Latest / Blocked and Reported / Premium: Jessica Taylor’s Tattle Battle (Part 3)

Transcript

Premium: Jessica Taylor’s Tattle Battle (Part 3) · Blocked and Reported

0:00
SPEAKER_00: Hello, you're listening to a preview of a premium episode of Blocked to Reported.
0:04
SPEAKER_00: This is part three of Katie's insane investigation into Jessica Taylor.
0:10
SPEAKER_00: I don't know how many times I can say insane or ixane, which is not a word, but it's insane.
0:15
SPEAKER_00: There's more revelations here.
0:17
SPEAKER_00: There's a crazy twist.
0:19
SPEAKER_00: You're going to want to hear the whole thing.
0:20
SPEAKER_00: Go to Blocked to Reported.org to become a premium subscriber to gain access to this
0:24
SPEAKER_00: and so much other content, including all of part two of this very series.
0:28
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
0:29
SPEAKER_00: Enjoy the preview.
0:36
SPEAKER_00: Hello, Jesse.
0:37
SPEAKER_00: Katie, can I give you a quick life update before we get to our very exciting part three?
0:43
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
0:44
SPEAKER_00: So was that lag or was that a pause of you deciding whether or not to create it?
0:48
SPEAKER_01: I was considering it.
0:49
SPEAKER_01: Long time.
0:50
SPEAKER_01: The Wi-Fi is fine.
0:51
SPEAKER_00: Long time listeners know that I had a long running fight with pigeons.
0:56
SPEAKER_00: I won, although fingers crossed it stays that way.
1:00
SPEAKER_00: Go back.
1:01
SPEAKER_00: There's like, I think, 50 to 60 episodes where we talk about it.
1:03
SPEAKER_00: I have a new I have a new adversary,
1:05
SPEAKER_00: which is I made the mistake of leaving out
1:08
SPEAKER_00: a single banana despite having those little basket things that are anti insect.
1:13
SPEAKER_00: Uh huh.
1:14
SPEAKER_00: This banana was my Waterloo.
1:16
SPEAKER_00: I have fruit flies now.
1:17
SPEAKER_01: Oh,
1:17
SPEAKER_01: this brings me back to the time you must now retell the story about the time you,
1:21
SPEAKER_01: do you remember this?
1:23
SPEAKER_01: The Pepper?
1:24
SPEAKER_00: Oh, Jesus.
1:25
SPEAKER_00: Oh, God.
1:25
SPEAKER_00: Just tell the story.
1:26
SPEAKER_01: We've got a lot of new listeners.
1:27
SPEAKER_00: I was at my then girlfriend's house.
1:31
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
1:32
SPEAKER_00: I had a girlfriend.
1:33
SPEAKER_00: She was a model in Canada.
1:35
SPEAKER_01: She had four legs and a very long tail.
1:37
SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's another throwback.
1:39
SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah, new listeners, there's a whole lore where I, I guess, have sex with horses.
1:44
SPEAKER_01: I think make love, but have sex, okay.
1:48
SPEAKER_01: Eat grapes all weekend, fuck fest.
1:51
SPEAKER_00: Calling it having sex or fucking does not capture the emotional connection.
1:55
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, yeah,
1:56
SPEAKER_00: this was years ago at my then-girlfriend's in a group home,
2:00
SPEAKER_00: and I took a piece of rag.
2:01
SPEAKER_01: Wait, when you say group home?
2:03
SPEAKER_00: She was developmentally disabled.
2:05
SPEAKER_00: She was in a group home.
2:08
SPEAKER_00: Shut up.
2:08
SPEAKER_00: She had like a nice big Brooklyn Brownstone group house,
2:11
SPEAKER_00: which in New York, things are expensive.
2:13
SPEAKER_00: It's not a group house.
2:15
SPEAKER_00: It's a group home.
2:16
SPEAKER_00: And they often had like communal food out because they were sort of hippy dippy.
2:22
SPEAKER_00: And I took a piece of bread and I dipped it in olive oil that had specks of pepper in it.
2:27
SPEAKER_00: And I put it in my mouth.
2:28
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't olive oil.
2:28
SPEAKER_00: It was vinegar.
2:31
SPEAKER_00: Just step on the punchline?
2:32
SPEAKER_00: Well, that's not the punchline.
2:33
SPEAKER_00: Forget what Katie just said.
2:34
SPEAKER_00: The punchline is,
2:36
SPEAKER_00: it tasted weird and it was vinegar and the little specks of pepper had been flies
2:41
SPEAKER_00: because it was some sort of homemade fly trap.
2:43
SPEAKER_01: Why did you think that vinegar was olive oil?
2:46
SPEAKER_01: They don't look alike.
2:47
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
2:47
SPEAKER_00: I'm dumb.
2:48
SPEAKER_00: What do you want me to say?
2:48
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, the fruit flies are here.
2:49
SPEAKER_00: I will say...
2:51
SPEAKER_00: Maybe, honestly, the least annoying pest in the world.
2:54
SPEAKER_00: Like, occasionally, a few of them will just, like, they don't do anything.
2:58
SPEAKER_00: I mean, like, if you had to have a pest, is there any pest you'd rather have?
3:01
SPEAKER_01: Fruit flies?
3:02
SPEAKER_01: Look, I have lived in homes with fruit flies before.
3:04
SPEAKER_01: I went to war with the fruit flies.
3:06
SPEAKER_01: I committed genocide against fruit flies.
3:08
SPEAKER_01: I really didn't like having fruit flies.
3:10
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm going to get rid of them, but they're not.
3:11
SPEAKER_00: They don't do anything.
3:12
SPEAKER_00: They are gross.
3:13
SPEAKER_00: Look, they make it seem like you live in an unhygienic environment.
3:16
SPEAKER_01: Apparently, you're supposed to cut the tops off the bananas.
3:18
SPEAKER_01: Of the flies?
3:19
SPEAKER_01: Oh.
3:21
SPEAKER_00: You're supposed to decapitate them as a warning to the others.
3:23
SPEAKER_01: Well, Jesse, thank you for the update with your pest problems.
3:26
SPEAKER_01: It could be worse.
3:27
SPEAKER_00: It could be worse.
3:28
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
3:28
SPEAKER_00: Speaking of pests,
3:31
SPEAKER_00: when last we checked in,
3:32
SPEAKER_00: Dr. Jessica Taylor, MDJD, was being attacked by the pests of Tattle Life, a website.
3:38
SPEAKER_00: Tell me if I'm getting any of the facts wrong.
3:40
SPEAKER_00: Tattle Life sent a group of assassins basically to try to kill her
3:43
SPEAKER_00: and she narrowly escaped while eating grapes with her wife, more or less.
3:48
SPEAKER_00: You pretty much got it.
3:49
SPEAKER_00: And you discovered,
3:50
SPEAKER_00: people should go back to listen to parts one and two,
3:53
SPEAKER_00: there's a lot of discrepancies in Jessica Taylor's accounts of her war with Tattle
3:58
SPEAKER_00: and her claims about...
4:01
SPEAKER_00: Harassment in general.
4:02
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
4:02
SPEAKER_00: And she just wrote a book that is basically premised on trying
4:05
SPEAKER_00: to explain these monsters who've been going after her rather explicitly.
4:09
SPEAKER_00: She's trying to get tattled,
4:10
SPEAKER_00: yanked off the internet, trying to take its head off like a fruit fly.
4:15
SPEAKER_00: You discovered the book was full of direct quotes from her harassers talking
4:19
SPEAKER_00: about her, scheming against her.
4:21
SPEAKER_00: And these quotes were linked to specific usernames.
4:26
SPEAKER_00: You reached out.
4:27
SPEAKER_00: You wanted some proof that this happened and she wouldn't provide it.
4:30
SPEAKER_00: And then she clarified.
4:32
SPEAKER_00: The direct looking quotes pegged to specific usernames in this nonfiction book.
4:38
SPEAKER_00: Alabama Mama.
4:38
SPEAKER_00: Alabama Mama was one of the worst offenders.
4:40
SPEAKER_00: These were actually, did she use composite or amalgamation or both?
4:44
SPEAKER_00: I believe both.
4:45
SPEAKER_00: A composimation.
4:46
SPEAKER_00: These were not,
4:47
SPEAKER_00: so these were actually made up,
4:49
SPEAKER_00: but drawn from hundreds of real ones that she also has not provided any evidence of.
4:55
SPEAKER_00: That's where we're at, right?
4:56
SPEAKER_00: Correct.
4:56
SPEAKER_00: Correct.
4:58
SPEAKER_00: And that's why you emailed the publisher to ask about this.
5:02
SPEAKER_00: Spoiler alert, they haven't gotten back to us yet.
5:04
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
5:05
SPEAKER_00: All of that is correct.
5:06
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
5:06
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
5:07
SPEAKER_00: All right.
5:07
SPEAKER_00: Any other preliminaries before we pick up the story?
5:09
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there's a couple things.
5:10
SPEAKER_01: So one thing I want people to keep in mind here is that the book starts
5:15
SPEAKER_01: with this scene of this woman, Jennifer.
5:17
SPEAKER_00: Sorry.
5:19
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to start...
5:20
SPEAKER_00: People noticed how much I was giggling the last episode and I'm going to try
5:24
SPEAKER_00: to keep it under control.
5:25
SPEAKER_00: Giggle away.
5:26
SPEAKER_00: The writing is so funny.
5:28
SPEAKER_00: The writing is hilarious.
5:29
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
5:29
SPEAKER_01: Jennifer in this book is one of Jessica.
5:32
SPEAKER_01: Who's real?
5:32
SPEAKER_01: She's real.
5:32
SPEAKER_01: She's one of Jessica Taylor's stalkers.
5:35
SPEAKER_01: And she has this very elaborate scene of Jennifer with her friends that she met online.
5:41
SPEAKER_01: They met online and they moved from the internet, from the forums to WhatsApp and Zoom.
5:48
SPEAKER_01: These women would get together and plot Jessica Taylor's demise.
5:52
SPEAKER_01: And Jessica Taylor had some...
5:54
SPEAKER_01: Very detailed descriptions of Jessica's like the twitch of her eye while she was
5:59
SPEAKER_01: in these groups.
5:59
SPEAKER_00: Right.
6:00
SPEAKER_00: So it's like Jessica typed, I hate Jennifer.
6:03
SPEAKER_00: Jennifer typed, I hate Jessica.
6:05
SPEAKER_00: She turned to her Sauvignon Blanc, took a sip of it.
6:09
SPEAKER_00: And leered meanly at her phone and like just these really specific descriptions.
6:14
SPEAKER_00: That was part of why I was so giggly,
6:15
SPEAKER_00: because how the fuck would Jessica Taylor know when this woman took a sip of wine?
6:18
SPEAKER_00: It's literally fabricated.
6:19
SPEAKER_00: Or I would think so, unless she has cameras.
6:21
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so and Jessica told in the book,
6:23
SPEAKER_01: she said this in the book,
6:24
SPEAKER_01: and she told me via email as well,
6:26
SPEAKER_01: that the reason she had these excerpts from these WhatsApp groups is because someone
6:32
SPEAKER_01: in the group was Sent her recordings.
6:34
SPEAKER_01: There was a mole in the group.
6:35
SPEAKER_01: Someone had a turn of conscience and said, this is awful.
6:39
SPEAKER_01: I need to tell Jessica Taylor and sent her all of these receipts.
6:43
SPEAKER_00: As well as logs of when every person in the chat sipped wine or did anything else.
6:48
SPEAKER_01: If this was more realistic, it should have been like, she was sitting on the toilet.
6:53
SPEAKER_00: She had really bad diarrhea and it made her think of Jessica Taylor.
6:57
SPEAKER_01: So that's where we were.
6:59
SPEAKER_01: Uh, that's where we left off.
7:01
SPEAKER_00: And, and you promised me,
7:02
SPEAKER_00: you just swore a blood oath that things were going to get more rather
7:06
SPEAKER_00: than less crazy.
7:07
SPEAKER_00: Do you stand by that?
7:08
SPEAKER_01: I stand by that.
7:09
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
7:10
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
7:10
SPEAKER_01: Before we get to the new stuff,
7:11
SPEAKER_01: there's a couple of other things we need to,
7:13
SPEAKER_01: uh, we need to just revisit really quickly.
7:15
SPEAKER_01: So first off, I have one correction.
7:17
SPEAKER_00: Uh oh.
7:18
SPEAKER_01: This came from- You were wrong
7:19
SPEAKER_00: about everything?
7:20
SPEAKER_00: Uh oh.
7:21
SPEAKER_01: It's all true.
7:22
SPEAKER_01: Then this came from a commenter, a listener on our site.
7:25
SPEAKER_01: It is accurate.
7:26
SPEAKER_01: When you asked me about this,
7:27
SPEAKER_01: I simplified it to the point, I think, of inaccuracy, but this is important.
7:30
SPEAKER_01: So you asked me how Neil and Donna Sands,
7:33
SPEAKER_01: that was the couple that sued Tattle Life and unmasked Sebastian Bonds.
7:38
SPEAKER_01: He's the proprietor of the site.
7:40
SPEAKER_01: Everyone thought it was this middle-aged woman named Helen McDougal.
7:43
SPEAKER_01: It was actually a guy, which I didn't mention, by the way, but he was a vegan influencer.
7:46
SPEAKER_01: Huh.
7:47
SPEAKER_01: And And I said that when you asked me how they unmasked him,
7:52
SPEAKER_01: I said that they hired a private, like a PI company.
7:56
SPEAKER_01: That is true.
7:57
SPEAKER_01: But there was this other step that I missed,
8:00
SPEAKER_01: which is that Neil Sands,
8:02
SPEAKER_01: the plaintiff in this case,
8:04
SPEAKER_01: he actually already had Sebastian Bond's identity,
8:09
SPEAKER_01: he got it from someone who worked,
8:11
SPEAKER_01: a confidential source who worked at Tattle Life's old software provider,
8:15
SPEAKER_01: this company called Zenforo.
8:17
SPEAKER_01: He gave that information to the PI company.
8:20
SPEAKER_01: So the plaintiffs,
8:21
SPEAKER_01: the Sands,
8:21
SPEAKER_01: knew Sebastian Bond's identity,
8:23
SPEAKER_01: but when they went to the court, They filed this case against persons unknown.
8:29
SPEAKER_01: And so Sebastian Bonds, so you know what I'm saying?
8:33
SPEAKER_01: They knew who he was, but they didn't tell the court and he was never served.
8:38
SPEAKER_01: And so this judgment was rendered by default,
8:41
SPEAKER_01: the judgment against Sebastian Bonds, he lost by default.
8:44
SPEAKER_01: He didn't show up in court to defend himself.
8:47
SPEAKER_00: Gotcha.
8:47
SPEAKER_01: Right.
8:48
SPEAKER_01: Because he had, he like literally didn't know about the, he didn't know about the case.
8:51
SPEAKER_01: He didn't find out until a year after the judgment had been rendered by default
8:56
SPEAKER_01: when he goes to get money out of his bank and his assets are frozen.
8:58
SPEAKER_00: I mean, he is literally an accessory to murder, but I still don't, that doesn't seem fair to me.
9:04
SPEAKER_01: Anyway, I wanted to get that on the record.
9:05
SPEAKER_01: Neil Sands got this information allegedly,
9:09
SPEAKER_01: reportedly from the software provider,
9:11
SPEAKER_01: not the PI company discovered it on their own.
9:13
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
9:14
SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you for the correction.
9:15
SPEAKER_01: Okay, and then also,
9:16
SPEAKER_01: so Sebastian Bonds,
9:18
SPEAKER_01: he also is in the comments on our Substack page,
9:22
SPEAKER_01: and he also pointed out something interesting.
9:24
SPEAKER_01: We talked about this BBC show about tattle life,
9:29
SPEAKER_01: and you read comments that these tattlers had posted.
9:33
SPEAKER_01: I'm just going to read you a bit from Sebastian's comments.
9:37
SPEAKER_01: The BBC documentary,
9:38
SPEAKER_01: and he uses documentary in scare quotes,
9:41
SPEAKER_01: showed 186 words of Sophie Dixon cherry picked out of 624,774.
9:48
SPEAKER_01: Even in those they truncated,
9:50
SPEAKER_01: edited to add capitalizations and full stops, missed off emojis, etc.
9:54
SPEAKER_01: And these sometimes transform the meaning.
9:57
SPEAKER_01: So for instance, the comment featured on the show was, it was making me feel sick watching her.
10:01
SPEAKER_01: The full comment was,
10:02
SPEAKER_01: it's so sick how she probably is in bed posting things like this while Princess is
10:06
SPEAKER_01: on Tic Tac Live, clearly intoxicated and on something.
10:09
SPEAKER_01: I had to go off.
10:11
SPEAKER_01: It was making me feel sick watching her.
10:13
SPEAKER_01: You can tell how young she is by her friends too.
10:15
SPEAKER_01: It's so, so sad.
10:17
SPEAKER_01: And then Sebastian, he has on Tattle itself.
10:19
SPEAKER_01: He took every statement that was shown on the BBC show documentary and he...
10:27
SPEAKER_01: Posted the full context and the full text.
10:30
SPEAKER_01: I'll post a link to that show note.
10:31
SPEAKER_01: It's interesting to compare how the BBC phrased something versus what the actual poster said.
10:37
SPEAKER_01: And some of it is verbatim, but it's not all.
10:40
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
10:42
SPEAKER_01: Okay, let's get to the new stuff.
10:43
SPEAKER_01: Let's do it.
10:44
SPEAKER_01: So today's story is mostly going to focus on Jessica Taylor's business.
10:48
SPEAKER_01: But last we left, you asked me about book reviews.
10:51
SPEAKER_01: There were no reviews of Jessica Taylor's new book, Click, Stock, Destroy in the Press.
10:55
SPEAKER_01: This isn't uncommon.
10:56
SPEAKER_01: Most books don't get reviewed these days.
10:58
SPEAKER_01: She does have two bestsellers.
11:00
SPEAKER_01: Sorry, go ahead.
11:01
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
11:01
SPEAKER_00: I was going to say, most books by famous people do get reviewed somewhere.
11:05
SPEAKER_00: And she's pretty famous.
11:06
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
11:06
SPEAKER_01: I mean, she's...
11:08
SPEAKER_01: It's the UK, so lower standards.
11:10
SPEAKER_01: She has 400,000 followers across social media, not half a million, as she often says.
11:13
SPEAKER_01: But yes, like my book was reviewed by, I believe, two, maybe three actual outlets.
11:19
SPEAKER_01: Hers got none, and I'm bar less known than she is.
11:21
SPEAKER_01: So it was a little bit odd.
11:24
SPEAKER_01: So anyway, I didn't find any published reviews.
11:26
SPEAKER_00: Well, also the UK has like a really low literacy rate.
11:28
SPEAKER_00: So that would also eat into that, yeah.
11:30
SPEAKER_01: So no reviews.
11:31
SPEAKER_01: But what I did find instead was this Substack post.
11:34
SPEAKER_01: So Jesse, please click that link and read the headline here.
11:37
SPEAKER_00: Click, Lie, Repeat, inside the claims of a self-styled trauma psychologist who markets online.
11:43
SPEAKER_01: All right.
11:44
SPEAKER_01: So this was a very interesting post.
11:45
SPEAKER_01: It's by Carrie Danes,
11:47
SPEAKER_01: who is a registered forensic psychologist and the current chair of
11:50
SPEAKER_01: the National Stalking Consortium.
11:52
SPEAKER_01: It's less a review of the book than a review of Jessica Daler herself, and it is scathing.
11:57
SPEAKER_00: Scathing how?
11:58
SPEAKER_01: So Danes says that she knew Jessica during her grad school days.
12:01
SPEAKER_01: Jess had told Danes that she was being stalked by someone at her university.
12:05
SPEAKER_01: Carrie Danes believed it.
12:07
SPEAKER_01: But like others I spoke to who knew her while she was doing her graduate studies,
12:11
SPEAKER_01: I mentioned this in the first episode,
12:13
SPEAKER_01: later, Carrie started to sense that something was amiss.
12:17
SPEAKER_00: What was amiss?
12:19
SPEAKER_01: So it started with social media.
12:20
SPEAKER_01: Carrie told me this in an email.
12:22
SPEAKER_01: I felt that her content was becoming increasingly clickbait.
12:25
SPEAKER_01: Self-serving,
12:26
SPEAKER_01: unprofessional and potentially even harmful online as much of what she posts
12:30
SPEAKER_01: and sells is aimed at victims of abuse and those with mental health problems.
12:34
SPEAKER_01: And they had been friendly.
12:35
SPEAKER_01: So when I searched Carrie's Twitter for mentions of Jessica Taylor,
12:38
SPEAKER_01: Carrie had posted her congratulations when her book Sexy But Psycho came out
12:42
SPEAKER_01: in 2022.
12:43
SPEAKER_01: Carrie wanted to go to her book launch.
12:47
SPEAKER_01: She couldn't.
12:48
SPEAKER_01: But Carrie also started to hear around that time from other academics
12:52
SPEAKER_01: and psychologists working in the field who are concerned about Jess's behavior.
12:56
SPEAKER_01: She also started to see the allegations made by Sally Ann Robinson.
13:00
SPEAKER_01: Jesse, can you remind people what Sally Ann said?
13:02
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Sally Ann originally said Jessica used her story without consent in one
13:06
SPEAKER_00: of her books, and then it turned...
13:08
SPEAKER_01: And this is a story of child abuse.
13:11
SPEAKER_00: And then it turned out that wasn't exactly right.
13:14
SPEAKER_00: Sally Ann had given her permission to use it in one context, but not in the book.
13:18
SPEAKER_00: And then this became a whole thing between the two of them.
13:21
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
13:22
SPEAKER_01: I mean, to put it mildly.
13:23
SPEAKER_01: So Sally Ann was the first person to publicly claim
13:26
SPEAKER_01: that Jessica Taylor took her story and published it without consent.
13:30
SPEAKER_01: Another woman came forward after that.
13:33
SPEAKER_01: And Carrie Dane saw this.
13:34
SPEAKER_01: And she also was aware of Jessica's sort of increasingly...
13:38
SPEAKER_01: It's French the right word, her views on psychology in general.
13:43
SPEAKER_01: She calls herself anti-pathology,
13:44
SPEAKER_01: but she essentially does not believe that mental health
13:46
SPEAKER_01: or mental illness is anything except always a response to trauma.
13:51
SPEAKER_01: So she doesn't believe in things like schizophrenia.
13:53
SPEAKER_01: And so Carrie ultimately came to the conclusion that Jessica Taylor did not adhere
13:58
SPEAKER_01: to the standards expected of someone in the field.
14:00
SPEAKER_01: And she was public about this.
14:02
SPEAKER_01: So for instance,
14:02
SPEAKER_01: in 2023,
14:04
SPEAKER_01: Carrie saw a conference advertising an event with Jessica Taylor,
14:07
SPEAKER_01: and she tweeted at the conference that having Jessica was a bad idea.
14:10
SPEAKER_00: Cancel culture.
14:11
SPEAKER_00: Cancel culture.
14:12
SPEAKER_01: So they're no longer friends.
14:13
SPEAKER_01: Let's put it that way.
14:14
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
14:14
SPEAKER_01: So also in 2023, Jessica had been filmed as part of a series called The Fraudsters, a TV series.
14:21
SPEAKER_01: And when the trailer came out and she was in it,
14:23
SPEAKER_01: the producers started getting emails saying, she's a fraud.
14:27
SPEAKER_01: What is this woman doing in your show?
14:29
SPEAKER_01: So Carrie does a lot of TV herself and the producers reached out to her
14:33
SPEAKER_01: and another colleague and they're like, look, we're getting emails about this.
14:36
SPEAKER_01: What do you know?
14:37
SPEAKER_01: And both Carrie and the colleague said, yeah, don't touch this one with a 10 foot pole.
14:42
SPEAKER_00: So the producer doesn't don't work with her in the future.
14:44
SPEAKER_01: Well, they edited her out of the series before it aired.
14:47
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
14:48
SPEAKER_01: And so to Jess, this is further evidence that this harassment campaign against her is working.
14:53
SPEAKER_01: She's been canceled by Carrie.
14:55
SPEAKER_00: So I made a cancel culture joke,
14:56
SPEAKER_00: but technically she had been filmed for this show and whatever you think about her,
15:01
SPEAKER_00: then people complained about her and then Carrie's feedback was like,
15:05
SPEAKER_00: no, you shouldn't use her and then she was cut.
15:07
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
15:08
SPEAKER_01: A month later,
15:09
SPEAKER_01: the Health and Care Professions Council,
15:11
SPEAKER_01: so that's a regulatory body for psychologists and other healthcare workers.
15:15
SPEAKER_01: Carrie's registered with them.
15:16
SPEAKER_01: Jessica's not.
15:17
SPEAKER_01: Carrie is.
15:18
SPEAKER_01: They reach out to Carrie and say they've received a complaint about her from Jessica Taylor.
15:23
SPEAKER_01: Jessica told them that Carrie had harassed her,
15:26
SPEAKER_01: that she tried to steal her job,
15:28
SPEAKER_01: like from the TV show, and that Carrie herself was unfit to practice.
15:33
SPEAKER_01: Jessica also told this council that she had reported Carrie to the police.
15:37
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
15:38
SPEAKER_00: Reported them to the police for what?
15:39
SPEAKER_01: Harassment.
15:40
SPEAKER_01: I assume.
15:41
SPEAKER_01: So Carrie was never contacted by the police.
15:45
SPEAKER_01: The production company gave her a letter in support that she then gave to
15:48
SPEAKER_01: the council and the council closed the complaint.
15:50
SPEAKER_00: This is just more of Taylor, like Jessica Taylor really...
15:55
SPEAKER_00: Insane responses to criticism.
15:56
SPEAKER_00: Obviously,
15:57
SPEAKER_00: if you got cut from a show,
15:59
SPEAKER_00: that would be frustrating,
16:00
SPEAKER_00: but it sounds like the producers reached out to someone else in the field
16:04
SPEAKER_00: and they said, maybe they're wrong, but that should not.
16:07
SPEAKER_00: You then complain with her licensing board?
16:09
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's crazy.
16:11
SPEAKER_01: After Carrie finds this out, she later posted about it on X.
16:14
SPEAKER_01: She said,
16:14
SPEAKER_01: shocked,
16:15
SPEAKER_01: not shocked to learn today that I am the latest of an ever-increasing line
16:18
SPEAKER_01: of people,
16:19
SPEAKER_01: including academics,
16:20
SPEAKER_01: X employees,
16:21
SPEAKER_01: anyone who questions her on Twitter,
16:23
SPEAKER_01: To have been made the subject of a failed complaint
16:25
SPEAKER_01: by small time social influencer slash shonky psychologist.
16:29
SPEAKER_01: Shonky.
16:30
SPEAKER_01: Not a word I was familiar with, but I'm going to start using it.
16:32
SPEAKER_00: Seems fair though.
16:32
SPEAKER_00: That seems accurate.
16:34
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
16:35
SPEAKER_01: She didn't name Jessica Taylor,
16:36
SPEAKER_01: but apparently it was obvious because she says she started to hear from people
16:40
SPEAKER_01: who had had very similar experiences.
16:42
SPEAKER_01: They would criticize Jess and Jess would report them either to police,
16:46
SPEAKER_01: to a regulatory body, to their employers, etc.
16:49
SPEAKER_01: Carrie says this in her Substack post.
16:51
SPEAKER_01: This is a sequence that has now repeated itself with minor variations at least 25 times.
16:55
SPEAKER_01: Damn.
16:56
SPEAKER_01: 25?
16:56
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
16:58
SPEAKER_01: I could not confirm that this has happened at least 25 times independently.
17:02
SPEAKER_01: When I asked Jess, she declined to comment on that specific allegation.
17:06
SPEAKER_01: I was able to independently confirm 13 people who had been on the receiving end
17:10
SPEAKER_01: of her calls, either to police or employers or regulatory bodies.
17:14
SPEAKER_01: We're going to go into more details on some of those cases shortly.
17:17
SPEAKER_01: But Jesse, read this part of Carrie's article.
17:19
SPEAKER_00: If Taylor has been subjected to any stalking, she has my sympathy.
17:22
SPEAKER_00: But it seems odd that given how vocal she is on her platforms,
17:25
SPEAKER_00: to my knowledge,
17:26
SPEAKER_00: not one individual has ever been charged,
17:28
SPEAKER_00: cautioned or made suspect to a full court order in connection with stalking
17:32
SPEAKER_00: or harassing Taylor.
17:33
SPEAKER_00: Not one.
17:34
SPEAKER_00: And only one person has ever been publicly named.
17:36
SPEAKER_00: And that's Sally Ann Robinson.
17:37
SPEAKER_00: That's Sally Ann.
17:38
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
17:38
SPEAKER_00: Do...
17:41
SPEAKER_00: This gets into British court stuff we don't know much about.
17:45
SPEAKER_00: Do you know that Taylor could know that as a fact that no one's ever gotten
17:49
SPEAKER_00: into legal trouble for stalking Jessica Taylor?
17:51
SPEAKER_01: I don't know that she could know that for a fact.
17:54
SPEAKER_01: She reached out to Taylor's publisher and either didn't hear back or they declined to comment.
18:01
SPEAKER_01: I asked Taylor directly about that claim and she also declined to comment.
18:07
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
18:07
SPEAKER_00: I will say the smoke to fire ratio
18:10
SPEAKER_00: of how badly Jessica Taylor says she's been harassed and then the number
18:14
SPEAKER_00: of these cases that seem to be her,
18:17
SPEAKER_00: like someone complains about her and she accuses them of harassing her.
18:21
SPEAKER_00: It's like, would the actual harassers and stalkers please stand up?
18:24
SPEAKER_00: Where is the evidence of the actual behavior she complains about?
18:27
SPEAKER_01: Right.
18:27
SPEAKER_01: So I think that if anybody had ever been harassed Charged caution or made subject to
18:32
SPEAKER_01: a full court order.
18:33
SPEAKER_01: I think that Taylor would say it.
18:36
SPEAKER_01: She might not name the person necessarily, but I think she would name it.
18:39
SPEAKER_00: She's not shy about drawing attention to herself or the harassment.
18:42
SPEAKER_01: No.
18:42
SPEAKER_01: And she has also she has repeatedly said that Sally Ann Robinson,
18:47
SPEAKER_01: she has mischaracterized this,
18:48
SPEAKER_01: but she has said that Sally Ann Robinson was was cautioned by the police.
18:52
SPEAKER_01: It was a much more.
18:57
SPEAKER_01: Taylor reported her to the police.
19:00
SPEAKER_01: She went in for a voluntary interview.
19:02
SPEAKER_01: Taylor then got what basically amounts to a temporary restraining order against her,
19:07
SPEAKER_01: but it lapsed.
19:08
SPEAKER_01: And this is just standard operating procedure, as we explained in, I believe, the first episode.
19:13
SPEAKER_01: During an investigation.
19:15
SPEAKER_00: We talked about this last episode with her conflation of gang stalking with online harassment.
19:19
SPEAKER_00: She is so poor at drawing boundaries between like normal forms of online bullshit
19:23
SPEAKER_00: and actually menacing behavior.
19:25
SPEAKER_01: And Carrie herself has been stopped.
19:27
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
19:28
SPEAKER_00: So did Jess like acknowledge or respond to the blog post?
19:30
SPEAKER_01: Not publicly.
19:31
SPEAKER_01: And this is something Jessica Taylor does that I think is smart.
19:35
SPEAKER_01: Yep.
20:01
SPEAKER_01: So I will post a link to Carrie's post in the show notes.
20:03
SPEAKER_01: I highly recommend people read the comments.
20:05
SPEAKER_00: All right, Katie, let's get to the meat.
20:07
SPEAKER_00: So we've talked about her claims,
20:10
SPEAKER_00: her written work, but you'd also mentioned this victim focus thing.
20:15
SPEAKER_00: That's what we're going to focus on victim focus today?
20:17
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
20:18
SPEAKER_01: Victim focus is the company that Taylor runs with her now wife, Jamie Shrive.
20:23
SPEAKER_00: Of the grapes.
20:23
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
20:26
SPEAKER_00: And victim-focused is trauma-informed training type stuff?
20:31
SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
20:32
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
20:32
SPEAKER_01: So they do trainings with police departments.
20:34
SPEAKER_01: They've done them with NHS, with universities, with housing trust.
20:39
SPEAKER_01: And it's this...
20:43
SPEAKER_01: Anti-pathology, trauma-informed trainings about how to work with survivors or victims.
20:49
SPEAKER_01: And she started this company while she was in grad school,
20:52
SPEAKER_01: and they're still going today, so it's been probably around 10 years at least.
20:56
SPEAKER_01: And I spoke to former victim-focused employees and volunteers about All of
20:59
SPEAKER_01: whom told me similar stories.
21:01
SPEAKER_01: They were all women.
21:02
SPEAKER_01: And this was not a job that paid especially well.
21:05
SPEAKER_01: Some of them were on benefits.
21:07
SPEAKER_01: But they joined because they supported the mission.
21:09
SPEAKER_01: These women were feminists.
21:11
SPEAKER_01: Some were victims of abuse themselves.
21:14
SPEAKER_01: And as one former employee told me, this woman realized that feminism wasn't just an identity.
21:18
SPEAKER_01: It was an action.
21:19
SPEAKER_01: So that's why she joined.
21:20
SPEAKER_01: Plus, they were fans of Jess.
21:22
SPEAKER_01: Like the employees I spoke to told me that at first things were pretty good.
21:25
SPEAKER_01: They admired Jessica Taylor.
21:26
SPEAKER_01: They were there for the mission.
21:29
SPEAKER_01: And at first, Jessica was a hands-off boss.
21:32
SPEAKER_01: So you had a lot of flexibility.
21:33
SPEAKER_01: You were allowed to sort of pick and choose your own projects.
21:35
SPEAKER_01: But around 2022, things got weird.
21:38
SPEAKER_00: How did they get weird?
21:39
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
21:40
SPEAKER_01: So in early spring 2022, victim focus had been on a hiring spree.
21:45
SPEAKER_01: At the high point, there were around 25 people on staff.
21:48
SPEAKER_01: And this was a distributed office.
21:49
SPEAKER_01: So everyone was remote.
21:51
SPEAKER_01: And most of the work communication took place on WhatsApp.
21:53
SPEAKER_01: So they used it like another office might use Slack or Teams.
21:56
SPEAKER_00: That seems not ideal.
21:59
SPEAKER_01: It would be odd here, but Europe has one app.
22:02
SPEAKER_01: So maybe it makes sense there.
22:03
SPEAKER_00: What do you mean they have one app?
22:04
SPEAKER_01: It's just WhatsApp.
22:05
SPEAKER_01: That's the only thing they have.
22:06
SPEAKER_00: Europe doesn't have like normal inter-office communication apps.
22:09
SPEAKER_01: I'm joking.
22:11
SPEAKER_00: Oh, sorry.
22:11
SPEAKER_00: You got really mad about that.
22:14
SPEAKER_00: What the fuck, Katie?
22:15
SPEAKER_00: You're lying to me.
22:17
SPEAKER_01: So the WhatsApp group.
22:19
SPEAKER_01: It's just like that.
22:20
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
22:20
SPEAKER_00: I mean, maybe other offices do that,
22:22
SPEAKER_00: but I could think of all sorts of like reasons,
22:24
SPEAKER_00: especially pertaining to like liability and stuff that you wouldn't want
22:27
SPEAKER_00: to use WhatsApp.
22:27
SPEAKER_00: You'd want to, you know, whatever.
22:28
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
22:29
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so WhatsApp group was really active.
22:32
SPEAKER_01: People said they were getting like 200 notifications a day, all hours of the day and night.
22:37
SPEAKER_01: And the tone of the group was just not what you'd expect in a professional setting,
22:41
SPEAKER_01: particularly one in this field, you know, violence against women and girls, VOG.
22:46
SPEAKER_01: And the employees told me that the WhatsApp group became this huge liability for
22:50
SPEAKER_01: the company and ultimately led to over half the staff leaving.
22:53
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so they were mad about the tone of it?
22:55
SPEAKER_01: That was part of it.
22:57
SPEAKER_01: So this started in March 2022,
22:59
SPEAKER_01: the day that Jess's book Sexy But Psycho landed on the Sunday Times bestseller list.
23:04
SPEAKER_01: As you surely recall from episode one,
23:06
SPEAKER_01: that was the day that Sally Ann Robinson decided to go public with her allegations
23:10
SPEAKER_01: that Jess had published her story in her book without consent.
23:13
SPEAKER_00: Right.
23:14
SPEAKER_01: So in the WhatsApp group, the staffers are congratulating Jessica on her big achievement.
23:18
SPEAKER_01: She gets on number five on the Sunday Times bestsellers list.
23:22
SPEAKER_01: So Jesse, read a few of their posts here.
23:24
SPEAKER_00: I got to ask, do we know these are legitimate?
23:27
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
23:27
SPEAKER_00: Congratulations, Jess XX.
23:29
SPEAKER_00: Woohoo.
23:29
SPEAKER_00: Congratulations for this massive achievement.
23:31
SPEAKER_00: Encouraging emojis.
23:32
SPEAKER_00: I love this heart emoji.
23:33
SPEAKER_00: Congratulations, Jess XX.
23:35
SPEAKER_00: Number five for the Times, but always number one for us XXX.
23:38
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
23:39
SPEAKER_00: Where'd you get this?
23:40
SPEAKER_01: I have the entire WhatsApp archive.
23:43
SPEAKER_01: So it's a big day.
23:44
SPEAKER_01: The staff are celebrating.
23:45
SPEAKER_01: And then Jessica posts this.
23:47
SPEAKER_01: Jesse, read this.
23:48
SPEAKER_00: I'm actually totally stressed out.
23:49
SPEAKER_00: And I'm so, so sorry to have to do this.
23:51
SPEAKER_00: But you do all need to know before I have to say something or do something publicly.
23:56
SPEAKER_00: This is on WhatsApp again.
23:57
SPEAKER_00: I know a couple of you have already seen the new accusation spreading
24:00
SPEAKER_00: across social media about me and my work.
24:02
SPEAKER_00: A woman I know has come forward to say that I have written about her abuse history
24:05
SPEAKER_00: without her consent in my quote unquote new book.
24:08
SPEAKER_00: Hundreds of people have jumped on it and shared it and accused me of exploiting her
24:11
SPEAKER_00: in SBP, Sexy But Psycho.
24:13
SPEAKER_01: So just to interrupt here for a second,
24:14
SPEAKER_01: Sally Ann Robinson did not accuse her of using the story in Sexy But Psycho.
24:19
SPEAKER_01: It was in her prior book, Why Women Are Blamed For Everything.
24:22
SPEAKER_00: It's grown and grown,
24:23
SPEAKER_00: and I've had professionals and survivors DMing me, accusing me of exploiting her.
24:27
SPEAKER_00: I spoke to this lawyer yesterday,
24:30
SPEAKER_00: and he said he will monitor it till tomorrow morning,
24:32
SPEAKER_00: and if it goes on,
24:33
SPEAKER_00: we will have to take legal action for defamation,
24:36
SPEAKER_00: which is something I don't really want to do as the woman is very vulnerable.
24:38
SPEAKER_00: I doubt she doesn't actually want to do that.
24:40
SPEAKER_00: I mean that in its truest sense.
24:42
SPEAKER_00: She is often in suicidal crises as recently as last year.
24:47
SPEAKER_00: This is sort of, how many people work for her?
24:50
SPEAKER_01: At that point, so at the height of the company, there was 25.
24:54
SPEAKER_01: At that point, I don't know if she'd finished the hiring spree, but.
24:57
SPEAKER_00: In any case,
24:58
SPEAKER_00: it's like a little bit unprofessional to share details about this woman,
25:01
SPEAKER_00: especially for someone in the VOG world.
25:02
SPEAKER_01: Right, right.
25:03
SPEAKER_01: We're talking about a field that is about vulnerable women
25:06
SPEAKER_01: and she's giving them these details about this vulnerable woman.
25:09
SPEAKER_01: So her message is long, but she finishes it with this.
25:12
SPEAKER_01: Jessie, read this part.
25:13
SPEAKER_00: I haven't ever and would never write about someone without their express
25:16
SPEAKER_00: and ongoing consent,
25:17
SPEAKER_00: and I have proof of every woman in each book and can back that up if needed.
25:21
SPEAKER_00: And I'm absolutely exhausted by the daily accusations and allegations
25:23
SPEAKER_00: that will do nothing but harm me and what we do more broadly.
25:27
SPEAKER_00: My ethics around working with women and talking to women are by far one of
25:30
SPEAKER_00: the most important things about me and my work,
25:32
SPEAKER_00: and I've never put a woman at risk or used her story without permission.
25:35
SPEAKER_00: It's one of my greatest fucking hates when researchers do that.
25:38
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so she's just denying this completely.
25:40
SPEAKER_00: It's a total denial.
25:41
SPEAKER_00: And were staff supportive?
25:42
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
25:43
SPEAKER_01: First response.
25:44
SPEAKER_01: Aw, Jess, it's fucking awful.
25:45
SPEAKER_01: I just want to send you a massive hug.
25:47
SPEAKER_01: Putting that message together for all of us must have been so hard.
25:50
SPEAKER_01: Second response.
25:51
SPEAKER_01: I'm so sorry this is happening, Jess.
25:53
SPEAKER_01: We are with you 100%.
25:54
SPEAKER_01: Is there any way we can help?
25:56
SPEAKER_01: So this is the tone at the time.
25:57
SPEAKER_01: We believe you.
25:58
SPEAKER_01: We support you.
25:59
SPEAKER_01: Team Jess.
26:00
SPEAKER_00: Believe women.
26:01
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
26:02
SPEAKER_00: Except that lying bitch with the suicide out.
26:03
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
26:04
SPEAKER_01: So they actually,
26:05
SPEAKER_01: upon Jamie's suggestion,
26:06
SPEAKER_01: collected money for her to do a spa day that week because she was so stressed out.
26:11
SPEAKER_01: And the employees I talked to said that until things change, the staff was devoted to Jess.
26:16
SPEAKER_01: And they thought she was devoted to them.
26:18
SPEAKER_01: So one described the atmosphere as culty.
26:20
SPEAKER_01: Another ex-staffer told me, quote,
26:22
SPEAKER_01: if you're in her inner circle,
26:23
SPEAKER_01: she is very good at making you feel she's being persecuted unjustly and that
26:27
SPEAKER_01: if you're a good friend or colleague, you'll defend her.
26:29
SPEAKER_01: To my shame,
26:30
SPEAKER_01: I unwittingly became one of her flying monkeys while I worked for her
26:33
SPEAKER_01: as I defended her reputation on several occasions.
26:36
SPEAKER_01: So they're fully behind her at that point.
26:39
SPEAKER_01: Couple days later,
26:40
SPEAKER_01: Jess comes back to the WhatsApp group and she says,
26:42
SPEAKER_01: I figured out that
26:43
SPEAKER_01: the story Sallyann thinks is hers is actually another woman called C.
26:47
SPEAKER_01: She's just confusing herself with C. I put our lawyers on it.
26:51
SPEAKER_01: They're going to protect us.
26:52
SPEAKER_01: So Jesse, read the responses.
26:53
SPEAKER_00: Wow, Jess, what an amazing development.
26:55
SPEAKER_00: This makes me feel super happy for you.
26:56
SPEAKER_00: What a fucking awful thing to happen to you when you do so much good
26:59
SPEAKER_00: for others around your face.
27:00
SPEAKER_00: Sending lots of love and hugs your ways.
27:01
SPEAKER_01: It's just a lot of that.
27:02
SPEAKER_00: Heart with a bandage on it, blah.
27:05
SPEAKER_01: So this goes on.
27:05
SPEAKER_00: I'm glad you have lawyers to protect you now.
27:08
SPEAKER_01: So this goes on for a while and people start talking about Sally Ann.
27:12
SPEAKER_01: And it's getting kind of mean.
27:13
SPEAKER_01: Of course, they think this is some crazy liar targeting their beloved boss.
27:18
SPEAKER_01: So it probably wasn't even weird when someone joked
27:21
SPEAKER_01: about finding Sally Ann's address and sending her,
27:23
SPEAKER_01: quote, alternating envelopes of glitter and shit.
27:27
SPEAKER_01: Or when two of them joined a webinar Sally Ann was on under fake names to spy on her.
27:31
SPEAKER_01: To them, they're just protecting their boss.
27:33
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's the midst of...
27:36
SPEAKER_00: It's so weird.
27:36
SPEAKER_00: They're becoming the harassers.
27:37
SPEAKER_00: Does Jess ever reprimand them or try to control the chat when they're going crazy
27:41
SPEAKER_00: about Sally Ann?
27:42
SPEAKER_00: And everyone knows when they're talking about Sally Ann, do they know this person's identity?
27:45
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
27:46
SPEAKER_00: Oh, because you say they're talking about finding her address.
27:48
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
27:49
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so Jessica Taylor's victim-focused WhatsApp group chat.
27:54
SPEAKER_01: Let's send shit to the woman who was sexually abused as a child.
27:58
SPEAKER_01: Shit and glitter, which honestly, what would you rather prefer get in the mail, Jesse?
28:02
SPEAKER_01: Shit or glitter?
28:03
SPEAKER_00: Glitter?
28:03
SPEAKER_00: I don't think that's tough.
28:04
SPEAKER_01: Both would be bad in one.
28:05
SPEAKER_00: I don't think that's tough.
28:06
SPEAKER_00: It's like fruit flies or rats.
28:08
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
28:09
SPEAKER_00: And does Jess try to rein it in?
28:11
SPEAKER_01: No.
28:12
SPEAKER_01: But cracks are starting to appear,
28:14
SPEAKER_01: particularly because not all of these staffers are down
28:18
SPEAKER_01: with how their colleagues are talking about Sally Annan
28:20
SPEAKER_01: and how Jess is handling this.
28:22
SPEAKER_01: So some staffers are starting to share their concerns more privately.
28:27
SPEAKER_01: They're still on Team Jess at that point,
28:28
SPEAKER_01: they still believe in the mission, but they're starting to lose faith.
28:32
SPEAKER_01: And I have a recording of the very moment that Jess lost one of her most loyal soldiers.
28:37
SPEAKER_01: So Jess reports Sally Ann to the police,
28:39
SPEAKER_01: and on the day that she thought that Sally Ann was going to be arrested,
28:42
SPEAKER_01: she was never actually arrested, for the record, Jess sent this voice note.
28:45
SPEAKER_01: Jess, you listen to this.
28:50
SPEAKER_00: That's it.
28:50
SPEAKER_00: That's all you get for the preview.
28:52
SPEAKER_00: If you want to hear the whole thing, go to blocked or imported.org.
28:55
SPEAKER_00: Bye.