Many politicians have survived sex scandals and still held onto their jobs. But news about John Tory’s affair has brought an end to his career as Toronto mayor. Here’s what’s unique about Tory’s case.
Why are we so utterly in thrall to upper-crust tales of privilege, riches and scandal? Because it’s a great story of wealth, heritage and survival in the modern world.
A view of the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C.
John McDonnell/The Washington Post via Getty Images
The response to the sex scandal that led to Jerry Falwell Jr. resigning as president of Liberty University falls into a gendered pattern often seen among evangelicals.
Harvey Weinstein arrives at the Manhattan Criminal Court, on February 24, 2020 in New York City. On March 11 he was sentenced to 23 years in prison for criminal sexual acts and rape.
Timothy A. Clary/AFP
Scandals are violent shocks to social systems, yet not all questionable behaviour produces scandal. How can we explain that some figures escape the consequences of their own behavior while others don’t?
Leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters Julius Malema (C) addresses the media after local elections in 2016.
EPA/Kim Ludbrook
W.T. Stead’s 1885 account of the process by which wealthy Londoners procured teenagers for sex became a global news story, but the police refused to investigate.
MP Tony Clement has resigned from the Conservative caucus after admitting to sending “intimate” photos to women he met online.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young
Former Conservative MP Tony Clement, dropped from caucus over a public sexting scandal raises questions for all of us about what is too much in our ‘casual’ daily online exchanges.
Adult-film actress Stephanie Clifford, also known as Stormy Daniels, poses for pictures at the end of a show at Gossip, a gentlemen’s club in Long Island, New York.
Eduardo Munoz/Reuters
Richard Flory, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
Americans are increasingly choosing not to identify with any religious tradition. But this group of irreligious people is a complex one – with different relationships to religion.
Still at it after all these years: the FSB’s Moscow headquarters.
Sergei Butorin via Shutterstock
Russia has decades of experience setting “honeytraps” for spies, diplomats, and whoever else it wants to embarrass or blackmail.
John Whittingdale, centre, was chair of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee when the phone-hacking story broke.
Rebecca Naden / PA Archive/Press Association Images
In a scoop worthy of its deceased predecessor, the News of the World, the Sun on Sunday ran a five-page exclusive at the weekend alleging that Lord Sewel, deputy speaker of the House of Lords, had been…
Chief Research Specialist in Democracy and Citizenship at the Human Science Research Council and a Research Fellow Centre for African Studies, University of the Free State