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Hi, Real Crime Profiles. It's Laura here, jumping in ahead of the podcast we recorded with Mike Bude from Sword and Scale about male sexual victimization.

This is a really important topic with Brave Victims coming forward, and those who are interviewed on Episode 99 of Sword and Scale.

So if you haven't listened to it, we'd recommend listening to it before this next podcast.

But in light of the current context and what's happening present day, I wanted to acknowledge the Brave Victims coming forward,

sharing their stories of abuse by Harvey Weinstein and the impact that it's had on so many.

The words Me Too are trending on social media after women were asked to share if they had ever been sexually assaulted or harassed.

American actor, Adi Similano and Rose McGowan shared a screenshot of the suggestion and asked people to reply with the words Me Too to share the magnitude of the problem.

One more than 30,000 women replied by Monday morning and thousands more posted on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

This really underlines my point that I make in this podcast. We never truly know the full scale of abuse or the prevalence.

And I thought long and hard before I posted the words Me Too on my profiles as I'm sure many others will have.

In fact, I bleed through my own personal professional experience should be hard push to find a woman who's not being sexually assaulted or harassed.

Sadly, it's something that we've had to put up with to tolerate and deal with as it happens oftentimes in spaces where we should fill the safest.

It happens in our homes, our schools and our workplaces. And sadly, when we do speak up, we're rarely believed or listened to.

Questions are asked of us, what we did, what we said, what we were wearing.

And there's no accountability for the perpetrators who move onto other victims destroying more lives.

I really hope this creates a much needed cultural shift of asking questions of the perpetrator, the person who the blame shame and judgment should reside with.

We talk about Harvey Weinstein, the victims and the mountain metropolitan police service investigation into at least five sexual assault allegations in the UK in a separate podcast and give you our analysis and our thoughts on it.

And so I'm going to end with a call to action before we deep dive into the pod and ask you to sign our petition for serial perpetrators, serial stalkers and domestic violence offenders to be included on the violent and sexual offenders register and managed by the multi agency public protection arrangements.

Which will firmly place the focus on the perpetrator, which is exactly where it should be.

And now to this important podcast, thank you for listening for your support and please continue to review us and share us with others.

Because we didn't talk about that kind of stuff and I had no idea that boys could be victimized.

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