http://au.news.yahoo.com/entertainment/ ... -pictures/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;The photographer who took pictures of Nigella Lawson being assaulted by her husband says the attack lasted for "27 minutes of madness" but he didn't intervene because he feared being arrested himself.
Snapper Jean-Paul says the incident outside a London restaurant shouldn't be brushed under the carpet and the celebrity chef Lawson was "properly abused" by art collector husband Charles Saatchi.
"What I witnessed was 27 minutes of madness," Jean-Paul wrote in the British tabloid Sunday People, which first published his shocking pictures last weekend.
"That's how long the abuse lasted from start to finish so it was most definitely not a fleeting moment."
Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg came under fire last week for suggesting Saatchi's clutching of his wife's throat could have been "just a fleeting thing".
Government minister Alistair Burt on Saturday said he would have intervened if he had witnessed the assault on the celebrity chef and there should be "no toleration" of violence against women.
Jean-Paul said people had asked why he didn't intervene but the answer was simple.
"I would have been arrested," he wrote on Sunday.
"I'm paparazzi so everyone hates you to begin with.
"The best thing I could do was carry on taking the pictures because now everyone can see that Charles Saatchi is an abuser."
The celebrity photographer said knowing his pictures had been seen all over the world was "so special".
"I am proud because as a photographer you want to be in the paper but you also want to take pictures that mean something.
"This will be talked about for years."
IMO this photographer should be arrested for not intervening. A full restaurant of people watching this go on for 27 minutes and nobody does or says anything except take pictures?
A man in his 70s was assaulted by two girls on a train last week and not one person helped. They all sat there taking pics and hoping for their 15 minutes of YouTube fame at someone else's expense though.
This mentality of "let's take pics and put them on YouTube but not lift a finger to help" is becoming a disease. A disease we don't need in society and one we don't want spreading.
