Baby Reindeer (Netflix)

[frogwoman]

He might have successfully done that with the rapist, but he really didn't try with the stalker, and did actually bring other people into the spotlight that way.

It's pretty much impossible to have sympathy for the stalker, given what she did actually do (the thousands of emails and phone calls, which she doesn't seem to regret at all. They aren't trivial). But a major TV show really shouldn't be able to invent a sexual assault, invent a serious physical assault and add a criminal conviction and say it's "a true story." Even if we don't like the person concerned.

I didn't know the sexual assault was made up?

 

[krtek a houby]

I didn't know the sexual assault was made up?

Neither did I

 

[Thora]

I didn't know the sexual assault was made up?

I can't remember where I read it now, but I think the suggestion is that Martha grabbing his genitals didn't happen (he says she pinched his bum on occasion though) and the bit where she tried to gouge his eyes didn't happen, and of course the convictions didn't happen.

 

[kabbes]

It’s all in his witness statement. According to that, she did plenty.

 

[Thora]

What she did was awful, but it seems a crazy decision of Gadd/Netflix to fictionalise and exaggerate so much except for who the real Martha is, and then label it as a true story rather than inspired by or based on true events. I can't understand why the only detail they would change about her is her name, the story would have worked just as well if she was a skinny American.

 

[scifisam]

I didn't know the sexual assault was made up?

It was. Pinching his bum does count as sexual assault too IMO, but it's not on the same level as following him down to a canal, forcing him up against a wall and trying to wank him off against his will, which is what the show portrayed. The serious physical assault on him and his GF didn't happen at all (I was baffled why, in the show, that didn't lead to them calling the cops). Nobody's denying this. BTW - Gadd and Netflix are open about them being invented for the show.

 

[editor]

Depends what you mean by "previous". She might not have had a criminal record for stalking but she had allegedly stalked before.

So in its colloquial definition, she may well have had "previous":

MP's widow who says she was stalked by real-life Martha 'to sue' Fiona Harvey

Interesting article that:

The wife of an MP, who claims to have been the target of the real-life individual that inspired the Baby Reindeer character Martha, is considering legal action against Fiona Harvey following her interview with Piers Morgan.

Laura Wray, 62, is contemplating suing after Ms Harvey made allegations on the programme which had a viewership of 13 million that she was harassed by her.

The series subtly suggests Martha's past history of stalking. Gadd's character looks up her name online and discovers a newspaper article - created for the show - with the headline: 'Sick stalker targets barrister's deaf child'.

This barrister is Mrs Wray, an advocate in Scotland whose family - including her disabled son Frankie - was targeted during the stalking campaign.

In 2002, the situation escalated when she and her husband were accused by Ms Harvey of assaulting three year old Frankie, who was born with a rare chromosomal disorder.

Mrs Wray then obtained an interim interdict in court which stopped Ms Harvey from further harassing her.

 

[editor]

I've had relatively low level experiences of being stalked as a result of this site and it is a truly horrible experience.

Some long term urbanites may remember a character who would appear in the urban chat room telling everyone he was taking over the site from me. He would email and call me at all hours - and my girlfriend - and he created an impressively long and mainly factual Wikipedia page about me (apart from the weird stuff).

 

[Epona]

I've been stalked for no other reason than I was polite to a bloke at a bus stop once when he said hello to me, and he followed me home when I was travelling that route twice a week for three years.
No he never did any violence towards me but it doesn't make it less terrifying.

Do people think that there should be some sexual or physical assault before it's OK to call someone a stalker?

 

[frogwoman]

I've been stalked too by an ex who wouldn't let things go when I was in my late teens and it was really scary. Nothing actually ever happened but stuff he said made it quite clear that he wanted it to.

 

[editor]

The alleged stalker was interviewed on Piers Morgan.

 

[scifisam]

I've had relatively low level experiences of being stalked as a result of this site and it is a truly horrible experience.

Some long term urbanites may remember a character who would appear in the urban chat room telling everyone he was taking over the site from me. He would email and call me at all hours - and my girlfriend - and he created an impressively long and mainly factual Wikipedia page about me (apart from the weird stuff).

Yes, it's not a minor thing at all, That sort of experience is why I tried to make it clear in my own posts that what Fiona Harvey did do (and doesn't seem to deny) is serious.

It's just that I don't think adding extra offences onto it is justified on this particular occasion. The extra things added were really significant, and the TV show did say it was true. Maybe she had threatened to do those things, or other things she had said made him believe she would do them, so it's not like it came out of his pure imagination, or maybe it was due to his other experiences that he wrote the character that way. But either way she didn't actually do them, and he didn't change her identity.

Allowing Netflix to get away with it would set a precedent that someone who was, well, a stalker or another type of abuser, could do the same to a person who was innocent of anything at all. It wouldn't help any victims - quite the opposite.
.

 

[editor]

The alleged stalker was interviewed on Piers Morgan.

It gets a bit weird when she says that she had 4 or 6 different phones and six different email addresses.

 

[Thora]

I don't think anyone has doubted that she's a mentally ill stalker.

 

[Epona]

I mean I find it worrying but typical that she's been the one in the focus of finding out who she is and possibly less well disguised than the apparently famous media person who allegedly was involved in grooming, drugging, and raping Gadd.

But that doesn't mean she's a blameless victim.

I think the point about the court case is because punitive damages have already been ruled out, she'll have to demonstrate loss of earnings or financial impact of being identified in order to get a payout, and it will just be in terms of what she can prove she's lost out on financially due to the untrue parts of the allegations.

 

[metalguru]

It's just that I don't think adding extra offences onto it is justified on this particular occasion.

The “particular occasion” is a high profile dramatisation with high viewing figures by a global media streaming company with 277m paid subscribers across the world as of 2024, and which has been extensively covered by the media.

I think she’s got a good chance of getting significant damages for mental distress caused.

 

[kabbes]

Before the discussion gets too carried away with speculation, let me just quote you this

Under California law, a plaintiff cannot receive more than $250,000 in non-economic damages, no matter how injured they were.

Is Emotional Distress a Personal Injury? | The May Firm Attorneys

Have you suffered from emotional distress after a personal injury or car accident? Our expert legal team is here to help. Call The May Firm Injury Lawyers today!

mayfirm.com

That bit of code relates to healthcare providers. Not sure how it generalises more widely. But it gives you context for how worried or relaxed Netflix might be right now.

 

[Silas Loom]

Before the discussion gets too carried away with speculation, let me just quote you this

Is Emotional Distress a Personal Injury? | The May Firm Attorneys

Have you suffered from emotional distress after a personal injury or car accident? Our expert legal team is here to help. Call The May Firm Injury Lawyers today!

mayfirm.com

That bit of code relates to healthcare providers. Not sure how it generalises more widely. But it gives you context for how worried or relaxed Netflix might be right now.

The award of costs is going to hurt them, though.

 

[kabbes]

The award of costs is going to hurt them, though.

“Hurt” in the context of their benefits from making an Emmy award-winning show?

 

[Petcha]

Baby Reindeer was wrongly billed by Netflix as a ‘true story’, judge finds

Fiona Harvey, the inspiration for Martha, can proceed with defamation lawsuit after judge agrees the show suggested she was convicted for stalking creator Richard Gadd

www.theguardian.com

“There is a major difference between stalking and being convicted of stalking in a court of law,” he wrote. “Likewise, there are major differences between inappropriate touching and sexual assault, as well as between shoving and gouging another’s eyes. While plaintiff’s purported actions are reprehensible, defendants’ statements are of a worse degree and could produce a different effect in the mind of a viewer.”

If you believe Gadd, he was opposed to the wording at the start of the show about it being a true story. So clearly that wasn't just an oversight by the producers, it was fully intentional and probably the subject of much discussion. I mean I doubt they could have predicted this would become their biggest show but still seems a bonkers decision.

 

[Silas Loom]

“Hurt” in the context of their benefits from making an Emmy award-winning show?

They make money from subscribers, not shows. Marquee content may drive subscriptions or at least prevent churn, but there isn’t a specific revenue line for Baby Reindeer. There was a cost line, though, which would have been impressively low if they had been more careful, and will now look considerably less healthy.

 

[kabbes]

They make money from subscribers, not shows. Marquee content may drive subscriptions or at least prevent churn, but there isn’t a specific revenue line for Baby Reindeer. There was a cost line, though, which would have been impressively low if they had been more careful, and will now look considerably less healthy.

Netflix know fine well exactly how their subscription base responds to different types of marquee content. Their whole thing is the use of big data to identify exactly this kind of thing. There’s no way that they aren’t fully aware of how the massive success of this show translates into dollars. And labelling things as “true stories” will be part of that. You think that Netflix insisted on doing that on a whim?

 

[Plumdaff]

Fargo claims to be a true story and is yet to be sued by the North Dakota Tourist Board.

Facile, I'm sorry, but this is neither the first or last 'true' story in which the story has been interpreted for television, in fact, this has been amended less than most. It's perhaps the first in the Internet age where it was easy enough to track down the most disturbed of the abusers, and may lead to a bit of blurb inserted at the end of whatever amended story becomes a big hit next.

 

[Petcha]

Fargo claims to be a true story and is yet to be sued by the North Dakota Tourist Board.

Facile, I'm sorry, but this is neither the first or last 'true' TV or film story in which the story has been interpreted for television, in fact, this has been amended less than most. It's perhaps the first in the Internet age where it was easy enough to track down the most disturbed of the abusers, and may lead to a bit of blurb inserted at the end of whatever amended story becomes a big hit next.

Fargo said it was 'Based on True Events' - which in itself is pretty questionable but gets it off the hook with the lawyers I guess

 

[Plumdaff]

Fargo said it was 'Based on True Events' - which in itself is pretty questionable but gets it off the hook with the lawyers I guess

Fargo very famously starts the film and each TV season with the following;

“This is a true story. The events depicted in this film took place in [location] in [year]. At the request of the survivors, the names have been changed. Out of respect for the dead, the rest has been told exactly as it occurred.”

 

[Petcha]

Yes, I stand corrected

 

[Silas Loom]

Fargo is clearly and obviously joking, it’s irrelevant to the Baby Reindeer case.

 

[Plumdaff]

Fargo is clearly and obviously joking, it’s irrelevant to the Baby Reindeer case.

Hence the word facile...

 

[Silas Loom]

Netflix know fine well exactly how their subscription base responds to different types of marquee content. Their whole thing is the use of big data to identify exactly this kind of thing. There’s no way that they aren’t fully aware of how the massive success of this show translates into dollars. And labelling things as “true stories” will be part of that. You think that Netflix insisted on doing that on a whim?

Maybe. Most claims made by new media organisations about the amazing predictive power of their data are overblown. Netflix still commissions a huge number of turkeys and seems to have lost its ability to pick surprising winners. As far as understanding its subscribers goes, it is no better st suggesting what I might want to watch than Amazon is at suggesting what I might want to buy. The share price of both companies, though, is inflated by claiming to have an unassailable moat of customer data and algorithms to exploit it.

 

[kabbes]

It’s hard to predict how sympathetic a Californian jury will be to Harvey, but I suspect not very. They may take the view that she was jointly liable for any emotional distress as a result of her response — by showing no contrition for her actions and instead concentrating on the accuracy of precise details, she fed the cycle. They may take the view that once you’re labelled as a stalker, there ain’t much difference whether or not the label includes “convicted” in it. Either way, the judge has not left the door open for Netflix to feel this as much more than a gnat-bite. I’d be surprised if they didn’t have a budget in 8 figures annually for dealing with law suits. This will hit their 2024 provision, is all. They’re not going to be paying out tens of millions to Harvey.