Talk:Jeremy Spencer

Untitled

The "hall of fame" external link showed that the band AND its key members were specifically honored. On that basis I suggest restoring it.--Kibbitzer 30 June 2005 06:11 (UTC)

• Fair enough. --Monger 30 June 2005 12:28 (UTC)

Album title correction

The solo album of 1972 is titled "Jeremy Spencer and the Children"—Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.236.129.91 (talk • contribs) 03:08, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Alan Ward

This piece about Spencer being identified as being involved in child abuse confuses me slightly. If he wasn't charged, then how is this allegation proven? Spencer hasn't answered these allegations as far as I know (if so, where is his statement?). Surely if there's a case for him to answer, then charges would have been pressed? How far is this from libel? Bretonbanquet 00:13, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Accurately reporting the facts does not constitute libel. Is is an undisputed fact that Lord Justice Ward's 1995 judgement has the following information about Mr. Spencer:

THE ORAL EVIDENCE OF CHILD / ADULT ABUSE
8. MS. Her father is Jeremy S. [Jeremy Spencer] of Music with Meaning. Her mother is Dawn, a European Shepherd. … She said in her affidavit: From my earliest memories until my time in India, sexual activity pervaded The Family. Instances that stand out in my mind are as follows:-
"My mother and my father frequently had sexual intercourse and performed oral sex with each other and with other people in the same room as us children, regardless of whether we were awake or asleep. I distinctly remember my father having sexual intercourse with Faithy Berg when we lived in a caravan in Greece. I was around four years old at the time."
At the age of 6 she had to use both hands to masturbate Timothy in his 20's or 30's, ex-Vietnam veteran. At the same age she had to "help her father [Jeremy Spencer] out" which meant caressing him and mutual masturbation. From the age of 7 her step father made her masturbate him. She later told Mary Malay about her step father but not about her father because she liked him: "at least," she said, "he did not beat me".
THE LEADERS' INVOLVEMENT IN SEXUAL ABUSE
8. Jeremy S. [Jeremy Spencer]
His own daughter with understandable reluctance complained that he abused her as I find he did. He also abused MB. Music with Meaning was a particularly corrupt and corrupting organisation. He played a central part in it.

Just because Mr. Spencer has not been charged with or convicted of any crimes related to the sexual abuse of his children and other minors does not mean that Lord Justice Ward's ruling is libelous. I do think the article would benefit from the above quotes so the specific allegations, and evidence presented by Justice Ward is clear. Manicmoe 08:06, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Just because Ward's ruling may not be libellous, it doesn't mean it's correct. A good way to prove his findings are correct would be to actually prove them, and that hasn't been done. I just think it seems unfair to include allegations against someone that haven't been proven. If this was decent evidence, why haven't charges been brought against Spencer and this evidence used against him? Is it because this evidence wouldn't stand up? All this seems to be is someone's word backed up by a judge, against someone else who isn't there to defend himself. It seems a bit one-sided to include this without some kind of addition to state that this evidence as found by Ward is not proven in any legal way. Bretonbanquet 14:25, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Bretonbanquet: Your statement that the allegations against Mr. Spencer have not been proven is an opinion. After reviewing the evidence, including the statements (and in some cases, sworn testimony) of the alleged victims, the ruling of Lord Justice Ward, pornographic video cassettes produced by The Family which feature Mr. Spencer, his daughter and 2 other children he allegedly abused (by exposing himself to them, having sexual activity in their presence, having them perform in video taped pornographic strip teases, having sexual contact with them, etc.), I also have an opinion about whether the allegations against Mr. Spencer have been proven. However, neither my personal opinion or yours (or that of any other contributor) belongs in a Wikipedia article about Mr. Spencer. What belongs in the article are the facts about Mr. Spencer and not our personal opinions about those facts. It is a fact that at least 3 people, including Mr. Spencer's daughter, have accused him of sexually abusing them when they were children, that Lord Justice Ward found their testimony credible and that other witnesses and video tapes corroborated their accounts. The article makes it clear that he has not been charged with any crime. Due to obstacles such as the statute of limitations, it is very unlikely that Mr. Spencer will ever face criminal prosecution for incidents of child sexual abuse that were not reported to a law enforcement agency until the applicable criminal statute of limitations had expired and happened more than 20 years ago in countries (such as Greece) that, unlike the U.K., have a relatively short limitations period for such crimes. Manicmoe 07:10, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Manicmoe: You have just introduced a lot of information not previously presented. On the basis of the level of information that was previously available to me, I don't feel that I was being unduly opinionated. It was a reasonable point to make that evidence had not been effectively explained. You have just said that you have been able to review all the evidence and I know you will appreciate that I, nor anyone likely to be reading this article, will not have had that opportunity. Your introduction of the video tape aspect casts a wholly different shadow on the information given, and it would be worth citing full sources for that in order to add strength to what you have said. Anything else you may be able to cite should also be added, either here or in some other relevant place, in an effort to provide a fuller picture.

I'm sure you will understand that information of this nature requires as much detail as possible for the purposes of a Wikipedia article. I fully refute that I was expressing a personal opinion. My level of knowledge extends only to Spencer's musical career - I don't really know anything about this case, so my only opinion was that it was not being fully explained. Bretonbanquet 09:33, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Justice Ward also specifically requested that those identified in his document by initials not be indentified further in any other way. I think this wikipedia entry violates that request.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.97.89.104 (talk • contribs) 20:15, 22 October 2006

Lord Justice Ward identified Jeremy Spencer by full name rather than initials. There are a number of text versions of the Ward judgment in which the name is inexplicably edited to read "Jeremy S." but this is not found in the original printed version that was released to the public. You may verify this at http://www.xfamily.org/index.php/Complete_Judgment_of_Lord_Justice_Ward and http://media2.xfamily.org/docs/legal/uk/ward-judgment/ward-judgment-scan-low.pdf (296 pages, 25MB)Manicmoe 01:39, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Someone has come forward to state that Spenser abused children in this cult

Daily Mail 13th July 2007 "By Celeste Jones. Born into an evil cult, called the Children of God, sisters Celeste, Kristina and Juliana Jones were abused from the age of three. Torn from their parents, their childhood was dominated by the warped cult leader David Berg. How could a man stand by while his 11-year-old daughter was effectively raped by another man? The former Fleetwood Mac band member Jeremy Spencer was a member of the cult. On the regular dates we had, he would play a tape of saxophone music. The routine was, by now, familiar - undress, pray, kiss and then perform lewd acts for him. "—Preceding unsigned comment added by 204.250.153.2 (talk • contribs) 15:02, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

I cleaned it up, put in more context, and sourced the quote. Take a look and tell me what you think. Joie de Vivre° 15:44, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject class rating

This article was automatically assessed because at least one article was rated and this bot brought all the other ratings up to at least that level. BetacommandBot 17:05, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

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BetacommandBot (talk) 23:52, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Allegations of abuse

It is highly unacceptable to have uncited sentences, paragraphs and even sections on this issue. Each statement needs carefully citing as it could potentially constitute libel. I am amazed that this has been allowed to remain for so long. Tom Green (talk) 13:19, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

I agree. This section of the article requires extremely careful sourcing. Some paragraphs have no citations whatsoever. This will need to be addressed or it risks deletion. It might not be a bad idea to take it higher up and get an admin to look at it in order to avoid the risk of libelling Spencer. Bretonbanquet (talk) 13:29, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

I have added more references in addition to the many that were already there. By definition, something that has been proven to be true is not libel. The allegations against Mr. Spencer are not vague but extremely detailed and explicit and based on verifiable information from reliable sources such as court records (including excerpts from 6 pages of a 295-page ruling by Lord Justice Ward), newspaper articles and published books (including "Not Without My Sister" published by HarperCollins in 2007 and which underwent a thorough and word-by-word review by a team of top lawyers in the United Kingdom and the United States before it was published) which is referenced numerous times in the section of the article concerning these allegations. This information has been publicly known for many years and the reason Mr. Spencer has not sued the people (including Lord Justice Ward, his wife, his daughter "MS," Merry Berg, Celeste Jones and others) who have accused him of child sexual abuse and those (including HarperCollins, the Daily Mail and a number of other newspapers and magazines) who have published information about these allegations is because the evidence is voluminous and irrefutable. Wikipedia has nothing to worry about because the information in this article is accurate and very well-sourced. However, I do think it is libelous, defamatory and highly irresponsible to accuse Lord Justice Ward and the people who testified under oath, spoke publicly and published statements, regarding alleged child sexual abuse by Mr. Spencer, of perjury, judicial misconduct and other crimes without offering a shred of evidence. Manicmoe (talk) 13:14, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

No one has accused anyone of anything like that. In a subject matter of this nature, each statement, even sentence, requires a source - even if it is one that has been used multiple times. Tom Green (talk) 08:57, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

You wrote that "[e]ach statement needs carefully citing as it constitutes libel." Thus, your accusation was that these statements about Mr. Spencer constituted libel. For them to be libelous, they have to be false and accusing those (Lord Justice Ward, Fiona Spencer (Jeremy Spencer's wife), Mery Berg, Celeste Jones, MS (Jeremy Spencer's daughter), The Family/Children of God, Harper Collins, The Daily Mail, some Wikipedia contributors and others) who made or published these statements of libel implies (depending on which person or organization is involved) that they are also being accused of the other things I mentioned such as perjury, judicial misconduct and other crimes. To prove that all the allegations of child sexual abuse against Mr. Spencer are false and that making them constitutes libel, one would have to prove the existence of a vast and extraordinary conspiracy involving dozens of people (including those who testified under oath in a court of law) and the creation of a huge amount of phony evidence (including many hours of video footage). Asserting that all these allegations constitute libel is an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence before it is made. If statements in this or any other Wikipedia article constitute libel, the only remedy is to remove them and careful citing is not going to make any difference. Of course, in this case it is absolutely clear that nothing in the current revision of the article constitutes libel. However, I see now that you didn't really mean that these statements constituted libel but something else entirely which your second comment makes clear and is a position that I generally agree with. I am not sure if every single sentence needs to have its own footnote but that is easily done since there is at least one (and in some cases as many as 6) corresponding source for every single sentence. So, if I have understood your position correctly, I believe we are in agreement. Manicmoe (talk) 18:56, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Unencyclopedic

I know Wikipedia enjoys these long controversy sections, but the allegations of abuse section needs to be summarized and all the various participant statements moved to a more appropriate place. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 6.3.55.1 (talk) 21:29, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

I have removed a great deal of cruft. If you really need to expand the section, please do so, but a list of he-said she-saids, particularly one that takes up more than half the entry, is unencyclopedic and should be avoided. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 6.3.55.1 (talk) 19:46, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Anticipating complaints and reversions of the above IP editor's recent edit reducing the section to one paragraph, he/she clearly did post here attempting to start a discussion, and nobody joined in, or objected. The quoted sections were not necessary, given that it's all there to be read in the references, and the whole section was unnecessarily detailed and long-winded. I suspect that some editors will expand the section again, but it needs to be more encyclopedic. Bretonbanquet (talk) 19:50, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

The White Album

Jeremy Spencer's 1970 "Jeremy Spencer" album has apparently been reissued on CD (in the UK?) by FootPrint Records (FPR 29004). Not sure how official it is. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 6.3.55.1 (talk) 23:15, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

I think it's a pirate thing. I'll ask him. Bretonbanquet (talk) 23:51, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

TheJeremySpencer Youtube Channel

Not sure if you want to list it but :

http://www.youtube.com/user/TheJeremySpencer

Honemelgren (talk) 13:09, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

"best known"

No-one's yet explained the reason for their desperation to have this phrase in the article. It is an assumption, an opinion, and what you would need to turn it into a fact would be a global poll asking a representative sample of the population what they know him for, which of course does not exist and never will exist. At a conservative guess I'd say 99% of the world's population would never even have heard of him anyway. NPOV requires that you state the facts and don't judge them. What next? The Moon, best known for being the Earth's largest natural satellite? Berlin, best known for being the capital of Germany? This inanity needs to stop. 190.162.52.196 (talk) 04:21, 18 June 2013 (UTC)