We were all appalled enough by Jimmy Savile and his five-decade rampage abusing women and under-age children
By Melanie Phillips
Truly, it seems that scarcely a day now passes without our being informed of yet another celebrity accused of sexual depravity.
We
were all appalled enough by Jimmy Savile and his five-decade rampage
abusing women and under-age children (horrifyingly, we now learn he may
have sexually assaulted four five-year-olds).
Since
then, a steady stream of male celebrities has been arrested on
suspicion of sexual offences including comic Jim Davidson, DJ Dave Lee
Travis, publicist Max Clifford, entertainers Jimmy Tarbuck and Rolf
Harris, Coronation Street actor William Roache and the former BBC
compere Stuart Hall.
Nor is that all.
Claims
of groping by the Lib Dem grandee Lord Rennard seemed to raise the
floodgates on a deluge of stories of sexual harassment of women in the
workplace.
The House of
Commons Deputy Speaker and Conservative MP Nigel Evans has been
arrested on suspicion of rape and sexual assault against two men.
Eddie
Shah, founder of the now defunct Today newspaper, is facing trial on
six counts of rape in the Nineties against a girl aged between 13 and
15.
Horrific
A
new book claims that two senior male staff on the BBC children’s show
Doctor Who sexually preyed on young male fans during the Eighties. All
this against the backdrop of a number of horrific trials of men accused
of kidnapping, sexually assaulting and killing children.
Of
course, we don’t know whether all these accusations are true. In law,
after all, everyone is presumed innocent until they are proven guilty.
And
there are also grounds for unease about the way some police have been
going about all this, with arrests conducted in the most high-profile
manner.
DJ Dave Lee Travis (left) and PR guru Max Clifford (right) are among the
celebrities to be arrested under Operation Yewtree on suspicion of
sexual offences
It is almost as if they have set out
to bury the fact that for years they ignored accusations of sexual
assault made by disadvantaged women and children, who were written off
as being unreliable.
But
far too much has been established to ignore. Stuart Hall, for example,
has pleaded guilty to indecently assaulting 13 girls, the youngest aged
nine.
And from the
details of that sordid case, we learn that the BBC effectively
facilitated Hall’s crimes, with a member of staff shepherding a steady
stream of girls and women to a ‘medical room’ in the BBC’s Manchester HQ
where Hall’s assignations took place.
A number of people knew what was going on there; no one did anything.
We now know people at the BBC similarly knew or suspected Savile’s grotesque sexual misbehaviour, but did nothing.
So should we conclude that the BBC was a den of vice, a kind of public service brothel of the air?
Yet
the BBC and entertainment industry were clearly not alone in this. No
fewer than five distinguished music schools are currently facing
investigations into claims of sexual abuse of their pupils by members of
staff.
And let’s not
forget the relentless trickle of Christian clerics subject to such
accusations. One reason this is all coming out now is that the social
climate has dramatically changed from indifference about sexual
permissiveness to panic about sexual abuse.
The
real reason no one at the BBC did anything about Savile or Hall was not
just the fear of destroying their lucrative stars. It was also that,
especially during the Seventies and Eighties, sexual licence was
considered acceptable and anyone who spoke against it was treated as a
pariah.
This was, after
all, what the sexual revolution was all about. All constraints on
sexual behaviour were removed. ‘Lifestyle choice’ meant the right to
have sex with anyone.
And
there are also grounds for unease about the way some police have been
going about all this, with arrests conducted in the most high-profile
manner.
Eddie
Shah, founder of the now defunct Today newspaper, is facing trial on
six counts of rape in the Nineties against a girl aged between 13 and
15.
Horrific
A
new book claims that two senior male staff on the BBC children’s show
Doctor Who sexually preyed on young male fans during the Eighties. All
this against the backdrop of a number of horrific trials of men accused
of kidnapping, sexually assaulting and killing children.
Of
course, we don’t know whether all these accusations are true. In law,
after all, everyone is presumed innocent until they are proven guilty.
DJ Dave Lee Travis (left) and PR guru Max Clifford (right) are among the
celebrities to be arrested under Operation Yewtree on suspicion of
sexual offences
It is almost as if they have set out
to bury the fact that for years they ignored accusations of sexual
assault made by disadvantaged women and children, who were written off
as being unreliable.
But
far too much has been established to ignore. Stuart Hall, for example,
has pleaded guilty to indecently assaulting 13 girls, the youngest aged
nine.
And from the
details of that sordid case, we learn that the BBC effectively
facilitated Hall’s crimes, with a member of staff shepherding a steady
stream of girls and women to a ‘medical room’ in the BBC’s Manchester HQ
where Hall’s assignations took place.
A number of people knew what was going on there; no one did anything.
We now know people at the BBC similarly knew or suspected Savile’s grotesque sexual misbehaviour, but did nothing.
So should we conclude that the BBC was a den of vice, a kind of public service brothel of the air?
Yet
the BBC and entertainment industry were clearly not alone in this. No
fewer than five distinguished music schools are currently facing
investigations into claims of sexual abuse of their pupils by members of
staff.
And let’s not
forget the relentless trickle of Christian clerics subject to such
accusations. One reason this is all coming out now is that the social
climate has dramatically changed from indifference about sexual
permissiveness to panic about sexual abuse.
Comedian Jim Davidson (left) and Rolf Harris (right) are two well known personalities to have been arrested
No
one had the right to judge anyone else’s sexual behaviour. Those who
warned this would unravel not just traditional morality but the very
bedrock of decency and order were scorned and insulted.
This
permissive attitude was extended to children, too. The young were
greedily viewed as a huge consumer market, and so were cynically
targeted by sexually suggestive pop lyrics, clothing and magazine
articles.
Predators
At
school, young children were subjected to grossly inappropriate ‘sex
education’, which was a green light to sexual activity. Such lessons
presented sex as a kind of sport, telling children in effect:
‘Here are the pleasures, here are the risks, now enjoy yourself but be careful.’
Accordingly, when 14-year-old fans threw themselves at pop stars and other celebrities, no one disapproved.
With
the ‘rights of the child’ supreme, children’s homes couldn’t even
discipline their young residents without being sued or prosecuted.
So children wandered out of these homes more or less at will to go on the prostitution game and fall victim to sexual predators.
Eddy Shah founder of the now defunct Today newspaper, is facing trial on six counts of rape in the Nineties
And everyone carefully looked away
from gay paedophilia; even to raise it as a problem was to be vilified
as an anti-gay bigot. The legal age of consent thus fell into general
disuse. In the past few days, there has been a hue and cry against the
barrister Barbara Hewson, who suggested the age of consent should be
lowered to 13 to end the prosecution of ageing celebrities for
‘low-level’ sex offences.
Her remarks have caused outrage and
led to an inquiry by her own chambers. The idea that 13-year-olds might
legally have sex is, indeed, deeply undesirable. But why are people so
shocked at Ms Hewson’s comments? For such calls are unfortunately now
commonplace.
Back in
2006, Terry Grange, the Association Of Chief Police Officers’ spokesman
on child protection, said having sex with children should not be classed
as paedophilia if the child was aged between 13 and 15.
Three
years later, Professor John Spencer, a law fellow at Selwyn College,
Cambridge, argued on BBC radio that the age of consent should be reduced
to 13.
And in any
event, the age of consent has been progressively eroded. Irresponsible
teenage magazines — which are read by much younger children — endlessly
promote a bordello menu of sexual activity.
Barbara Hewson advocatied reducing the age of consent to 13 to 'end the persecution of old men'
Schools
dish out contraception and abortion advice to pubescent children —
advice blessed by paediatricians, who claim that if a child is old
enough to ask for it, she is old enough to give her meaningful consent.
Culture
So it would seem that the outrage
directed at Ms Hewson is not so much over her proposal to lower the age
of consent — but rather that she has taken the side of the men who are
accused.
Indeed, the current wave of sexual abuse revelations has put a spring in the step of bash-the-men feminists.
Last
October, the writer Joan Smith exulted that Savile and similar scandals
had ‘lifted the lid on a rage that’s been simmering for years’ over ‘a
wider culture that was sexist, out of control and for the most part
unchallenged’.
In a
Guardian article last week, Kira Cochrane, while careful to say most men
abhor male violence, nevertheless claimed that the root problem was
‘the threat of male aggression we all live under’.
This
is all staggeringly perverse. Man-bashing feminism has much to answer
for in creating a climate that came to tolerate the abuse of women and
children.
Demonising men as at worst violent and at best irrelevant, it told women they could and should go it alone.
Men
took them at their word and started routinely playing the field — thus
treating women and children increasingly as objects to be used and
discarded.
So why are people now shocked by the debauchery that has been unleashed?
If
you remove constraints on sexual behaviour, this is precisely what you
get.
Permissiveness and sexual abuse are two sides of the same coin. We
are now merely reaping what we have sown.
No comments:
Post a Comment