Recently, I’ve been watching YouTube videos about social decline and living standards in the UK, my home country. As a result, the YouTube algorithm, which has become razor sharp of late, has been showing me everything related to this topic. Yesterday, I stumbled across a video from Dr K – Brendan Kavanagh – a successful and very talented pianist with over 2.5 million YouTube subscribers. The video describes how both he and his wife were arrested in front of their children at their farm on the outskirts of London. He has uploaded three videos of the arrest – one giving context and background, with the other two being security camera footage of the arrival of the police and their subsequent arrest.
Be Careful What You Write On Social Media And Email
In the UK, online content that causes offense but doesn’t meet the threshold for a hate crime may be recorded as a “non-crime hate incident” (NCHI)
The context of these two arrests, as outlined by Mr Kavanagh himself in this video, is as follows. He has a small chapel on his land, so when they can find a priest, they like to take mass once a month. A priest was recommended to them by a friend, who was supported by a bishop that the Kavanagh family had known for 15 years. However, when the priest turned up, he insisted on an unusual amount of secrecy, such as not divulging where and by whom he was ordained. This rang alarm bells with Mr Kavanagh, especially since after the mass, the priest was apparently touting his services around the area, particularly to families with children. Mr Kavanagh then began to investigate the priest and discovered that he had been working for the Catholic Church on the island of Martinique, so he emailed that diocese to find out more about him. Some time later, he received email from the diocese of Martinique informing him that the priest in question had apparently been ‘defrocked’ for alleged child abuse. Clearly, this shocked Mr Kavanagh, especially since the priest had had access to his three young children and had heard their confessions. He then ‘angrily’ forwarded the Martinique email to both the bishop and priest, asking for clarification. Then, according to Mr Kavanagh, the bishop (who subsequently blocked Mr Kavanagh) and the priest sent the email to the police in London and reported him for ‘harassment’.
The Arrests
A couple of days ago, Mr Kavanagh uploaded two videos of his arrest, which had been recorded by one of his home security cameras. In them, we see no less than two police cars and a van arrive at his home, out of which step six police officers who waste no time in arresting Mr Kavanagh and his wife, both of whom are immediately handcuffed. The police then search their vehicle and home, confiscating cell phones and electronics. Since their three young children are at home, the parents then have to bargain with the police over the care of their children, who are clearly in shock. The parents are then bundled into the police vehicles and spend the next 10 hours in police cells. Apparently, after two months of police investigation, the charges, which are not made clear by Mr Kavanagh, are dropped due to ‘lack of evidence’.
As a caveat, I should point out that what I have written here is a condensed version, which Mr Kavanagh has made publicly available on his Dr.K YouTube channel. I don’t know him and have no affiliation with him or anyone mentioned in this article.
Why Am I writing About This?
I’m writing about this incident for several reasons. Firstly, because one wonders why six police officers in three vehicles were required to arrive at Mr K’s house as a result of an alleged complaint from two people over some ‘angry’ email. If he had threatened violence or hints of terrorism in his email, that would have been different. Not being privy to the material mentioned by Mr K, one has to wonder exactly who in the Crown Prosecution Service decided that the emails were grounds for arrest? How and when does one cross the line between angry and harassment in any written document? How private are our emails? Not at all, apparently. And social media is certainly not private.
Hate messages and harassment online are serious problems and are taken very seriously by authorities. They are damaging and can cause untold misery to those on the receiving end. Having said that, we are not privy to the exact contents of Mr Kavanagh’s ‘angry’ email (that’s how he described them) to the bishop and priest. What we do know is that in the text section of his arrest video, he refers to this article in the Belfast Telegraph and implies very strongly that the priest referred to in the article is the same man who was recommended to him by the bishop. Draw your own conclusions on that. We also don’t know exactly what charges were laid for his arrest, and since he mentioned harassment several times, his alleged offence must come under the Stalking or Harassment law (UK), which carries a prison sentence of five years, depending on the severity of the offence.
I’ve been using email longer than I can remember, and believe me, I’ve written some shockers over the years, especially when I ran my own business and definitely if and when I had been either shafted or mistreated in business by some unscrupulous creep. But that was then, and I probably wouldn’t get away with that kind of language today, unfortunately. Mr K’s only crime was to send email to those concerned asking for clarification about the allegations referred to him by the Diocese of Martinique, and let’s face it, most of us would have done the same.
What disturbs me more than anything today, and Mr K’s experience is not isolated, whether in social media, email, and/or other social interaction, the victim is often seen as the offender. On the other hand, what have we become as a society when a man seeks to protect his family from an alleged child abuser and is subsequently arrested?
Who decides when free speech becomes so-called hate speech? Who lays down the arbitration for free speech? I wouldn’t like to draw parallels with Orwell or the feared Stasi of the defunct East Germany, or indeed many countries where free speech is currently banned, but it’s impossible not to in light of this and other recent events. What is shocking is that people are going to prison for expressing an opinion that is not acceptable to a minority and/or the powers that be.
What are your thoughts on this bizarre incident?
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