BBC Radio 4 series this week about PIE: In Dark Corners

I was a child in the 60s and most of the 70s, but my impression is that many members of the generation that was born during or just after the war wanted to see huge changes. They were impatient with the old ways - no sex before marriage, having a child out of wedlock was a source of lifelong shame for the child as well as the mother, early marriage or forced adoption was the best way out of the last problem, same-sex attraction was unnatural and vile, marriage was for life even when it was destroying the lives of both spouses and their children, termination of pregnancy was wrong at least in part because it would encourage immorality, etc etc. So they and many of their elders campaigned for change, and got it. Great.

But some radicals were keen to go much further than that and get rid of all social norms and taboos. Some of them were undoubtedly motivated by a desire to do things that were at that time illegal, and mostly still are, without the bother of trying to keep it quiet and risking a prison sentence. However, a lot of them were just clueless. They had no grasp of what the consequences would be if just about anything was legal and if there were no prudes trying to control what other people did with their bodies. I genuinely think many people are very, very naive, overly trusting, and utterly lacking in common sense. They suppress their instincts that something is wrong and tell themselves that they're repressed and have to work harder to get rid of these bourgeois tendencies. So they nodded along when PIE turned up asking to be affiliated to the NCCL and were supported by the Young Liberals. Why shouldn't children be allowed to express themselves? Why should they be denied the chance to do what adults did for fun? If pressed I expect a lot of them would have said they assumed that PIE were actually talking about teenagers who were sexually mature. But those who had actually noticed that PIE explicitly said they thought four years old was old enough to consent to sexual activity were probably too afraid of being labelled as prudes themselves to say anything.

Lolita - when I read it, I saw it as about how someone who might seem "normal" could be a predator. And even how giving into our fetishes/fantasies is dangerous.
Humbert Humbert on the surface is a boring middle aged man who marries a woman with a child, and then when that woman dies he "heroically" takes on the responsibility for that child.
It is only by seeing into his mind and thoughts you see how corrupt his motives are. And even here you see that he is lying to himself.

I once advised my Ex not to read it unless he was in an extremely mentally stable place.
But the book as a whole has somehow been interpreted as "erotic", which is a very worrying interpretation. Just as is the pressure on women to push their erotic and sexual boundaries. This often seems to be not as much about enhancing sexual fulfilment for women as letting men act out their fantasies.

And I also know that Secure Hospitals had a massive problem trying to keep pornography (including the worst types) out, and stopping abuse of children happening within their walls. It wasn't just Jimmy Saville.

Yes yes.

It's such a relief this is no longer the norm. I'm so pleased younger people are actively shocked this could ever have been seen as OK.

Yes, Ditum nailed it in that article, didn't she?

"Parasitic" is exactly the right word for this behaviour of constantly trying to worm their agenda into any available political movement or social change.

Yes, Starmer's been calling for mandatory reporting for more than a decade.

I remember there was some debate back in 2013, when he made this call, re whether it would be helpful in practice or discourage survivors from making disclosures:
Not reporting child abuse 'should be criminal offence'
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24772777

But it's obvious it would have made a difference in many of the examples we're discussing on this thread.

Charlie Chaplin's second wife Lita Grey, 15 years old to his 35.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lita_Grey

Referenced in a #1 hit pop song in 1980, by the way.

I looked up Lolita, and give you this paragraph from the Wiki entry

In 1958, Dorothy Parker described the novel as "the engrossing, anguished story of a man, a man of taste and culture, who can love only little girls" and Lolita as "a dreadful little creature, selfish, hard, vulgar, and foul-tempered". In 1959, novelist Robertson Davies wrote that the theme of Lolita is "not the corruption of an innocent child by a cunning adult, but the exploitation of a weak adult by a corrupt child. This is no pretty theme, but it is one with which social workers, magistrates and psychiatrists are familiar."

Remember, she was 12 when he first drugged her, by 14 she was getting too old for him

The whole entry is worth reading (as is the novel) if you have the stomach for it.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lolita

Let's not forget that a big factor in paedophiles getting away with it was a prevalent belief that the child victims were complicit, had been asking for it, behaving provocatively, and so on.

Also it's the go-to smear in any dirty tricks campaign. That or (male) homosexuality. As with "anti semitic" or "racist" or "transphobic" the more you use a phrase, the less it means and the less currency it carries.

Even now - as I type - all the fuss over grooming gangs has already trampled on any hope of helping victims as yet another culture war football to be kicked from left to right until it has lost all shape.

It was also the time of groupies, often under age. Nobody seemed to blink an eye at the idea that young teenage girls were hanging around the stage door hoping to catch the eye of a much older pop star. Also page 3 girls, who were often only just 16. Horrible stuff, looking back now, but also so normalised back then.

FWIW (not much, probably) we moved to Leeds in the early 70s when I was a child. Because of my Dad's job there is a good chance that at some point he met Savile, but probably only in passing. I can't remember now if he ever mentioned it. He's dead now so I can't ask him. My Mum would never have crossed his path, fortunately, and neither did I. I never heard a word against him in Leeds, but I'm sure if we'd happened to know a nurse who worked in one of the big hospitals she might have said something.

Let's not forget that a big factor in paedophiles getting away with it was a prevalent belief that the child victims were complicit, had been asking for it, behaving provocatively, and so on. Obviously that broke down when there was incontrovertible evidence that a man or boy had assaulted a baby, toddler or very young child, or abducted their victim from the street, but once children reached the age of puberty there often seems to have been an assumption that they were somehow tempting the poor vicar or scoutmaster or teacher or youth leader or whoever he was by being nice to him and accepting the attention he paid them. I do remember the shock as the 1980s progressed and there was more and more coverage of child sexual abuse. When the first estimates of prevalence were reported I was incredulous. How could it possibly be that common? I'm not as naive as that now.

In 1979, Eileen Fairweather was working at Spare Rib, a radical-feminist magazine....

If every woman at Spare Rib did not agree 100% that men having sex with children was wrong, full stop, that PIE was dangerous and should be condemned and that the NCCL were completely out of order to accept them, it reveals something about Spare Rib, i.e. it wasn't very 'radical-feminist' at all.
The most radical sections of the then Women's Movement were the ones calling out all male violence, rape, harassment, child sexual abuse, PIE, etc.,etc. without fear or favour - and getting called ugly man-haters for their troubles.

It's hard to fault the observation that whilst everything in the world is about sex, except sex, which is about power.

Paedophilia arises from the same wellspring as rape and violence in that it confers a power on the abuser. Whether that craving is a reaction to the fact they could not achieve it another way (say by working hard and actually being useful) or is indeed a symptom that having power is addictive and once you have a little, you have to have more and more has yet to be definitively answered.

Sunday afternoon philosophy I guess.

How was it possible to just sit and interview someone who said 4 was the age of consent.

In discussions such as this, I often think about Eileen Fairweather (extract from Helen Joyce).

"In 1979, Eileen Fairweather was working at Spare Rib, a radical-feminist magazine. She was young and new to journalism, but assigned to read Paedophilia: The Radical Case, in which Tom O’Carroll, later imprisoned for child-abuse, argued for lowering the age of consent to four. She recalls “anguished, earnest” discussions with feminist friends about what they should write about it. “I did draft something, arguing that the existing age of consent was not ‘patriarchal’, but protected children,” she says. “But I never even dared show it to anyone.” No-one back then realized the extent and brutality of child-abuse. And the pedophile movement had so thoroughly hijacked the gay movement that, if you said you were against “child sexual liberation”—as, outrageously, they put it—you were branded “anti-gay.” She says she sees “the same intimidation and paralysis of intelligence” with the transgender debate, with people terrified to express legitimate concerns about infiltration and safeguarding."

quillette.com/2018/12/04/the-new-patriarchy-how-trans-radicalism-hurts-women-children-and-trans-people-themselves/

The "War on drugs" is another good example. It's amazing how many people in power have an epiphany that it's a crock as soon as they no longer have to believe in it for a career. I'd bet there as some transactivists who are the same.

Never ever underestimate the power of some people to "not know" when it affects their position or livelihood.

Or even their concept of how the world is, filled with exciting, famous, powerful, people they might get to meet some day if they're lucky. See the people who muttered disapprovingly when we were told about Savile. See the continuing denial about Kincora.

The fact that "lots of people" knew about Savile doesn't mean that Whitehouse knew.

Never ever underestimate the power of some people to "not know" when it affects their position or livelihood.

Slight distraction (or is it ?) however look at the extremes folk will go to to preserve their world view.

(I almost posted this previously in response to a reply to my comment about flat earthers)

Three seconds Googling confirms that abuse by Savile has been reported from 28 hospitals, not three. Lots and lots of nurses in 28 hospitals, all capable of talking to each other and to family and friends. As I said not a small circle of people 'in the know', not and exclusive circle.

In this instance, "knowing women who worked as nurses" would mean knowing nurses who worked at Stoke Mandeville, Broadmoor, Leeds General Infirmary. Most of us don't know nurses who worked there.

I agree that there was a lot less concern about such things happening to children, and that has to change. But most of us didn't know about Savile. I used to watch Jim'll Fix It, and thought he was a bit wierd, "unusual". But it never occurred to me that he was raping and abusing children and young people. Why would it? Not everyone on telly that I don't like is a serial rapist/abuser. I don't like Jonny Vegas, but I've no reason to think he's a rapist.

like the rest of us, she didn't move in the right circles to find out about him

'the right circles' meaning knowing women who worked as nurses - or knowing people who were related to women who worked as nurses. Not a very exclusive circle.

It's more about no-one wanting to know. And not caring if they did know. Remember the outcry when people suggested there was something wrong about 47 year-old Bill Wyman having sex with 13 year-old Mandy Smith? Famous men, rich men, men who involve themselves in positive and benevolent actions - entertainment, religion, education, sports training, charity - have a layer of protective glamour.

Children, girls or boys, didn't matter. And still don't.

The fact that "lots of people" knew about Savile doesn't mean that Whitehouse knew. People in certain circles knew - in the places where he worked, in some parts of the media - but a lot of us didn't. Do you have any proof that she knew about Savile?

If Whitehouse was opposed to paedophilia (on whatever grounds) she would hardly have supported Savile if she'd known the truth about him. I could accuse her of many things, but I've seen no evidence of hypocrisy. She was passionate about her causes, and there's no reason to think that she would support someone she knew to be a paedophile when she was so vehemently opposed to paedophilia.

You say that "as a Christian [she] had a distorted world view and was looking in the wrong places". That suggests she didn't know about Savile or Blyth, because she wasn't looking in the right places to find out about them.

So either:

• she knew about them and was a hypocrite
• she didn't know about them because she wasn't looking in the right places
• she didn't know about them because, like the rest of us, she didn't move in the right circles to find out about him.

PIE was very widely reported on and discussed in broadsheet newspapers and on the BBC in the late 70s and early 80 - not obscure, never mind secret.

If you were someone who followed these.

Just as young people now only look at social media, many people didn't bother with what they thought was the establishment.

The issue is, not did the general public know, by why politicians, and the media itself, give them air or newsprint space.

How was it possible to just sit and interview someone who said 4 was the age of consent.

When you compare this to for instance, women being able to openly talk about the problem is men / male culture. ie domestic violence, rape. Even after the Gisele Pelicot case, nobody talked about the problem being men.

Even the child abuse scandal is being talked about in terms of, its only certain men. Not that it is something that men, irrespective of race, class, religions or whatever do.

But a man saying 4 year olds can agree to sex, is taken as being worth listening to.

I think there is a huge difference in terms of say Jimmy Saville between those who only knew him as a personality and those who knew him through working in the media, hospitals and children's homes.

Really scary to know, that even knowing what he was doing, people in those areas of work felt unable to report him.

And this climate of not feeling able to report still exists. Look at Fayed. How many years has that taken to be spoken about.

I do think the media who often are in the know, but hold back for fear of law suits also need to take some responsibility.

Lots of people knew that Jimmy Savile was an abuser. John Lydon (Johnny Rotten) knew that Savile was an abuser and wanted to expose him. Mary Whitehouse as a Christian had a distorted world view and was looking in the wrong places. She could not imagine that a Christian like John Smyth could be just as much an abuser as the members of PIE.

She thought PIE were wrong because she thought promiscuity was wrong. For the same reason she thought gay liberation was wrong and the counterculture generally.

There's a book called Hags by Victoria Smith where she writes that middle-aged women stopped men like Savile from exploiting younger women and children. They didn't though. She describes Savile as 'a serial abuser in plain sight'. She quotes Louise Perry who wrote that when anyone stood up to Savile it was older women, the sort who flocked to Whitehouse's campaigns. This is not true.

I think you make a very good point, DeanElderberry - so many of these 'revelations' of the abuse children suffered at the hands of well-known, or less well-known but highly respected men, are in fact revelations of how people put the needs of men above the safety of women and girls, and boys.

There was a nudge-nudge wink-wink attitude to sexual abuse up to and including rape - I came across a book of 'jokes' from the 1970s the other day, and there were several about sexual harassment, rape and child abuse, including jokes about scoutmasters, choirboys etc., which we now know were actually describing the reality for so many abused children.

What Savile was doing to girls was not only known, it was captured on TV. The issue was not that nobody knew, it was that nobody cared because women and children were fair game and not worth bothering about.

It wasn't even always a case of victims not being believed, it was sometimes a case of 'yes everyone knows that he's a risk to children but he's the priest/pillar of the community/holder of high office/respectable father of three, and that's the most important thing, not what he's doing to you.'

It used to be hard to explain how on earth a society could know that harm was being caused to children by, for instance, priests, and yet do nothing about it because people didn't want to stick their heads above the parapet to criticise a protected caste.

It used to be hard to explain how something like that could possibly happen; then along came transgenderism...