Suzanne Moore in the Guardian re Jimmy Saville

[GetOrfAKAMrsUsainBolt]

I am very sorry as I am on my phone and can't link useless.

But I think it is a very good article - gets away from the media arguing with itself and the whole 'deputy heads must roll' at the BBC, and discusses that the key point about all of this is the fact that children have been abused.

Anyway I think it sums up a lot of what I have seen on Mumsnet.

I suppose I am working on the assumption that there will be inquiries of Stoke Mandeville, Broadoor, Jersey in due course. right now it's the BBCs turn.

Perhaps this is naive - there are some very good points on this thread about displacement etc.

Yes I am extremely depressed and angry too. All the female friends I have talked to feel the same. I haven't talked to many men about it (am single). Do the men in your lives have same reaction?

Actually, I have talked to two men and they felt the same and had obviously thought a lot about it. May have been a self-selecting sample though!

Yes I am more amazed by Stoke Mandeville and Broadmoor. But then when I think about it my mum was a social worker in the 70s and her child clients would quite often stay at our house overnight. Mum would be taking them on a parental visit and if the child couldn't stay with the parent overnight they would just come and share a bunk bed with one of us kids before the journey back to residential school. No one thought to check if our house had any undesirables in it or if we kids were safe with mum's caseload of children. Times were very different.

Thanks, Getorf, for linking to the Suzanne Moore article, I agree wholeheartedly with her point that actually we should be focusing on the crimes and the victims, not the media navel-gazing stuff. All that BBC-bashing is a huge distraction from the core issue - believing victims, supporting victims and finding some justice. Criminal justice where there are live perpetrators and some form of justice - acknowledgement, at least - where the perpetrator is dead and can no longer be brought to trial.

Lenny harper on 5live.They are talking about arrests and jersey and teachers and significant people on radio5.

What does seriously annoy me most about this is people going "oh, it was the 70s. Stuff like that happened, but it wouldn't happen now".

That's stupid on two fronts:

1. Just because it happened 30/40 years ago, hell, even 90 years ago, does not make it less worse for the victims, or less disgusting. It wasn't acceptable then (otherwise, why the huge coverup?) and it isn't acceptable now
2. It does happen now. All the freaking time, and saying it was just a thing that happened in the past means that people will continue to blithely get away with it, and it gives people the excuse to ignore signs of abuse, and to discredit the victims.

And, have things changed that much? We still have tossers, high profile (Justice Secretary ...) ones at that, in power, thinking that sexual crimes aren't serious. There's a picture doing the rounds on FB which is "the Republican Guide to rape" which has some quotes, over the last few years and the current campaign, on what Republican candidtes/senators etc. have said in relation to rape. It's horrifying.

I don't think anyone was saying "it's the 70s, it wouldn't happen now". What I was saying at least was that some of these actual events occurred before the people who have now lost their jobs were even alive. And secondly it was virtually unheard of in the 50s 60s and 70s to have any kind of child protection at all. Hence my story about my mum and her clients. There was just so little awareness and where there was awareness there was also a sense of "oh, another dodgy old man" as if it was just a particularly tiresome part of life.

Jimmy Savile had been investigated 6 times by the police during his lifetime apparently. There is no way someone with that profile would now get a job presenting kids tv - but Jim'll Fix It was on tv 4 decades ago so the mindset was just very different.

I think describing this as a cover-up is what the OP is concerned about. There wasn't a concerted cover-up by "those baddies at the BBC" that means we can all point the finger at the BBC and as a result blame them and not ourselves.

Society basically didn't take any of this seriously, institutions didn't have it on their radar as something they had to worry about (certainly not broadcasting institutions but not even care institutions had it as a priority) and children and women were routinely just expected to put up with this and if they did say something they were ignored. "Cover-up" makes it an institutional problem and it's not - it's a social problem.

Jimmy Savile had been investigated 6 times by the police during his lifetime apparently. There is no way someone with that profile would now get a job presenting kids tv

I am not sure that is correct - someone said on another thread that he would have passed a CRB check because he hadn't been convicted, (or presumably cautioned about anything).

He wouldn't have been allowed his disgusting cigars and if he got mardy about that, it would have been a good excuse to give him the old heave ho.

I know he wasn't convicted but I had a feeling multiple and clearly unconnected accusations were recorded and cross referenced somehow these days - not something that could have been easily done in a pre computer records age.

I was really thinking that his status wouldn't allow him to do that job now - much older single man with no obvious kinship with children. I'm aware that that's not good in itself because older, single men should not be stigmatised like that but I think that's where we are today. Plus with JS there was always a sense of oddness that I think would rule him out today. He was never lovable anyway, was he?

But you are right, the cigars would be a total no brainer.

So not loveable. Unmarried. Slightly weird. Much older. Made weird noises. Smoked huge cigars. Let's give that guy a job with children...just not going to happen in 2012.

Interesting comment up-thread on how people reacted to this story. DH and I both feel physically sick if we see his face on tv and have to switch over. We have found it very upsetting and are fed up of seeing his evil face all over the media, goodness knows how his victims feel. I had a go at my Mum the other day who said she's fed up of it and people are jumping on the band-wagon - I can imagine those words coming out of my Dad 's mouth and his friends (all in their 60's 'children should be seen and not heard' brigade) and she was echoing. I said this country (all the institutions) owes those children the chance to speak up now, to make sure that nothing like this happens again and to emphasise how important it is we listen to our children.

I agree. I don't actually want to hear any of the stories or see his face. But it has prompted me to have lots of conversations with DD about how she has a right to say what she thinks whether or not she's worried about being rude to adults.

Difficult to express to her without being too explicit (she's only just 6) but I was trying to get her to understand that if a grownup gives you a present you don't really like you smile and say thank you. But grownups can do things that are just wrong and if that happens and you don't like it you can be as rude as you like and you can tell mummy and mummy will agree with you. When I had an experience like that as an 8/9 year old I didnt do anything because of the fear of being rude to an adult.

An enhanced CRB (which he would need these days, to work with children) would pick up those six prior allegations.

Enhanced CRB's were the legacy of the Soham murders - Bichard Enquiry picked up that previously complaints that didn't result in a conviction weren't collated anywhere.

That was to drjohnson btw, to back up what you said.

Hmmm...though I'm not sure his Job Title would have necessitated an enhanced CRB, thinking about it. They're supposed to be for people who have sole care of vulnerable people. Poss wouldn't have had one for his TV role but I would have thought the night portering (shudder) would have warranted it.

I really liked the article by Suzanne Moore.

However I would really like to see the Guardian write more about the victims of the Catholic Church child abuse scandle rather than just using any news story about it to make petty swipes at the RC church.

I read the Guardian regularly - I hadn't particularly noticed swipes at the RC church. In the JS case they have hardly mentioned his supposedly devout Catholicism - daily attendance at Mass and all that.

Excellent article thanks for linking to it.

I am so disappointed about how this has turned into a lets point fingers at a few people in the BBC thing and feel the water has been muddied by the reports of those adult females working at the BBC being felt up.

I'm not saying that it was right that these other things happened happened but at the core here is a massive peodophile ring and it feels very much as if some parts of the media are trying to change the story to their own agenda or isolate it to the already dead or convicted when it seems obvious that there is much much more to come out.

For some odd reason last night I was thinking about Prince Charles. Surely with the pictures of him and Jimmy being such good pals coming out it would have been appropriate for him to issue a statement of condolence for the victims - or yet again is it a case of moving to to another news story asap.

I too was thinking about Prince Charles last night, and wondered why there had been such silence from that quarter.

I think I would be a bit baffled if Prince Charles suddenly commented. Is everyone who knew Jimmy Saville supposed to comment?

Maybe I'm being a bit silly about it I don't know.

But for the future monarch to be pictured in a number of friendly photos with what is apparently a notorious paedophile is not a good thing. I suppose they just want the storm to pass over as quickly as possible.

LaVolcan not about Jimmy S, with regard to the RC child abuse scandle in general. My point is that Suzanne Moore has asked for the victims to be more central to the coverage rather than being ingnored in favour of a big row over the institutions involved. I agree. I just think it is a little hypocritical for the Guardian to be printing this when they have routinely failed to do anything but make a swipe at the catholic church in its coverage of the child abuse scandle, rather than focused on the need to look after the victims.

There was an article in the Guardian which went into a lot of depth on Jimmy S's catholicism, but that isn't really what I meant.

If he knew he was a notorious paedophile then I think an apology would be the least his worries.

I am just getting a bit concerned at some of the sanctemonious cries of 'people should have told/why ddn't they know/ why didn't x speak up'
Most people genuinely thought my abuser was a fabulous bloke. Re writing history to blame people who were clueless just makes people caught up personally in these situations more ashamed.

Can we wait to see who should have spoken up rather than randomly blaming anyone who has associated with him?

I am not having a go. I hope it doesn't sound like I am. It is just not helping IMHO.

I think on the whole there are two issues coming to the for here (at least) -
How does society treat the testimony of children (and women) who are abused: mothers allowing abuse to continue, teachers punishing children for speaking out...all the way to women being dismissed constantly, consistently, having no voice with which to deal with perpetrators. When this happens within a large organisation, and there are questions to answer that span decades of management: that is news. It simply is.

And of course the way these victims themselves, as individuals, were treated by JS etc is the other story. No less important, but a hell of a lot harder to get into the media. Few will want their words in print, their faces on tv. There's the risk of intruding, being prurient, presenting those stories in a tabloid fashion - naturally most of the media aren't going to go down that route. Not that it's impossible, just that the balance is always going to be in favour of the other story, isn't it? I think it's wrong but I can see why it looks like the victims' stories are going to seem less important.

troubador - Would the enhanced CRB check of today, have picked up the 6

previous allegations as they were, from what I understand, allegations made to

6 different Police forces?

I have wondered about this as I feel, if nothing else, that though no-one can

turn the clock back and un-do what happened to those children, at the very

least, to coin an awful phrase "lessons must be learned".

I read somewhere about a system in Sweden (I think) where ALL parents had

to attend compulsory sex education/discussions with their 8/9 year olds.

The thinking behind it was that children (and parents) should get accustomed

to discussing sexual matters with each other. One of the ideas behind it was

that children who have been/are being sexually abused are embarrassed and

don't always have the verbal skills to tell their parents/adults what is

happening.