Celebrity Big Brother should take responsibility for dropping the ball on domestic violence, not Roxanne Pallett

Yes, she made, and escalated, the allegations, but producers played the crucial role of enabling that to happen, therefore facilitating Ryan Thomas’s emotional breakdown

Over the past few days, former Emmerdale star, Roxanne Pallett has become the nation’s villain through her now notorious appearance on the latest series of Celebrity Big Brother (CBB). In astonishing scenes, Pallett had viewers screaming at the TV when she accused former Coronation Street actor, Ryan Thomas, of assault after a short play fight in the CBB kitchen, surrounded by other housemates.

In the infamous CBB chair, Pallett demanded to speak to producers and sobbed that Thomas should be removed from the house for “punching” her “like a boxer”. Pallett’s claims, it seemed, escalated on a daily basis following the incident on Thursday night.

She recreated the alleged assault for the now-evicted housemate Ben Jardine by issuing several thumps that he said made him “bruise like a peach”. In response, CBB viewers and many of Pallett’s former colleagues have taken to social media to denounce her claims with comments ranging from her Emmerdale on-screen husband Kelvin Fletcher‘s blunt statement “She. Is. Evil. #CBB” to actor Sam Attwater’s calls for previous alleged victims of Pallett’s false allegations of assault to be recognised.

For her part, Pallett left the CBB house on Saturday and was interviewed this morning on The Jeremy Vine Show where she apologised “massively” for her allegations against Thomas and claimed that after viewing the footage she realised she’d ‘“got it wrong”. Pallett’s apology doesn’t seem to have gone down well on social media, however. Many of the colleagues who condemned her have shown little sign of changing their minds and US blogger Perez Hilton still branded her a “lying, vile woman” after her appearance this morning.

While Pallett has been widely denounced for undermining genuine victims of domestic violence, the charity Women’s Aid has supported her. As a former victim of domestic violence herself, Women’s Aid representatives suggest that Pallett could be more likely to be frightened and triggered by play-fighting, a claim that Pallett repeated during her interview with Jeremy Vine, but was quickly dismissed on social media by many women who’ve also experienced domestic violence.

As Pallett attempts to weather the storm and preserve any vestiges of her career, the furore surrounding her allegations doesn’t seem to show any sign of diminishing. Eamonn Holmes is the latest celebrity to suggest that Pallett’s apology was insincere and that the Vine interview was a “PR stunt”.

Yet, amid the near universal outrage and condemnation, there’s been a disquieting silence around the role CBB played in enabling and facilitating the controversy. Let’s not forget that this year’s CBB series is based on the theme of “Eye of the Storm” and all the celebrity housemates have been chosen because of their involvement in a public controversy.

Are we then surprised if housemates generate a further controversy while in the house? While CBB didn’t engineer Pallett’s claims, it certainly didn’t do anything to address them. The producers of CBB seemed to have little intention of dealing with the issue with any ethical approach. They could have nipped the allegations in the bud by showing the footage to Pallett immediately, especially since she says that on viewing the scene of Thomas play fighting with her, she realised that she’d misread the situation. Maybe Thomas could have been spared some psychological distress if Pallett, or even the rest of the housemates, had been allowed to reflect on the footage sooner. CBB, however, allowed the story to run. They allowed Ryan Thomas to become visibly – and understandably – distressed on the show. They allowed Thomas’s fellow housemates to question his character and begin to isolate him for being violent to a woman.

Yes, Pallett made, and escalated, the allegations, but CBB played the crucial role of enabling that to happen, therefore facilitating Thomas’s emotional breakdown. Some social media users, including Ryan Thomas’s girlfriend Lucy Mecklenburgh, have also shown concern for Pallett’s mental health and yet, despite clear signs that both Pallett and Thomas were experiencing significant emotional distress in the house, CBB just kept those cameras rolling to capture every claim, every tear and every viewer.

Think what you like about Pallett, I’m no fan myself, but this whole sorry episode has exposed how very far the #MeToo movement has to go before we start to think about the structures that allow misogyny and gender-injustice to flourish. Pallett has been targeted with relentless abuse during and since her time on the show, but the bigger issue, that false allegations and the resulting emotional distress were used as entertainment, has been ignored.

Women have a difficult enough time being taken seriously socially and legally when they’ve experienced gender-based violence. And while Pallett hasn’t done anything to help this situation, CBB has behaved appallingly too. Worse because their role has been left unchallenged. They have paid two men, both sacked for harassment to women, and in former TOWIE star Dan Osborne’s case, for making horrific threats of sexual violence to his ex-partner. If we’re going to get outraged then let’s get outraged across the board, not just condemning women for making false allegations – an extremely rare occurrence – but for programmes like CBB that reward men for harassment and violence, and facilitate emotional distress for audience figures.