IT'S ABOUT TIME SOME OF THE 'MIGHTY' FALL

So Ron Brierley has fallen.

He's been sentenced to 14 months in prison after pleading guilty to three charges ( fourteen more were withdrawn) relating to having images of child abuse on his laptop. Police found more than 200,000 images and 500 videos on his laptop and electronic storage devices depicting child abuse material. In total, he was charged over 46,795 images found.

Naturally his well-paid lawyers are  are already launching a challenge against the sentence in the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal. He will be eligible for parole in May next year.

NZ HERALD - BRIERLEY

Here are some excerpts:

Friend and barrister Thos Hodgson wrote that  Brierley was a "broken man" and would spend his twilight years in extreme distress and the subject of public ridicule.
"All his kindness and generosity and good works will forever be overshadowed by those revelations concerning his possession of child abuse material," he said.

Well, tough shit. It seems that everyone who really know him are well aware that for all his adult life he has had a predilection for underage girls.

Yvonne van Dongen, who wrote Brierley's unauthorised biography but did interview him for it, told Radio NZ after his arrest of Brierley's frequent trips to Thailand to meet teenage prostitutes.

"It was flagged in the book. There was no sense of shame. There was no 'don't write that'. I am not surprised given that he had a predilection," she said.

The 1990 book, Brierley: The Man Behind the Corporate Legend, said of the trips to Southeast Asia: "Most Western social and moral conventions are meaningless in Asia and, like many Western men, Brierley revels in the luxury of freedom run loose."

She wrote: "Brierley seems completely comfortable with this aspect of his life and showed no signs of embarrassment when teased about his frequent trips to Thailand.

"'You know how I like to visit the Buddhist temples', he told me with a knowing smile."

What a sleaze, made worse by the fact that he's been hiding in plain sight.

Brierley's lawyer, Tim Game SC, told the court his client has dealt with his attraction to prepubescent girls for many years, which he described as a "significant affliction" and "disorder".

"He has kept this to himself and has been troubled by it for a long period of time," Game said.

"Maybe because he's been forced to, he does appreciate the seriousness of the wrong done."

The court had also previously heard Brierley believed the images were "perfectly okay" and he looked at them for "recreation".

Lawyers have tried to use the defence that attraction to pre-pubescent girls is and affliction! For fuck's sake.

A lot of financial pundits are lauding Brierley as a hero for his business acumen and have talked about how important his companies have been. 

The company's primary objective was described as taking over or acquiring substantial holdings in certain public companies, in Australia and New Zealand, with a view to ultimate participation in management and the reorganisation and improvement of their finances.

This applied particularly to "dead" companies with considerable assets but low earning capacity because of poor management.

 This to me is like saying how wonderful and clever Donald Trump is. Sure Brierley made a lot of money. He also lost a lot of money. His coat-tailing followers also made a lot of money but let's not forget the thousands of New Zealanders who lost their jobs because of this corporate raiding pirate. He and his co-bandits sought out companies that had lots of assets but were performig poorly. They aggressively took shareholding and then forced out the owners and management, usually closing down the company and selling off the valuable bits (land, property and stock). Sure, as thepundits say the owners were' fat and failing' but many of these companies had long-time dedicated employees who were simply dumped. I can't see anything heroic in this.

So - good riddance to this once-was-a-sir. I'm all for the Me Too movement where these bastards get exposed and shamed regardless of who they are and how old they are.

We need to name, expose and shame a whole other lot of 'famous' people as well though. The ones who get away with it still and who have collectively done it for generations are rock stars and famous musicians.

It's good to see Robin Thicke get censured again for his drunken behaviour while filming the Blurred Lines video and R. Kelly convicted of sexual abuse but these are just tips of the iceberg.  Why haven't Mick jagger, Elvis Presley, Steve Tyler, Jimmy Page and many, many others been outed, shamed and prosecuted?

Old Mick saying things like "I wouldn't write a song like Brown Sugar today" just doesn't cut it when he's tried to edit the lyrics in that rock paedaphiliac anthem Stray Cat Blues See: HERE