Quick links: NewsBiscuit Home • Chat Room • Writers' Room • Top Ten
Tripod
offlineMember
Out of prurient interest, I've just been listening to Jimmy Savile on Desert Island Discs from 1985.
He actually sounds very plausible... not the mad-eyed old perve we now know and loathe. OK, one of the records was chosen by Charlotte, a young girl from Stoke Manderville, but it was hard, back then, to think too badly of a guy who raised many millions for genuinely good causes. It's a strange life he had, and now no-one will ever know the whole story...
Tripod
offlineMember
But we will know enough...
It's unusual for anyone to "get away with it" for half a century or more. I think that's what flummoxes people. How did he manage to fool so many people for so long? His reputation is trashed, and he'll be expunged from the records of light entertainment, but there's no longer any target for all the anger... unless people want to piss on his grave. I think the story has a long way to run yet, and there'll be plenty of other people caught up in the net. But Savile has taken his story to the grave, and there's nothing we can do about that...
The All New Jeni B
onlineMember
I'm sure there are others on here who are more learned in the subject, but I recall an article I read for a uni project on abuse which said that often, Paedophile rings involving 'well-known' people also include people with power. It was claimed that when each party has a great deal to lose, there was a kind of security. Those with political, editorial or legal sway were able to exert it to protect any member who was at risk of exposure, ensuring that the whole house of cards didn't come tumbling down.
I'll see if I can find the article, it made for very uncomfortable, but interesting, reading.
Oxbridge
offlineMember
Unfortunately, though, it's not difficult to get away with it for half a century. We might think we're all wry, detached observers who aren't fazed by the rich and powerful but many people still are - witness the many who didn't feel ready to come forward in his lifetime.
Tripod
offlineMember
Savile's charity work was a very effective smokescreen. This wasn't some short-lived movement (remember when we made poverty history??); he genuinely raised huge amounts of money for genuinely good causes (and, amongst the appalling revelations, no-one has mentioned any financial irregularities). So did he put up this smokescreen from the very beginning, hoping that the charity work, the school visits and his work on children's TV would deflect attention from his interest in young girls? Or did the charity work represent some cack-handed way of compensating for what he must have known was wrong behaviour? Was his entire career a cynical ploy to give him access to young people who would be star-struck, vulnerable, malleable and unlikely to 'shop' him. Or did it just happen that way?
We're never going to know now, and that's what rankles with the great British public. Savile really was held in high regard. I was born and raised in Leeds, where he was seen as a 'local boy made good'... a man whose eccentricities could be excused by decades of fundraising activities. So he was quite the enigma. I never liked him, but that wasn't because I thought he might be a serial abuser of under-age girls. I just didn't like his 'shtick": the hair, the clothes, the cigar, the stupid catchphrases. Ugh...
Sinnick
offlineMember
I find it worrying that people like Savile & presumably the Welsh chap can maintain this Jekyll-and-Hyde lifestyle. Savile was very eccentric, and "everyone knew there was something unpleasant", but he somehow evaded any substantive evidence.
Perhaps more worrying is the knowledge that paedophilia is a lot more widespread than we'd like to think. There really are thousands in prison, and many more who aren't. Apparently, they all seem to know each other. I hear that the authorities set up psychotherapy sessions, along the lines of AA, where they describe their crimes in groups with the intention of the paedos realising the harm they do. Apparently the inmates rather enjoy these opportunities to swap stories and learn new ideas in front of a medic.
Tripod
offlineMember
Back in the 1970s there was an organisation called PIE (Paedophile Information Exchange). For a couple of years - before the public realised what they were up to - a group of paedophiles really did try to persuade us that 'consensual' sex between grown men and young children was just another acceptable lifestyle choice. Then somebody actually read the group's manifesto... and our recent obsession was peadophilia was born. In 16 years of working as a Samaritan, I heard hundreds of accounts of people being abused as children... but I'd say that 95% of abusers are family members or close family friends, rather than some ferret-faced guy in the dirty raincoat, hanging around the school gates with a bag of wine gums in his pocket. So locking the door at night generally keeps the abusers in... not out...
beau-jolly
offlineMember
I grew up in a very small boarding school. The few of us still about are very close and look out for each other. One of our lot turned out to have a worrying fondness for much younger girls when he was in his twenties. We only found this out after he topped himself aged 24. He couldn't stand the thought of being a peaodophile. I often wonder what we would or could have done had we known. Would we have stopped him killing himself?
Also an ex-lady friend told me about her last partner. She caught him spying on next-door's kids. She then found kiddie porn on his PC. As she had given up a lot to move in with him she had a dilemma. She confronted him and told him it had to stop. I don't know if he stopped but I doubt the relationship could have recovered. However he became very ill soon after. He had a strange complication and died very suddenly. She was a senior nurse in a private place and had access to a lot of nasty stuff. I broke off the relationship which was emerging as I was convinced she was about to confess to murder and really wasn't keen enough on her to risk being an accesory after the fact.
Long winded but if you have managed to read this far the question is this; What the f*ck do you do with a paeodophile?
Tripod
offlineMember
There looks to be no forseeable end to stories of abuse... at the hands of JS and others (there'll be plenty of people - big names - who won't be sleeping too well at the moment). And, with JS being dead, there's no logical end to proceedings: no trial, no 'under oath' evidence, no sentence, no 'closure'... just the rather unsatisfactory feeling that he's got away with it...
sigmund
offlineMember
Beau,
there’s the dilemma. We can’t execute them, we can’t keep them in prison for their whole lives, so some effort has to be made to rehabilitate them. But this, I hear, rarely works. A colleague in child protection tells me that the Orkney case did everyone a disservice, as the use of the word ‘Satanic’ induced scepticism in the collective mind of the authorities regarding organised child abuse rings. But, he tells me, they do exist, and they often contain pillars of the community who have the wealth and power to protect themselves and each other. It’s very frightening to hear about.
Sinnick
offlineMember
Beau, that was difficult for you to say !
As mentioned earlier, I think they receive an element of true justice in prison, but even that doesn't stop them.
Obviously, other countries have the same problem, but I wonder if it's as prevalent as here, and also how they deal with it long-term.
The All New Jeni B
onlineMember
My solution is vindictive and brutal. I don't care if it 'works', but it would certainly give some satisfaction to those affected.
We chemically castrate them, then, at least partially, lobotomise them.
I read an article where a Paedophile said the problem isn't just sexual, it's mental too, and straight castration doesn't stop the urges, merely makes the abuser find another means by which to abuse.
That's where the lobotomy comes in...
charlies_hat
offlineMember
I think some of those lobotomised by Jeni have been posting a lot on here recently...
The All New Jeni B
onlineMember
I wondered why my cellar had gone quiet...
Ironduke
offlineMember
I'm very pragmatic and sanguine about this, possibly partly because I do get to put down animals in either their best interests or very occasionally for general safety.
I'd put down a dog that had bitten a child without compunction, regardless of the circumstances, because the greater good must prevail and children must be protected and looked after.
I cannot imagine anybody with the merest remnant scrap of decency being happy in the knowledge that they were abusing children...therefore, either put them down because they are miserable and unhappy in themselves, or put them down because they have not a shred of decency in their soul.
If we can't bring ourselves to that, then a lifetime's incarceration somewhere secure and forgettable.
Either way, the greater good is served and potential future victims are saved.
Tripod
offlineMember
Either way, the greater good is served and potential future victims are saved.
And, in the meantime, we need to remember that 'child abuse' is a term that covers a wide range of behaviours... from insufficient care, say, to crimes that are arguably worse than murder (in their ability to damage so many lives... and continue the damage from one generation to the next)...
AReader
offlineMember
I cannot imagine anybody with the merest remnant scrap of decency being happy in the knowledge that they were abusing children...therefore, either put them down because they are miserable and unhappy in themselves, or put them down because they have not a shred of decency in their soul.If we can't bring ourselves to that, then a lifetime's incarceration somewhere secure and forgettable.
[Kenny Everett]And then we put them in a field AND BOMB THE BASTARDS!!![/Kenny Everett]
kimllfixit
offlineMember
As this was supposed to be a little haven for shite Savile-paedophilia jokes, here's a fresh-un:
As a mark of respect, Jimmy Savile's family has removed his headstone and all flowers from his grave leaving only a small hole and no bush. Just how he'd have liked it.
beau-jolly
offlineMember
Euow! Kim you've not only let us down, you've let yourself down.
The All New Jeni B
onlineMember
I've just read on the BBC site about Peel.
What bothers me about that though, isn't just that he allegedly had an affair with a 15yr old, but that I find that less horrifying than the entire Savile thing.
Maybe it's because it was an affair, which seems to suggest she was a willing participant, whereas Savile appears to have been very predatory, and his victims were far from willing.
Do any others have a theory?
Ironduke
offlineMember
Looked that up. Yes, different feeling.
Could it be that the perception of child / adult isn't solely an age issue...the girl was going to Black Sabbath concerts in the sixties; that suggest adult behaviour rather than playing on swings. I'm sur there was a Rolling Stone with a 15year old years ago - Mandy? - who he met at a nightclub, and who looked like a young lady.
Still uncomfortable - Peel was 30 - but different league to Saville/Glitter.
thing is...it would still be uncomfortable if he was 31 and she was 16...but suddenly as soon as the birthday candles are blown out, it switches from statutory rape to perfectly legal. A little incongruous.
The All New Jeni B
onlineMember
Yep, thought about the fact that a matter of months later it would have been 'legal'.
It was Bill Wyman who met, and married, a 14yr old Mandy Smith. Then his son married her mother. Buying Christmas and Birthday cards must have been complicated.
Definitely is a bit "Eeeewww" regardless, yet it seems that I find the number of children and not just their ages repulsive.
Apparnatly in 1968 you could write a song about it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn0ZJHVH17I
The All New Jeni B
onlineMember
Anyone else noticed that the BBC site seem to be looking out their scariest Savile pics for using with the story?
You must log in to post.
