feeling uneasy about Rolf Harris stuff...

[gettingridiculous]

I feel a bit uneasy about writing this. But something about the reporting of this makes me feel uncomfortable. Firstly, I want to make clear that I am absolutely satisfied with the fact that this man has been brought to trial, tried by a jury and found guilty. The sentence I think is appropriate given that he is approaching the end of his life - 10/20 years ago, I would argue that it would have been too lenient.

But I hate him turning from a man who cried at puppies to this evil villain. I think it distorts the reality and doesn't help people cope with being presented by inappropriate behaviour. I don't think, personally, that he deliberately forged this persona of funny, friendly guy to hide a devious intent to do bad. I think those two sides of his personality just co-existed. Some complex mental capacity enabled him to live a life as a "decent" human being and manage to do those deviant things in a pocket that was compartmentalised and set aside. I accept a certain societal mindset probably legitimised some of his sexist behaviour but the child abuse?

I think the complexity of most abuse cases is that the awful behaviour sprung out of nowhere (in the eyes of the victim), no-one wanted to believe it (victims especially) and it was allowed to continue because no one felt they had the power to deal with it.

Some recent posts about this really chimed with me. How it's exactly the fact that he was a "lovely" man made it all the more shocking. But that's who is responsible for most of abuse - the friendly uncle, the father, the priest, doctor, nun etc,,,,

Saville I think is an abberation in terms of the level of assistance he indavertantly (?) received from the NHS, BBC, church organisations etc...

I think most of the damage is done by people as seemingly "harmless" as Rolf Harris.

Any of this make sense?

I'm aware of such situations composhat
But they're still rare and they still usually also involve men.
I don't believe all men are abusers and I don't actually think you all should locked away. My comment had a degree of sardonic tone, at least in its intent. But there's something ("patriarchy") in our way of life that sanctions the domination of women's and children by men and this has a role in the issue of predatory sexual behaviour.
As a pp pointed out, this is not just about sexual preferences, it's about power and control and it's insidious and pervasive in our world.

Anyway, obviously I need to hide this thread now.

Not that rare if I encountered all of these in single social services department across five years.

composhat I'm sure your experience as a SW assistant leaves you with an enormous amount of knowledge on this subject.

Given that we actually had oversight and day to day management of cases and the social worker was the caseholder in name only...yes it did.

Ok, so my point was that the vast majority of sexual assaults are carried out by men. And your counter to that is to mention a few cases you know of where women were involved in sexual abuse.
Good science.

Ffs...I don't dispute the majority is undertaken by males and I didn't make any claims that it was scientific.

I mentioned it isn't unknown or even extremely rare backed up by cases I've come across. You've just offered sweeping statements.

Actually I think patriarchy is responsible for the 'all men are paedophiles paranoia' childcare has been deemed women's work so any men showing an interest in caring for or even talking to children are viewed suspiciously and only having a sexual interest in children.

TheRealAmandaClarke

"Ok, so my point was that the vast majority of sexual assaults are carried out by men."

Might also be helpful to point out that in the majority of these child abuse cases (not those surrounding neglect) that not only are the perpetrators mainly male but also known to the victim, Father/step father/partner, close male relative, close family friend etc.

I also don't think RH's daughter should be castigated for seemingly standing by her father. If the general public feel duped by him, can you imagine what she's feeling now??

I totally agree and no one can imagine how she is feeling now.

There is a syndrome where the captors feel for the en slavers, she was not held captive by rolf, he was her father she is made from him....

we know she freaked out in the past over his behaviour goodness knows how awful she feels now, and her poor son too.

Not only has she got to cope with this but also her frail mother as well. She has already had to have counselling due to her father. why add to her pain,

anyway yes op of course your right, people are a pie, some nice some horrid, etc etc....I would be interested to know how many men ( of course women absue too) feel urges towards children but hold them in check....

and what the difference is between those that cross that boundary..and those that do not.

• TheRealAmandaClarke Sat 05-Jul-14 12:38:31

Totally agree.

I also think since the time of Jimmy S et al we have come a long way in talking about and challenging entrenched attitudes but I agree, society is still tipped in favour of men...

realamanda don't worry, what you're saying is very clear, in the context of this thread. We get it. All the statistics I've ever seen show child abuse, like domestic violence, to be predominantly perpetrated by men. On these threads and dv threads there's always a poster who will come on saying 'but some women do it too!'

Poster upthread who said tell children not to go away with strangers...children are more likely to go away with someone they know. Teach them to always ask mummy first before going away with someone they know. Even the small fact that the paedo, friendly uncle Bob, sees that your child will always ask you before taking off with him might be enough to make the paedo think twice. They target vulnerable children, so it's important for children to show that they are not vulnerable, they know how to look after themselves, they will always consult their parent, their parent knows where they are, etc. A paedo will think twice about trying it on with a child whom he can see having open lines of communication with the parent. That's why keeping secrets is so important to paedos when they are grooming kids - they are essentially making the kids feel ok with secrets.

Poster upthread who said about reporting and having concerns minimized and dismissed - you see that on MN too. A poster will start a thread about something really worrying, red flags everywhere, and there will be other women telling her it's all ok nothing will happen she is just being hysterical.

Poster who said her sisters/brothers knew Rolf Harris was dodgy. I can believe that. But again, if anybody said 'he touched my child when my child asked for an autograph!' at that time the likely response would be 'don't be hysterical'. Of course people see things, but they say nothing because we collectively will NOT believe them.

Sorry if this thread is upsetting some people. It's a tough subject. But being able to talk about it is so important, and I would never talk about this in RL. You just can't say 'hmm, let's talk about paedophilia' when you're sat with your friends having coffee, can you.

Paedophiles are individuals who appear to ENJOY hurting and humiliating children, and almost overwhelmingly have been abused themselves and want other children to suffer.

Not quite - Paedophilia IS a sexual attraction. I think what you are talking about are child molesters. In the UK we use these terms fluidly so it can be confusing. There are plenty of men in the UK who are sexually attracted to children (women too, i'm sure) and so identify as paedophiles but because they are good people they know they would never act on these feelings. Plenty of normal men are attracted to teenagers, the sun newspaper counted down the days until children like Charlotte Church turned 16 so they would be legal....

It's difficult to accept that we can't 100% label all paedophiles/molesters as evil - we have to accept that anyone of us could commit these crimes should we want to. Those in prison are not so different to us after all. So many people in prison feel they don't belong there because they are good people, who made one little mistake...

we have to accept that anyone of us could commit these crimes should we want to.

This. And without wanting in any way to victim-blame, part of keeping the dc safe is knowing that anyone you leave them with could commit a crime if they want to. I trust all the childcarers who look after my dc, I trust them completely but I would never say 'oh, they would NEVER do an evil thing'. Anybody can do an evil thing. I talk to dd about her day not to paedo-hunt but because I think communication is the only real way to keep dc safe. And I believe her always. I tell her 'I believe you' if she is telling me a story about something that happened at school. So if something horrific ever happens to her (god forbid) she will be used to hearing me say 'I believe you'.

We have taken the old fashioned approach with dd and told her if anyone tries to touch her private parts, to kick them in the nuts and run to tell somebody. This conversation was last week, then on sunday we walked round a corner into the bus station and found an old man wanking.
DD shouted stop it, and dh nearly flattened him, but he was old so he restrained himself and called him a dirty old git whist trying to shield dds eyes.
She said "Dad, I can't see him, to kick him in the nutters".

i have read evidence that paedophilia is NOT simply a sexual attraction towards children; it is not another side of sexuality, as an earlier poster put it (although I am paraphrasing, so apologies if I've got his/her comment slightly wrong). Paedophiles are individuals who appear to ENJOY hurting and humiliating children, and almost overwhelmingly have been abused themselves and want other children to suffer. They are true sadists and for me that makes a huge difference to how I view them.

This I disagree with. Paedophile is often used incorrectly to denote everyone who sexually abuses children.

There are I think two categories:

One who enjoys the power over someone weaker. Your common or garden rapist who happens to finds children easy prey.

One who is a genuine paedophile ie loves children, is sexually attracted to children. They will not want to hurt the child, after all they love them, and they will believe that everything is consensusal.

I feel very upset about it as I always loved him. DH said it's because it's made all the loveliness of his songs and "act" into a lie and that feels bad. :(

We didn't know him. But it was difficult to reconcile this convicted criminal with the agreeable person he portrayed. I'm just relieved he's been convicted, and hope it gives the victims some sense of justice.

Whatever works for you, but I would never teach a little girl to kick a grown man in the nutters or to accost a grown man wanking at a bus stop. I would not trust that as a way to keep herself safe, unless she happens to be superhumanly strong and also trained in the martial arts.

I feel very upset about it as I always loved him.

Yep, same here. People had a huge affection for him - remember his second wind of popularity with 'Stairway to Heaven'?

What was interesting reading the profiles in the press this week, was that as far back as the 50s and 60s he refused to play to racially segregated audiences. On that issue he was completely upstanding and moral. We now know he was committing sexual offences at the same time.

Interesting thread, this.

I was agreeing with the OP, until I read these stories about what a nasty piece of work Harris could be. Then again, there are so many celeb stories like that, 'Ooh, he was actually horrid when I met him' not always untrue but it can sound a bit sour grapes.

I was unsure about him using his celebrity though, a lot of these offences could have been done by any bloke in an authority role I'd have thought, unlike Savile and his access to all sorts of venues.

John Noakes of 1970s Blue Peter admitted the whole persona for the telly was one he deliberately he adopted, that kind of jolly, let's have a go thing. No, I am not saying Noakes had a dark side! But some celebs do adopt a persona and it is sometimes wrong to expect them to do that offscreen.

I'll add something about Ian Brady. He was one handsome dude. Yes, I wrote that. The mugshot we see is of that fishy quiffed zombie, the iconic shot, but a lot of us could look bad in our passport photo or having been duffed up by the police. Other photos of him arriving at the court in a taxi I think show a handsome fella who could be from a Terence O'Neill photo (is that him, the one who exhibits at London's Proud Gallery every so often). Like Terence Stamp. No schoolkid would get into a car with a bloke who looked like his evil iconic image, but a dishy fella with a blonde woman, well, they would. Sadly, those evil images we know have misled all sorts of schoolkids, but the press used them because it satisfied the notion that evil people are obvious, and of course to get a kind of revenge, it would hurt to show a goodlooking man on the front pages, and fly in the face of that whole 1960s era of narcissism, after all if he could look like that but be like that, it undermines the whole Beatle Revolver, Michael Caine era of premeditated cool.

Same with Levi Bellfied who took Milly, okay no looker from any photo but as the police said, he could be a real charmer when he wanted, a jack the lad. A schoolkid might get into the car with someone like that, but not the grumpy fat fuck you see in the mugshots. But the mugshots are misleading.

Blimey, wish we could go back and edit posts, that one rambles a bit. Was saying about Noakes and co, that just because some celebs are not how they appear to be onscreen, it is not always that sinister. But obviously was in Harris' case.

but I would never teach a little girl to kick a grown man in the nutters or to accost a grown man wanking at a bus stop. I would not trust that as a way to keep herself safe, unless she happens to be superhumanly strong and also trained in the martial arts

I agree!

Poster upthread who said about reporting and having concerns minimized and dismissed - you see that on MN too. A poster will start a thread about something really worrying, red flags everywhere, and there will be other women telling her it's all ok nothing will happen she is just being hysterical.

This. I remember a thread not too long ago where a poster got a bad feeling off a guy looking at her DD when out and about. She got called all kinds of crazy and misandrist to boot. As though she had never come across a Man before, had only seen them in scary films and freaked out, instead of interacting with dozens of perfectly normal decent blokes everyday without incident.
She may well have been wrong and there was no sinister intent, she wasn't planning a pitchforking after tea. That however is not the point, the point is she was told to minimise and dismiss her own antannae.

And we know that paedos are not actually that rare.

I know someone who worked with him and told me years ago he was a nasty bit of work, apart from the fact he was the sort of man you'd never leave your kids with-her words.

As a child I didn't like him at all, he gave me the hee be geebees (not sure how to actually spell that )

He was a vile, sick man who appeared to be nice on the telly.

7 days-I agree, people on MN often say pedophiles are rare etc etc. There are lots of nice men but my God there are an awful lot that aren't. My own experience is one very dodgy teacher,a pervy, abusive great uncle on my side of the family and another uncle on my Dh's side. I don't think that's particularly unusual either tbh talking to friends.

I also don't think that pedophiles are nice people that do bad things, they are monsters who sometimes do nice things. No one that hurts children can ever be described as a nice person imo.