken Autistic man in his 20’s who had a lot of growing up to do and who had to learn to wind his neck in and mind his tongue at times.

What I genuinely am guilty of wasn’t enough to get me on, and there are some advocates out there who just wanted to see me gone. I think for those reasons alone, stories about me had to be exaggerated, and, in some cases, completely made up.

I should probably address this as well:

In all the private message conversations I have had with people over the years, there is but one snippet of a text conversation which dates back to 2019 that, without any explanation, has been shared fairly widely and used to shore up the narrative that I am in fact a nefarious and morally depraved character. These screenshots out of context do seem alarming and require an explanation. Please refer to the timestamp 2:36:30 on the live I streamed last Tuesday 20th February 2024 (titled: At Long Last, I am Able to Say a Few Words of My Own), where I expatiate on these screenshots.

Oh, and for those who think I’m “using” Paula Rice, here’s what she has to say on the matter:

I’m sorry to everyone for what has been such a confusing and distressing mess. I hope this statement provides you with a little more clarity. For those of you who are interested in how the smear campaign affected me, I may decide to write one post about this, but if I don’t, either join the Harry Thompson: Falsely Accused group or stay tuned for the book I plan to write on this experience. I will say this, though:

In a single morning, I had to contend with not just one but multiple traumas at once, from the inconvenient and superficial to the viscerally deep and existentially agonising. I watched as organisations and charities that used to hire me one by one publicly announced that they were professionally distancing themselves from me. A flurry of emails flooded my inbox as organisations who already had upcoming events at which I was booked as a speaker cancelled me. I lost my entire livelihood at a time I had important bills, tax and a mortgage to pay, with no guarantee I’d be able to source the money required soon or at all. My reputation was destroyed amongst literally thousands of people internationally, who were now calling me: “predator, monster, abuser, narcissist, sociopath, psychopath and Jimmy Savile.” People I thought were friends stepped away at a time I needed their support and love the most, some with ominous parting messages, and none of whom asked to hear my side of the story.

Even the person I was closest to at the time stepped away from me without explanation, two days after they assured me they wouldn’t. On an Autistic level, I had to process the most intense changes all at once. I almost took my own life twice, and on both times someone had to intervene. This situation broke me. It was the most hellish, excruciating, confusing and scariest experience of my life. My mental health was completely destroyed, but I’m doing better now than I was at the beginning.

Okay, so I think that will do for now. I know that there are people out there who want me to admit to all of the accusations and plead guilty to everything because that would align with their narrative of me, but I can only take responsibility for the things I did do, and not the things I didn’t do.

I know there were also many who wondered why I never made a public statement about this at the time. There are multiple answers to this:

1. I was incapacitated by the trauma of what happened early last March 2023. I could scarcely talk, think or eat let alone muster up the strength to defend myself.

2. I had no solid idea of what it was I was being accused of and so had to find this out for myself first. How could I defend myself against something of which I knew almost nothing?

3. I didn’t want to resort to vindictive, playground battles on social media, potentially making the situation worse. I always vowed from the very beginning not to make any kind of public statement until I had cleared my name to the best of my ability through the proper channels, i.e., through lawyers and the police. And so here we are now.

Thank you all for listening and take care!