Roy Harper charged 2013, cleared 2015

Subject: Roy Harper charged
From: Uncle Tone
Date: 15 Nov 13 - 05:23 AM

"Folk singer Roy Harper has been charged with sexually abusing a girl from the age of 12."

BBC News link

Subject: RE: Roy Harper charged
From: Acorn4
Date: 15 Nov 13 - 05:37 AM

Bit of a shock to put it mildly.

Subject: RE: Roy Harper charged
From: GUEST,iou
Date: 15 Nov 13 - 07:33 AM

not a shock to everyone

Subject: RE: Roy Harper charged
From: George Papavgeris
Date: 15 Nov 13 - 08:59 AM

All such cases shock. But I am also shocked by GUEST,iou's implication that there were those who were aware or suspected, yet did nothing. What authority were they afraid of, FFS?

Subject: RE: Roy Harper charged
From: GUEST
Date: 15 Nov 13 - 09:16 AM

He isn't a folk singer.

Subject: RE: Roy Harper charged
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 15 Nov 13 - 09:48 AM

I fully agree with you George, but there again people who knew about him protected Jimmy Savile.

Dave H

Subject: RE: Roy Harper charged
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 15 Nov 13 - 10:13 AM

He isn't a folk singer.

A typical Mudcat reaction!

He's in a great tradition of singer-writers to whom the word Folk has been traditionally applied for several generations now, so I guess that makes him as much a Folk Singer as anyone else.

That one of his songs (from his 1974 album Valentine) just happens to consist entirely of unambiguous first-hand reportage concerning a sexual encounter with a thirteen-year-girl, is, in any instance (but especially this one), unfortunate to say the least.

Subject: RE: Roy Harper charged
From: GUEST
Date: 15 Nov 13 - 10:55 AM

Get a life, Blandiver. Blather all you wish, but it still doesn't make him a folk singer. Songwriter, rock and roller, etc., but not a folk singer. Tell your damned newspapers to get their headlines right.

Subject: RE: Roy Harper charged
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 15 Nov 13 - 11:12 AM

"Between your thirteen year old thighs" from memory of reading the back of said LP Valentine, which was owned by an old friend who actually cautioned me about the paedophilia contained in the lyrics as I was browsing his collection. I don't know anything about Harper, but even to me, having never listened to the music, it's not a "shock". More a shock that he's finally been busted really.

Subject: RE: Roy Harper charged
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 15 Nov 13 - 11:13 AM

Okay, Guest. I'll get my people onto it right away...

Actually I hope as much as anyone here that all these allegations of Roy Harper being a Folk Singer prove to be unfounded - but if they do, you can bet your bottom dollar the retraction won't comply with Hacked Off's demands on such matters. Shame.

Subject: RE: Roy Harper charged
From: Jim McLean
Date: 15 Nov 13 - 12:53 PM

Folk singer or not, that is not the question, nor the answer. The lyrics to Forbidden Fruit are entirely sick, an expression of paediophelia which, if it reflects his view and actions should ensure he is locked up unquestionably and as quickly as possibly. Listening to what this man thinks about how he would treat a thirteen year just makes me so angry. I'm just surprised he has got away with such public statements for so long.

Subject: RE: Roy Harper charged
From: GUEST,Silas
Date: 15 Nov 13 - 02:10 PM

I don't and have never thought of this person as a 'Folk' singer - what he was doing on the Folk awards is still a mystery to me, but not a surprise.

Never liked the guy though.

Subject: RE: Roy Harper charged
From: Jack Campin
Date: 15 Nov 13 - 02:30 PM

I'd rather he'd got in court over his song about Islam, but hey we can't be choosy.

Any chance of somebody finding a nice fat tax fraud?

Subject: RE: Roy Harper charged
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 15 Nov 13 - 03:16 PM

Tax fraud in the folk world? Chance would be a fine thing!

Oh, I'm forgetting, he's not a Folk Singer...

Subject: RE: Roy Harper charged
From: GUEST
Date: 15 Nov 13 - 03:26 PM

"West Mercia Police said the offences are alleged to have been committed in Herefordshire between 1975 and 1977 and relate to one victim."

Subject: RE: Roy Harper charged
From: Elmore
Date: 15 Nov 13 - 03:34 PM

Not a folk singer to me, but I,m not the folk police. Never heard of him. Played a couple of his videos on You Tube. Sounded pretty good. Doesn't mean he's not a perv.

Subject: RE: Roy Harper charged
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 15 Nov 13 - 03:35 PM

He should have been put on a charge for that 20 minute introduction to his song at the Folk Awards.

Dave H

Subject: RE: Roy Harper charged
From: The Sandman
Date: 15 Nov 13 - 03:47 PM

innocent until proved guilty.

Subject: RE: Roy Harper charged
From: Nick
Date: 15 Nov 13 - 04:06 PM

Has anyone done Nabokov for writing Lolita yet?

My view as on facebook is that - aside from how hard it is to sing 'I Hate the White Man' in Yorkshire without people misinterpreting it (it must be the flowery 60's writing) -

I thought that people were supposed to be presumed innocent until pronounced guilty - Sally Bercow's libel damages point to that. Craig Douglas was a rapist for a while until he wasn't.

Personally, I have never understood the attraction of pre-pubescent girls or the need to want to start a relationship with one. So if he is guilty - and until then not - he deserves to pay for what he has done.

How is it that people have such certainty without any facts?

Subject: RE: Roy Harper charged
From: GUEST,kenny
Date: 15 Nov 13 - 04:23 PM

Agree with the 2 posts above.

Subject: RE: Roy Harper charged
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 15 Nov 13 - 05:14 PM

1. Craig Douglas?

2. 13 years old pre-pubescent? You need to get out more.

Subject: RE: Roy Harper charged
From: selby
Date: 15 Nov 13 - 05:33 PM

I though that the tenant of the law in the UK was innocent until proved guilty.Although I do not rate the bloke, that rule should apply, I am not comfortable with trial by media in all its forms, for anyone, due process should punish or not as the case may be.
Keith

Subject: RE: Roy Harper charged
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 15 Nov 13 - 05:39 PM

The charge is of molesting a girl from twelve years old.

Forbidden Fruit (written when Harper was 32) is about enticing a thirteen year old "little girl" away from her "mummy" to "play secret games" with him. It's not proof, but the language is explicitly paedophilic.

Subject: RE: Roy Harper charged
From: Jack Campin
Date: 15 Nov 13 - 05:48 PM

This is an interesting case for the media's perception of "what is folk". I expected it might be like the way athletes in British media tend to be Scottish when they lose and British when they win, but it's a bit more random than that. Headline labels applied in news stories about this event:

Independent: "influential rock singer"
Huffington Post: folk singer"
ABC News: "folk singer"
Mirror: "folk star"
Sky: no label but "said to have influenced rock band Led Zeppelin"
Spin (who they?): "folk legend"
BBC: "folk singer"
Mail Online: "Singer-songwriter, 72, who performed with Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin" but in the text "Celebrated folk musician"
NME: "folk singer"
Rolling Stone: "English folk singer who sang with Pink Floyd and influenced Led Zeppelin"
Standard: "folk singer"
Pitchfork (who?): "influential folk artist"
CTV News (Canada): "British folk singer"
news.com.au: "UK singer"
The Australian: "UK singer"

Perhaps there's an element of "never mind the genre, he's a Pom so what do you expect" in the last two.

Subject: RE: Roy Harper charged
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 15 Nov 13 - 06:10 PM

I never much liked Harper (not folk, you see) but the 13 years reference is not as cited and it's all rather part of the fantasy of the era - Donovan's "Mellow Yellow" and "Photeen" and "Honeybunch" from the Oz mag. Etc.

Subject: RE: Roy Harper charged
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 15 Nov 13 - 07:02 PM

Whether thirteen-year-olds are pre-pubescent or not is a bit of a side issue - they're too damn young for grown men to be drooling over. Speaking as the father of a thirteen-year-old girl, I think "Forbidden Fruit" was beyond the pale - and Harper didn't exactly help matters by saying that these were in fact his fantasies. (Lewis Carroll is a complete red herring - there's no evidence he had sexual fantasies about the girls he befriended, some of whom were still corresponding with him after they'd grown up.)

Having said that, fantasy is fantasy, and we don't yet know what, if anything, he's actually done.

Subject: RE: Roy Harper charged
From: Acorn4
Date: 16 Nov 13 - 03:50 AM

Apparently Roy Harper has denied all the charges.

Just a case of wait and see.

Subject: RE: Roy Harper charged
From: Will Fly
Date: 16 Nov 13 - 04:12 AM

I've never cared for Roy Harper or his music - and recall, in the days when several of us drank in the "North Star" in Finchley, that he was known rather disparagingly as "the Mini Pop Star".

However - once again no-one knows the facts, so comment on this case is pointless. As for the lyrics of songs being a pointer to the character of the songwriter, has no-one heard of a writer inhabiting a character he or she has created - a character which bears no relation to the writer? There are many songwriters who employ this device - Randy Newman being archetype. Newman isn't a redneck, isn't a dwarf hater, etc. - just uses and inhabits these characters temporarily to make a point.

Trial by online forum is a pretty pointless exercise either way.

Subject: RE: Roy Harper charged
From: Uncle Tone
Date: 16 Nov 13 - 05:08 AM

Is Ian Anderson Aqualung? Did he invent Cross-eyed Mary?

Was Maurice Chevalier a paedo?

You can't judge a person by their song lyrics any more than you can judge a fiction writer or poet by their observations or inventions.

One has to wonder, if these allegations have any truth in them at all, why the victim(s) have waited this long to make them. Jumping on the bandwagon? Seeking financial compensation in an out-of-court settlement?

Is anyone in the public eye safe? I bet there are a rake of ex-pop group members hoping that their under-age groupies don't come creeping out of the woodwork.

Operation Yewtree and its spawnings reminds me of McCarthyism.

Innocent until proven guilty. Agreed absolutely.

Tone

Subject: RE: Roy Harper charged
From: GUEST
Date: 16 Nov 13 - 05:13 AM

Agreed. Innocent until proved guilty, what do we know? And apropos song lyrics, I often sing Stackolee but have never, as far as I can recall, shot anybody on a dance floor. Or felt any particular desire to do so.

Subject: RE: Roy Harper charged
From: Uncle Tone
Date: 16 Nov 13 - 05:23 AM

.... not even Bruce Forsyth?

Tone

Subject: RE: Roy Harper charged
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 16 Nov 13 - 05:49 AM

Lewis Carroll is a complete red herring - there's no evidence he had sexual fantasies about the girls he befriended

And eroticised in naked photographs....

Subject: RE: Roy Harper charged
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 16 Nov 13 - 06:34 AM

Photographs yes, eroticised no, fantasised (in Harper's sense) definitely not. God knows what was going on in the depths of the Carrollian psyche, but whatever it was stayed well down in the depths.

As for reading anything into the lyrics, if somebody wrote a really good murder ballad I'd think that person was in touch with their own violent impulses. And if somebody writes about persuading a thirteen-year-old girl to give him a hand-job (and then acknowledges that it's a fantasy of his), I never ever want that person anywhere near my daughter.

He may be entirely, totally, whiter than the driven snow innocent of acting on these fantasies. I think he's guilty of being a creep, though.

Subject: RE: Roy Harper charged
From: Mr Red
Date: 16 Nov 13 - 06:48 AM

Most pundits who study the Rev Charles Lutwidge Dodgson agree there were repressed feelings. Mostly from interpreting his literature.
FWIW I would not include Roy Harper in the "Folk" camp - he is a singer songwriter and Folkies can include such - happily. But that don't make him Folk. We decide that and we can't agree --- I submit.
Case "not proven" unlike the impending court case will be.

Subject: RE: Roy Harper charged
From: GUEST,Jack Campin
Date: 16 Nov 13 - 07:32 AM

Humphrey Carpenter's book "Secret Gardens" has quite a bit about Carroll's psyche. He doesn't come across as a paedophile pornographer.

I hadn't come across "Forbidden Fruit" before. Even more inexplicable than Harper writing it: how come he found an audience for it? What kind of listener would pay money to hear it?

Subject: RE: Roy Harper charged
From: GUEST,Rev Bayes
Date: 16 Nov 13 - 09:38 AM

canalwheeler, why a victim chooses to report or not report something is entirely up to them and there are good reasons they may choose not to report or may delay reporting for long periods. Such delays have no bearing whatsoever on the veracity of their allegations.

Innocent until proven guilty, yes, but anyone making an allegation also has the right to be treated with respect.

And, people, please bear in mind that since he has been charged there are rules on what can and cannot be said.

Subject: RE: Roy Harper charged
From: GUEST,Musket curious
Date: 16 Nov 13 - 11:52 AM

Someone has been charged. He denies it. So "wait and see" seems to be the order of the day.

He is an excellent singer/ songwriter and I have a number of his songs in my repertoire.

In 35 years of playing them in folk clubs and festivals, nobody has tried telling me they weren't folk songs.

Possibly because they are. ...

Subject: RE: Roy Harper charged
From: GUEST
Date: 16 Nov 13 - 12:30 PM

He is a folk singer not like hitler's horse

Subject: RE: Roy Harper charged
From: GUEST,Tunesmith
Date: 16 Nov 13 - 02:11 PM

Regarding the "folksinger/not folksinger" question.
Some 40 years ago I - and a few friends - went to see Roy at the Liverpool Phil, and we had a chat with him before the concert.
One of our group happened to mention that the Taverners Club in Blackpool had decided not to book him anymore because they considered that he was no longer a folksinger.
Roy was much amused by this, and mentioned it during the concert.

Subject: RE: Roy Harper charged
From: GUEST,Doc John
Date: 16 Nov 13 - 02:51 PM

Lewis Carroll is an interesting case: it is usually said that he was only at ease with children and found adult relationships difficult. However if you look at some of the photographs that he took they include the famous - like Tennyson - and even royals; this does not seem to fit in with a man who is only at ease with children. It has been said in recent times that his family put out the 'only at ease with children' tale to hide his relationships with adult women; friendship with children was quite acceptable in those times but not with female adults as an bachelor don and ordained deacon. This situation has now reversed and the attempt to whitewash backfired rather. Interesting thought.

Subject: RE: Roy Harper charged
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 16 Nov 13 - 04:02 PM

Guest ~~ You didn't write Stackolee.

Tone ~~ Maurice Chevalier didn't write "Thank Heaven for little girls": just sang it from the script of Gigi.

So not really comparable.

Not offering any comment on the topic of the thread.

Just saying...

Subject: RE: Roy Harper charged
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 16 Nov 13 - 05:31 PM

In 35 years of playing them in folk clubs and festivals, nobody has tried telling me they weren't folk songs

Has anyone ever told anyone that what they were doing was "not folk"? I asked this once before, on an open thread for anyone to come up with examples of the Folk Police in action; nobody did.

Subject: RE: Roy Harper charged
From: GUEST
Date: 16 Nov 13 - 07:08 PM

Mick Jagger is a folk singer.

Subject: RE: Roy Harper charged
From: Uncle Tone
Date: 16 Nov 13 - 07:36 PM

"Maurice Chevalier didn't write "Thank Heaven for little girls": just sang it from the script of Gigi."

I didn't say he did. I asked a rhetorical question to point out the nonsense of identifying a writer or performer with their work.

Tone

Subject: RE: Roy Harper charged
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 16 Nov 13 - 10:44 PM

Quite ~~ but it wasn't 'his' work in that instance, was it?; and performers are beside the point, obviously, or any actor playing a murderer on a cop show is going to be in dead trouble! Your point was merely confusing, however 'rhetorical', rather than enlightening.

~M~

Subject: RE: Roy Harper charged
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 17 Nov 13 - 02:00 PM

I have no information and no opinion on this particular case, but would just point out one reason why such accusations are sometimes made many years after the alleged event(s): when there are false memories resulting from "therapy" sessions.

Subject: RE: Roy Harper charged
From: pavane
Date: 17 Nov 13 - 03:35 PM

Someone i know personally has just been acquitted of such charges despite several separate independant victims testifying. We know of many more who didn't become involved, and that he lied consstently in court. The prosecution didn't cross-examine, just took his answers. If we can find the pictures which are alleged to be out there, maybe we can nail him.

Subject: RE: Roy Harper charged
From: The Sandman
Date: 17 Nov 13 - 04:07 PM

Roy Harper, has not been tried yet.

Subject: RE: Roy Harper charged
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 17 Nov 13 - 07:55 PM

yes indeed Craig Douglas - when my little girl is smiling - evidence enough for me!

Subject: RE: Roy Harper charged
From: GUEST,michaelr
Date: 18 Nov 13 - 02:16 AM

Reminds me of the film where Gerard Depardieu takes his teenage daughter on holiday and she tells everyone he's her lover... then he plays the lounge piano and sings "Thank heaven for little girls".

Perfectly innocent, but everyone walks out on him.