The Waxman Cometh: London’s Commissioner for Which Victims, Exactly?
Sean Parker
January 25, 2023
Claire Waxman is London’s first Victims Commissioner. In 2011, she won a case to overturn the decision not to prosecute her stalker, university friend Elliot Fogel.
Fogel was first convicted in 2003 over repeated phone calls. The former Sky Sports producer denied he had done anything wrong, but was convicted by a jury of stalking and breaching a restraining order.
Waxman was a contributor to a successful campaign for change in stalking laws, and in 2013 founded campaign group Voice4Victims to continue lobbying for legislation. V4V proposed victims’ rights amendments to the Policing and Crime Bill, passed in the House of Lords in 2016.
Also in 2016 V4V launched the Abuse of Process campaign, which aimed to tackle the problem of alleged victims being abused by alleged perpetrators through legal platforms. Whether this would be following verdict, when a complainant legally becomes a victim, is unclear. V4V also drafted the Sexual Offences Bill, to improve protection for alleged victims of rape and sexual assault. What, if any, connection Waxman has to Betsy Stanko (Operation Soteria grande fromage, charged with increasing UK sexual assault convictions) is as yet undeclared.
Waxman was subsequently reappointed by Sadiq Khan in May 2021. She claims to have undertaken work to transform the criminal justice system to provide a better experience for victims of crime, working alongside victims to amplify their voices, and promoting their interests throughout the ‘criminal justice journey’. Does this also include victims of false allegations of domestic violence and sexual assault, wrongful conviction or incarceration, or men and boys in general?
In December 2022 Waxman issued a series of social media posts that appeared to erase the existence of male victims of domestic abuse, and vilified men. Here are some examples:
- December 7: “Our campaign is making a real difference in our fight to end the epidemic of male violence against women and girls for good.”
- December 9: “We should reflect on Violence Against Women and Girls in the 21st Century, and the huge proportion of abuse that takes place online and using technology.”
- December 12: “Much more must be done to tackle the harmful behaviors of men.”
- December 14: “Zara’s future was stolen by a man with no regard for her life or the law.”
- December 18: “We are in an epidemic of violence against women and girls.” December 19: “Everyone has a responsibility to challenge misogynistic views and attitudes.”
Also in 2022, Justice Secretary Dominic Raab declined to renew national Victims Commissioner Dame Vera Baird’s contract. Baird is a well-known radical feminist of the ages. See False Allegations Watch‘s annotated notes on a statement given during her tenure.
According to sources Claire Waxman has been used by the legal-dominance feminist lobby to campaign against the recognition of Parental Alienation in the Domestic Abuse Bill. She allegedly went to the President of the Family Division with a list of names of professionals working on Parental Alienation cases. The source suspected that this was why he referred to people having their professional reputation destroyed in a key speech on Parental Alienation in October 2021. The President didn’t take any action.
So the Victims Industry rolls on unquestioned, due to nobody in power wanting to be seen as denying alleged victims justice. But there are many kinds of victims, and in a world where good is bad, right is wrong, left is right and male can be female, there are also potentially 8 billion victims.
Subjectivity ultimately goes in only one direction – inwards; and let it not be forgotten that prisons also are full of ‘victims’. Those who are charged with creating alleged victims are by and large victims themselves, and even if they claim not to have been, have possibly not yet been correctly coerced into seeing themselves that way.
As is increasingly the case, it’s the terminology that’s the problem: If victimhood is seen as a monetisable virtue, then the image of wrongdoing, pain and suffering must be maintained at all costs, and for as long as possible. Otherwise any possible pretence or change of state might be seen through, and fatal doubt sown. Using negative experience as an emotional crutch is a very dangerous business, as crying wolf is a one-way street; once done, rarely recovered from. And don’t even start on the potential false memories in historical cases, or the social contagion of a million believed stories becoming the industrialised wheels before the new culture-wars ambulance-chasers (MeToo lawyers and their ilk).