When Peter Rippon made the fateful decision not to allow broadcast of Meirion Jones’ documentary on the alleged sexual abuse of girls at the Approved School headed by his aunt, it was the first full bodied drop of rain in what was to become the perfect storm.
Rippon says that he made the decision because he was not satisfied with the corroboration available for the girl’s story. Last week, with Rippon out of the picture, Newsnight threw aside the remnants of journalistic integrity and flew headlong down the path first detailed by Ronald Summit MD, the California based ‘child sex abuse’ expert who explained ‘why children must always be believed’ when they claim to have been abused. This in turn has become a meme that demands that even 60 year old adults with all the loss of detail that age brings ‘must be believed’ if they claim to have been sexually abused. Never mind that they might get their age wrong, the place wrong, the person allegedly abusing them wrong – they have to be telling ‘the truth’ for were they not ‘an abused child’? Following that path led Newsnight to broadcast an interview with Steve Messham during which he claimed to have been abused by ‘a leading Conservative’. Lord McAlpine’s name was quickly, and incorrectly, trending on the internet – with some judicious help from those such as Speaker’s wife, Sally Bercow – to the delight of all who wish to believe that child sexual abuse is something only practised by high ranking politicians - preferably from the ‘other party’ – or members of the judiciary. The fact remains that you are more likely to be sexually abused by your own Father or other humble family member, than any exotic celebrity, but that doesn’t shift newspapers half as well.
The two Newsnight programmes had neatly hooked into another meme popular on the Internet; that our lives are dominated by shape shifting lizards, Jews, homosexuals and other unpopular figures of the moment. There are no decent people in power, only a motley collection of the afore mentioned, the ‘decent people’ are all to be found condemned to a life at the ‘bottom of the pile’ bound in everlasting silence by a collection of the non existent ‘D’ notices to a life of servitude. It is a nonsense of course; there are as many decent people in power as there are paedophiles struggling to pay the gas bill on minimum wage – but that doesn’t shift newspapers half as well either.
We are now in the grip of a perfect storm – the humble who claim to have been abused are feted and forgiven every inconsistency in their story, the mighty are to be brought down on the basis of gossip and innuendo with no excuses or explanations permitted.
The losers in all of this are those children who have been sexually abused; and who will be in the future. For the entire focus is on suitable retribution for those whose names have been bandied about – ranging from the regulatory; more CRB checks – to the punitive; castration, string him up, drive a stake through his heart – to the positively medieval; heads on spikes outside parliament through to (in Savile’s case) digging up his corpse and tossing it into the North Sea. They all forget one salient fact – that for any of these actions to take place, someone has to at least claim to have been abused by that person – worse, to have actually been sexually abused.
I have yet to see even the smallest suggestion that anything useful might be done to prevent a child being the victim of an abuser in the first place. Only to prevent a child from being the victim of a ‘repeat offender’. Are we really such a primitive society that we can only deal with putting a lock on the stable door after the horse has bolted? Even then, we are only interested in the famous racehorses? What price a child coming forward to try to say that he has been abused by the broken down old nag known to him as Uncle Fred? Would his voice even be heard in this cacophony of gilded revelations?
As a society, we send forth such confused messages to those whose sexual preferences are for the very young – which genetically, I might point out, is a more logical preference than an interest in middle aged women. (For the avoidance of doubt here, I am not talking about true paedophilia but ephobophilia, which unlike paedophilia is not listed as a recognised mental aberration). How is it that a small fraction of human beings, and most often men, can have sexual preferences for objects such as shoes, for parts of the human body such as hair or feet, or for inappropriate partners such as animals or children?
We demand that 13 year old girls be given the birth control pill if they wish, thus reinforcing the view that there is nothing wrong with sex at that age; we offer them the morning after pill if they have declined birth control; we declare that ‘they have made their own choices’ and set them up in a government funded flat when they rebel against their parents wishes and continue to sleep with a hopelessly unsuited partner. Then we work ourselves into a paroxysm of moral outrage when a DJ squeezes their bottom.
We say ‘its not that bad’ in the courts when a 21 year old man sleeps with them, and slap him on the wrist; woe betide him at age 28 if he is still sexually excited by the same things he was at 21. Somewhere around his 27th birthday he is supposed to single-handedly magically transform his sexual preferences. Preferences which we are told, emerge pre-puberty. It is quite illogical.
We have been told for years by the ‘gay lobby’ that homosexual preferences emerge pre-puberty and should not be thwarted. The law was changed on these grounds so that those who could not control their preferences should not be criminalised. Retrospectively no less, which is an interesting conundrum facing those young boys coming forward saying they were sodomised in the 1980s…er, yes, it was wrong then, but it isn’t now, so nowt you can do about it?
I am not by any stretch of the imagination campaigning for the age of consent to be lowered. Rather for a two pronged attack on the problem. Neither of which will sell newspapers.
First, that the age of consent is routinely observed by everyone, governments included. Families especially. Let’s see brothers walk their sisters home again, Mothers watching their daughters with eagle eyes once more – sitting on the internet howling with rage because you’ve just seen a grainy Youtube clip of a DJ ‘possibly’ rubbing the lower back of a ‘possibly’ teenage girl is no substitute you know.
Secondly, I am minded of the early days of Aids. A time when everyone was terrified of Aids victims. When it required a royal led campaign to even shake the hand of an Aids victim. Until someone actually worked out that all the vilification and moral outrage was only going to drive Aids victims underground where they would infect anybody who happened to be passing. Much better to effect a calmer atmosphere whereby those who believed they might have Aids were able to come forward for help and advice. The gay lobby were largely responsible for that change in atmosphere, albeit through self interest.
At the moment, anyone who is aware that they are attracted to the underaged sexual partner, whether just ’underaged’ or a true ‘child’ is only able to access help and advice once they have committed a criminal act against a child. Until then they are supposed to rely on their moral compass and the words of the good book – worked well for the Catholic church didn’t it? There they all were, steeped in the ‘good book’, outlining the moral path ahead on a daily basis for their congregation, and they still couldn’t overcome their sexual urges! How likely is it that those with a ‘lower IQ’, difficulty with their memory, a higher likelihood of childhood brain injury, lower educational achievement, who form the bulk of paedophiles, are going to achieve this standard without help and support?
The media storm of ‘naming and shaming’ offenders is actively working against this approach. It implies that so long as you shame and penalise those who have already committed an offence against a child, you have solved the problem.
I believe the Inca’s stopped handing the gods a child sacrifice in order to effect a change in society thousands of years ago – isn’t it about time we did too?
Ms Raccoon lives in the Monbazillac area of South West France, renowned for its fine wines and gourmet food, so she frequently finds better things to do than sit in front of a computer all morning. She is liable to take off traveling at a moment's notice. Consequently this blog only gets updated these days when it is raining - and it doesn't rain very often round here...
{ 165 comments }
So true!
/applause
“The fact remains that you are more likely to be sexually abused by your own Father”
I thought that statistically Mum’s latest boyfriend was the most likely …
http://www.civitas.org.uk/pubs/experiments.php
“All studies of child-abuse victims which look at family type identify the step-family as representing the highest risk to children…However, the use of the term step-father has become problematic, as, whilst it used to refer to men who were married to women with children by other men, it is now used to describe any man in the household, whether married to the mother or not. An NSPCC study of 1988 which separated married step-fathers from unmarried cohabiting men found that married step-fathers were less likely to abuse: ‘for nonnatal fathers marriage appears to be associated with a greater commitment to the father role’”
Statistically, the largest number of convicted sexual abusers are siblings/step-siblings.
Anna, what you are saying is absolutely correct and shows that as a society we are going backwards not forwards.
For some reason – which is a topic in itself – the idea of personal responsibility of the individual has been replaced by a ‘the state must do something’ mentality, especially in the younger generations. Until that is reversed we will continue to see media storms leading the sheeple by the nose and dictating ‘that which must be done’ to everyone, irrespective of if it is sensible or not.
Common sense has been replaced by sound bites of so called ‘experts’, many of whom have an axe to grind or an agenda to follow.
Until common sense and responsibility of the individual are taught in schools and ideologies thrown out there is no hope for any change.
Absolutely spot on – someone has finally pulled away to observe the whole ball of wax from a sensible perspective pointing out the flaws and stupidity of what appears to be a UK society led by a popular media largely devoid of logic, common sense and ethics.
Though I would like to support your stance their are good people in the current system, I am afraid they appear to have lost their voice.
O yes, I do believe it is called the Whip system.
Good post, most of which I agree with.
The people at Newsnight were unbelievably clueless to do this broadcast based on the word of a man who, according to Internet sources, is a former mental hospital patient. Who knows what his diagnosis is/was and what kind of behavioural problems he may have had as a teenager? Supposing he is a paranoid schizophrenic with delusions about the Tory party? Paranoid schizophrenics can appear superficially normal and very plausible to people who are not trained or experienced in psychiatry, and even in the case of the Norwegian mass-killer, experts can disagree in good faith as to whether a person is mentally ill or just has weird ideas.
There were thousands of boys who passed through the North Wales approved school system, and while it is well understood that not all will have turned out to be successful in later life, to make sensational allegations of this type one really does need to have extremely credible witnesses with corroboration, the kind of witnesses who would stand up well on cross examination in court.
Clearly now Steve Messham is completely shot as a plausible witness. One can hardly stop wondering why he has now withdrawn allegations he has pursued for decades if he has not been paid off, unless he is nuts.
Same goes for the Savile case. Savile may well have “groped, hugges, squeezed, or kissed some girls who were under the age of 16, but so far there is not even any hard evidence that he had intercourse with any girl under 16, yet he is widely branded as a pedophile–which he may still turn out to be, or not as the case may be.
Of course the problem is that sex with children is so unthinkable to the kind of adults who make programmes like Newsnight that they are incapably of dealing objectively with the subject. I would rather rely on the police, who are altogether more familiar with the criminal world.
“I would rather rely on the police, who are altogether more familiar with the criminal world.”
more often than not familiar for all the wrong reasons. no doubt many police officers enter the force with the most noble intentions, only to find there is a minority of colleagues above them on the ladder who sometimes thwart the path of truth and justice and many of these perverts are members of masonic lodges.
freemasonry has basically become the dad’s army of the british intelligence service. it’s the interface between them and the shoddy world of the gangster. course freemasons hark on loudly about not being allowed to talk about politics or religion when in a lodge… but there is nothing stopping them from talking about anything whatsoever outside of those lodges. then there is the masonic penchant for library’s of certain material… please take a couple of minutes to watch this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BecEgL7M8Nc
once upon a time a visit to a new lodge brought the prospect of new material, these days most of them get in online. but still, if the police (the non-masonic variety if that is possible) were to pay a visit to any of the many major lodges they would find large stashes of material- most of it illegal. come on plod, the truth is out there (hidden in the basements and secret nooks).
if the police don’t get the evidence, others will, and to an extent already, have. and it is only a matter of time before it starts appearing on the internet (albeit censored on grounds of decency and protection of minors).
What’s next? Shapeshifting lizards running the Met, I’m sure.
Everyone, don the tinfoil hats!
I believe I heard Mr Messham say that the defamed party was identified to him as being whom we have all heard of now by police officers at the time. If that is indeed the truth, then all the journos on Newsnight had to do was show him a photograph of the alleged perpetrator prior to broadcasting their story. I assume that in due course we will hear whether that simple test was applied and at that point will be able to conclude ourselves whether the witness was unreliable or the journos unprofessional.
Mental health issues encompass a wide range of conditions and it may not be appropriate to dismiss people with some of those as “nuts”.
“If that is indeed the truth…”
Ah. There’s the rub, eh? If I had libel lawyers breathing down my neck, I might want to throw someone to the wolves too.
Calm. Sober. Correct.
Another well-thought out and incisive piece that goes against the prevailing tide of mis-informed rubbish and innuendo that is currently swamping the media.
Thank you.
I used to work for the BBC, nothing to do with the areas currently under fire, and the most basic libel training covered the risks in identifying people piecemeal via a series of reports none of which in itself amounted to libel but which could when taken together. Entwistle said this morning that he didn’t know about the infamous tweet trailing the Newsnight report intil the next day. The damage it could do the BBC if it proved untrue was even being discussed on a forum for [i] football supporters [/i] the same afternoon, and the editor-in-chief was completely in the dark!
Again we have this assumption that paedophiles are men. The focus is usually on men. The police are always seeking men when a sex crime against a child is mentioned? The newspapers leap at naming and shaming, blaming and condemning a ‘man’. Why?
If a man, a father, say, touches his daughter’s private parts whilst bathing her, he is excoriated. But a mother handling her son’s private parts doing the same bathing is never considered to be ‘abusing’. Are men not allowed to wash children? Think back to that American actor fellow, wossname, when married ( or maybe separated) from Mia Farrow. She called the police because she found him sitting in bed with his son reading him a story. He was hauled away. That she could sit in bed with the son reading him a story was never questionable.
Teachers, female, are often in the papers (well after page 25) for sleeping with 10, 12, 14 year old boys, even bearing the children of the children they have raped. The raped child (for that is what it is, rape) has to pay child maintenance ! But we still automaticvally think of ‘MEN !!! ™ as the sex abusers.
Yes, I know, they are always in the news. Men. “Rapist on the loose”; “Women in Fear !”. The accusations vastly outnumber the reality however, when again on the small columns on page 26+ reveal that Miss so and so was discovered by police to have made the story up because she was pissed and angry at her boyfriend, or the Taxi driver had the foresight to install a camera to record a young woman’s threat to cry Rape to get out of paying her fare. No camera and a man is jailed and another headline about ‘Men!!!(tm)
All this Savile issue and the pall cast over the entertainment industry seems to have completely excised all the woman in showbiz. Women who make a fine living making exhibits of themselves. Do you really think that a woman who appears on stage or screen dressed in next to nothing, or queing up to appear braless with her dress above her arse on page 3 is pure and would not dream of showing her tits to kids? They seem to have no suspicious TV producers investigating their past and predilictions, nor their access to kiddies in Reform Schools and Hospitals. The almost average female today takes it as a ‘right’ to expose herself in public at will and drops her clothes at the sound of a camera shutter. And we trust them around children !!
Why?
I share your frustration. As someone who has two convicted paedophiles as parents, and consequently a whole 30-odd years of thought-processing/psychotherapy in respect of the issues that that raises, (not to mention a background in law), I never fail to be astonished at the blatant gender bias that these type of discussions inevitably demonstrate. I’m female, for the record.
It seems evident to me that the biggest problem in addressing the issue of paedophilia is societal perception of such. We none of us are responsible for our genetic inheritance; neither is it often the case that many of us have much responsibility in relation to our childhood events so if an individual is attracted to children, then so be it. I don’t have an issue with what/who any individual is sexually attracted to, no matter how distasteful or disgusting I may find such attractions. I do have an issue with the choices that some individuals make in respect of their attraction, specifically when they harm non-consenting others. And, as has been pointed out, no help is offered to nor generally sought by, a paedophile, until a child has been harmed. It seems to me that until society as a whole can look at paedophilia in an objective and dispassionate way, without either judgement or gender bias, then we will continue to slide down what is becoming an ever-slippery slope. I won’t start on how society sexualises children thereby compounding the problem since it was covered eloquently in the article.
Oh but yes, I certainly share your frustration.
What an incisive and well-written article (once again!) – cutting to the heart of the issue, unlike the mainstream media with their transparent witch hunts & pandering to the lowest common denominator.
The other aspect to the Newsnight issue is the sheer bloody minded hatred for “Mrs Thatcher’s Tories” by the BBC. For a week now they have desperately thrown the phrase “Senior Politician in the Thatchewr Government” into the news reports broadcast every half hour all day every day.
This blantant smearing is the reason I have given up my TV license. The BBC’s bias relentlessly pushes the country into a position of the state knows best, yet when the obvious failings are highlighted, it adopts the attitudes of the most irrational posters on CiF.
The BBC needs to be abolished immediately. It is a cancer at the heart of the country.
*applause*
*thunderous applause*
*standing ovation*
There are anonymous, self reporting systems to improve safety in the aviation, maritime and medical professions. Perhaps a similar system could be established to amass the evidence needed to develop prevention and treatment pathways.
Your article are always good this one is outstanding.
‘ephobophilia’ should be:
‘ephebophilia, n. Etym: < ancient Greek ἔϕηβος adolescent boy + -philia . .
Sexual attraction in adults to adolescents, esp. homosexual attraction to adolescent males.
1964 J. Z. Eglinton Greek Love 481 Ephebophilia, noting sexual preference for adolescents . . ‘ [OED]
Thank you Chris, I stand corrected.
One thing we had in Florida was the Abuse Hotline, a free phone call that any person confined by the state, whether they be juveniles, elderly, or mental patients, (but not adult criminals or sex offenders in prisons) was allowed access to by law 24 hours a day, with a guarantee that an independent investigator would show up in person within 24 hours and see the person making the complaint. Staff in such institutions were also legally bound to call the hotline if they were in receipt of complaints of abuse from persons in care.
http://www.myflfamilies.com/service-programs/abuse-hotline
Does the UK have anything similar now? Certainly if it had been in use from the 70s onwards a lot of the current problems of allegations of historical abuse of children in care would have be averted.
What is the ‘Bureau of Investigative Journalism’?
Who are its key players?
What are their interests in this?
Anyone know?
Thought they had come up before somewhere in this saga. Just asking…
Bureau of Investigative Journalism. Three seconds of google research to find it.
I knew that thank you.
The CIB put together a feature for Newsnight about allegations of child abuse at a North Wales Home by someone with political connections. Angus Stickler of CIB appears to have had an interest for some years in the North Wales Child Abuse scandal and has interviewed Stephen Messham before.
Iain Overton, the editor of the CIB put out a tweet on 2nd Nov at about 11am
“If all goes well we’ve got a Newsnight out tonight about a very senior political figure who is a paedophile. ”
This was picked up by all and sundry who thought someone was going to be named, and this kicked started the race to hunt down the man via the internet and lists of names began to appear, not with they might be but asserting they were paedophiles. Interestingly many seemed to be chosen for their campness. So it went on the relentless search to locate and name the abuser, eventually the mob came up with a name they could agree on and although Newsnight did not name anyone it confirmed the mob had their man.
On the 4 Nov Iain Overton expressed on the CIB website his surprise that people had misunderstood his short tweet the day before which had caused a frenzied interest in the building industry among the conspiracy theorists, he also explained why the person’s name had not been given.
UNFORTUNATELY: Both his original tweet and subsequent explaination have gone from the internet.
https://twitter.com/iainoverton
http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2012/11/04/opinion-why-the-political-figure-in-our-investigation-is-unnamed/
I saw those. I have always like a good recantation. Reminds one of the 1930s Soviet hierarchies
Next obvious question, of course, is what contractual relationship, if any, that this organisation had with the BBC and who was responsible for which parts of the journalistic process
If they were the source, somebody must have been funding them, and if it wasn’t the BBC, and the BBC was being fed this for ‘free’, then who was it and what remit did they have from their funders on this issue
I saw those Tweets and watched the Newsnight programme on the basis of the first. Clearly the Beeb thought better of it
But I have always like a good recantation. Reminds one of the 1930s Soviet hierarchies
Next obvious question, of course, is what contractual relationship, if any, that this organisation had with the BBC and who was responsible for which parts of the journalistic process
If they were the source, somebody must have been funding them, and if it wasn’t the BBC, and the BBC was being fed this for ‘free’, then who was it and what remit did they have from their funders on this issue
Interestingly there is a Statement on their website which doesn’t read as if they are too proud of their part in this
http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2012/11/10/statement-from-trustees-of-the-bureau-of-investigative-journalism/
(sorry about the double reply. Reception here is terrible
. )
The question for me isn’t so much what the Bureau of Investigative Journalism is, but how were they able to lead Newsnight by the nose to the extent that their editor could tweet in advance that “we” are outing a prominent Tory on Newsnight?
Indeed, but I think that I may have to sharpen my pencil so that the pointy bit makes a clearer imprint
I meant to add the broader point that it looks like an example of the perils of outsourcing. You might wind up outsourcing your editorial judgment along with the donkey work. Ironic that maybe the BBC, in its rush to surrender even more funding than the government demanded, cut its own throat.
Yep. That’s why the contract conditions and money flows are important. And were Beeb EE’Es only maybe required to sign off a checklist that the contractor had itself produced credible evidence, rather than do the actual checks themselves?
You would expect some sort of full indemnity from the originating source in such circumstances, wouldn’t you? That would get interesting
Thank you for this excellent post. How sad! I am old enough to remember a time before intellectual indiscipline and sheer bloody wimpishness began to infect this once wonderful country. O tempora ! O mores! as they say.
The very words ‘child abuse’ are totally over-used and conjure up terrifying visions of young children being raped when in fact it could mean via neglect, physical beatings or even less awful things according to the NSPPC who claim children not getting their own way or feeling humiliated can be regarded as abused children.
Tabloids and tabloid TV loves these exagerations including implying that the ‘child’ in question maybe a nine year old when in fact they may be a 15/16 year old who could look older and who may have, as Ms Raccoon says, had a buttock squeezed (an unsavoury thought) by Savile which isn’t the same as an innocent 8 year who has been penetrated.
The meshing together of all these matters by the popular media has only one aim in mind- to profit by flogging newspapers. ( And personally I believe there is a national psychiatric problem here where several million people buy these newspapers to read lurid child sex stories ). Does any one remember The Sun newspaper’s attempts a few short years ago to buy the life story of a 14 year old boy who was then presumed to be the youngest dad in Britain when his 15 year old girlfriend became pregnant ?. They decided against it in the end but even contemplating the purchase should have had the editor whisked away for a police interview.
Ms Raccoon is correct and the demonizing of people who may have urges we find abhorrent- but who are precluded from seeking help before they take action, could mean a child is abused and that is a crime that every self appointed ‘expert’ has participated in. They do not prevent abuse, they run advertising campaigns and devise meaningless strategies and it’s all after the fact.
Good point. I’ll always remember The Sun (and other tabloids) the day after poor Jamie Bulger’s body had been discovered. The first dozen pages covered the horrific crime and probably rightly so …….. only then to turn to the pages beyond this story of National interest to find lurid tales with the continual undercurrent of sexuality, immorality, bad behaviour, etc etc. The press are for the most part an utter disgrace and I wouldn’t give a microsecond of my time entertaining any of them.
Another posting by “La grande dame de l’article incisif”
Perhaps slightly off the main thrust of Madame’s letter, I have just emerged isolation in the form of a 48 hour reflective meditation, seclusion and retreat conducted in the wine cellar under the auspices of my old friend, the well known philosopher and author, Randy Hack. Having been thus immersed in matters spiritual and in a state of meditatively unaware bliss for a couple of days I returned to what is loosely termed “reality” to find the BBC in a state of melt down.
I have not followed the story very well, but what seems to have happened is this. Newsnight, which appears to be a tv programme, conducted an investigation into a strange but apparanetly well known man called Savile who turns out to have had a fondness for young girls, Savile had done a lot of work for the BBC. Now the Director General of the BBC, nne George Entwistle is told about this over a lunch, but does not ask any more about why. I heard him interviewed and he says it was a very busy lunch, and he didnt really have any curiosity about what he was being investigated for, although one supposes it would not have been for unfortunate taste in apparel. And apparantly he did not think it was appropriate to ask anything because he did not want to be seen to be interfering. So the Ed in Chief doesnt think it is appropriate to know about what is going on in his programmes.
Although the programme was then pulled for insufficent evidence.
A furore then erupts when it turns out that Mr Savile was a bad man.
Then the Newsnight gremlins strike again. Newsnight investigate child abuse at a Welsh children’s home, and say that a “Former Leading “Conservative” had been involved in said events, and in particular by reference to one particular witness. This programme then goes out without Mr Entwistle, who is also Editor in Chief, knowing it is going out. Unfortunately, it turns out there has been a cock up, because the journos have forgotten to ask some basic questions of the accuser, like “here is a photo – is this the man who did it?” and “Dear Senior Conservative, before we broadcast this very nasty stuff, can you comment on whether any of it actually true?”
So a the “Former Leading Conservative” is fingered, the internet goes into overdrive and off we go on the usual Twitter firestorm.
Then on Friday The Grauniad does a front page – front page note – naming the “Former Leading Conservative” and pointing out that Newsnight had got it wrong….
And Lord McAlpine (for it was he”) puts out a very clear statement which says: “erm, it wasnt me actually, and I am a tad distressed” – which is fair enough really…
Right. So you would think a copy of it would hammer onto his desk, and then klaxons would blare and the Newsnight gnomes would be hauled in for a pretty sharp interview without the coffee….
But no! Mr Entwistle, who seems a very nice chao by the way, did not see that either. He was, he explains, up early and giving a speech.
And he had not had any advance warning of what the Newsnight gnomes had been doing, or that they were going to broadcaste very serious allegations of criminal activity against a public figure in the middle of the “Savile Storm”. He know nothing about it. He was unaware there was any controversy about it, really. He was unaware of a lot of things. He didnt really know mich about the programme or what had been going on at all.
Now, as I say, Mr Entwistle sound a really nice bloke. He might even be too nice and too honest – a failing in today’s murky world of high office and professional Establishment troughing of public money.
However, I do have to wonder – what does the DG of the BBC actually do?
Because I am pretty sure he gets an awful lot of money, and I would have thought that, in the highly unlikely event of being made DG, one of the things I would be doing was finding out what the bloody hell was going on in my programmes?
But the BBC seems a strange world of line managers and protocols in which questions can’t be asked, speeches are given, and a lot of people are employed on very high salaries.
Any one got any observations on this?
Am I missing somthing?
The order of play was…
Oct ’11 – Dec ’11 Savile investigation
Entwistle was Head of Vision at the time and in a passing comment was told there was an investigation.
Jan ’12 – Feb ’12 Someone gave Miles Goslett of ‘The Oldie’ fullsome details of the dropped feature and a reason why it was dropped.
Sep ’12 George Entwistle becomes DG at the BBC
Oct 2 2012 Peter Rippon writes a blog about why Newsnight dropped Savile
Oct 3 2012, ITV broadcast their programme nicked from the BBC
All hell breaks loose
02 Nov 2012 George Entwistle is making a speech
@ 11:30 A twitter appears (not from the BBC) promoting Newsnight
@ 22:30 Newsnight broadcasts an item indicating a likely child abuser within the political elite.
08 Nov 2012 Investigative journalist hands his well researched (3 mins on the internet) list of names of people he’s accussing of nothing to the Prime Minister.
09 Nov 2012 Guardian points out errors in the Stephen Messham account told to Newsnight and names the politician.
@ 10:31 Ruth Langsford apologies on behalf of ITV & Philip Scholfield for the “misjudged camera angle”
@ 18:30 Stephen Messham announces that after seeing a photo he realises he identified the wrong man.
Soon after BBC announce they are very sorry for previous week’s Newsnight feature
@ 22:30 Eddie Mare reads out an apology from the programme.
10 Nov 2012 George Entwistle appears on Today and John Humphrey’s makes he clear he doesn’t want a Christmas card from George.
Nice one!
It is a bit hard to know what to make of Entwhistle’s pronouncements sometimes. Not least his only belatedly becoming aware of the Newsnight internet furore.
If I was he (and I am not by the way) I would immediately appoint a Director of Internet/Twitter Nonsense to report the reaction out there in the unregulated netherlands. When relevant. And I might commission a series ‘Yes, DG’.
‘DG, Twitter is trending…’
‘Thank you, Humphrey.’
As a footnote:
The first witch hunt (savile) started to run out of steam
So they started 2nd witch hunt for a …………….. (senior politican/illuminati/freemason/lizard/fill in the bogey man of your choice)
That ran dry pretty quickly so they started a 3rd witch hunt for the BBC which we apparently all now distrust to such an extent we would rather believe in the self-serving pronouncments of the Politicans (burn the BBC licence fee) , Press (nah nah nah nah nah – not so smart now are you – drops trousers and moons those smug so and so”s and the beeb), and some sections of the public (how terrible they say while quietly putting their pitchfork down).
Meanwhile the government now have 2 – count them 2 – inquiries they committed to in a blind panic on the basis of the short-lived 2nd witch hunt and some pompous hyperbole from Tom Watson.
errrr….. oh Gawd, I have a stonking great big headache
And if that weren’t enough, we now have the unedifying spectacle of BBC interviewers falling over themselves to out-savage their own in a bid to show how independent they are of any pressure from above. Magnificently failing to see that this is one of the things that got them into this mess in the first place. I just don’t know where to start with this unholy f***up. Self obsessed halfwits. Gah!
Have a bigger headache, m.barnes, we schmucks are paying for the entire shebang……!
I did enjoy the ironical spectacle of MPs complaining about state aparatchiks taking their full contractual entitlement even when found to be in the wrong…….until I remembered that we paid for that too…
As we will pay for the lawyers ‘no fee, no win’, and the out of court compensation claims paid out, and, and, and…
We might as well slit our throats now and be done with it.
Hi Anna
You raise many good points. Here let me deal here with Messham. (By the way, welcome back!)
As a supporter of the BBC I am greatly dismayed by the Newsnight report. What on earth were they doing–other than trying to show they too can broadcast accusations of child abuse? Messham has much form. As far back as 1999, Richard Webster wrote in the New Statesman:
“What the BBC did not tell us was that Messham claims he was sexually abused by no less than 49 different people. He also says he has been physically abused by 26 people. In 1994 the Crown Prosecution Service declined to bring his allegations against Howarth to court. None of his allegations has ever resulted in a conviction. In 1995 one of his most serious sexual allegations was rejected by a jury after barristers argued that it was a transparent fabrication. ”
http://www.richardwebster.net/whatthebbcdidnottellus.html
And David Leigh on 6 November 2012 in the Guardian quickly found this in the Waterhouse evidence:
Waterhouse accepted that Messham had been repeatedly abused and psychologically damaged but concluded that Messham’s evidence on “Mr X” was inconclusive. He said: “He has been described also as manipulative and there are many matters on which he is particularly vulnerable in cross-examination.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/nov/06/welsh-childrens-home-inquiry-abuse?
In other words there was ample evidence in the record that Messham should not be taken at face value. Why did Newsnight not examine it? Because of over-eagerness to to have an ‘abuse’ story? Because the reports authors, their Newsnight boss–those in BBC News hierarchy to whom they reported–were too naive to see its potential flaws? Because the lawyers who didn’t ask the right questions or were given inaccurate answers? At this stage. Who knows?
But the integrity of some of the BBC’s journalism is indeed at stake. Not all, of course.
@Robb: Exactly! It seems absolutely incredible that the BBC chose to take this fellow’s account as the gospel truth. I believe this is another example of just what Anna was talking about in her “Past Truths and Present Misgivings” series. WHERE IS THE EVIDENCE?
Given the serious nature of the allegations is it not at least worth establishing that ANY of the wild and lurid allegations flying about at the moment have some basis in fact? Newsnight were on notice. The DG was unhappy. The Meirion Jones fiasco had embarrassed the BBC and led to the establishment of an Enquiry… or two. Surely they should have been extra cautious, double checking all their facts before broadcasting? In assisting
the libeling of a very wealthy and well connected man they have exposed themselves to ridicule and a large and expensive court case. Lord McAlpine will ensure that he has his pound of flesh and I don’t blame him. It is absolutely outrageous to cause others to label a completely innocent man as a kiddy fiddler. The BBC should hang its head in shame. A once mighty Corporation has been brought low.
But… we and they are caught in a tidal wave of accusations. A few busloads of people coming out of the woodwork with tales that “…Twenty years ago I was at the BBC, I was in the audience of a TV show called ‘Clunk Click’ and after the show…” You get the picture. Clearly, Mr. Savile was a very odd man and, from his own account took full advantage of the array of willing young flesh on display all around him but… we are judging him by our standards of today, not by the laid back standards of the Sixties and Seventies and, rightly or wrongly, things were very different then.
We, as a country, appear to have convicted Mr. Savile in the Court of Public Opinion. The BBC, and others, call him ‘Savile’. He is, it would appear, a vile paedophile, whose last resting place is not safe. Not Sir James Wilson Vincent “Jimmy” Savile, OBE, KCSG. We, as a country, have forgotten all that was good about him. He did, demonstrably, do a lot of good. I cannot imagine how on earth he came to occupy the positions of power he once held, but again, those were different days. We are judging the decisions of Edwina Currie by our more moral and allegedly enlightened opinions.
I am not an apologist for Jimmy Savile and I think that one day there will be sufficient evidence that would tend to prove that he was indeed what he has now become… but not yet. FIND THE EVIDENCE. PUBLISH THE EVIDENCE, TO THE CRIMINAL STANDARD SUCH THAT JIMMY SAVILE AND OTHERS WOULD HAVE BEEN CONVICTED, HAD THEY BEEN TRIED. THEN, THEY ARE GUILTY.
So… it transpires that Mr. Entwhistle barely had time to decorate his office before he ‘chose’ to take a figurative ‘dive out of the window…
Oh, boo hoo. The BBC will have to honor their contract with him, and he can retire somewhere tropical. Georgie, we hardly knew ye!
It certainly brings into question the integrity of Iain Overton and the The Bureau of Investigative Journalism and that is a great shame.
I’m as ‘left-wing’ as they come but I cannot abide false accusations even against a Tory !
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism has previous on this issue, according to Brendan O’Neill:
http://brendanoneill.co.uk/post/35407232631/this-isnt-the-first-time-a-newsnight-journalist-has
When I was exiting Duncroft, it was considered for a while that I would move to London and live with my brother and his wife, who was a reporter for the Record Mirror. She had plenty of friends who worked for that rag, the never to be lamented News of the World. I went to lunch with my former s-in-law and two scumbags from the News of the World. We went to the Wig & Pen, where these lovelies plied me with wine, and then tried to get me to agree to do an interview with them, about my time at Duncroft, for which they were prepared to pay. I refused, and kept refusing, until they got it and stopped nagging. Finally, we left and I threw up in the back of the taxi on my way to the hairdressers. Wine and cheap reporters are a bad mix! Let alone the s-in-law, from whom my brother got a rapid divorce a couple of months later.
Remarkably, I just caught a widget of a 4 or 5 way piece on Radio Five. Rantzen was on telling the world that two truths are now in the public domain – one is that Savile was a child abuser, and the other is that the other bloke is not. She sounded quite proud. The more remarkable piece of information was from some guy who says he used to work for the Daily Mirror and that in 1964 (I kid you not) he and his colleagues almost *got* Savile via interviews with…… wait for it…… girls from Duncroft School!! …. But then he said they couldn’t get the editor at the time to agree that they had a story……. Coincidence? What rumours were floating around Fleet Street all those years ago about Duncroft? Perhaps it was because of James Robertson Justice back then (I think he has/had a reputation amongst those in the know)? ….. And this “story” just transferred to Savile in due course. It really does seem like Duncroft has been on Fleet Street radar for decades. Perhaps this influenced Meirion too.
Well, now, that’s VERY interesting.
Yes, true enough that James was a bit of a rascal with the ladies, but young girls, not a bit of it. He was a b.f. of my mother’s from the 40s. I met him at my prep school when I was about 11 (I was taking the 11 Plus at the time, so approximately that age). I introduced myself to him as my mother’s daughter; he was a bit taken aback, recovered fast, looked around anxiously and asked if she was there. I said she wasn’t. I think I got his autograph. That was it.
I didn’t see JRJ at Duncroft, because I was on home leave quite a bit in 1964, also the time of the encounter with the News of the World at the Wig & Pen, but I was certainly aware he’d visited – I have photos – and that girls went to Shepperton to visit the studios as his guests, always escorted. He was a genial host apparently. We’ve got another Duncroft girl who posts here occasionally who met JRJ several times, including lunching with him and Margaret Jones at the studios.
So, at one point in the current proceedings, Bebe Roberts appeared to be to inferring that JRJ was also in the cross-hairs. I contacted MWT and inquired. He told me that he was not interested in JRJ.
Perhaps the yellow press were trying to get the fix in, such were the bottom-feeders in those days, and my crazy sister-in-law probably whipped all this up, being as she would have known Jimmy. She used to be roommates with Cliff Richard, and he was generally known as Boothby’s Little Boy.
But, like I said, I turned them down.
I was so drunk, they had to pretty much carry me down those twisty stairs from the top floor to the street level, where the taxi was hailed. We actually met up with these reporters again later that day at some hotel. I had my own room. Marion had her own arrangements. She was the daughter of Maurice Levinson, who wrote the book “Taxi!” which became the successful television series. Last I heard, she was in a mental institution, where she had been since about 1965. My brother was having to pay for her upkeep through his Trust.
You confirm my other theory : the tabloid media which loves to thrash the Beeb, acts like it was hamstrung in reporting Savile’s alleged activities because of the fear of libel suits even while they knew all about him (the former editor of The Sun writes this on the Huff Post).
This could be true but if they had this – what appears to be common knowledge- why did they actively promote Jimmy Savile when they could have ignored his so-called charity activities ?. Silence says a lot.
And by promoting Jimmy Savile in such an active way when they could have ignored him for years- would that not have encouraged Savile if the claims are true, to continue his activities in the belief he was untouchable?
@Moor Larkin
Think you’ll find it was not 1964 but 1994 and Paul Connew then editor of the Sunday Mirror. He had allegations by 2 women from Duncroft but on legal chose not to publis. From what he has said it appears he did not pass this information on to the police.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19806460
Entwhistle and the BBC ‘Systems’
The new DG is undergoing a battering over the new Newsight report. Entwhistle seems a bit inept at explaining how the BBC (rightly, in my view) works. I’ll have a go.
The basic concept is ‘referral upwards’. As a producer of a programme you are responsible to a Series Editor, who commissions you to make it, checks in now and then (asking awkward question about whether something is true, why it isn’t more interesting, or why it is costing so much, etc.). Finally, after often endless modifications, s/he signs off and it is broadcast.
Occasionally, a programme is deemed ‘controversial’. To seek greater wisdom and to cover his/her arse, your boss refers it to his/her boss. And so on, if deemed necessary, up the chain, ultimately to the DG. Mind you, you get no kudos for bothering you boss, who is busy, with trivial or easily resolved matters. This is how it should be–and why you get the big bucks. It’s called responsibility. (And knowing it’s limits).
This was a while back in my day, but with modifications (there appears to be a greater bureaucracy and many more fingers in the pie) it is the same today. And properly so. You put in place trusted lieutenants–Helen Boaden in the case of BBC News–and you expect she will telegraph you about problems she cannot deal with.
We don’t yet know what–nor where or why–things went wrong with the Messham report. But the system is right, even if some of the occupants may not be.
In the olden days we used a reporting system called SOFT in my bit of the Civil Service. Successes, Opportunities, Failures, Threats. A sentence or two submitted upwards every week or more often if necessary. The reports would be combined and available to everyone in the Agency. It meant that the Chief Executive was never surprised by matters about which he knew nothing. Woe betide anyone who tried to keep failures and threats secret.
Mr Entwistle appears to be a decent cove, but didn’t he ever learn on the management training courses he attended the difference between delegation and abdication?
Look its one thing to say that Entwistle is incompetent and the BBC reporting structures misfunctioned.
But the BBC has gone out of its way to try to shift the opprobium of the Child Abuse allegaqtions onto the Tory Party. I may think Cameron is an arse but this is an absolutely fundamental breach of the BBC Charter. It simply cannot claim to be impartial. And as such it cannot continue in its current form funded by a tax.
Hi Johnnydub–You go far too far.
It was one rogue reporter on Newsnight (and possibly some of his superiors). We don’t know who or why. Yet.
Recognize the (deliberate) phrase? Foolishness, naivete, ineptitude, shoddy journalism? Very possibly. Through-going illegality and dishonesty? Not to mention corporate coverup? We are far from this.
You need to keep a sense of proportion. Unless you wish to destroy one of our great national assets. In which case you might like to tell us why.
“Preferences which we are told, emerge pre-puberty. It is quite illogical.”
On a personal level, I beg to differ here. I would think up to my mid to late 20s, I would have been attracted to teenaged/early 20s girls. As I’ve got older, so has my taste in women. At age 50, I would rather stick needles in my eyes than chase after teenaged girls, even in the highly unlikely event they’d be vaguely interested.
But what age women do you find the MOST attractive? Surely from a sexual point of view they should at least be of the age of fertility, though perhaps from the point of view of companionship the upper end of the range might be more compatible. I am actually 61 and my wife almost 25. We have a small baby and a 4-year-old daughter. I would not swap my wife for an older woman for anything.
Hi JM–Congratulations!
On the other hand, I doubt many of us on this unusually–and much needed–skeptical blog will accept your claim with out evidence!
You will be hearing from my lawyers. Evidence will be produced at your libel trial.
I’m 49 and certainly do not any longer find late teenage or even early 20s females that attractive. They may be well shaped (though less so these days with many) but seem to me to be vacuous and culturally devoid (sorry girls). A woman in this age bracket would either be the death of me or drive my mind into meltdown with their ridiculous notions and priorities. Unfortunately also, many women older than this age bracket display similar tendencies. Welcome to the Modern World chaps. I suppose if pushed, an attractive age is about 30 years old. But then one begins to think……..
Wise words, Paul!
When did you meet?
Great article, having some experience in this field I wholeheartedly agree with it. I have often wondered if all this publicity and hysteria only encourages those attracted to children, I mean children, not adolescents, to believe their tastes are quite normal. I am sure many who had such an inclination felt so ashamed they would never have acted on it but now it seems, to them, to be common and natural. Like many teenagers I had my share of unwanted gropes but a sharp word or sometimes a sharp slap usually dealt with it. I think Saville was without doubt a very unsavoury character but the whole thing is getting ridiculous, now they want to dig him up! a stake through the heart no doubt. As for the BBC programme, words fail me, a man with known problems and they fail to even show him a picture of the man he accuses? fail to even ask the man himself? what sort of organization are they running or is it just anything to get Tory – Politician – Thatcher years in the their story. There are quite a few Labour current and former MPs names on the internet too but I have not heard any mention of them. In my experience there are two distinct types attracted to young people: those who like adolescent boys or girls ages from about 12 – 16 and those attracted to pre pubescent children and I have never seen the tastes cross over which is why I was suspicious about a 9 year old boy accusing Saville as he was clearly interested in young girls not children. All we will get is more years of hugely expensive enquiries into historical abuse cases which can almost certainly never be proved and more compensation claims no doubt. Like many of you I have seen the result of real sexual abuse on very young children and for these perpetrators hanging is too good although it is true they were often abused themselves and consider it ‘normal’ especially where it runs in famillies. I find it all very depressing.
Hi Carol42–”I was suspicious about a 9 year old boy accusing Saville”
This was the Boy With The Blue Rolls Royce. Recall: the Mirror reported his alleged abuse, with photo. Unfortunately his detailed description of the Rolls’ interior failed to match that car. Apparently. The general rule here is that if details which can be checked turn out to be wrong, skepticism is justified about details–here abuse–which cannot. I investigated a little, which I now report.
First I asked a RR enthusiasts’ site if they could identify the car and it’s interior details. The archivist kindly replied noting they need the chassis number to check their records. Then I asked the site advertising the sale of what seems to be this Savile blue Rolls for it’s chassis number. No response so far. Probably ever.
http://www.british-car-auctions.co.uk/Classic-Cars/Previous-results-holding-page/Blackbushe—Tuesday-2nd-Octob/Rolls-Royce-Corniche-convertib/
Jack Barkley of London, a big Rolls dealer at the time and from whom Savile supposedly bought the car, remain an option. They still exist, although under different ownership.
There is no evidence the MSM has followed up this lead. Although a couple of reports this boy may sue:
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/jimmy-savile-almost-100-victims-make-1365264
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/jimmy-savile-child-abuse-photo-1410124
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2225788/Abused-child-poses-Jimmy-Saviles-Rolls-Royce-chilling-picture-released-lawyers-appeal-information-attack-late-TV-star.html
Meant to ask, did anyone else see the guy interviewed on Sky News? that struck me as largely correct as it seems the boys liked their days and nights out and put up with the sexual games as the price to pay. Not to excuse it but I have seen this attitude before with children in care and it sounded true to me, especially when he said some kids would not be compliant and refused to go, I have seen that too but the ‘carers’ usually know who is vulnerable. Definitely sounded more real than any of the other ‘victim’ interviews I have seen.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20284124
Indeed! Entwhistle has just resigned.
As I noted just earlier, he should have a appointed a Head of Twitter to keep him informed.
Or fired Helen Boaden, Head of News, for keeping him in the dark about Newsnight.
Entwistle is now toast. As predicted by your scribe and others…
Seemed a nice bloke but wholly unwilling to have any idea what was going on in his organisation.
Bloody Hell, I hear you all think. How did he come to be the first on here to deliver the “Breaking News” that the DG had resigned? Is he wired live into Sky News? Has he got a “Journo” in the know? Sadly, no. And, sadly is the operative word. I was following a live blog on The X Factor (for reasons I prefer to keep to myself) and it got a mention!
Very well reasoned thinking Anna.
But you are a minority with truly independent thinking. Unfortunately there are so many vested interests in developing the ‘knee jerk’ ‘hysterical’ approach to something that is truly unthinkable, whichg will prevent a rational sane approach to child abuse.
The family is almost denigrated to incompetence by the politicians in Britain that only the state rules and social theories of raising children are accepted to be followed, do not toe the line and your children can be confiscated. A brother walking sister home would be deemed as preventing ‘independence and confidence’ because once the norm, it no longer is. Parent’s keeping an eye on their children’s activities and asking questions would be considered too controlling. There is no moral compass or common sense in British life any more- just the nanny state and its apparatchik who clearly are not up to the task of anything much that is worthy. Those who are decent often find they are sidelined. I have had explain to aged parents that how we were brought up would not be accepted by the state system of ‘rules’ today. It is bizarre.
It is because unless one has a ‘connected’ society built on concern and well being of all its members, not concern for ‘growth’, security and prosperity of the lucky ones, nothing can be done to protect children other than transport them from one place of abuse to another. We have forgotten- all children are or children- not just those we give birth too.
Lots of typos; the last sentence should read:
We have forgotten- all children are our children- not just those we give birth to.
It takes a village.
But when the village idiots outnumber the others……..
Pitchforks, torches, and up the hill we go!
Read about Twitter: it has given every idiot an instant village!
I think there would be a good body of those in psychiatry who would think the whole approach to early sex abuse is treated incorrectly.
But you are right about the scary growth in private bodies engaged in the security business be it from private prisons to guards etc etc.
When government hands over control to a body where profit is it’s first motive, surely alarm bells should be ringing.
Funny you mention (as Ms Raccoon did) the idea of a brother walking a sister home.
My older brother always walked me to and from school in the early 1950s in a country town and woe betide him if he forgot as my mother would warn him ‘ wait till your father gets home’.
I don’t know where this idylic past was that tabloids refer to where you could ‘leave your doors unlocked’.
I also remember said brother put me on the back of a truck once when i was 4 as a joke and the truck drove off with the distraught delivery driver discovering me giggling in the back , in the next town. Imagine that poor man today ?. he would definitely be on charges.
there is something very ironic in all this :
a life of alcoholism, drug taking, perhaps dole fiddling, broken marriages and so on is taken as clear proof that early sex abuse has destroyed your life whereas in any other case, say if you were before the courts on a charge of stealing a car it would be treated as evidence of leading a dissolute life without accepting responsibility with the magistrate giving you a good telling off and the advice to ‘pull your socks up’ and so on.
I have no idea what early sex assaults does to a person but I believe this motion perpetuated that it ‘destroys your life’ is dangerous and one perpetuated by a self-interested and generally self-appointed professional ‘child protection’ industry that hoovers up millions of pounds of taxpayer’s money.
Likewise as Ms Raccoon pointed out- this odd American style claim that ‘closure’ can be found another furphy perpetuated by self interested bodies , police and so on.
I’ve had terrible things happen in my life- dear friends who have died young, in accidents, one murder and so on and all I know is that time heals most wounds. I’ve never found this ‘closure’ thing they talk about and have no idea what it is.
Surely if enough people in authority backed by tabloid media , keep harping on that early sex abuse will destroy your life, it could become a self fulfilling prophecy.
About 20 years ago I found myself in the ‘company’ of a young woman who was clearly ‘uncommunicative’ one could see that there was something seriously amiss psychologically. We were going to a place which is more a ‘retreat’ type situation- for anyone. I discovered over time she had been sexually abused by her father as a child. She remained aloof for her first stay at this place. When I the following year went back she was there- but what a change! She was smiling and communicative. The environment, unlike many of the ‘professional’ distance ones, was such that she was able to come to terms with something bad that had long ago occurred but was no longer, (I had seen how others too had benefited at the time in different ways).
I agree this closure stuff is all largely recently instituted ‘psycho babble’. Many people and families have experienced seriously awful things that people in the ‘industry’ would deem needs psychologists etc. to properly deal with- what a lot of tosh! Many in the world suffer the most appalling situations yet continue with their lives as memory dulls the experience and in the end often near erases it or makes it unimportant to the present. If you have a system which perpetuates an idea that you need ‘help / closure’ you will no doubt ‘act this out’ perhaps as in the BBC scenario- the lure of compensation will assist. I think once people realise there are things that happen which have no rational or happy explanation and are still loved and cared for by others they do ‘survive’ in the real sense and live out their lives – however imperfect to others…
Observer: That was a very sensible comment and I totally agree with it.
I can not understand the reports of sex abuse of children.
I understand that not all people are the same, but I would not have tolerated unwanted sex abuse when I was young, and even if I was sex abused, I would have screamed about it from the roof tops, no matter who did it.
We all act differently.
However there has to be a sea change in just accepting people’s claims unquestioningly when it involves historic sex assaults. Yet even as we now see, Lord McAlpine’s accuser is a repulsive character, others seem to forgive his intentions to destroy perfectly innocent people even whilst the clues were all there for the world to see in court transcripts simply because he carried the mantle of ‘child abuse victim’.
What if Lord McAlpine had not challenged ?. The same tabloids now ripping Meesham apart would have continued crucifying innocents by implication.
Someone like Messham only has the power he has been given by those better able to balance their realities. To express it rather unfeelingingly, if you give the lunatics the keys to the asylum you can hardly blame them for trashing the place. That’s not to label anyone – it’s meant as allegory.
If only the BBC had “written” on behalf of Savile, as McAlpine wass able to do for himself, this rampage of mainstream insanity might never have gotten off the ground. It never fails to amaze me how people can know someone intimately for nigh on fifty years and then condemn them to be crucified with not even a breath of, “Are you sure?” That’s not to cover up, but is at least to check that certain people were actually in the place they say they were at the time they say they were. It could be said that the first sin was Betrayal – everything else follows, and there is no bigger betrayal than the abuse of a pre-pubescent child.
I did notice, tucked away on an inside-page of The Times yesterday, in a tiny box, a mention that nine more men in Rochdale were at trial for the use and abuse of a girl under-16. I don’t expect the case to hit the headlines however.
This is a very simplistic attitude and does not take into account the “grooming” of the child that occurs in most cases of child sex abuse. It is very normal for the child (even as adults) to blame themselves and even to feel empathy for their abuser sometimes, even when they logically understand the truth of the crime. There are similarities in the psychological phenomena that occurs in victims of domestic abuse, whereby they take all responsibility for the harm done to them, both physically and emotionally, and often apologise to the abuser for causing the abusers behaviour.
“single-handedly magically transform his sexual preferences”……….priceless
Thank you Anna for sharing your thoughts on the Newsnight debacle.
You have a gift for cutting through the fluff and getting to the real nub of the issue.
I have thought for sometime that the BBC’s rational for not broadcasting the original Savile story was quite reasonable. Yet they are still criticised for this. Their broadcasting of the “senior Tory Paedophile” piece was however utterly ludicrous, and th piece should have been pulled for the same reason the first Savile program was. It was unsubstantiated. One cannot go around making very serious allegations against people unless you can back it up with evidence. Or if you do, expect to be rightfully sued.
I too think these issues should be left to the criminal justice system to address. Yes people will point to failures in these systems too. But what we must remember is that we as a society are always evolving. The Abuse of power in the aftermath of Hillsborough was shocking and was corrupt. However, the collective consciousness of the county will be learning from this. Even if only for self-interested reasons those in authority are well aware that corruption does eventually “come out” and are therefore less likely to engage in it. The vast majority of those who work in state bodies that wield power I believe are well intentionned, ethical people. We now have legislation in place that protects those who do find they need to “blow the whistle” so they can do so appropriately…not by ringing the daily mail! I know from my own experience that it is much easier to be heard when you have a serious concern about a state organisation, than it was even five years ago. We are learning. We are becoming more transparent.
I feel desperately sorry for anyone whose name has been bandied about on the Internet as being an alleged Paedophile due to this media witch-hunt. This is not justice. It is grossly unfair and I hope Lord Mcalpine takes those responsible for defaming him to the cleaners.
I also feel desperately sorry for those who have endured abuse as children, including the chap who featured on Newsnight. None of this has helped their cause and I hate to think of the further damage done to Mr Meesham by these broadcasts.
” We are learning. We are becoming more transparent.”
Anne Marie- I too was once called an optimist, I am older and wiser now and have seen the worst.
I am afraid your comment flies in the face of the known- ‘serious case reviews’ all over the country, where made public into child protection failures, even after decade, have repeatedly thrown up the same issues and problems. I am not at all convinced that most humans actively learn anything much or change. I also would question the transparency increase. The ‘secret courts’ and behaviours of the ‘social circus’, as the social workers/services are called on a carers blog site, is the testimony. I point you to a social work blog site- these are the ‘child and vulnerable persons protectors, some threads are very informative of attitudes:
http://www.communitycare.co.uk/carespace/forums/difference-between-qualified-and-unqualified-14249.aspx#72402
You are right in that there is a long way to go, but I can only speak as I find, and it is much easier now to raise a safeguarding concern, or a perceived failure in a public body than it was previously.
I do have concerns around the potential for abuse in the closed family courts….but I am reluctant to assume the worst with my current state of knowledge. I assume (perhaps wrongly) that these cases are independently overseen to ensure fair play, given that they cannot be reported in the media?
Child protection is a huge issue (and rightfully so) and I would never work in that field specifically (although obviously I am as bound by child protection requirements as anybody) because it is an absolute minefield. Underfunded, under supported, and you have to make decisions that involve causing huge trauma to children and families, sometimes without hard evidence. The potential for mistakes is enormous, the potential harm caused if you remove a child unnecessarily, or don’t remove a child and they suffer abuse……It’s a job that has to be done. And I applaud those who work tirelessly in this field. But I am aware of my own limitations and I couldn’t do it.
Hmmmmm I think I’ve meandered off-topic there. I suppose my point is child protection (and vulnerable adult protection) are not an exact science by any stretch of the imagination.
Once the wider family, neighbours and local community helped in the ‘protection of children and the vulnerable by personally interfering if necessary / raising voices so that bad behaviour was checked. There was and will always be the potential for abuse in any environment and never be anywhere near 100% protection- this is impossible. Only when people have ongoing social contacts / relationships are non statutory interventions be possible, the UK has developed into a society of isolated and disconnected people and individuals with many having broken family ties, and rarely community ones where people notice much because they are so ‘separate’.
I recall 40 years ago a neighbour intervening in a local ‘fight’ between two schoolboys- no knives / guns in those days- no fear of reprisals by be accused falsely by the boys / their parents and not requiring physical intervention. Today we would pass by for fear of retribution with weapons or being accused of ‘abuse’ of some kind. Few will take risks these days to ‘care’. That is not an open or caring society.
Do we really believe that someone took leave of their senses to the extent that they broadcast the second piece, on the nations public broadcast showcase news programme, out of prejudiced malice, or a sense of need for image restoration, in neither case without believing that someone, somewhere had done some work that backed this up?
The questions are about who was persuaded, by whom, what the evidence really was and what the approval mechanisms were
And once we find out who did the persuading, then, and only then, what their motives were
“Daily Mail” – Sunday 11-11-12
” A victim of his delusions: Astonishing story the BBC DIDN’T tell you about its troubled star witness”
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The former care home resident who falsely claimed he was sexually abused by former Tory party chairman Lord McAlpine was exposed as an ‘unreliable’ witness whom no jury would believe almost 20 years ago, a Mail on Sunday investigation has revealed.
We can show that those responsible for the controversial Newsnight story based on Steven Messham’s claims misrepresented crucial facts, and either failed to check or wilfully ignored alarming information available in official records. The Mail on Sunday has established:
Newsnight failed to say that Messham triggered a 1994 libel trial by falsely claiming to have been abused by a senior police officer. His story was shown to be riddled with contradictions, costing the publications which reported his claims a total of £375,000 in damages and £1 million costs.
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2231212/A-victim-delusions-Astonishing-story-BBC-DIDNT-tell-troubled-star-witness.html?ICO=most_read_module
Yes, Thor – the whole story has been out there for 8 years had they but looked.
Funny how when you claim to have been abused by a live celebrity, the Mail suddenly stops going all ‘oh its an abuse victim we must believe every word’!
Same programme, same lack of checking the records, same lack of checking with informed and reliable sources.
And now the left and various disability activists are all over the net doing one of two things (occasionally both):
A) bewailing the fact that the press is out to ‘smear’ (ie bring to the fore existing matters of record) a poor victim of sexual abuse – probably at the behest of ‘senior Tories’ and
B) pointing out that it was the police who allegedly confused and befuddled this poor victim of sex abuse – probably at the behest of…errr, well, whom?
The stuff about File on Four leaves me speechless. The Richard Webster blog entries read very credibly and are dated some years ago. If they aren’t themselves a very elaborate concoction, it looks like the reporter on FoF who is now with the self-regardingly titled Bureau of Investigative Journalism is a sort of Typhoid Mary who may well have already done enough to kill off Newsnight. It’s like a reverse version of “nominative determinism” – Mr Bone the butcher etc – where the surname is deeply inappropriate to the trade..
Now the Daily Mail seems to have shown beyond all argument that Messham is a completely unreliable witness, not to mention fraud, so the only question is how (or why) Newnight failed to do the same background research on him as the Daily Mail.
The decision to put the Duncroft allegations on hold is starting to look wiser and wiser.
The resignation of Entwistle is hardly a surprise, but what does surprise me is he must have been the only top executive in the world who apparently doesn’t have an iPhone so that he can receive tweets, instant messages, alerts, e-mails, and calls while on the go and so that his subordinates can keep him in touch with significant developments that could affect the very future of the BBC. Astounding!
Spot on. I wonder what he actually did all day. Sit in an empty room, staring into space, it seems….
I do wonder if maybe his treatment in parliament, much of which was unfair but which he handled with dignity, and the flak from that had left him unable to function. When he told Humphrys lamely “I was out” I thought perhaps it was a case of the lights being on, but no-one home.
“The decision to put the Duncroft allegations on hold is starting to look wiser and wiser.”
Indeed. Can’t happen too soon for me!
Nice one, Anna.
I think this is even broader, and we need to bring in reform of a number of bad laws such as the Sexual Offences Act 2003, which – if I read it correctly – criminalises the consensual sexual activity ‘encouraged by free contraception’.
Never mind the other things such as how to get official interference off twitter.
‘ there was ample evidence in the record that Messham should not be taken at face value’. There was indeed. I found it myself within a short time of looking. What a pity that Richard Webster is not here to have pointed out to Angus Stickler that he was STILL flogging a turkey, over a decade since he last attempted to flog it. What I find astounding is that these people have had access to the Waterhouse proceedings (on the internet) and also probably to other info that we don’t have access to. But they preferred to believe him, and also to use him as the public face of the accusations. That was just so incredibly stupid! I have spent the last week with my mouth hanging open, waiting for the merde to hit the fan, and hoping that it would be sooner rather than later. The entire experience of the last few weeks media-watching has been rather like watching a loop of Brass Eye.
I have always been a supporter of the BBC and for me what has happened is little short of tragic – its enemies will use this as an excuse to eviscerate it still further. Thanks Angus matey, thanks a bunch.
I don’t know – what with dear Meirion Jones sending a stuffed rabbit round the track in front of the greyhounds, and Angus flogging a turkey, we are doing well with the allegories!
It looks more and more as though the Newsnight production team had been hit by a nasty dose of the conspiracy theories. I’m not sure there’s even a cure for it, other than chuck them out and start again with a new team.
I never saw myself as being an advocate of the BBC, but I do feel sorry for them – everyone demanding heads roll at the top – how about heads in the production room? I loved the comment I saw somewhere that ‘this only happened because Meirion had been tied up defending his last programme’.
Yeah, like he would have made all the necessary checks…
This was a kill-job on his aunt, didn’t bother to check facts, administer lie-detector tests, or do anything other than dance around the room singing “Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha …” – completely irresponsible. He should be fired at this point.
Hi Mewsical
I think you go too far–on the available evidence. This site has done great work in casting doubt on the testimony some Duncroft girls. Notably Bebe Roberts. Still, we don’t know what that abandoned Newsnight report contained. Nor based on what. Firing someone before the full story is in smacks of, well, a witch-hunt.
Actions should be evidenced-based. We don’t have the full evidence yet.
The Liz McKean interview with Kari Ward in the Panorama piece was from the Newsnight original show, and as the piece was allegedly about ten minutes long, that was the meat of it, I believe. If you remember, Kari was very disappointed that she had agreed to appear on camera and reveal her identity for the Newsnight piece, only to have them cancel it on her. At the time, she was treating for cancer, and looked very ill. When the Exposed show came out, she was recovering well, and looked a lot better.
”It looks more and more as though the Newsnight production team had been hit by a nasty dose of the conspiracy theories.”
They outsourced the conspiracy theories to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.
Do you have a quote in which Messham actually named the man? And the same for Newsnight?
Messham named the man at the Waterhouse enquiry, and has been naming him ever since, although of course no-one would actually print it. Not only is he now saying that he was ‘shown’ a picture of MacAlpine on Friday evening and discovered it was not him – when elsewhere he said he found it while browsing his computer – but he also said quite clearly that this man had rung him up, told him who he was talking to, and threatened him. Now he is trying to say this was mistaken identity, in my opinion because as he found out once before with a prominent policeman, if it goes to a libel trial he will lose.
Now Mellor is in trouble for calling him a weirdo. People like MWT are scuttling to say how awful that is. Well actually what was awful was ever encouraging this man to rehash, for the nth time, a mass of unverified and unverifiable accusations. Messham is a sad figure but the people who promoted him to this public prominence are beneath contempt.
The problem I find with people who have suffered abuse is their lack of continuity of thought. They are very easily scared because of the shame of what they are trying to explain.
As a child, damaged children always seemed to head my way, mostly for advice, but just for good non-judgemental friendship, many said they felt safe in my company. It takes a lot of trust before abused people can tell you their secret, and in most cases the person being told is the leader of the converstaion.
By that I mean dependant upon the reaction of the listener, be that vocal or body language, but by far the most significant, the emotional response from the listener, will determine wheather the person clams up or gives you it all, and if at any point the listener shows sign of doubt, the abused will clam up, backtrack, and even feign to be winding you up.
I understand it in these terms, abusers become more aware of the power over the emotional system of the abused, they understand how to manipulate it.
Seasoned persons could very easily demolish the story of the abused by inserting any of the above criteria into the interview.
It seems strange that as you say, he has named the same person from the get go, I believe their has been a twist in the way he has been handled presenting a long held story to collapse so long after the event.
I think we all agree the target is the BBC and a dead Knight, but with the story moving back into waters the darker forces within the establishment thought to be quite, has prompted a takeover by the forces that activate each time they are exposed.
What I have taken from this whole affair to this point is the fact yet again, charitable trusts and paedophilic networks go hand in hand.
I love the BBC said: “Messham named the man at the Waterhouse enquiry”
I have a vague idea in my head that Messham only gave the surname and was said to be too afraid to give a first name.
In 1997 Nick Davies reported that one abuser shared the same surname as a prominent Conservative supporter, which is not the same as saying his abuser *was* a prominent Conservative supporter.
“[A victim referred to as Leon] had been threatened and burgled and had had his car attacked, he said. He would give no more – except for this man’s surname. Which happened to match that of one of Mrs Thatcher’s most prominent supporters.”
And later wrote:
“Since Mr B has been identified only by surname, it is not clear whether the witnesses are referring to Mrs Thatcher’s colleague.
Leon’s evidence suggests that they are not – he said that he thought Mr B was dead, whereas Mrs Thatcher’s supporter is still alive and prominent.”
How this came to be Newsnight suggesting Lord McAlpine to be ‘Mr B’ I cannot fathom.
Lack of basic fact checking. Simples.
When I was 10 years old I was sent to a boarding school in the Lake District (which closed down many years ago). On Sundays we were given about 3 or 4 hours of free time to roam the school grounds, play games, or whatever we wanted to do. (No doubt this was rest time for the teachers.) One day a group of 4 boys of 11 or 12 years old were absent from roll call at the end of the afternoon, and it was rumoured that they had gone to a tarn about a mile away to swim. Eventually they returned and were given a severe caning on the bare bottom. I don’t remember how many strokes, possibly six, but I do remember seeing their buttocks displayed in the changing rooms days later, and the entire area of the buttocks were literally black and blue with the outlines of the cane strokes quite visible.
Today such a punishment would be considered criminal assault, but back in the day such things were considered all part of a school’s day. My memory at the time was not of the cruelty of the punishment, but of making a note to avoid leaving the school grounds without permission.
On retrospect as an adult I see that the headmaster (long since dead) must have been absolutely terrified that one of the boys might have drowned and that his severity of punishment probably was driven by his own fears of what might have happened due to inadequate supervision of young boys. I don’t know what happened to those boys in the long run. One always had an ambition to emigrate to Canada and maybe he did. Another wanted to become a doctor, and since his father was a GP it is very possible that he did. A third boy whom I think (but not quite sure) was one of the group is now a prominent judge in the UK and I have seen his name on the Internet.
However, although I am 100% sure that this event took place, in the unlikely event of the headmaster being disinterred and put on trial, and of there being no statute of limitations, what are the chances of a positive conviction today? Almost zero, I am sure, even though the credibility of the potential witnesses is probably extremely high.
So what on earth is the point of resurrecting these old cases of sexual abuse on TV if the character of the plaintiffs is not impeccable? The sad truth is that programs like BBC’s Newsnight have just become tabloid journalism willing to put out any story to create a quick sensation. The problem is that there probably are numerous victims of sexual and physical abuse in childhood of excellent character, but very few willing to go public, and those likely to go public are probably those who have no good reputation in their community to lose and who are looking for money. It is almost a stereotypical drama that is enacted ever few years, giving everyone a chance to ventilate their opinions and experiences of child abuse until it all dies down until the next outbreak of the epidemic.
I left school in 1962. It was a Catholic Grammar School run by Priests (5) and over 100 lay staff. Co-Ed, too.
The main punishment was the strap, ‘administered’ only by the Deputy Headmaster, a tall, gaunt fellow, Irish, Fr. Moran. After each lesson there were a line of boys from most of the classes and years outside his office door. No girls of course; they usually were ‘told off’ for their misdemeanours, whilest the boys were whacked for very much the same behaviours (oh what patriarchal oppressors we were learning to be. We were quite unaware that the girls were building up enormous resentment for this lack of equal treatment)
So, every 45 or 50 minutes, some 40-50 boys would be awaiting a sound whacking from a leather strap approx 2″ wide and quite thick. Six whacks per hand was the usual. The one man whose job it was would have only just worked his way through the previous 40-50 lads. He would be in tears before we even entered the door. Behind the bike sheds as we smoked illicit ciggies, we would occasionally try to imagine the awful crime he must have committed in the past to have been given that job.
I suppose this small compassion on our part due to his tears would these days be taken as solid proof that he was grooming us.
Looking back on those happy days and reading about the awful times at Duncroft, I can see that because I wasn’t depraved, I was deprived.
‘scuse my grammar. That should have been ‘was a line of boys’. Shows how much notice I took.
As a non-boarding school chap, I have to say your comment has a serious stench of keeping the plebs out of the boarding school ways.
Are you suggesting only persons of impeccable character are allowed to be victims of crime, and thus allowed to use the justice system?
Are you under psychiatric treatment presently?
Belinus,
You are very welcome to join us, but this isn’t Digital Spy – we don’t go in for the casual insult such as ‘Are you under psychiatric treatment presently?’. The commentators over here are intelligent folk who like to debate seriously. Do so yourself and you will find yourself amongst friends.
Don’t do so and you will find yourself out in the gutter without your drink – I’m a dab hand at the ‘hurled customer’ myself. Won first prize in the Derbyshire Troll hurling contest last year with a magnificent 230 yards…..
You’ll be glad to hear we have a tradition of first drink is on the house.
Why thank you Anna, point taken, and my humblest apologies to said recipient of shall we say, my rather headache driven onslaught..
That’s OK Flower, have a bag of pork scratchings on the house as well……
Oi.
The only Trolls in Derbyshire are those which have escaped from Staffordshire.
(And The Beast).
“Are you suggesting only persons of impeccable character are allowed to be victims of crime, and thus allowed to use the justice system?”
Not at all. I am simply suggesting that if you want to make a TV program about this issue and name names, or even hint at names, you had better make damn sure to get all your ducks in a row and that would mean coming up with solid, credible witnesses. If you read what I said above in another post, I said that I thought such matters were dealt with better by law enforcement than by the media.
“Are you under psychiatric treatment presently?”
No, I worked for many years in the field of psychiatry in various formats and as a result of my observations would be very reluctant to seek psychiatric treatment even if other people thought I needed it. I have had some psychiatrists as friends, but purely on a social level, never professional.
I occasionally drink a cup of coffee if I feel in need of a stimulant, but have never taken any psychiatric medications unless you count Benadryl for a runny nose.
Grattitude for your acceptance of my apology, and a big hello.
As for the psychiatry aspect, I am with you 100%.
I believe it is the case that neither Newsnight nor Messchem actually published nor spoke the name in question, merley it was spread about the grapevines.
I could be wrong, but it would appear the are twisting the actal McAlpine in question, if this is the case, from what I can gather, the police showed him a picture of the wong one.
Who knows if he is telling the truth about the police showing him the photograph. He has been pursuing these allegations against McAlpine for decades, so if he had any credibility at all, he would surely have done more research on the subject. From what I see in the Daily Mail, he has a long history of self contradiction and fantastic claims and is regarded as completely unreliable.
I have worked in a sex offenders treatment facility, although as a health care giver, not as a therapist, but I did have access to the full case notes of offenders which I occasionally perused. One thing I noticed was that in legal and sexual case histories there was a level of detail in witness statements (even from children) regarding sexual offenses that goes far, far beyond anything ever printed in UK newspapers.
For example, let’s take Karin Ward’s allegations of what took place when Savile had her perform oral sex on him in his Rolls Royce at or near Duncroft. The description is vague and she says she can’t remember the details. However if the account had been in one of these legal case histories, there would have been details about where she was in the car, what position she was in, how large his penis was, whether he tasted or smelled bad, whether he gave her instructions of how do perform the oral sex (faster, slower, use one hand, use two hands, etc.), any identifying marks around his genitals, how long the sex took, whether he ejaculated, whether she spat or swallowed, whether he touched other parts of her body and many other aspects in excruciating detail. (You get the general picture.) Such accounts could be compared with the accounts of other witnesses to see if there were minor but significant details of his modus operandi that corresponded with accounts by other witnesses that could not have been obtained by collusion.
Now the allegations we have on rather sensational TV shows are very general in nature and don’t include the kind of forensic detail that police statements would go into, so it is very difficult to assess what information the TV reporters actually had. However the kind of vague statements like “I delivered a tray of food to his flat and he buggered me” are useless in a legal setting.
This is why I am more inclined to believe the assessment of law enforcement officers and prosecutors over Messham’s credibility as a witness than the opinions of BBC journalists who are just interested in making a nice sensational TV show.
Mmm and lovely they were too.
I was very partial to the cain and indeed the belt, i have to say the belt was by far the worst, it not only bruised my little botty, but would wrap around and hit those things that should not be hit. Did make for very cute patterns, which of course at every opportunity would be shown to fellow pupils.
Talking of interesting patterns, my last boarding school but one before Duncroft, had a Matron who was very fond of making us sit naked on a cane seated chair in the freezing corridor if we were caught talking after lights out – now that was an interesting pattern….
Ooo, to be a fly on the wall…
I believe back in the day they knew how to deal with us wiley chidren, though not seeing in that way as it happened, it was the hindsight that was the key for me when i finaly began to re-evaluate my own behaviour during childhood, they were right in most cases.
Perhaps the defining point for me came when a huge black guy, my foreman, called me a defeatist, because up until then i thought of myself a rebel, it had never occured to me that i was a an expression of a million excuses as to why i need not learn…
Operation Missed-Bus has now arrested convicted fradudster Wilfred De’Ath – that’s the same Wilfred De’Ath who was one of Mark Williams-Tosspot’s ‘star witnesses’ on the Exposed programme. Really racking up the ‘big names’ aren’t they? Bebe & Karin next?
Was that the guy who saw Savile with the 12 year old? Yes, you get one lie after another, and then it becomes a little obvious that there was a game afoot to get Savile, and it didn’t matter whether people were telling the truth or not, they were ripe to be exploited. These liars have cast doubt on anyone who might be telling the truth, and yet they huff and puff, and hurl insults and threats around at every opportunity. Once you adopt a false persona or personas in at least one case, and you come over to the Raccoon Arms and threaten Margaret Jones, then it all becomes a noxious cloud of smoke.
Yes Chris and he is apparently the same man who also has past as a fraudster, did time for it. Did he ‘dob in’ Savile to try and save himself? Who knows, it isn’t exactly easy to work out.
Just when I think the weirdness may be over, it gets worse.
Oh lol, lookee here http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/jimmy-savile/9670403/I-know-how-Lord-McAlpine-feels-says-ex-BBC-producer-arrested-for-sex-abuse.html
Yes indeed, his arrest is entirely unconnected with Savile, just as the arrest of Savile’s chauffeur was expressly stated by the police to be unconnected with Savile. However to read much of the press, this is the “third man” (after Starr and Gadd presumably).
De’Ath did tell a very early story that led me to think it was unlikely that Savile did much at all about underage girls. It was a tale of them on a street tour (Saviles Travels?) and De’Ath recalled Jimmy ascertaining a young girl with her mother was “aged 16″ and he shouted out in the way only gauche celebrities could, “Legal! Legal!”. It certainly seemed an odd behaviour for a practising closet paedo as I would have expected them to go about their work in a rather more subtle manner; but then what do I klnow of such matters. Very little thankfully. But I can see the absence of substantive evidence as readily as the next potential juror. Next case please.
David Rose http://tompride.wordpress.com/2012/1…er-david-rose/
All that does is establish that a lot of people are very confused about who David Rose is. But then I find that a lot of people these days are very confused about everything. The idea that David Rose and Bob Woffinden are ‘shills’ for the paedo appeasers is too stupid to need comment. Or at least that was the way it used to be – since David Icke because guru to British journalism anything can happen. So I will leave it by saying that nothing in that article is new, it was all available to anyone willing to master the art of Google.
Does it now qualify as a Super Shitestorm?
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/11/world/europe/long-ago-jimmy-savile-abuse-complaint-is-heeded.html?pagewanted=all
I suppose all this is because the new Editor in Chief of the NY Times just left the BBC?
Deborah Cogger, New York Times…
The experience preyed on her, she said, and several times over the years she called various newspapers and tried to talk about what happened.
“They just didn’t want to know,” she said
Deborah Cogger, Feature World….
During all this time I barely told a soul about what happened with Jimmy Savile. I confided in one close friend, Lorraine – and briefly mentioned it to my daughters when they were older – but otherwise, I blocked it from my mind.
The last line seems almost libellous, unless it is true:
“They pimped us out,” she said of the teachers at Duncroft…………………………
There were no ‘teachers’ at Duncroft, the staff there were supervisory only. Teachers were accredited people who came from the outside on a daily basis when I was there, and likely that remained the same. Once again, a mish-mash, using Bebe Roberts nonsense about the dormitories, etc. If we have to continually listen to the accusations of women from Duncroft, I would ask them to take a lie-detector examination at this point. There are too many games going on, and Cogger sold her story to Bella magazine initially. If they have nothing to hide, they should be agreeable to such a measure. When all this was going on, the school was NOT an approved school. The term was discontinued in 1969 by general mandate, and the schools were referred to as care homes. The school was NOT dependent on Jimmy Savile’s money, it was funded by tax payers. In 1974 the NAHM and MIND were the administrators, and I don’t believe the Home Office was involved. The school reverted to being overseen by the local authorities at that time as well. Barnardo’s took over in October 1976.
“First, that the age of consent is routinely observed by everyone, governments included. Families especially. Let’s see brothers walk their sisters home again, Mothers watching their daughters with eagle eyes once more – sitting on the internet howling with rage because you’ve just seen a grainy Youtube clip of a DJ ‘possibly’ rubbing the lower back of a ‘possibly’ teenage girl is no substitute you know.”
I think a bigger question is what the age of consent is actually for. Is it about pregnancy, abuse, or something else? I’m not advocating lowering it, I’m just suggesting that laws should be based on moral foundations, and what is the moral case for it being 16? And in terms of the police disregarding the law, what is the moral case for it being done at 16 or 17, but not at 30? And if the police regularly disregard the law, should we therefore be having an open and honest debate about what the law should be rather than the police just arbitrarily deciding which bits of it they will disregard.
I’ve tried going back in my memory to how people felt in the 1980s, and my own memories are that the age of consent wasn’t about “abuse”, it was about pregnancy, that a girl that age wasn’t really ready to be raising a family, and that a girl with a baby at 16 without a husband or secure boyfriend wasn’t going to have much of a life.
Two things changed attitudes. One was HIV. Everyone got so worked up about its consequences, that they stopped worrying about kids having sex, and instead focussed on keeping kids safe. The second thing was the effect of welfare and other incentives, which meant that some girls took risks earlier (the left’s arguments about sex education run against the statistics that show that girls of wealthier parents keep their virginity longer, or else they have to say that the National Curriculum isn’t actually national).
This is where I have a problem with the talk about “abuse” involving Savile. He was a dirty old man. What he did was wrong. But, society often views different wrongs in different ways, and frequently considers some wrongs as not fitting to the level of deserving criminal sanction. And if you look at the age of consent about being about pregnancy, then you can see why no-one was bothered about Savile’s behaviour as he wasn’t having intercourse. It also perhaps puts Bill Wyman and Mandy Smith in perspective, that her mother allowed them to have sex at 14, because perhaps she saw that Wyman would be a good provider to her daughter, arguably, better than some boy at school would be.
It’s really worth catching up with old fiction from past times, because you get a good idea of society’s views then. The St Trinians movies of the 1960s, despite being U rated, would cause a stink if made today, what with sixth form girls “distracting” military officers by spending time alone with them in their study, smoking and snogging soldiers, showing stocking tops and doing a striptease act on stage.
Very thoughtful Stigler. Instead of knee-jerking over sexual abuse, and having issues about these girls being under the ‘age of consent,’ let’s first revisit the idea that the times dictated the moral code. We are talking the late 60s to mid–to late 70s.
Obviously, as far as early sexual encounters were concerned, the fear of pregnancy was overcome when birth-control was generally available, sometime in the late 60s or early 70s. Woo-hoo! Sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll!
Not one of the Duncroft women has mentioned if they were on the pill or not – just out of interest. And yes, Savile was careful not to have intercourse. Not to say he behaved like a bloody nuisance and he should have been slapped at the very least. Even Cogger admits that she read him off, pushed him away, and he backed down. That was probably all it took. He didn’t want to deal with some girl who wasn’t interested. Good for her.
The Duncroft girls were usually more sexually sophisticated at 14 than their more demure counterparts on the outside, but there was a fair amount who were not confined who were sexually sophisticated as well by the early 70s, ongoing. I think this is what Margaret Jones meant by “they were no angels … they knew more about sex than I did.” She was born in 1921.
There appear to be at least 25 girls at a time during the Savile years. Much less in the 60s – 16 to 18 only. So, out of a possible 80 girls during the years he was there, if not more, only 5 have come forward. Bebe Roberts must be eliminated because of problems with the time-line – Margaret Jones has verified that Savile didn’t show up at Duncroft until February 1974. So we have 4. Kari, “Fiona,” Toni, Cogger.
“Fiona” fails as another dubious character, hiding behind false identities, self-appointed leader of the “last chance” group, manipulating the gullible, but in the meantime keeping photos of herself with Savile, laughing and companionable. posting the whereabouts of former staff members on public sites, and so on. Don’t know about you, but if someone had molested me, I wouldn’t exactly be keeping photos.
My own personal experiences tell me that “Fiona” from the Exposed show has been the driving force behind the rest of the complaints and allegations. She is exposed indeed, as the person providing the Mail with the forged letter from the Surrey Police regarding the 2007 investigation. Then I inadvertently discover that she is operating behind a false identity, i.e. “Susan Melling.” At this time, it should be noted that “Fiona” had an adoptive father who was a very successful producer/director for the BBC. He was also a lifetime peer. Hm. The Navy Lark ran until 1977, btw. So, possibly “Fiona” met Savile through her influential adoptive father, during his tenure at the Beeb. Timeline matches. At one time, I was prone to believe that something might have happened, then something occurred to completely reverse my opinion, and as we continue to discuss this matter, and the attacks and insults escalate, it just smells to high heaven to me.
I do believe that the best result is a public debate about the age of consent, and that women of all ages should be actively involved in this discussion.
Mewsical , you couldnt help yourself could you. A perfectly well written blog and you turn it into a vile attack on women at Duncroft during a period that you werent even there and do not even know. You are totally obsessed and not in a good way .
Oh, Lisa, do try and make intelligent comments and not use this blog as a place to bash people who don’t agree with you. Anna started this blog because she found Bebe Roberts’ transparent lies and called her out on it, as well as the Daily Mail for participating. Not one of you ex-Duncroft women have addressed that. So, let’s do that, shall we? How about Bebe and her lies? Do you think that was a good thing for her to have done, to bring discredit on the Duncroft ‘victims.’ How about Fiona pretending to be someone else and producing forged documents to the Mail? Stop boring everyone with this “ooh, big bad Mewsical’ stuff (and by the way, you can use my real name, not trying to hide anything). I am sorry that David Graham took your playpen away over at CLR, but you only have yourselves to blame for that. I don’t believe that there is anything ‘vile’ about my expressing my doubts about the veracity of the Duncroft stories. Are we all supposed to sit and agree with you, when there are so many inconsistencies? Go have a go at the other posters for a change. You know, the ones you don’t know, who also have their doubts about Duncroft. I don’t think Anna set this up so that you can come over here and attack me, unless of course she is letting it happen so others can see exactly what has been going on for the last year on various sites that have had to close down because of this behavior, but multiplied tenfold.
Indeed, Mewsical – sometimes it is better to let the public judge for themselves the pressure that anyone who doesn’t fall in line with the ‘it was all terrible and we were thrown naked into padded cells’ line comes under rather than just for me to say that pressure has been brought on some people to toe the party line.
I figured that you were a big girl, as am I, and you could take the brickbats – the obsessive way in which they hurl childish abuse has been educational for my readers.
I would just add though, that I didn’t set this blog up just to discuss Duncroft, it has been running for some years generally picking up on poor reporting in the media and stories which should be reported in the media, but aren’t, because they don’t suit the media narrative.
@ Not one of the Duncroft women has mentioned if they were on the pill or not – just out of interest. And yes, Savile was careful not to have intercourse. Not to say he behaved like a bloody nuisance and he should have been slapped at the very least. Even Cogger admits that she read him off, pushed him away, and he backed down. That was probably all it took. He didn’t want to deal with some girl who wasn’t interested. Good for her. @
This really is the core of the confusion I think too. It is the complete lack of clarity about what Savile may have done that I find so frustrating. The police and “authorities” have made no effor to define it; just using broadbrush terms like “sexual predator”. The panic in the public mind is that they take from this a meaning of headlong assaults of every foul kind. There are 300 “lines of inquiry” but nobody can know what they are. In the case of De’Ath’s recent arrest it seems this line of inquiry relates to something he is supposed to have done in 1965 in a cinema somewhere. Such random associations.
This tendency was also apparent in a piece I was reading about Messham, where the “abuse” at Bryn Estyn was detailed but the list of “abuses” goes from the evil things done, into ridiculous things like the children were made to “cut the lawn with scissors” or “clean the footpaths with a toothbrush” – things that were a staple of the things that National Service recruits were apocraphally required to do in films like “Carry On Sergeant”. To reframe such daftness of the past into some kind of evil is just so crass. In truth all “abuse” is relative anyway. I was telling a younger friend about how routine caning was in my time at school and she was appalled. I explianed there was nothing to be *appalled* about because we were only caned for breaking the rules; this was how things were. I knew the reason I was being caned and I accepted the rules at the time; so it was not abuse of me, however much she might consider I was abused nowadays. I refused to be turned into a victim because I knew I was not one.
In the Karin Ward autobiography she describes being taken by Duncroft staff to the doctor’s to be put on pill when she was at the rehabilitation hostel there and working outside the institution and staff discovered she was seeing a young chap from her work. In her book she says that she was not sexually active at the time prior to going on the pill. I think she would have been 16 at the time. Not sure if pill was given to girls under 16.
Er…. while the hunt is on for nasty chaps, what about……
Intercourse ‘became the norm’ for sexually abused teenage boy
OK, this ones a Tranny: Cross-dressing housekeeper accused of molesting teen
Incest mother: Mother Mistie Atkinson ‘made sex tape with her son, 16, and sent him naked photos of herself’ | Mail Online
32 YO woman has sex with 14 YO boy in a public bathroom: Lakeland woman sex boy: Lakeland woman had sex with underage boy – Orlando Sentinel
38 YO Woman, 14 YO Boy: Woman, 38, had sex with boy, 14, in living room of his house | Mail Online
Tanning both with 15 YO Boy: Woman caught in a tanning booth with her pants off, kissing a 15-year-old boy: report* – NY Daily News
The pastors wife: Judy Lee, Pastor’s Wife, Mother of 4 and Music Teacher, Allegedly Sexed Up High School Pupil – Orange County – News – Navel Gazing
Sex in the classroom: Kristin Leone, N.J. high school teacher, arrested for alleged sex with student – Crimesider – CBS News
The teacher with child porn and sex with 2 of her students: Guilty Verdict in Trial of Ex-McCaskey Teacher – WPMT
4 Underage students, 1 female teacher: Police: Ex-Iowa teacher had sex with students – EsthervilleDailyNews.com | News, Sports, Jobs, North Central Iowa, Emmet County
A little reefer and a teacher in the school office: Tutor accused of pot-fueled sex romps with 16-year-old student in explosive $10M notice of claim – NYPOST.com
3 years probation, 3 underage male students. Ex-teacher gets probation, must register as sex offender – KCTV5
Pizza Parties, pot, booze, and underage students and a teacher: Bethany Appleton, Indiana Middle School Teacher, Accused Of Having Sex, Smoking Pot With Students
Female teacher brags about sex with under age students and gets away with it: Kristle Vandever, Oregon Teacher, Loses License But Not In Jail After Sex With Students
Probation for the teacher (lots of good video links embedded in the article: VIDEO: Judge gives probation to teacher who had sex with student « The Chronicle-Telegram – Lorain County’s leading news source
Special needs teacher: Special Needs Teacher Sent Porn And Had Sex With TWO OF HER STUDENTS
Yet another teacher with 15 YO boys: UPDATED: Kathryn Murray Is the Latest Teacher Accused of Having Sex with a 15-Year-Old Student – Houston – News – Hair Balls
Teachers aid: School Aide Pleads Guilty To Charges Of Sex With Student – Wall, NJ Patch
Yet another one, over summer vacation: Richland Teacher Arrested : powered by Fox 40 WDBD, Jackson, Miss.
The underage football star and his female teacher:
Another teacher and a cheerleader: Kentucky high school teacher Andrea Conners to serve 90 days in jail for having sex with 17-year-old student – NY Daily News
And another cougar: Former Richland High teacher gets probation for having sex with a student | News | News …
Female Basketball coach, underage female student victim: Coach arrested: West Broward High interim coach accused of sex with girl under 18 – Sun Sentinel
3 years for 29 counts of rape. Read the article to see the pussy pass plea bargain: Teacher Cindy Clifton, 42, who had sex with 7 students jailed
A teacher and her boy/girl orgy: Brittni Nicole Colleps: Jury sees video of English teacher ‘having group sex with four students during orgy in her home while another taped it’ | Mail Online
4 years 8 mos for incest Mom: Mom who had sex with son gets under 5 years in prison, but claims
……just from a simple search.
Telegraph – Mon 12-11-12
\\Smearing an innocent man’s name is the real tragedy here – The BBC should prove that ‘Newsnight’ was not acting with malice towards Lord McAlpine, argues Boris Johnson.\\
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/borisjohnson/9671346/Smearing-an-innocent-mans-name-is-the-real-tragedy-here.html
Anna Raccoon said: “Indeed, Mewsical – sometimes it is better to let the public judge for themselves the pressure that anyone who doesn’t fall in line with the ‘it was all terrible and we were thrown naked into padded cells’ line comes under rather than just for me to say that pressure has been brought on some people to toe the party line.
I figured that you were a big girl, as am I, and you could take the brickbats – the obsessive way in which they hurl childish abuse has been educational for my readers.
I would just add though, that I didn’t set this blog up just to discuss Duncroft, it has been running for some years generally picking up on poor reporting in the media and stories which should be reported in the media, but aren’t, because they don’t suit the media narrative.”
As far as the Duncroft group, give some people enough rope and the outcome is predictable What these lovely ladies don’t understand is that there is little or no support for bad behavior in the world outside. My hat is off to you for your excellent work at the Raccoon Arms, in keeping the popular press’s nose to the honesty and integrity grindstone. This particular situation is the Balrog however!
Regarding your third from last paragraph; people concerned about their attractions CAN get help:
http://www.stopitnow.org.uk/
Also, talking to a doctor in confidence can get you referred to appropriate psychotherapy.
Meanwhile, in Australia: in the news today…….
A GROUP of students from an exclusive Gold Coast private girls’ school, including the mayor’s daughter, partied in a bikie clubhouse after a formal graduation dinner on the weekend.
The girls, aged 17 and 18, were bussed to the clubhouse of the Nomads outlaw motorcycle gang in Carrara after the dinner at the Gold Coast convention centre on Saturday night…
Lord McAlpine now has no cause for complaint.
He’s probably now the only male left with a squeaky-clean record, now it has been firmly established that he is NOT a paedophile.
The strangest part of it however is that he has not produced any proof that he was not a “paedo”. It was just that he stated clearly he was not one and that he would be able to provide proof of where he was at various times, and so he could have a pretty good chance of proving at least some of the accusations were false – but I have no doubt that he would struggle to PROVE every single one that someone might care to make must be false; especially if he were faced with the entire population of Britain accusing him all at the same time.
Being dead, Jimmy Savile lacks such an ability, and the BBC were evidently so institutionally determined to confess to being a place where child abuse could be carried out, that they certainly were not about to say it for him. There is a certain poetry in the result that the BBC is now buggered.
I did wonder if the emergence of the name in the Guardian shortly before his own statement might be a piece of incredibly savvy news management by Lord M. and his lawyers, maybe by arrangement. A sort of hors d’oeuvre ahead of the feeding frenzy chomping on Newsnight. The paper gets an exclusive and in return, tees the whole thing up. If so, it worked an absolute treat and you really couldn’t blame him.
Meant to add: In the current climate, which even vaguely prominent individual wouldn’t leap at an opportunity to make an irrefutable public statement that whoever else might be a child abuser, I’m certainly not? And I’m NOT suggesting he really is, IMHO his statement covered every single base in clearing his name.
Yes, beyond all reasonable doubt is perhaps too tough a hurdle for something as deviant as paedophilia, but not being in the same town on the day in question seems a start.
In Savile’s case it seems not being there in the same decade was not enough to prevent Bebe’s story gaining traction as corroboration of the Case Celebre. Still, no point in flogging that dead old horse now.
Interesting to think that if Savile (no longer thought of as that eccentric-but-loveable Jimmy) had had a CRB check he would probably have come out clean.
Whereas some noteable cases of paedophile rings have involved nursery schools where the people in charge also (presumably) came out clean.
And to think that I gave up being a voluntary sports coach when these were first introduced, on the principle that I would have to pay (£10 then) just to prove that either I hadn’t been found out, or I hadn’t committed the crime – yet.
A complete reversal of ‘innocent until proven guilty’
http://www.richardwebster.net/whatthebbcdidnottellus.html
Funny to see Tony Bennett’s old imperial sparring partner Robert McAlpine crop up in the news. Small world certainly. For those who may have forgotten it was the Lord’s ‘McAlpine Contractors’ who took part in Bennett and Shrimpton’s 2002 publicity stunt on the merits (or not) of metrics. You can read all about it here. It’s a road story with a difference (or should that be ‘différance’ given the sheer number of ironies involved?)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1389886/Poll-candidate-took-50-metric-road-signs.html
By some weird quirk of fate both Shrimpton and Bennett had been mentored by McAlpine during his stint as leader of the late Jimmy Goldsmith’s Referendum Party (Bennett and Shrimpton both dallied with this party as they made their respective departures from Labour in ’97 over Europe). Shrimpton later compounded their relationship at the Bruges Group – which McAlpine funded and for which Shrimpton was (briefly) co-chair.
In retrospect, it seems peculiarly apt that McAlpine should have provided the road signs in that particular stunt.
Fancy those two long time proponents of fanciful Madeleine theories should feature marginally in another (euro) sceptical paedophile story.
I seem to recall that further offshoots of the Jimmy Goldsmith party featured in the Hollie Greig drama too (SACL?)
What a small old world. Anybody would think the Beeb had been set up!
A fair comment, but we must ensure we work out agenda over damaged people.
I had a very long conversation with two detectives just before the queen visited my home town. They asked if I was a danger to the queen.
Anyway what we learned together during that conversation was the fact corporate interests through control of the PCSO’s, were undermining the constabulary.
They were lying to the police when reporting complaints made to them as the recipients of all calls to the police stations today.
The constabularies are not as they should be today, the oath and the 9 principles are superceded by statutory guidelines, a position according to constitution we call treason.
Is their a cause for concern that one of the first things Blair carried out with the queen in 1997-8, was to change all laws on treason?
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