Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:00:14]:
You’re listening to the Keith Blakemore-Noble Radio Show. Interesting chats with interesting people about interesting things and no adverts. Here’s your host, Keith Blakemore-Noble. Hello, welcome. Welcome to another fantastic episode. We are talking about stalking. In this episode, my guest, Brad Burton. He’s been on here a couple of times in the past.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:00:43]:
Always great to have him here. Brad, you’ve only recently been able to start talking about this for legal reasons, but you’ve been the victim or one of several victims of a particularly nasty, nasty stalker, so before we explore that just give us a really quick overview of the situation.

Brad Burton [00:01:05]:
So obviously I’m the motivational speaker and for those that don’t know me, guess what? I’m a motivational speaker and for many, many years I go into audiences of strangers and I do my thing to kind of really throw a switch within individuals that they’ll make changes and some event. I was running my own private events before the pandemic. That’s how far back we go. 2019, I did an event over in Aston Villa football club. About 200 people there, exceptional all day event called now what? And in the audience was a lady, a lady called Sam Wall. Didn’t really know her. You know, when you’ve got 200 people in a room, you kind of don’t know everyone, you don’t see everyone, you kind of just do your thing and then no problems whatsoever. And then about two years later on the Internet was, she started a thread and this thread said, I’m being intimidated by it as someone.

Brad Burton [00:01:53]:
And you know, with Facebook, you know, you understand how these things work. Is that all the friends, friends on Facebook kind of piled in, you know, who is it? Sam, can we help? You know, and then the next day that, whilst that one’s kind of building up, she did another post to say, yeah, it’s a really high profile speaker. Once again, people powered on that. And then the third day, this is in 2021, so this is two years after or so after the event. Yeah, it’s a high profile speaker, most motivational speaker. And then the third comment down, somebody said, is it Brad Burton? And that was it. Whoosh. You know, I didn’t want to say and you know it then kind of because I was watching this myself, thinking, who is this? And then at some point I realised she might be talking about me.

Brad Burton [00:02:34]:
All completely made up. I poisoned the cat, put a tracking device on her laptop. I was in cahoots to unseat her, to ruin her business. And it just kept going. And going and going. And I kind of sent some legal letters to say, hey, guess what? This isn’t true. Of which she posted them. And then people kind of were saying, yeah, fight the good fight.

Brad Burton [00:02:54]:
I’m gonna fight this guy. He’s not gonna bully me into, into suppressing me. And this kept on, on, on and on. I left it, left it and left it. And then about six months later, and this was happening on a daily basis, around six months later, I went to the police. And that was four, four and a half years ago. And since that point, we’ve had a conviction, five guilties, harassment, malicious communications and stalking. And there’s not only made this, this.

Brad Burton [00:03:18]:
There’s actually several victims. But yeah, it’s been a really interesting. I say interesting. It’s been a really interesting and dark time.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:03:25]:
Yeah, I, I cannot even begin to imagine what, what, how any of that must have felt like. I mean, you, you said that you weren’t the only victim. Did you know this from, from, from the outset or.

Brad Burton [00:03:37]:
No, not at all. What happened is I put a post on after. This was getting quite heavy. I put a post on because. On the Internet to say, hey, guess what right now? Because people were saying to me, brad, is there any truth in this, you know, these allegations? And there. And I had no option other than to defend myself because it was really impacting this during the pandemic. This was really impacting my business when my business. I should have been kind of effectively trying to save my business and national networking business, which is where you and I met, called 4 Networking.

Brad Burton [00:04:06]:
And we was running thousands of breakfast networking meetings across the UK each and every year. And I should have been saving that during the pandemic, but instead my focus was kind of taken off to defend myself and my reputation. Really, really dark times. Sounding sincerely. And I mean that it’s. As a motivational speaker, I’m supposed to find the positive in everything. And this was really quite difficult to do.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:04:28]:
So, yeah, I, yeah, I remember seeing, seeing some of the stuff at the time as it was coming. I was like, well, that cannot possibly be true.

Brad Burton [00:04:40]:
It’s so alien, Keith. And that’s the thing is, you know, none of this was, it was doubly unfair because none of these allegations that she was kind of putting on me were, Were fair or legit. And, you know, you can contact the social media companies, which is exactly what we did, and nothing happens. So these posts, there was thousands of them, literally thousands of them across every format. It wasn’t just Facebook, it was LinkedIn. It was Instagram, it was Twitter and you’re trying to bat this off and you’ve got different audiences within each of them. And it got, like I say, really unreal there. Hence the reason I did the, the post.

Brad Burton [00:05:13]:
Like a post that said, hey, gu. What? Currently I’m going through a legal situation. None of this is true. And at which point a few people actually contacted me to say, is this the individual? Because they’ve been doing the same to me. So it wasn’t just me.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:05:27]:
Interesting, interesting. And I presume that must have, must have made a bit of a difference for you just to go, oh, I’m not the only one. This individual is.

Brad Burton [00:05:36]:
Well, you know, you think you’re going mad. And I mean that because every, you know, you. I followed what the Suzy Lamplugh trust said, which was, you know, anti stalking, which was to do this, to block them, to not engage with them. But the nature of social media and certainly the nature of having thousands of members on the network, I had no option. It was just, you know, even well meaning people were saying, have you seen what she’s wrote about you? I’d wake up in the morning and look at my phone, it’d be 20, 30, even 40 messages from people saying, have I seen what she wrote about me? Really, really, really difficult to navigate. It really was.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:06:11]:
Yeah, that must, that must be a really horrible side of it because so you go ahead, you, you block so you can’t see this really nasty stuff. And as you say, you get lots of well meaning people saying, oh, have you seen this? Have you seen this? Ah, there’s a reason I blocked her. I don’t want to see it.

Brad Burton [00:06:25]:
Well, you know, there was a reason I blocked her and, and I didn’t want to see it, but had an option because this would now get into a legal situation. So, you know, I did contact the police and you’d like to think that if I said something about you on social media that you’d tell the police and the police would come around in blues and twos and tell me to remove it and I’d rem. That would be the end of it. It didn’t work like that. You know, there’s nothing that you can do within the framework of the current legislation or laws that enables you to do anything other than just to sit there and soak it up. And there’s a 2% conviction rate for women versus men stalking. Less, less than 2%. And I think the reason that it is less than 2% is most people would blow the case by really Blowing up and trying to defend yourself on social media, which I initially, I did, if I’m honest, for the first very short term space at time.

Brad Burton [00:07:12]:
But no, you kind of just got to soak it up. And I think for me, the social media companies have to bear some kind of culpability here because we’ve got someone who’s facing six years in prison, I’ve had my life effectively ruined for four years of a reputation trashed, all because social media don’t want to act. And I think they want to keep themselves out of these, what they consider to be a dispute.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:07:32]:
Yeah. So you kind of let down by the, the legal system, which I guess it has to make sure it does things properly and takes its time. But from, from a victim’s perspective, that’s no, no consolation. And, and then the social media companies. So what happened when you, when you, when you contacted them?

Brad Burton [00:07:53]:
Nothing. As soon as you kind of report something, you get an automated response that says, hey, guess what? They don’t contribute any terms and conditions. Therefore, you know, but we have made the, we’ve made the call to block you, so you can’t say anything anymore. Do contact us again if anything else continues. Thousands of posts, literally thousands of posts. And they, you know, they kind of wash their hands of it. And I think that this is the really difficult thing in all of this is that fortunately I had the kind of mental faculties just to be able to get through this. But for somebody who doesn’t have a national network like I did, and, you know, hundreds of people kind of supporting looking out, for me, this would have been a completely different story.

Brad Burton [00:08:31]:
It could have ended tragic consequences. And I’m not saying that lightly. It could really genuinely could have been.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:08:36]:
No, absolutely. I mean, that could be enough to drive anyone to. Well, yes, we can all imagine. So the legal system was grinding along really slowly, as it always does, and the social media companies were less than helpful, worse than useless, basically, which they certainly seem to be when you report anything these days. Oh, that doesn’t contravene, really.

Brad Burton [00:09:02]:
I kind of get it because I think there’s going to be millions of scraps every single year on social media. You really don’t want to be the judge and jury on it. I get it. But this was a case where the police were involved and there was multiple victims and there was clear, we’d proven to LinkedIn specifically as he spoke to their complaints escalation team or whatever over America. And I’ve proven without a shadow of a doubt that this was not true yet. They chose to say nothing. And I think that this is the other thing is that there was hiding behind Irish law, and not only Irish law, also American law. And, you know, you’ve effectively got these kind of two moats before you get to British law.

Brad Burton [00:09:39]:
So it’s very difficult to defend against, it’s very difficult to go after them from a legal perspective, because one, they’ve got deep pockets and two, they can effectively squelch you in your business. But, yeah, very disappointing. Now, I think there’s a couple of turning points. One was I got contact by a friend of hers who was a school friend who’d been following this and actually was, you know, believing what she was saying. And then I think the penny dropped, that it was actually what she was saying. The other thing that happened was Panorama, the BBC TV current affairs program, the biggest one. They got in contact and they was following the case. They spent six months investigating this and proving that everything that was on that she said about the allegations was complete lies, 100 lies.

Brad Burton [00:10:24]:
You know, there’s no, no basis of any truth in it. None whatsoever. And obviously, look, I think there’s several things going on here in that this individual is clearly ill and I believe that due to the nature of the kind of pandemic, you know, it was a perfect storm because everyone was bored and, and looking at the screens. But also I think that the mental health services are probably under resourced as well and the police are. And you’ve got a 1980s police force trying to deal with a 2021 problem.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:10:55]:
Yes, that’s, that’s a really good point. They’re, as you say, under resourced across the board. So police under resource, which lets you down, and ultimately the mental health teams, etc, under resourced.

Brad Burton [00:11:09]:
That’s right.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:11:10]:
Have they been adequately resourced? Perhaps.

Brad Burton [00:11:14]:
Like I say, I think, I think there was a perfect storm. The police, the mental health services, the social media companies and, and somebody that had a. A commitment to kind of ruining my life and reputation for whatever reason. You know, this was somebody that I met for literally for 30 seconds, is a really famous photograph. Now, she asked for a selfie. Yeah. And you know, that was the only time I’d ever met the girl.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:11:36]:
Yeah, it’s crazy. Crazy. So with all of this going on, normally when, when any of us have stuff that’s going on, we can at least fall back on our friends for a bit of support. One of the things I noticed, which must have really twisted the knife, was the number of friends who were basically egging her on and yeah. What was all that about?

Brad Burton [00:12:05]:
Once again, I think it was a perfect storm. I think people were bored. People were bored with the pandemic and they were looking for stimuli. And I’m being seriously, this was a bread and circus. This was the old witch hunt, and I was guilty until proven innocent. And many people. I’ve got a list of around 100 people who wrote negative things about me, and I’ve only recently had the kind of courage to go into that. I’ve got a Dropbox with all these screenshots and there’s lots of things in there that I didn’t know about because people, Friends of mine, collated it in my absence.

Brad Burton [00:12:37]:
And the other thing is, what people won’t know is I had a WhatsApp group initially. People were trying to defend me. And every time you go on to defend it, would amplify it, more people would see it. And no matter how reasonable the. The kind of retorts were, it was getting kind of twisted. I mean, she was exceptional at doing just that, exceptional at turning the polarity of anything positive. It’s like when you’ve got an influencer on social media, you know, they. They paint a picture of positivity.

Brad Burton [00:13:02]:
Well, this was like a reverse influencer. No matter what I did, no matter how benign, it was getting put through a negative filter. But, yeah, that was really disappointing. It was on the list of 100 people. There’s a few usual suspects that you’d expect. There’s around 10 people that I’d done nothing other than to help and support over the years. And just, you know, that was dark and you start kind of questioning everything, you’re already in a dark place. But what people don’t know is I had them.

Brad Burton [00:13:27]:
I kind of. The people that were helping me and supporting me on social media asked them to pull back because all that was happening was just making this thing, you know, the. How do you. How do you stop a pub fight? By getting yourself out of the pub, not getting yourself in. So this. This team, I’ve got a WhatsApp group called the Pesky Kids. And the reason they call them Pesky Kids is if you rec. Scooby Doo, if it wasn’t for those Pesky Kids that have got away with it.

Brad Burton [00:13:49]:
And I think if it wasn’t for Those people, those 40 people that were supporting me in an evidence gathering, this could have been a completely different outcome. And it shouldn’t be. As a victim, you shouldn’t have to evidence gather for yourself. You know, once again, if you look at the reason that there’s only 2% conviction rate, it’s maybe because there’s, you know, the, the, the people that are Pesky Kids. So it’s very fortunate that I’d run a network that built a network and it had allowed me to be able to defend myself in a way or to certainly to, to create the case that we needed in order to get a conviction.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:14:23]:
Yeah, I proud to say I’m a member of the Pesky Kids. And it’s, you’re right, it certainly was a turning point as you say, that the more, more people would try and defend you, all it does is just creates even more publicity. And then of course all you need is someone going, oh, there’s no smoke without fire.

Brad Burton [00:14:42]:
Well, that’s, you know, that’s exactly what somebody said. I’ve got a text message from someone. So a very well known entrepreneur, you know, like genuinely well known entrepreneur. They, they said I shouldn’t be saying anything about this stalking thing, defending myself in the manner that I did. And they said, well, you know, people will think there’s no smoke without fire. And this has proven this case that there absolutely was no fire, but lots of smoke.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:15:04]:
Yes, absolutely, absolutely. So you, having gone through all this, you, you, you then found that you weren’t the only victim of, of this, this stalker and you created your small core of, of trusted supporters.

Brad Burton [00:15:21]:
Yeah.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:15:21]:
How did you move forward through, through, through there?

Brad Burton [00:15:25]:
I think, you know, the turning point was when the Panorama show came out. Panorama are renowned for dotting eyes and crossing T’s and if you just seen what was going on in the background, you’d understand about the dotting eyes and crossing T’s. It was almost like a police interrogation on occasion when I was there. And, but that was a turning point because people who have knew the story or may have seen 1 post or may have seen 100 posts about me finally knew that this was all complete. But once again, if it wasn’t for the Panorama show, then maybe, just maybe I’d still be having people saying there’s no smoke without fire. And apparently there’s. What’s the figure? I think it was something like 100,000 cases a year that don’t go to court. That don’t go to court.

Brad Burton [00:16:07]:
So, you know, this is, this is dark stuff. Dark stuff.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:16:11]:
Gee. Wow. And I think the scary thing for, for anyone listening is this could happen to anybody.

Brad Burton [00:16:19]:
You know, when I started my business off, there was no, it was all about private number plates, fish tanks and spinning chairs. It was, there’s no point was this, it was this, about this kind of negative downside of social media. And I think that we might look back in, in many a couple of generations time and look back at social media in the same way that we look at smoking now or asbestos. I think there’s something going out of control with this. I remember social media in the early, early days, 95, 96 and the glory days of maybe 2009, 2011. But in some respects right now we’ve almost got a digital ghetto online. So you’ve either got this, this, this gentrified social media, which is everything’s pretty, or you’ve got this kind of, you know, egg social media of anonymous accounts just spewing stuff out, whether they’re real or whether they are bots. Nowadays with the AI, we don’t know.

Brad Burton [00:17:10]:
And I think we’ve lost control of social media and I think if we’ve lost control of social media, we might have lost control of society. And I, I think that something needs to change because if it doesn’t change, I think we’re in for a real dangerous ride and rocky ride.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:17:26]:
Yeah, a really good point. And you mentioned AI there, there’s so much stuff coming out with AI now that makes it really easy to fake. Well, anything.

Brad Burton [00:17:36]:
Yeah, I think, well, this is the thing. If this would have been now, this would have started and you’ve got VO3 and all the video that enables you to do real video. This could have been really dangerous for me. A few prompts. You’ve got enough source material on social media of me on videos, on podcasts, my voice to be able to do anything that you want with a prompt. That’s dangerous. And I don’t think that people have realised this isn’t, you know, million Dollar productions from the CIA. This is a determined lunatic with a computer that will enable them to have made any kind of video of me doing something nefarious and that would have been on social media and people may have, you know, taken it as legit.

Brad Burton [00:18:26]:
And what you’re telling me that she wouldn’t have used social media, so she wouldn’t have used AI to, to, to paint a picture. At one point she even said that I had a twin and that I was serving nine years in prison and people were believing that I’m serving nine years in prison and I’m having to speak to people on social media and going, I’m here. What do you want me to do to prove that that’s not the case? And it’s, it’s been a really Like I say, dark time, but one that, you know, I’m through the other end of it now. And I, as I always say, Keith, the reason that you and I are talking now is because something terrible happened to me in 1995. I got shot at in Manchester. Well, yeah, this is the way from Salford to Somerset. And you know, my life changed as a result of that really dark time. And the lives of thousands of other people have changed as a result of that really dark time.

Brad Burton [00:19:08]:
Well, hopefully some, some good will come from this. I’m fairly hopeful that that will be the case.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:19:13]:
Let’s hope. Let’s hope. So what advice would you give to somebody? I hope it never happens, but we know statistically it will happen. There will be people who find themselves going through something like that. What advice would you give them to. To enable them to.

Brad Burton [00:19:26]:
To get, you know, document it for a start off. But listen to say that after a certain point the you realise that these things are not going to go away. Okay. So at the earliest opportunity, document it. And when I say document it, take a screen capture and also a live link so you know exactly where to find it. The way that the police evidential system works, it takes 15 minutes roughly to import a piece of evidence. So when there was thousands of posts coming through every single day and I’m sending them to the police, they was getting frustrated themselves because they couldn’t upload them fast enough. So what you need to do is you need to.

Brad Burton [00:20:00]:
To create a diary, an audit trail of exactly what’s going on, the timelines but also as I said importantly screen captures of every. Anything that’s contentious and a. A live link for it. That is the best that I’m going to get be able to give you on that one. If they are determined then it took me probably six months of this to get a charge on a. Six months of soaking up of getting this day in day out to get a charge on her. So this isn’t a slow, a fast process, it’s a very, very slow one. And the key to this thing is I think is to.

Brad Burton [00:20:34]:
Is to document, document and, and journal everything that is sensible that you. That will enable you to create a case against them.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:20:45]:
Got it. That makes, that makes sense. That makes, makes a lot of sense there. So I have to ask now obviously sounds. We pled guilty five offences. Just awaiting sentencing which I believe has been delayed twice. Twice so far.

Brad Burton [00:21:04]:
Third time we are on June 6th. Now that’s when the next sentence in Manchester.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:21:10]:
Fingers crossed for third time. Lucky with it. This time?

Brad Burton [00:21:14]:
No. You know, I think in all this, Keith, I think this is the kind of worst bit about this is it’s complete zero sum game. I don’t understand other than for likes and lulls. I’m not really sure why anyone would do this. What was the, what was the end game in this? Now she’s obviously ill in some respects. We know this because there’s been psychiatric reports been done for, for a sentence in. But you know, I think this woman actually believed all these allegations. I think she genuinely believed it.

Brad Burton [00:21:43]:
I think in a mind’s eye, we all live in our brain. This is what you do, Keith, in terms of, you know, with the work that you do and actually if you can change the way you think, you change the way you see to change the way you live. I think, you know, and this is a bit that someone asked me about, you know, what do I want for her? And I kind of just want her to be better. And what I mean by that is that yes, you can’t just go around and destroy people’s lives and then get away with impunity. But ultimately, you know, you kind of got a wonder what’s going on in somebody’s life where they believe that this is a good use of their time and appropriate use of, of, of, of energy. So let’s see where it takes us. But she could get up to six years in prison. I doubt that’ll be the case.

Brad Burton [00:22:21]:
But she could get up to six years in prison.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:22:23]:
Yeah. Wow. So what about what’s the future for, for you, Brad? What’s, what’s happening and what’s, what’s.

Brad Burton [00:22:31]:
So obviously started with four networking, I written four books and I was doing motivational speaking. And what happened a year or so ago is I had three clients in a kind of space of three or four months, say independently. You’re more than a motivational speaker. And I’m like, okay. And when you hear what I always kind of want to hear, three things the same thing three times from independence, I kind of sit up and go, okay. And with that I create something called motivational leader, which really is kind of umbrella for everything that I do, which is team building leadership, you know, motivation, training, this, that and the other, but also helping other people to become motivational leaders, like using their story, whatever their story is, to, to effectively come under this motivational leader umbrella. Anyone that’s interested. Motivationalleader.co.uk leaders well worthwhile having a conversation with me about that.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:23:24]:
Motivationalleader.co.uk.com forward slash. Leaders.

Brad Burton [00:23:28]:
Leaders. Yeah.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:23:29]:
Lovely. I’ll pop that link into the show notes. Brad, thank you so much for taking time out to, to share with us the inside story on that whole really dark chapter.

Brad Burton [00:23:42]:
Well, you know, Keith, is three TV shows. Sorry, two TV shows been done on this already. And I’ve got another two TV appearances on this one. And I’ve been told to expect intense media scrutiny upon sentencing. So let’s see where it takes us on June 6th.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:23:58]:
Yeah. Brad, thank you so much as always.

Brad Burton [00:24:01]:
Keith, thank you so much. Keep going.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:24:14]:
You’ve been listening to the Keith Blakemore-Noble Radio Show. To find out more, Visit KeithBlakemoreNoble.com.