I believe the prison system was nearly overwhelmed post-Saville. So many people came forward to accuse grandfathers, uncles, football coaches, etc, of historic abuse that the police could barely cope. And those are just the ones who were convicted. For every man who goes to prison for abusing a child there must be dozens who get away with it. I have often looked at old men and thought “I wonder if you’ll take some evil act to the grave with you. Did you abuse your granddaughter? Did you work in a care home in the ‘70s and abuse the children?”
I would bet there is at least one rapist or child abuser in every old people’s home in Britain. I have heard and read so many horror stories over the years that it’s made me hyper-vigilant and hyper-cynical. I can think of at least five women who have told me about rape or sexual abuse in their childhood. None of them ever went to the police. In the quiet suburban street where I live, there is a woman whose dad went to prison for abusing her sister, and a neighbour whose elderly ex-husband made sexual advances on a 14-year-old. That’s just one random street in rural Essex. It’s a dark subject, but I suspect the sexual abuse of young people has always been very common. It was a sort of dark, unspoken secret. Even writers like Dickens and Hardy don’t dare go there. They occasionally hint at it, but no more. Imagine what went on in Victorian orphanages and workhouses. They must have been paradise for paedophiles. And you can imagine the response if someone complained (“you wicked child…how dare you say such filthy things about your elders and betters” etc.) Thank god things are changing.
I know this, I”d like a full scale inquiry into sexual abuse in children’s homes as far back as living memory goes. From what I can make out, it seems to have been absolutely rife until well into the 1980s. Why has it never blown up into a scandal? Some of the staff must still be alive.