As we hit April, the BBC first sent the allegations to Channel 4 and CPL. These are letters intended to seek responses from those against whom allegations are being made.
Immediately, there was strong pushback. We were told CPL were able to provide contemporaneous notes of the “utmost accuracy” which proved appropriate decisions had been made.
CPL shared selected notes with Panorama but in many instances, these records confirmed that the women had in fact made reports of some of the allegations they later told us about, to the welfare team at the time.
We went back to our sources, checking and cross-referencing.
By this point, one legal firm representing one of the men against whom allegations were being made, told us its fees were being paid for by CPL. A sign that support was being offered to the men, while the women felt unsupported.
Despite all the lengthy letters, what no one was challenging was the central allegations in each of the three women’s cases, that they had been subjected to serious sexual misconduct.
We kept our nerve, and kept pushing back.
On Monday morning, hours before the Panorama edition that would make the allegations public, CPL went into what one former MAFS UK worker has described to us as “damage control” mode, firing off an email to former cast and crew and giving them advice about talking to the press.
It also correctly advised against speculating on the identities of the anonymous contributors making rape allegations, because they are entitled to anonymity by law.
In the minutes before publication of our story, Channel 4 removed all episodes of MAFS UK from their streaming service.
Fifteen minutes after we broke the story, an email dropped into our inbox. It was Channel 4, announcing it had launched a review divided into two parts. One led by a legal firm into how Channel 4 handled the allegations, and a second one into welfare protocols on MAFS UK.