Roadwarrior

by Nick Molloy

  What I do like about the Guinness records is that it’s open to all. Anyone can have a go and they need to do it in a structured way, on film, with witnesses so cheating opportunities are restricted. Of course, not many people will be mad enough to continue deadlifting for an hour and there is therefore probably a lot of untapped people out there who could break it. Also, in deadlifting unlike bench press for example, you can’t cheat. The guy whose mark I initially broke also holds the bench press hour record. He’d obviously done it with a powerlifting suit on as his figures were far higher for the bench than for the deadlift (the average lifter is about 50% stronger in deadlift than bench). The deadlift is a great leveler.

  Also, I met Brian Shaw at an event in Birmingham in 2011. I asked him how he thought he’d get on if he was to take me on over an hour (Brian Shaw is 6 ft 8 and 440lbs – he also won World’s Strongest man that year). He thought about it and initially said he wouldn’t give me an answer as he’d need to try a session preparing for it just to see how it felt. Then he thought some more and said 100,000lbs in an hour is some going and he’d rather leave it well alone ! He probably didn’t know it, but he made my day. He’s an athlete I respect enormously, a heroic figure in the strength world. For him to say that, actually, it made my year !

  I have also broken two world records in indoor rowing. I only compete over the sprint distances (100m and 1 minute). I’m also proud of these because whilst not quite like running fast, where everybody has had a go, the machines are widely available and are at gyms all over the world. Also, there are numerous competitions and forums every month so there is a reasonable competitor base.

  I owe so much to stripping. It has allowed me for many years now to live out that athletic lifestyle that I long dreamed of, ever since I first went warm weather training with the Belgrave track team. I am not going to grow old wishing I’d been an athlete having been doing a job I hated. I only did that for a few years. If I have to return to it at some point at least I’ll have lived a little in between. Making a career from sport/athleticism is all I ever really wanted as a kid. Stripping has allowed me to fulfill that ambition and in doing so has removed the psychological ‘what if’ scars I would have had about moving to Wales when I was 10 and not being able to play football. I was bitter and twisted about that for years. I couldn’t help the feeling I had inside about it. Like a skilled surgeon, erotic disrobing has cut me open and removed that tumour. It’s so strange how life’s little twists and turns can have massive outcomes. What if I hadn’t gone for a sauna that day all those years ago ? I’d probably never have contacted the Rock of Ages who would never have pointed me in the right direction. I’d probably have a lot more cash but what an embittered individual I’d be ! I’m so glad I did go to the sauna that day.

  I must share with you the most disturbing and unsettling happening which occurred to me due to the publication of this manuscript. Conducting a recorded interview for the police should be a nerve wracking experience, particularly if you haven’t done one before. Usually this would occur after you have been arrested. In my case however, I was an innocent victim being treated as a suspect. The true criminal was snuggled up at home; warm and content, rubbing her hands together and praying to her new god………Harriet Harman.

  As I have said elsewhere, being a male stripper does have its darker side. It’s not all fun and games. Every celebrity probably receives their fair share of stalkers. Similarly, strippers seem to generate feelings of both love and hate in people. Those that love him can be overly amorous. Those that are jealous of him can turn nasty either in a sly way or an upfront confrontational way. The stripper is only a celebrity in the club he is in. He is therefore afforded none of the usual protections of celebrity. This can leave him vulnerable sometimes in the wake of the haters.

  I have always regarded these people as a necessary evil. They simply go with the territory. It isn’t necessarily that pleasant when somebody won’t leave you alone for hours on end, vandalises your car because you spurn their advances (no matter how gently you turn them down) or leaves you racist voicemails because their partner has taken an unwanted shine to you. However, in order to have the lifestyle I desired I would have to tolerate certain ‘pests’. I never even considered that the ‘pests’ would be life threatening or life changing. That all changed after the publication of Roadwarrior.

  Whilst getting ready for a late show in the Mardi Gras in Blackpool in 2009 I was approached by a very nervous looking management who told me that the police were outside wanting to speak to me and that they were not prepared to let the show start. I went and consulted with the said police. Apparently an allegation of rape had been made against me. Maybe I had been naïve not to expect this one day. A male stripper does receive more than his fair share of ‘minge’ benefits and what do they say about a woman scorned ? However, nobody in my immediate circle of friends would even contemplate doing something so malicious and nasty as to attempt to get an innocent person locked up over a false allegation. However, I’m not friendly with everybody I have ever slept with………

  I informed the two officers that I had nothing to hide and that I would help them fully with their line of enquiry. They seemed to sense I was telling them the truth. They took my details and informed me somebody would be in touch.

  I honestly thought nothing of it. I hadn’t done anything wrong, so I reasoned I had nothing to fear. The next day whilst up a mountain in the lake district I received a distressed call from my agent. The police were looking for me and had demanded my number. They had refused to hand it over under some legislation or other. I found the police behaviour curious as I given them my number the night before and it is was available anyway on my very public website. All they needed to do was google me and they would have my number. I guess the police are not always renowned for their powers of investigation.

  Anyway, I phoned them back. I was told that I was the subject of a very serious allegation and that I would have to come in and speak to them. I was due back in Blackpool to perform the next day, so I suggested after that. He couldn’t arrange it for that day as that was his day off. He also told me that performing back in the resident town of my accuser was a bad idea.

  I immediately protested. If I did not perform I would be letting somebody who had made a false allegation affect my income and livlihood and that was not acceptable (especially given the small and unstable nature of my income). The officer put it to me another way. In his ‘experience’ if I was to perform at the said venue my accuser might lie in wait for me and make another allegation, such as how I had threatened to have her killed. In his ‘experience’ if I was somewhere else with upstanding citizens who could verify my whereabouts she couldn’t do this. I interpreted this new approach to mean that the officer was actually on my side and probably didn’t believe what he had been told by my accuser. Still, I needed to come and talk to him. I enquired whether this could be done on the phone. That was a negative. I was being asked to attend the police station and give a voluntary interview. There was no forensic or medical evidence, I just needed to come and present my side of the story. I was told that I would be entitled to have a solicitor present (free of charge). I said that wouldn’t be necessary. A date was agreed for the following Friday. Given where I was performing that night, it would only mean a 160 mile round trip detour (instead of the normal 450 from my home).

  I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t bothered by the forthcoming interview. I have never done anything to land me in trouble with the police in my life (except traffic offences). It seems however, that I am a victim of crime at least once a year. In the preceding decade I have lost count of the bikes I have had stolen, cars broken into/stolen, etc. I have never seen any return on these goods or received any compensation for damaged cars. I have come to the conclusion over the years that the police appear more interested in sanctioned detections than actually catching criminals and preventing crimes. The thought that I could be about to become a sanctioned detec
tion, a statistic in Harriet Harman’s war on the male species began to creep into my usually very confident mind.

  I told my friends about what had occurred. The Fox worked for the police and was a rock throughout the entire process. He quickly poured cold water on my idea about talking to the police without a solicitor present. ‘What if they are trying to frame you?’ he pointed out. ‘You could unwittingly give them an angle from which to fabricate evidence’. He had a point. This is how Harriet would want them to act and think. I arranged for a solicitor to be present at the forthcoming interview.

  During the coming week I began gathering data and researching the area of false rape allegations. As I discovered there is very little in the way of support groups for men (Fathers for Justice being a notable exception). Yet, I continued to uncover horror stories of serial accusers and lives turned upside down by false allegations. Many men had lost their jobs, their wives and their lives as a result of the allegations made against them and the subsequent six month long probing by the police. Some of these victims were never charged, other were charged and acquitted due to a complete lack of evidence. It emerges that some of the women who falsely allege, do it time and time again. There are cases where women have accused different men of rape as many as EIGHT times. Yet, it is only after she has attempted this trick numerous times that the police have prosecuted her. There is no crime of false rape accusation. The only crime she has committed is that of wasting police time and perverting the course of justice. Rape is a heinous crime. Somebody who tries to get an innocent man convicted of a crime he didn’t commit is also committing a heinous crime. They should be tried as such.

  Mainly through the Fox I spoke to numerous friendly policemen about my upcoming trauma. The problem, it seemed, was more widespread than I suspected. Some were privately saying to me that up to 90% of rape allegations, in their opinion, were false. They spoke of going to see alleged rape victims to take statements and being unable to get the alleged victim to turn off an episode of Eastenders. If the boyfriend had come home late he became a rapist. If the boyfriend found out about her one night stand the other party became a rapist. One allegation was disproved because the two alleged attackers had filmed the whole consensual episode on a mobile phone. Laughably, she was not prosecuted. Some of my police friends seemed to think I would be arrested when I arrived at the police station. Harriet’s policy preferred this. Other seemed to think that if they were taking the allegation seriously I would already be in custody.

  My mind, as you might now be able to imagine, was overflowing with possible pit traps. Harriet, the then equalities minister, was committed only to increasing the number of rape convictions. In her world it appeared to be fine to sacrifice the innocent just as long as the numbers look good. The police files are littered with miscarriages of justice where they have nailed the wrong man to satisfy the numbers. I was and still am very nervous about this drive to improve the numbers.

  I arrived early and waited. My solicitor arrives and I watch, unbeknown to him, as he joked and laughed with various uniformed officers. I am just another number to him, a number that puts food on his table, courtesy of Ms Harman’s representatives. I am introduced to the two investigating officers. They seem convivial enough.

  For the uninitiated in these customs (as I most certainly was), let me explain how this works. First your solicitor is briefed by the officers of the accusation made against you (or I guess the charges if they are made). Then your solicitor speaks with you alone (nobody else present). Then finally, you are interviewed by the officers with the solicitor still present.

  Before the process begins, the officers inform me that as I am not under arrest and I am free to leave at any time. A good sign - I jump to the conclusion that they mustn’t believe her. When I am invited back into the room to begin dialogue with my solicitor he informs me that all things being fair and equal I shouldn’t have anything to worry about. Her statement is so sketchy and full of holes it is, in his opinion, laughable. According to her, sometime in the previous October or November (2008), I was invited to her house and stayed the night. The next day it was alleged that her mother and boyfriend left the room to go next door (a room separated from the room we were in only by a curtain) and during the time I was away I had violently thrown her about the room and raped her. Whilst I was doing this, the mother and her boyfriend, who were still in the next room, heard nothing.

  The first I was made aware of this fabricated incident was July 2009. To my surprise the alleged incident was actually first reported on the afternoon of March 28th. Perhaps it is a coincidence, but on the morning of March 28th the Blackpool Gazette ran an article on the publication of Roadwarrior entitled ‘The Asset Stripper’. Given that the alleged incident occurred over four, maybe five months before (she couldn’t remember), why she chose to report it to the police on that afternoon is open to interpretation. If a man is convicted of rape in a court of law, perhaps the average £11,000 paid out to the victim was a sufficient inducement for her to chance her arm. Alternatively, perhaps someone with a book out is meant to be loaded ? Perhaps the fact that I had previously had sexual relations with a woman who was no longer a friend of my accuser raised her ire ? Interestingly, the said former sexual liason had warned me shortly before this incident that somebody in Blackpool was looking to set me up. I dismissed this as the rantings of slightly unbalanced former jealous lover. She obviously knew what was about to go down.

  Either way, the police didn’t seem totally persuaded by the arguments of my accuser. At the end of all this, one of the officers asked me to step outside. Off the record, I was told to be careful. My accuser was considered ‘dangerous’ and was believed to be stalking me. She had apparently divulged to police my whereabouts on certain nights. Those whereabouts would usually be between me, my diary and the other performers.

  In one sense I could be deemed to have got off lightly. My initial fears about police corruption and the chasing of targets proved unfounded. On my visit to the police station I was treated with courtesy and respect by the investigating officers. However, leading up to the interview, let me assure you that I have never felt so vulnerable in all my time as an adult. I had read case after case where innocent men had been subjected to intense scrutiny and investigation for several months only to be tossed out the other side, victims of a false accuser. Nobody was giving these men their jobs back or helping to them to piece their broken lives back together. Their accusers had turned these men into victims. These men had been raped by a system devoid of equality. The equalities minister was offering no support or recompense. Instead she sought to elevate the suffering of the innocent. The guilty accusers meanwhile are allowed all too frequently to lie in wait for their next victim with little danger of retribution.

  However, there was a darker side to the police conduct. As the Fox informed me, because I hadn’t been arrested the police were under no obligation to keep me updated with their ongoing investigation. There was an allegation of rape and it was therefore only right and proper that they conducted an investigation. Whilst they are doing this it feels like an axe is hovering over your head. I could really relate to all the reports I had read of men who said their lives had been turned upside down. It is difficult to think of much else and it is very stressful.

  As it turned out the police clearly had no intention of updating me, it was me having to phone them and ask for updates. The first couple of months I called I was simply told investigations were ongoing. The final time I called I was told there was no case to answer and that such a decision was made SOME WEEKS BEFORE!!!!! I thought that was disgusting. I was driving home form a show the other night listening to the radio and a rape victim was complaining that there was no support network in place for victims. A police officer called in and refuted her allegation. I can’t comment on that particular case and I can only talk about my case. Considering I was the victim with a potentially very heavy axe hanging over me, one would have thought somebody from the investi
gating team would at least have had the decency to phone and inform me that there was no case to answer.

  I immediately enquired about whether they had arrested my accuser yet for wasting police time and perverting the course of justice. There was clearly no will to do so and I was then stunned when the officer began to try and lecture me on the moral merits of one night stands. His implication was that I had left myself open to this kind of thing by sleeping with women after gigs ! Now I don’t know what their investigation had revealed or who had said what, but I did make it plain that my perfectly legitimate sex life was really none of their business outwith of their investigation. Furthermore, they were side stepping their responsibility by refusing to go and arrest the real criminal. I was distraught that the stripper’s curse of imbuing jealousy in others had reared its ugly head yet again.

  Why this guy should take umbrance to the numbers on my bedpost was baffling and dismaying. To add insult to injury the officer with whom I had this conversation was soon to be arrested himself, thrown out of the force and convicted on charges that resulted in his imprisonment. He’d been having carnal relations himself with someone at the centre of an investigation and a couple of cases collapsed as a result. I know the police take a very dim view of their own exposing their ranks to charges of hypocrisy and he paid a heavy price. It seemed overly harsh to me but given what he was doing I found his tirade aimed in my direction unbelievable.