Silence is not an option

by Xavier de Sousa

 

AUDIO VERSION FOR PART 1 HERE

 

AUDIO VERSION FOR PART 2 HERE

This text is long, messy, disjointed, and bumpy. While it is not an exhaustive text, it is a culmination of 5 years of working to hold an abuser to account and the hurdles we encountered when dealing with those who sought to protect him along the way.

It has two parts, one consisting of a notes and comment section on a few particular issues and one with a more timeline-driven description of events as they happened around me and as I experienced them. We decided to publish these writings as a way to shine some light into a grey area that has been corrosive and incredibly tangled for so long, and grey areas is how Chris operated across all levels of his work, so he could also abuse people.

All of what is written in this text and elsewhere, in my view abolishes any potential consideration or celebrations of his work, archive, methods, or talent, or profile. There is an argument elsewhere on separating the art from the artist but in this instance, you cannot separate the man from the work, for the abuse is embedded in the creation method, its intentions, and its outcomes. 

 

Notes:

1. Content Warnings: Paedophilia; Gender and identity based violence; References to physical, sexual and psychological abuse; Gaslighting and coercion; Death by suicide

2. It is important to note first that for the vast majority of us the reality is that we did not know about Chris Goode’s paedophilia up until the news of his arrest in May 2021. The shock of the triple-punch news (arrest-paedophilia-death) is something I am yet to fully recover from.

3. Chris isn’t a unique case in the culture sector and the abuse he inflicted on so many is vastly beyond his paedophilia. We cannot make this story solely about him because every other month we hear stories of other abusers and then nothing ever happens, or they go into obscurity. But people continue to be abused on a daily basis – and we all know it is daily because it happens to all of us, specifically those in more disadvantaged positions.

4. I’m particularly tired of the focus on the victim and/or individual responsibility as a way to deflect from responsibilities of the sector as a whole. Chris used this systemic individualism to put the onus on his victims and try and wash his hands of any accountability. It took 5 years of the survivors of his abuse holding the bastard and his Company to account, to get anything to be done.

With this in mind, I think it is important to put forward a few things in order for us to be able to navigate the culture sector in a more healthy, safe way:

• Theatres, production companies, funding bodies and unions have as much a responsibility to ensure safe practices are put in place and actively enforced in projects they commission or green-light, even if the making process happens outside of their spaces. You commission the work, so you are helping to make it happen. It is also your responsibility to ensure the safe and material conditions of any of the workers employed, salaried or freelancers.

• Theatres, festivals and venues in particular have a responsibility to ensure their spaces and the work they commission and/or present (including hires!) are navigated in a safe way.
  • Create safe and anonymised ways that anyone working on a production or event that you are a part of, can raise an issue of abuse with you, and you directly act on the complaints. Make sure that any person who raises the complaint is dealt with with respect and care, and that they can be anonymous and if they wish, they can have a third party (a friend, a colleague, a union representative) with them at all times when dealing with this.
  • Make it a funding/programming condition that teams ensure they have appropriate safe strategies in place. This includes:
    • Codes of Conduct included in all contracts and agreements with the production/show/company’s teams
    • Safe and anonymised ways to report abuse, directly to the board or a dedicated member of staff that can deal with it swiftly

• Funding bodies have a responsibility to ensure that any money they award a project is not used to create unsafe, abusive environments. You fund it, so you help make it happen. It is also your responsibility to ensure the safe and material conditions of the workers employed. Here are some clear examples of what funding bodies can do:

• Make it a condition of getting any grant/funding/commission that award/grant recipients need to prove they have safety measures in place, including codes of conducts and safe ways to report any type of abuse. There are plenty of examples of good practice out there, including the Royal Court Code of Conduct or the various examples in the Producer Gathering Resources page. If they don’t have these, please work with them to help them create it. Often artists/small companies don’t have the infrastructure, and they could do with the guidance/help.

• Create safe and anonymised ways that any person working on a project funded by you, can use to raise a concern about the abuse they are facing in said project, and make sure you follow it up and act on it.

During the last year, myself and Lucy Ellinson worked on Arts Council England’s Raising a Concern guidance and procedure, to ensure that anyone can raise an issue in safe and anonymous ways, and that the complaints will be escalated and investigated. Now, anyone who is a recipient of ACE grants and is found to be an abuser, will no longer be able to access public money in the future. It is by no means enough, but it is a start.

• Create a way to ensure that any person found to be an abuser (be it in sexual violence, financial corruption or identity-based violence) is barred from accessing future funding.

Part of the issue here is this ‘arms-length’ approach towards commissioning and funding of art work across the sector. This is a fallacy, and one used historically to protect those with already extensive power in the sector. Even if not intentionally bad as a policy, the consequences are devastating and isolating for those who rely on the approval of the select few to even exist in the sector in the first place.

Let me be very clear: no one accesses or is able to exist in the sector without the approval of funding bodies like the Arts Council, Trusts & Foundations, or Theatres with commissioning grants. No one. By selecting a project to be commissioned or a grant application to be funded, you are technically selecting and supporting a group of people to be a part of the sector. You are making that group or individual part of your ecology. Thus, you are as much responsible for whatever happens to that project and its workers’ safety and material conditions as everyone else involved.

• Unions have a responsibility to ensure that individuals in the sector can access membership and protection of exploitative and abusive labour practices. It is also the Unions’ responsibility to ensure that freelancers have access to them:
  • Reduce your membership rates for freelancers and create easier pathways to union membership. We wouldn't be able to do a lot of what we did without union representation and the benefits that came with it, including access to legal advice and representation.

• Please create more resources for freelancers to use in their working practices that are related to creating safe working conditions and ways to report abuse in their work spaces. This should be complemented with more training opportunities for freelancers to learn how to deal with situations of abuse in the work space, and how to find safe ways to report them to you.

• As an arts sector that wants to be open and championing of international artistic excellence, we must resist the labelling of experimental work (specifically work that is led by and/or explores sexuality, sex, intimacy, queer and trans identities) as inherently wrong or deserving of censorship. Instead, we should focus on the establishing of sector-wide provisions for the creation of safe environments so that creatives can work and explore safely and with the assurance that any abuse will be dealt with immediately and with consequences. This is both in and outside of the rehearsal room and performance space.

• Victims of abuse are often defenceless and/or scared to say anything precisely because of the repercussions this can have on their own career and mental health. So many in this story have had their careers and lives destroyed from this, precisely because there are no mechanisms to deal with it properly. Why does it consistently fall on the victims’ shoulders to raise a concern? I hope the next few sections of this text provide some clarification to why it was down to the victims to do anything – anything at all – throughout this.

We have a collective responsibility across the sector. The safety and material conditions of a performer or a stage manager in a rehearsal room are as much the responsibility of the director or the producer, as they are of the institution that helped that rehearsal being scheduled in the first place. Abusers exist everywhere, in every office, in every stage, in every café, school, parliament, court, train, etc etc etc. This is not an issue inherent only to the culture sector, but the creation of collaborative and sector-wide structures of safeguarding, open dialogue and ways to deal with abuse are ever more urgent, and the longer we continue to be individualised and silenced, the more violence we are helping to create.

5. I am not interested in engaging in any discourse on whether Chris was also a victim. As a survivor of various instances of violent sexual abuse and coercion (both as a child and across well over a decade of working in this sector), I know first hand the impact it can have on people, on our relationships with our bodies, intimacy, mental health and career. But I also know that if you use your own experiences of abuse to excuse abusing others, you are also replicating the abuse. I also understand how Chris manipulated many people’s own trauma to gaslight them into his world view. Victims and survivors are not abusers. Abusers are abusers. Chris was an abuser who tried to propagate and normalise his abuse through his work.

6. Chris was a master manipulator of narratives. Throughout the past 5 years, we have been uncovering so much gaslighting, abuse, omission of information and straight-up lies, and we understand now that pretty much everyone has a different story/narrative about Chris based on what he told them and what information they had available at the time. This is what predators do. They distort reality to make you believe that they are innocent or that, at the very least, you doubt your own sanity to protect theirs.

7. Manipulation of narratives is exactly where I place a big focus of his abuse. He used us, our stories, and our collective history, as protective shields for himself to normalise his abuse. When I say ‘us’ I mean everyone who worked with him but specifically queer and trans people and our shared histories.

Across his work, he often narrated and wrote about young men, inter-generational relationships, queer utopias. Often his work revolved around entering a new, exciting if obscured world. Weaklings had the form and narratives one might find when lost in an internet-hole at 4am in search for something one hasn't quite figured out yet. Ponyboy Curtis was about young men’s explorations of their own identities and sexuality. Men in the Cities explored fantasies of intergenerational lust and rape among other things. This was all merged within a broad artistic practice that existed in a grey area of definition, intentionally. The constant greyness of it all, allowed for him to play with nuances of trauma and fill them with obscurity and abuses that obfuscated our understanding that those narratives were actually an attempt to normalise the concept of paedophilia. The violence in those stories was the point, the normalisation of abuse was the point.

There are some incredibly dangerous precedents set by his actions. First, the ‘experimentalism’ of his writing and directing styles. He used experimentation as departure point but also as cloaking shield. Reflecting back now, I can see that the nuances he so revered in his writing, was in the language used, not in the actual content. The content was abuse, as was the goal, and they were actually in plain sight, framed as ‘difficult’ and ‘dark’ aspects of the human condition. The language was intricate and nuanced to obfuscate our perception of the abuses that happen in these stories, and their normalisation.

Secondly, many contexts have told me that they won’t engage or commission “this type of work any more” (i.e. queer work). Experimental theatre and performance art are already considered ‘too challenging’ in the UK theatre landscape, often too risky to programme/support. There are many studies on this, and frankly there isn't enough time or space here to go fully into that.

The truth is that queerness, and growing up and discovering sexuality and identity is not to be confused with abuse or paedophilia. Abuse is abuse, paedophilia is paedophilia. If you deliberately characterise the exploration of sexuality, of queerness and/or identity as being inherently abusive, or imply that there is a greater risk of abuse being present than in a heterosexual context, then I’m afraid it is you that is behaving abusively, and your homophobia and queerphobia are clear to see. Abuse is abuse, paedophilia is paedophilia. Homosexuality, queer relationships and the exploration of sexuality are not.

Chris, however, bastardised our queer experiences to help normalise his paedophilia and abusive intentions. He used the very normal and common relationships that men have with other men as a way to try and attempt a normalisation of coercion and abuse of teenage men and children by older men across his plays. This is something I will never be able to forget, nor forgive. He bastardised our shared histories for his own disgusting gains, and threatened to take us all down with him, tapping into anti-queer and homophobic and transphobic attacks and bad-faith agendas that could inevitably use this story to yet again call us all groomers and paedos. How fucking vile is that?

Alongside the texts written in these blogs, you will read daunting descriptions of violence, coercion and the duplicity of him using a veil of ‘queerness’ that was merely a superficial way of disguising his abuse. That veil didn’t really hold still as soon as he was out of his comfort zone, across two projects in 2017, surrounded by diverse groups of queer artists and culture workers who challenged him and who refused to take his abuse. He crumbled in front of our very eyes. Whereas others protected him, it took a diverse group of members of the queer community to bring the fucker down, because no one else did.

He was the paedophile, the groomer. Chris Goode is not representative of the queer community, no matter how much he tried, for he did not write about a collective experience. He was writing about himself and using us as a cloaking shield, and that needs to be very clear.

This time though, he messed with the wrong queers and I am very proud we were able to put a stop to at least some of the abuse. That is a sentiment I will take to my own grave.

8. Plenty of theatre and performance practitioners across the world employ performance-making methods that involve nudity, queer and trans identities, live sex and intimacy in very safe and consensual ways. This is something to be protected and supported, as it is a perfectly legitimate form of artistic exploration. Any conflation of these practices with abuse resulting from conservatism, prudeness, bigotry or deliberately misreading/mistreating the content for hateful purposes is nothing more than hate and fear, and only inflicts violence and abuse.

Sadly, in the UK specifically, we have seen bad-faith ‘activists’ conflating experimental performance, queerness and sexuality with abuse, and I want to draw a clear line here. One of the reasons I was attracted to Chris’s work was that it showcased a different and radical (for the UK theatre scene) approach to experimental theatre based on narrative experimentation, or on physical/devised theatre collective experiments. It is not unique work, for plenty of practitioners the world over have tried similar approaches or have succeeded in experimenting with the same themes, concepts and methods. However, in the more conservative playfield of the UK performance and theatre scene, it felt interesting and proposed an exploration of apparently queer takes on performativity and identity that could appeal to a queer crowd.

Once I started to be more in tune with what Chris’s processes of making performance were, it started to become apparent to me that the ‘queerness’ and radicalness he talked about were not as representative of the work in real terms. The ‘collective work’ was highly choreographed at all stages by Chris, resulting in reduced agency in the workplace for everyone else involved. This is not to say they didn't have any agency, but there is a difference between saying they do while he is the person with the utmost power and final word (in every way!). The ‘safe’ strategies he promised were being employed in the rehearsal rooms were nothing more than a daily ‘check in’ at the beginning and a ‘check out’ at the end, if that. This is basic standard practice for all rehearsal rooms and certainly not enough for works dealing with such intense levels of intimacy and physical and emotional exploration. Hierarchy and patriarchy were inherent parts of his work and this was Chris’ work – that is how everything was framed, and he sat on top of every aspect of the works’ processes, structures and narratives.

For many years, Chris refused to pay the performers of his side project at the centre of this story, even when he was taking commissions and funding grants to make the work. He paid himself only. His refusal to pay, he told me later in 2017, came because he wanted the performers to ‘believe’ and have ‘hunger’ for the work. If they believed in it, they would do it regardless of the lack of money. He, a very prominent and highly regarded ‘genius’, was using his position to groom younger, impressionable men at the start of their careers, to work with him unpaid on purpose even when he could pay them. After 20 years of working in the sector and getting large amounts of commissions and successful funding bids, he knew very well he could get bigger funding to pay his performers, but he chose not to as a control mechanism.

Across his contracts and ‘established norms’ in his processes, were clauses and stipulations on how you - the individual you - were solely responsible for your actions in the process. While he framed this under a queer-umbrella of liberation against capitalist models of control, it allowed him to navigate really intricate and intimate relationships that created intimately abusive and long-lasting traumatic experiences without culpability. Many collaborators tell tales of when they had to intervene for he wouldn’t when things were going south or abusive in the rooms he set up. Yet, he was the director, the writer, the dramaturg, the leader, the person with the money, the genius, the mentor.

Over the past 5 years we have come to learn of young men being filmed performing sexual acts, often on camera – framed by Chris as being legitimate artistic performance research, outside-rehearsal intimate ‘rehearsals’ at his place (or in other spaces) or "solo work". We have come to learn of abuses happening on stage and in rehearsals, of performers being coerced into doing acts they didn’t want to. These young artists were coerced into participating, not only through Chris's insistence that this was genuine artistic work, but also because of his promises of future employment, ie paid work in more mainstream productions.

9. Historically, we always had so-called ‘progressives’ taking advantage of under-privileged communities to wrap themselves in protective cloaks and further their own careers while abusing, coercing and gaslighting members of that same community. You see it in anti-trans movements who co-opt the lack of visibility of the lesbian community to further their own anti-trans agenda. The same people who consistently portray themselves as ‘protecting and championing women!’ in order to gain support as they continue to work to roll back the rights of trans women and by default, the rights of all women.

Sadly, a lot of people have used the language and identities of the LGBTQ+ community to further their own bigoted agendas. The result has been a contemporary rolling back of support for queer and trans communities in particular. We have had very high profile TERFs circulating this story to try and capitalise on survivors’ own trauma for their own bigoted agendas: wanting to do podcasts, write full length-articles or chapters in their books, etc. These people are only out for themselves, as seen in the hate campaigns they have been levelling at our communities for years. Everyone suffers at the hand of these individual and bigoted agendas, and they will never have the support or consent of the survivors of this story. Never.

The UK theatre and culture sector is not protected from this. Many of the responses I had from industry people since my work with Chris and the company was that, especially since news and word around this particular case have come to light, they will no longer programme ‘this type of work’, i.e. work that explores intimacy, vulnerability, sexuality and queerness. We have seen perfectly legitimate work being cancelled and/or censored across the UK because people from the community conflate LGBTQ+ identities as inherently abusive or ‘wrong’.

You can see this from creatives being forced to tone-down LGBTQ+ stories, to framing LGBTQ+ stories as ‘too risky’, to the horrific abuse levelled at Josie and the cast and crew of The Family Sex Show earlier this year by anti-trans and right-wing ‘moralists’ who conflate queerness and discourse around sex with ‘grooming’, a very loud fascist dog-whistle that has a long history of abusing children and queers across the UK and the world over (look at how Bolsonaro called experimental artists paedos and perverts to facilitate the decimation of arts funding in Brazil recently, or in North America where artists’ exploring the trauma of the AIDS crisis was used to facilitate the decimation of funding for artists).

Chris’ work isn’t an example of queer work that is reflective of the queer experience, nor is it reflective of what queer theatre is like. It is an example of a type of work that was utilised by an abuser to further his abuse. Don’t blanket us all under the Chris Goode umbrella, because by doing that you are simply replicating the harm he caused to so many, and capitulating to a very dangerous climate of hostility to the LGBTQ+ community both within the culture sector and outside of it.

This is partly why it has taken us so long to go public, as the history of abusers using progressive and queer language to gaslight their audiences into thinking of queers, trans people and progressive discourse as ‘grooming’ or ‘abuse’ is very prevalent in the UK. Chris often used progressive language to obfuscate the truth and make you think that you actually are the one in the wrong here. He would target young, impressionable and vulnerable men who wanted a break in the sector or who were in awe of his work and ‘genius’. He talked about working with ‘queer methodologies’, ‘collectivity’ and ‘creating safe spaces’ while at the same time gaslighting us all away from the reality: there were no safe practices in place and he actively worked against installing them.

Thus Chris is not an example of queer practice or progressiveness. He is an example of abuse. The abuse levelled by Chris at his employees is very distant from legitimate artistic exploration, for he consistently abused his power, privilege and position, and set up unsafe, coercive and violent processes and methods to achieve his vision. 

 

 

My Experience

 

My direct experiences with Chris Goode and the culture of abuse, coercion and gaslighting around him, his work and his artistic practice started around 2016, lasted until November 2017, and revolved around my appointment as Senior Producer for Chris Goode & Company. It is important to say that up until that point, I was a big fan of his work and artistic practice. I read his book, watched his shows, and read Maddy’s blogs on it. My own artistic work was influenced by some of his writing and methods up until I left the company.

 

The job of producer was offered to me seemingly without much of a bother. I went to lunch with Chris and his producer at the time, on separate occasions, and that was it. A few things to note in this:

• I was told specifically that this was a great opportunity for me, as a budding independent producer of live art and experimental performance. It was laid out how I would ‘find that Chris has a large amount of power and fans across the sector, who will go out of their way to support him’.

• I was also told, repeatedly by him and people close to him that he was a genius theatre-maker and that I was lucky to get the job, what an opportunity this was for me, and I bought in on that at the time.

• I was also told, by Chris, that he felt wronged about not being treated with the same level of respect, celebration and commissioning as some of his peers. It was now my responsibility to address this.

• I asked to be part of the rehearsal processes so I could understand the work and how it was done. This was promised to me, although I was only ever allowed in on one rehearsal for one hour throughout my year at the company and that was in a highly-controlled setting where I was watching only a ‘section’ of the work that was being done. Chris controlled exactly when and where, and what I would see.

• During our first meeting, we talked about a few things that now make much more sense than they did back then and yes, I do raise my hands in guilt that I didn't action on these fast enough: 
   
  • He operated in a grey area in all aspects of his process.
  • All performers of explicit content must be under the ages of 25.
  • The performers of his side project were not paid so that they do the work because they ‘crave it’.
  • His side projects were not to be linked with the company, nor was his work as a director for projects outside of the company. This, I now understand, has been a key element used by Chris and some of his colleagues to obfuscate any responsibility or duty of care throughout this story.

I didn't take action on the above right away and the best way I can explain this is by stating that I did not completely understand what he was telling me then, though I kept these in my mind and they informed my thinking going forward. What I should have done was raise these issues and red flags immediately with the person who led the company with Chris.

A few things became very clear to me as soon as I arrived at the company:

• The mess that the company was in, financially and structurally. There was no formal structure beyond a Company’s House registration and the company had accumulated a large amount of debt which I was now responsible for covering.

• There was information I kept asking for (bank statements, account details, spreadsheets, company information, previous correspondences) and which I never had access to throughout this period. Numerous requests went either unanswered or deflected with vague reasoning as to why the heads of the company couldn't give it to me or would ‘do it later’.

When you work in a freelance capacity, you are used to having to navigate a lot of work contexts where you don’t know much of what is going on, you are kept outside. It is important here to note that I was still very much a freelancer, on an invoice-by-invoice and project-by-project type of deal, no contract, so my capacity to actually map out the whole situation was incredibly limited. 

 

The main reason I lay this down here is because not knowing the full picture, not having information you need, being told only a few things and being kept ‘outside’ are among the methods that Chris employed to ensure that you were confused and doubted yourself. If you don’t know the full picture, how can you do anything that is not what is directly and immediately asked of you?

 

By Spring 2017, I was asked to do 3 unpaid days as producer for a side project that he had going on at a London theatre. This is when everything that I now know kicked off. 

 

Early summer 2017, the Company receives the news that it was to be awarded NPO status. At this time I also learned that a play he had been commissioned to write had been lost on a hard-drive that was broken. We now know this was either a lie or that the hard-drive was never taken to be fixed precisely because it contained paedophilia, and he was obviously against any repairing of the hard-drive. 

 

The first time I came across any mentions of abuse, was in a response to a Facebook post of mine advertising the opening of that side project. Written by a previous member of the collective (who wishes to remain anonymous), it indicated that there might have been coercion going on in the rehearsal room, that the process wasn't as ‘collective’ as advertised, and the performers had little agency in the process. 

 

Before we go into further detail here, I must admit that my first reaction was to contact this person directly and ask for more information. Once they said they wanted no more interactions with this or talk any further, I asked them to remove the post while I investigated further. This was wrong of me and while I have apologised directly to said person, I feel this needs stating, as asking someone to remove a perfectly legitimate complaint, no matter how publicly, is wrong and is akin to victim-blaming. I take full responsibility for the violence of that action. 

 

The poster told me they did not want any further involvement in this. None the less, I started to investigate because the mentioned abuse would have serious implications for the current performers and everyone around that project. Chris’ response was ultimately to dismiss it as ‘a misunderstanding of something that happened by chance in the beginning of the project when things were not very clear in terms of process or what was to be achieved’. I was also told by others this same story and ‘not to worry’. 

 

I demanded to be more close to rehearsal/making processes as I was starting to doubt what I was being told not just with that project but across Chris’ work. Around this time, I talked with many contemporary and previous collaborators who told me, directly or indirectly, that Chris was always a difficult person to work with, who controlled everything while pretending that everyone had agency in the process, and that there were serious concerns about how unsafe his work methods were. 

 

Upon request from him, I set up a ‘check-in’ day for the cast of that project, but was told I was not allowed in the space myself as they were to discuss very intimate things about the future of the project. Afterwards, I was told by Chris that the group had decided to close the project and no more shows or rehearsals were to be done for it. 

 

In September 2017, Chris informed me he was planning more versions of that project for 2018 and that I should start conversations with venues/festivals about it. I asked about the decision of the collective to end the project and he said that ultimately it was his project and that he would do it with other performers. I said I wanted nothing to do with it as I had concerns for the safety of the performers, he looked at me angrily and frustrated and moved the conversation to the company’s work and upcoming start of NPO. 

 

In November 2017, on my arrival in Manchester to watch the opening of one of his directing projects, I was made aware of two other cases of abuse, one of which was posted on an online blog and one which was raised to me in person right outside of the theatre. Furthermore, two other people in the cast for that evening’s show told me in no loose terms that Chris had been incredibly problematic in the process of making it. 

 

I will leave exposition or commentary of those complaints to those who raised them, as they are not my story to tell, but what became clear to me right there and then was that Chris was at the very centre of clear abusive practices and experiences, some of which were incredibly sexually and psychologically violent. 

 

Make no mistake here:

• Across the projects that I witnessed and the ones we are dissecting here, Chris was the main responsible person for the spaces he created. He originated them, he was the director, writer and facilitator of those projects, those spaces and practices.

• Every single one of the people who were abused alluded to here were in positions of disadvantage (all were young queer people, fresh out of uni or just starting in the sector), while he enjoyed the vast privileges his name, his status and his position both across the sector and in the rehearsal room brought to him.

As soon as I knew of these instances of abuse, I tried to contact Chris and the chair of the Company, and a few things happened which I want to state very clearly here:

• Chris refused to answer any of my calls or text messages throughout the day. He eventually texted the next day saying that I had no right to interfere, to mind my own business and that it was my role to focus on the upcoming meeting we had booked with a London theatre.

• The (at the time ) chair of the Company told me, when I asked if he was aware of the complaints, that ‘my responsibility was to ensure the future of the Company, so I shouldn’t get involved as the issue was with another project that sat outside the Company’. He told me this to my face, while I was sitting on the sofa of the café in the middle of the theatre building. He then turned his back on me and left. I remember it so vividly because it was the moment it finally clicked that I was alone in this and had nowhere to turn. It is a moment I will never forget.

Part of the reason why everyone was happy to ‘not get involved’ was because, very cleverly, Chris was adamant that his side projects - small or mid-scale in scope but around which most of the abuse took place - were separate from the Company. This is something his board members – especially the 3 chairs – used as an excuse to not investigate or do anything at all about this, then or since. To them I say: you tried to wash your hands of real abuse when you had the power to help, and that reflects on you, and you only.

Hear me out here: if the director of your company was abusing people elsewhere, wouldn't you want to do something about it? Or at least investigate? Or reach out to see if you could help with a situation that your director was implicated in and at the centre of? Do you have no care for the safety of others, let alone your staff? A company that allowed him to have any sort of sustainability and continue to operate in the sector, has the responsibility to deal with staff and board members’ abusive behaviour, does it not?

The next day I emailed Chris and the chair of the Company, demanding an immediate stop to any Company work and to start an internal investigation followed by an external one. I detailed the complaints and that there were serious concerns about Chris, his character and how it was affecting employers and freelancers working with him.

Immediately, Chris responded with a lengthy email on how I had no idea what I was doing and had acted unprofessionally and disappointingly. He also made veiled threats about what might happen in the event of an investigation, specifically naming individuals he knew were close friends of mine, to imply that there would be consequences for them that would also affect me. I have no qualms in saying this was a form of gaslighting. Basically ‘shut up or your friends will also be in the shit’.

Speaking with the people he mentioned in the email and going back to the people who raised the instances of abuse, none of them wanted to go any further than this had already gone for they were fearful of consequences. What I wanted to do then was to go to the police, or the press. Those were the only things I could think of that would shine a light on this and enforce some form of accountability. However, when the very people who were at the hands of the abuser didn’t want to go to the police or the press for fear of visibility and impact on them, I had to respect that. Beyond their experiences at the hands of Chris, most of were migrant, trans, queer and/or PoC, and all had traumas related to historical and direct state and/or police violence. So my hands were tied.

What happened over the next few months is, frankly, a bit of a blur to me, but here is what I remember:

• Later that week, I quit the Company upon realising that I wasn't able to do anything from within.
• I spent 4 months in bed, depressed and unable to do anything, with constant panic attacks and a few trips to A&E, as well as high-dose antidepressants.
• I developed PTSD that impacts my ability to breathe. Still today, whenever I am in high anxiety or stressful situations, I struggle to breath properly.

In Spring 2018, Maddy emailed introducing me to Lucy Ellinson. We had never chatted before, nor had we even met, so I was very surprised to be connected to this stranger whom I knew only from her work in the sector.

Talking to Lucy saved me in that moment, for she told me what happened to her, what she had observed happening to others and said she believed me. She was the first person to do that, to even reach out, and as a result of her uncompromising care, we have been able to support survivors and create some sector change. I will forever be thankful to her and in awe of her work, ethics and sense of justice.

We discussed the work that needed to be done to stop Chris and his abuse. Lucy along with another long-term collaborator Wendy Hubbard, had independently from me recently raised the alarm with senior female leaders at two high-profile venues. It is very apparent to me that it was precisely because these institutions got involved that the Company acted on the request for an investigation. Once again, individuals have no power unless institutions get involved, remember?

The investigation was led by an independent body, and it took a few months to conclude. I think it is safe to say that it was nowhere near conclusive or expansive enough to cover everything. Furthermore, I’ve learned since that some people didn’t feel comfortable sharing their experiences, and some now regret how they engaged with it.

The report, despite Chris's efforts to redact it (and he did), concludes that vast amounts of different types of abuse were committed by Chris, even when it plays some of it down. They are laid out across the various points of the findings, although a lot of the abuse that we know of is not included. It also proposes some concrete steps for the company to introduce processes of accountability and for future implementation of Codes of Conducts.

I remember the report coming out and feeling utterly deflated by it, as a lot of what we knew at this point was not included, and it all sounded very vague. However, talking with people who were part of this process, a few things were pointed out to me that just showcased the deep shit we were all involved in:

1. That Chris had been resistant to the investigation throughout

2. That Chris did not see people as people, but as objects or obstacles towards his goals

3. That there was no actual way of the Company being held accountable for any of it, let alone be forced to implement any of the suggested changes, for there are no systems in place across the sector to provide accountability of the kind that was needed here.

One thing that was said to my face after this process was done, which I will never forget: that because there was no system to hold the Company to account, or Chris, that it was up to us, the victims of his abuse, to create some form of accountability.

I know this isn't fair, and I can't tell you how enraged and distraught I was, because finally the penny dropped for me that actually the systems in place across the sector are designed to protect the abusers, even if that is not their inherent intention. The way the sector works, it is up to the victim to carry the burden of the abuse and to ensure that the abuser is held accountable for ever more.

A quick note before we carry on: what comes next should never, ever be the responsibility of the survivors and/or victims to do. Never. The fact that we, of all people, had to carry so much burden and violence from both him and the sector at large, is frankly disgusting and something I will never forget. Change will never come while we keep forcing this on the very people who were directly affected by it in the first place, for it keeps those in power and with the privilege of dealing with it with more direct action from having to do anything.

After the report came out, Maddy left the Company and we had a long call where we discussed what had happened, our fears and our wants from this situation. I believe people deserve second chances, especially when you have been groomed and/or gaslighted to believe an abuser’s narrative. Plus, at least Maddy reached out, and has worked with us ever since. None of the others did, and certainly not one of them even sent a fucking email asking if we were ok, not even the ones I used to consider my friends.

Upon Lucy’s suggestion, I rounded up a few of us whom I knew were directly impacted, and our group got together in early 2019. Some others, including Maddy and Lucy, were kept in the loop. With the help of an ally (who wishes to be anonymous) we sent communications to the company demanding clarity and information on progress made according to the demands of the report, as well as demands on further action including:

• Demands to show us how the Company was implementing the report’s proposals, specifically the work on creating safe-guards in any of the current and future projects that Chris would engage in;

• Demands to delete all documentation and marketing that included nudity and instances of abuse, from all Company records, hard-drives and any partners’ platforms who also had that content;

• Demands for the Company to post a statement on the situation, which clarified what had happened and the nuances of the situation;

• Demands for the Company to cease any work that involved Chris attending any university or education-led work, and specifically for the Company to ensure that Chris’ work wasn't taught at university levels;

• For the Company to ensure that any future activity would be preceded by the Company engaging in dialogue about the need for safety measures AND show the report to any partner, staff or collaborator (both individuals and institutions).

Throughout 2019, we engaged in a very lengthy and exhausting back and forth over emails where we would ask questions in the vein of the points above and would get some vague promises of change, specifically related to the creation and implementation of a code of conduct, and a lot of gaslighting. While this was done anonymously, I am sure they knew that at least some of us were involved in this work. This took a lot of our time, effort, emotional and physical labour to do. At every stage, we were consistently made to feel like a bother, like we had no right to ask these questions or make these demands, and the gaslighting continued.

Some other things happened throughout this which are very relevant to understand how all of this impacts on the individuals across the sector:

• The Company contracted new staff, some of whom stayed on even after knowing about all of this, and some of whom went on to get new shiny jobs in the sector!

• Chris continued to be invited to events, to get commissions and new board members. The Company continued to hold NPO status, although little is known of what work was done throughout that time.

• Some of us started to be treated like pariahs in the sector, some had doors shut in their faces, some literally lost jobs because of this, some became just ‘too much’ to employ.

Around Spring 2019, I was alerted to the fact that the Company was advertising a spare room in Chris’ apartment in Edinburgh during the Fringe Festival, reserved for an upcoming artist, for free. I took issue with it on safety grounds and directly contacted the then Company producer and chair of the Company. The producer responded very swiftly that I had no idea what I was talking about and that there was no indication that Chris was an abuser. Around this time, Maddy expressed concerns for my mental health and suggested that I should just let it go. It becomes apparent to me that either I am going completely out of my mind, or these people are not quite seeing the whole picture.

So I sent the email below to the Company in response:

Just to make this clear - what exactly do you perceive as 'no allegation on record of any personal impropriety against Chris' on the investigation?

Does point 1, 2 and 3 (on page 6 of the report) not clearly state that there there was abuse taken place? Emotional abuse, disempowerment and denial of reality, is abuse. Specially when you put it in the context of the work of actual sexual nature within Ponyboy in which Chris was the sole director and writer of, is of a much older age and position of power both within the industry and the Ponyboy curtis company at large, and the rest of the company were young, impressionable, just out of University performers.

Doesnt the report also state at various points that Chris did not seek - and at points proposed to not use the word at all as hindering of the process - consent? There are whole sections around this on the report.

Doesnt the blog put on the internet in November 2017 as a response to abuse being led within the Ponyboy Curtis not highlight the levels of discrepancy of power structures and coercive abuse within the room? A room in which Chris was the ultimate director of, with the ultimate power over?

Doesnt the response from Chris himself to my challenging in November 2017 to circumstances of abuse show the character of this person? Gaslighting is a form of abuse. For instance, I was left bed-bound for months, not able to breathe properly and that continues to affect me to this day in anxious situations. I give my example here just to illustrate the effect this whole situation and response from CG&Co has had. Others have gone through various similar situations and their cripling anxiety about coming forward is in fact due to the way the company and Chris himself have behaved in this process.

That producer and the Company’s chair (finally) resigned with immediate effect. Eventually, last year (2021) I reconnected with that producer and it became clear that she had only received limited passages of the report, nor had she been made aware of all the issues that led to it or happened since. This person should not be held to account, for she was gaslit in her job, and should be supported for she has been nothing but clear and caring with this situation since.

From what I understand, as a consequence of my challenges, the Company cancelled the work they had planned for the rest of the year (including an Edinburgh Fringe run at the prestigious Traverse Theatre), as they were left with only a General Manager in position.

From then on, upon our group challenging the company yet again through our anonymous ally, we received an extensive letter written by Chris but with absolutely no new information on anything we asked for clarity on, plus a heavy dose of gaslighting. In this letter, among other things, he made it very clear that it was due to our actions that he was left on his own to deal with all of this, so we had to wait. So we waited. From what I know, later that summer a new Chair was appointed and a new group of people from around the sector were assembled to work on the Code of Conduct that everyone had been waiting for for so long.

Meanwhile, I would get occasional emails or calls from people I know in the sector saying that they had been either contacted by Chris with a job offer or been told to talk to me as they were considering working for him. I always told them what I knew. In March 2020, Lucy and I express concerns that there seem to be more and more people talking about Chris to us and the general consensus is that people are willing to consider working with him. We worry that a whitewashing of this situation is at play and wonder how much people actually know. We decide to meet but then lockdown happens, and honestly the abrupt change of life is enough to make you forget about it. I don't think I remembered the story until much later in the year when I started to be contacted again by people who were pondering, yet again, working with him.

Early in March 2021, Lucy and I decided we should reconnect and meet up again, and potentially get the group back together again to check on how everyone was doing.

Then, in late May 2021 upon my return to the UK to work on a project, out of the blue, I got an email from Maddy that he had been arrested. She says in the email that I was right about his character and the danger he presents. I went into shock, my whole body shut down and I slept throughout the whole weekend (I don't think I was awake for more than 6 hours the whole weekend, and I have friends who can attest to that). It has been hard to breathe again ever since then, I have a constant feeling of anxiety and have gone back on really high medication.

The group decided to meet again, to talk about this new development, this time with Maddy and Lucy directly in the group as well. Honestly I was both relieved and frightened. Relieved because, even though I do not believe in the institution of the police or the act of policing, I knew that some form of accountability could come from that. Frightened because I had no idea what was coming towards us, what violence was about to be published online. Also, he was a fucking paedophile, and I had been abused by paedophiles from a young age, so PTSD kicked in, big time.

Just before the group was about to reconvene for the first time in over a year, news of his suicide came through. I cannot tell you how glad I am that we were all together in that room, for it felt like everything around us was burning and we at least had each other, yet again. Social media was rife with celebrations and stories about how moved people were by Chris and his work.

When news came out of his paedophilia, there were various people publicly standing by him, some even accusing me and/or our group of driving him to his death (I have the screenshots). Others sought to protect his legacy or even his profile, stating that it was outrageous he was being defamed when he could no longer challenge those accusations. Others, prominent figures in the sector, wrote comments under press articles on how he had been a victim of so-called cancel culture, like Kevin Spacey and other abusers (and yes, I also have these screenshots saved). To them, I say that I hope that soiling yourself online to protect an abuser was worth it. There will always be people whose first reactions will be to either place blame on the victims or create doubt. Many of those who levelled abuse at us throughout these years, were these kinds of people.

Yet there we were, the only people who had been challenging the bastard for years, all in different parts of the world, in a zoom room talking about ways we could support each other moving forward.

A few things became clear in that meeting:

1. We needed help and counselling both as a group and individually. The toll on all of us was immense.

Not only was the group already facing a history of sexual abuse, coercion and gaslighting among us from him, we were also grappling with the newly learned fact that most of the work we had done was deeply tainted by his paedophilia. A whole new angle had descended upon us and this had horrendous impact on our perceptions of what had happened over the years.

2. We needed to do something to bring some light into this story. There are so many grey areas, so much misinformation, too many lies told and believed. That’s what he wanted, so we should do the opposite.

3. We could not let his legacy be one of a ‘genius’ like so many other stories of abusers. We needed to ensure that Chris wasn’t another isolated case in the sector, and that in fact, it was a sector issue that we needed to tackle.

Every other month we hear stories in the press, or by word of mouth, of abusers in the sector. Abusers of all kinds: sexual abusers, racists, xenophobia, classism, etc etc etc. We hear them all, and we all get outraged, but then the story disappears and no one talks about them any more, until a new abuser comes to light for a few days and then it all vanishes again.

We asked ourselves the question: following the #metoo movement, what exactly has happened in the arts sector to better protect our people? Not just the actors in the audition rooms, or the artists just leaving university looking for a way in, but the techs, the stage managers, the company directors, or the box office staff? Nothing.

Where are the systems for us to turn to when we inevitably get abused sexually, or coerced into doing harm to others, or gaslit into depression? Where are the mechanisms that hold power to account in real terms, other than going to the press or the police? Neither of those are safe options, specially for women, queer, trans, black and minority ethnic, migrant or working class people. So what do we do to hold abusers to account, when there are no safe systems to report the abuse that we have to endure on a daily basis? And yes, it is everywhere. You know this, and admitting it is perhaps the first step. Talking about it is perhaps the second. The third is working for collective action and system change. Nothing else will do it, I’m afraid.

It fucks me up to know this, but I also know that had the majority of this group been women, or people of colour, or migrants, or primarily trans people, the following would have been much, much harder to achieve. While our group includes people who fall into those categories, the majority is white, British and male, and that is not lost on me. On top of that, some of us already had plenty of contacts and security in the sector to make this happen too. Most survivors don’t have any of these privileges, and if anything, let this be a fucking lesson so that others with less, can have equal access to the bare fucking minimum.

Here is what we did:

1. We had meetings with venues, individuals and other institutions and begged support in two ways:
   1. Financial contributions to secure trauma support for individuals who had been abused (that we knew of).
   2. Access to rooms with key industry people that could allow us to change some specific industry policy that were preventing victims of abuse from coming forward. Luckily, some of these came through, though certainly not nearly enough. Venues like the Royal Court Theatre, Theatre in the Mill, the Royal Exchange and the Yard theatre supported us enough for us to move forward. Others backed away cowardly, or only offered moral support. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate moral support. But we desperately need material support too. Trying to get resources and help took a lot of time and work, as theatre organisations did not have readily available options.

However, through different channels, we were able to resource support and to offer members of our group fully funded individual counselling and collective healing work via ELOP. We also contacted a few other people whom we knew had been abused by Chris and offered access to therapy via ELOP and through other ways. Some accepted, others did not for their own private reasons.

2. We were listened to by the Arts Council and invited to work with them on their safety policies, specifically Raising a Concern. Now, everyone can raise a concern about abusing practices occurring in spaces and/or projects, companies or events funded by the Arts Council and have their concerns investigated, with protections around them, and consequences to the abusers in the event of investigations concluding that the abuse occurred. It is nowhere near perfect, and there is a lot to still change, but it is a start. I wish we would do more, but right now we’re exhausted.

3. We reached out to previous board and company members of the company, with varying degrees of success. Earlier this year we met with some former staff/freelancers and we listened to each other and learnt more about what had happened in their experiences. We do not agree on everything and certainly, I am still quite unsure about a lot of what was said then and how things played out. However, the last two Chairs of the board continue to not respond to us to this day, and have made it clear to others that they see themselves as having no responsibility for any of this, and therefore do not want to get involved in any way. No care, no interest, hands washed, etc. Communications from us were unanswered by them throughout the years and especially coldly since his death.

Now that the process is coming to an end, we needed some form of collective closure. The grey areas are still all over this story, and perhaps will always be there. Others have told their side, and that is to be respected too. Perhaps this story will never leave us, and that is a burden that none of us asked for, nor do any of us deserve this. But many out there are still looking for closure, and I am sorry we haven't been able to get to everyone with our support or space. There were just too many people and too many different stories for us to be able to collect them all.

Which is why we are going public now. To shine some light on an impossible situation that marked so many in so many different ways, and perhaps to get some collective healing together, even if in an imperfect way. It is also not enough: many stories, including some from our group, are still to be told – but that is their story to tell, and we will be here to support them when or if that happens.

Finally, we need sector change. The longer we delay this, the longer Chris-like figures will continue to abuse others. While we can’t protect everyone, we can certainly install the tools to deal with situations like this promptly, and to the best of our abilities. We’ve spent the past 5 years doing what we could to the best of our abilities, and it is still not enough.

Personally, I can't tell you how proud I am of our group. We held each other in the worst of times, in our own time and we worked to be able to provide for each other and for others beyond us. We did it in our own time (none of us got paid for any of the care and fundraising work we’ve done over the past few years, just to make that clear!) and we never backed away from challenging moments, or the violence inflicted on us by him or those who fought to protect him or his work.

This to me is what queer solidarity is.