No, I don't blame him either Maddie, but largely for the reasons I gave above. Schofield's damage limitation campaign is in full swing, and will take anything the boy says and twist it to their advantage.
The client list of Schofield's management team (for which his daughter works, incidentally) is massive and spreads across many sectors. They have issued a press release saying that they have cut contact with him following information that they have on him, but I wouldn't be surprised if they are working with him behind the scenes - clearly someone is co-ordinating it all, whether it is YMU or another company. Either way, they are powerful machines.
It is normal practice for such companies to use one client to help another, so if they can organise an interview by one of their own, it is not going to be 'probing'. Similarly, if someone comes forward with information that would damage one client, they can use another to neutralise it. They can push one story forward to eclipse an awkward one. That's how reputation management works. The boy wouldn't stand a chance, and when he was in favour he will have seen all of that in action, and know the score.
It may be that he is keeping his counsel for personal reasons. It may also be that he is keeping his powder dry (there is, apparently, an NDA in place that will expire soon), or it may be that something different will come to pass. Time will tell (or it won't, if Schofield's team can prevent it).
I know I'm cynical about this, and I know that it might seem as though I have it in for Schofield. I have no personal axe to grind at all, but I do know how these things work, and it's annoying to see the way this is playing out, with so many people falling for the spin.
From memory, the only things that have been publicly said against Schofield (unless people have dug deeper, where there is a lot more to be found, but that has been the case for years now) are that he resigned (or was sacked) from his role for lying about a 'relationship' with a young man who rose through the ranks because of his patronage, that Holly W has distanced herself from him, and that he is deeply distressed and threatening suicide. Oh, and that a very large number of people think he is an arrogant narcissist whose TV image is fake.
It can't be nice for him to have to listen to that, but come on - it's hardly persecution or likely to drive him to despair, is it? And given that he has put others through as much, there is an element of 'live by the sword, die by the sword' about it. Comments about Savile and similar are not suggesting that Schofield is the same, but that the cover-up by ITV (BBC in the case of Savile) is similar, in that people speaking up are silenced, which deters others from coming forward.
Yes, there has been a media storm, but so far it has stayed in its teacup. Whether it will stay there remains to be seen, but the outcome will be largely in the hands of the management companies who manipulate this sort of thing. If everyone stops talking about this and it drops from the news (as it has done since the Caroline Flack-referenced suicide threats), they will have won, and we will all be the losers, as it is important that we can believe at least some of what we see in the media, and the more our trust is broken, the less chance we will have of knowing what is going on (by which I don't mean people's sex lives, but much more generally than that).
Palestine Action activists guilty of criminal damage
