tag:theconversation.com,2011:/fr/topics/jimmy-savile-4184/articles
Jimmy Savile – The Conversation
2023-10-12T10:21:08Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/215481
2023-10-12T10:21:08Z
2023-10-12T10:21:08Z
The Reckoning: I’ve interviewed over 50 actors who’ve played real people and Steve Coogan’s Savile is the most contentious
<p>Steve Coogan portrays Jimmy Savile in the new <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/p0g4swnr/the-reckoning">BBC mini-series The Reckoning</a>. This much anticipated and debated show is the most recent – and perhaps most contentious – in a long line of programmes “based on real events”, that focus on harrowing stories of abuse or murder. </p>
<p>In recent years alone, David Tennant played Scottish serial killer Dennis Nilsen in the ITV series <a href="https://www.itv.com/watch/des/2a7844">Des</a> (2020); Stephen Merchant played British serial killer and rapist Stephen Port in the BBC drama <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/m00134hr/four-lives">Four Lives</a> (2022) and Olivia Colman and David Thewlis portrayed the convicted murderers Christopher and Susan Edwards in the BBC series <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-58556857">Landscapers</a> (2021). </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The trailer for The Reckoning.</span></figcaption>
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<p>The trend is a testament to the public appetite for dramas based on true crime.
But how do actors approach such work? And how is portraying a real person different from playing a fictional role?</p>
<p>When actors play real people – particularly those involved in complex and disturbing events – they often find themselves at the centre of debates about the project. Should the programme be made? Is this a legitimate person to depict? </p>
<p>This debate is perhaps loudest when both the actor and the subject are famous. We know Coogan (and the characters he plays) and we know Savile (how he looked, how he spoke and, more recently, what he did). </p>
<p><a href="https://www.digitalspy.com/tv/a37948450/jimmy-savile-steve-coogan-bbc-the-reckoning-backlash/">Many people have denounced</a> the BBC’s decision to make a drama out of their own failings to stop the serial abuser and rapist. But how do actors navigate these questions? Do such debates about the subject affect their work?</p>
<h2>My research</h2>
<p>Over the past 15 years, I’ve interviewed more than 50 actors about their portrayals of real people. Never before have I heard such public interest and concern about a depiction – or seen an actor’s sense of the challenge so keenly felt. </p>
<p>I’ve interviewed actors playing notorious leaders such as Adolf Hitler and Robert Mugabe, people involved in terrorist organisations, and even <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13569783.2023.2170220">the people who gave evidence</a> at the recent Grenfell Tower inquiry and were held responsible for that terrible fire. But none of these actors spoke of the challenge in the way that Coogan has done.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Steve Coogan on why he chose to play Jimmy Savile.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Two days before the show aired, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-66987497">he told the BBC</a>: “I knew there was the potential for catastrophic failure if you get it wrong, but that’s not a reason not to do it.” </p>
<p>In other interviews, Coogan has balanced the attractiveness of the role with the sense of responsibility he felt in taking it on. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOG5TxNdbTA">He explained</a>: “As an acting job, it’s what all actors want to play. Whatever your views on him, [Savile’s] a fascinating, although horrific … figure.” </p>
<p>But he was <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOG5TxNdbTA">also aware</a> of the public concern, which felt more personal: “People play Hitler or serial murderers and no one bats an eyelid, but there’s a lot of consternation about me doing this.”</p>
<h2>Concerns over casting</h2>
<p>Some of these concerns may be down to Coogan’s association with comic roles and impressions. Many actors I have interviewed are eager to distance themselves from impersonation. </p>
<p>Actors in the 2007 documentary play <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2007/apr/24/theatre">Called to Account</a>, about the legitimacy of the war in Iraq, told me that: “The most important thing is you don’t imitate.” Ian McKellen <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/playing-for-real-9780230230422/">similarly distanced himself</a> from notions of impersonation when portraying Hitler in Countdown to War (1989). But why? </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Ian McKellen has said that he avoided impersonation when playing Hitler.</span></figcaption>
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<p>The processes that actors described to me often focused on recreating their subject’s verbal idiosyncrasies and physical appearance. For our book <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/playing-for-real-9780230230422/">Playing For Real</a> (2010), <a href="https://www.bristol.ac.uk/people/person/Mary-Luckhurst-1a8ee3be-ee94-41dd-ab13-ff7f4712aa23/">Mary Luckhurst</a> and I interviewed Roger Allam, who played Hitler in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of Albert Speer (2000). He told us: </p>
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<p>I found photographs helpful. There was one taken at Hitler’s mountain residence in Berchtesgaden where he was slumped far down in a chair, and I stole that posture for a moment in the play. You steal everything that is usable, really.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>When it came to physical likeness, Allam recalled: “Being able to look in the mirror and think, yes, that passes for Hitler. That’s very, very important.”</p>
<p>What, then, is the distinction between acting and impersonation? I’d suggest that it is the comic connotations of the terms “mimicry” and “impersonation” or “doing an impression” that actors are at pains to avoid, rather than a particular approach. </p>
<p>There is also a snobbery about impersonation, perhaps viewed as a less noble art than acting. It seems likely that Coogan’s profile as both an actor and comic contributed to the questions raised ahead of his portrayal of Savile.</p>
<h2>Rethinking ‘impersonation’</h2>
<p>Coogan’s portrayal has, deservedly, been widely admired – despite <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/2023/10/09/the-reckoning-bbc-review-steve-coogan-jimmy-savile/">significant reservations</a> about the drama and the way that the BBC’s shortcomings were handled. </p>
<p>The praise has often returned to this question of impersonation and acting. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2023/oct/09/the-reckoning-review-steve-coogan-is-chillingly-brilliant-as-jimmy-savile-bbc#:%7E:text=Coogan%20is%20brilliant%20in%20the,the%20two%20in%20perfect%20proportions.">Guardian journalist Lucy Mangan</a> focused on these terms when she wrote: “He is a fine actor as well as a fine impressionist, and the part of Savile gives him the chance to blend the two in perfect proportions.” And <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/21f13f7c-adcd-49f8-a81f-f374fae13eb6">the Financial Times noted</a> that by “transcending impersonation, he reveals the depths of grotesque depravity”.</p>
<p>Here is the other side of the coin. Though playing notorious real people might place actors at the heart of complex debates about legitimacy and representation – and come with a great weight of responsibility – actors’ portrayals of such people are often highly admired. </p>
<p>Six of the last ten best-actor Oscars and three of the last ten best-actress Oscars have gone to actors playing real people. Arguably, this is due to the fact that playing a real person makes the actor’s skill more measurable. We see Coogan and we see Savile – the hidden craft of acting becomes tangible when we can compare the two.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tom Cantrell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Coogan’s profile as both an actor and as a comic contributed to the questions raised ahead of his portrayal of Jimmy Savile.
Tom Cantrell, Professor in Theatre, University of York
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/193145
2022-11-29T12:00:52Z
2022-11-29T12:00:52Z
Child sexual abuse review: how research can help to tackle growing online abuse
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492535/original/file-20221031-14-pp4l6n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Each time abuse material is shared, the victim is revictimised.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/digital-lifestyle-blog-writer-business-person-407179981">Chinnapong | Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the seven years since the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/iicsa-report-of-the-independent-inquiry-into-child-sexual-abuse">Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse</a> launched in 2015, it has held more than 300 days of public hearings, processed over 2 million pages of evidence, heard from over 700 witnesses, and engaged with over 7,000 victims and survivors. </p>
<p>One of the most pressing issues the inquiry <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/oct/20/what-is-the-child-sexual-abuse-inquiry-and-why-did-it-take-seven-years">has raised</a> is that of <a href="https://theconversation.com/eu-law-would-require-big-tech-to-do-more-to-combat-child-sexual-abuse-but-a-key-question-remains-how-183512">online-facilitated child sexual abuse</a>. The use of hidden services to distribute online child sexual abuse material globally increased <a href="https://www.iwf.org.uk">by 155%</a> between 2019 and 2020. </p>
<p>In 2021 alone, <a href="https://inhope.org/EN">Inhope</a> – an organisation that supports 50 hotlines in 46 countries around the world to remove child sexual abuse material from the internet – handled almost 1 million URLs featuring suspected child sexual abuse and exploitation. And the scope and scale of online child sexual abuse show no sign of abating. Of the images and videos reviewed by the Inhope hotlines in 2021, 82% had not seen before. </p>
<h2>A growing threat</h2>
<p>In the wake of the scandals involving <a href="https://theconversation.com/jimmy-savile-how-the-netflix-documentary-fails-to-address-the-role-institutions-play-in-abuse-181383">Jimmy Savile</a>, Rolf Harris and other celebrities, the inquiry was commissioned by the UK government in 2015, to scrutinise the extent to which state and non-state institutions had failed to protect children.</p>
<p>On October 20 2022, this inquiry <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/oct/20/child-sexual-abuse-inquiry-final-report-20-actions-for-change">published</a> its <a href="https://www.iicsa.org.uk/final-report">final report</a>. Underlining that child protection should be made a national priority, its report puts forward 20 recommendations, designed to make England and Wales places where children can grow up safely and thrive. These both take in lessons from the past and seek to address evolving challenges, of which online sexual abuse is the most urgent.</p>
<p>Research with survivors <a href="https://www.protectchildren.ca/en/resources-research/survivors-survey-results/">shows</a> that when documentation of their abuse is shared online, it affects them differently than the abuse they originally suffered. The images are permanent and the sharing never ends. Online distribution of this kind of material thus results in children being re-victimised each time it is viewed. </p>
<p>The sheer scale of offending in this sphere, and the opportunities afforded to offenders to hide their activities with end-to-end encryption, means that the deck is heavily stacked against a law-enforcement response alone. The inquiry has asserted as much. </p>
<p>The report thus focuses attention on the responsibility of platform providers. It recommends that it become mandatory for all search service and user-to-user service providers <a href="https://theconversation.com/apple-can-scan-your-photos-for-child-abuse-and-still-protect-your-privacy-if-the-company-keeps-its-promises-165785">to screen any material</a> at the point where it is uploaded. The hope is that this will prevent any child-abuse material from ever getting into the public domain. </p>
<p>This recommendation, of course, only addresses the supply side of the equation. What is also needed is an approach that actively reduces the demand for child sexual abuse material. </p>
<p>Research has a key role to play here. By looking for patterns and insight into the behaviour of people who intend to abuse children, as the collaboration between the <a href="https://childrescuecoalition.org">Child Rescue Coalition</a> non-profit and the <a href="https://aru.ac.uk/policing-institute">Policing Institute for the Eastern Region</a> is doing, academics can help with the development of tools to support law-enforcement investigations. </p>
<p>Research can also help to design interventions for people who share and consume this abuse material. The <a href="https://www.suojellaanlapsia.fi/en/post/csam-users-in-the-dark-web-protecting-children-through-prevention">Redirection survey (2021)</a> by the Helsinki-based non-profit, Suojellaan Lapsia (meaning “Protect Children”), canvased the views of over 8,000 people on the dark web who accessed abuse images. This survey found that only 13% had sought help but that 50% wanted to stop and 62% had tried to stop but failed. These findings have helped with the development of a self-help programme for people who search for, view, and distribute child sexual abuse material. </p>
<p>A 2021 threat assessment by the We Protect Global Alliance organisation <a href="https://www.weprotect.org/global-threat-assessment-21/">stated</a> that online child sexual abuse represents “one of the most urgent and defining issues of our generation”. Finding ways to tackle the devastating harm caused by this type of abuse, at the root, is crucial. For a sustainable, long-term prevention strategy to make any kind of headway, preventing harm in the first place needs to be prioritised.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/193145/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Samantha Lundrigan receives funding from The Dawes Trust</span></em></p>
Online child sexual abuse has been described as one of the most urgent and defining issues we face. Tackling it at the root is imperative.
Samantha Lundrigan, Professor of Investigative Psychology and Public Protection, Anglia Ruskin University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/193356
2022-11-02T17:22:37Z
2022-11-02T17:22:37Z
Child sexual abuse review: listening to children and young people is crucial
<p>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/can-the-child-abuse-inquiry-retain-the-integrity-it-needs-to-survive-69175">independent inquiry into child sexual abuse</a> (IICSA), set up in the wake of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/jimmy-savile-how-the-netflix-documentary-fails-to-address-the-role-institutions-play-in-abuse-181383">Jimmy Savile</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/rolf-harris-guilty-but-what-has-operation-yewtree-really-taught-us-about-sexual-abuse-28282">Rolf Harris</a> scandals, has published its <a href="https://www.iicsa.org.uk/reports-recommendations/publications/inquiry/final-report">final report</a>. Commissioned by then home secretary Theresa May in 2014, the inquiry has spent seven years examining how state and private institutions failed to protect the children in their care from sexual abuse. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.iicsa.org.uk/reports-recommendations/publications/investigation">The investigations</a> that fed into the final report spanned a wide range of organisations. These included child protection services at local authority level, religious institutions, hostels and residential schools. </p>
<p>Among its 20 <a href="https://www.iicsa.org.uk/reports-recommendations/publications/inquiry/final-report/ii-inquirys-conclusions-and-recommendations-change/part-k-summary-inquirys-recommendations/k6-justice-system-response-child-sexual-abuse">recommendations</a>, the report calls for the government to establish a child protection authority for England and Wales and a cabinet minister for children. It also highlights the need for specific support, compensation and redress, emphasising that no statute of limitation be placed on people, who have experienced child sexual abuse, coming forward.</p>
<p>A salient contribution to these recommendations came from the <a href="https://www.iicsa.org.uk/victims-and-survivors/truth-project">Truth Project</a> aspect of the inquiry, which drew on the accounts of over 6,000 victims and survivors of sexual abuse. What comes across most urgently is the imperative that the voices of those that have been abused be heard. </p>
<h2>Why reporting should be mandatory</h2>
<p>Across the investigations it carried out, the inquiry found that children and young people were not listened to. A key recommendation it makes is that reporting of child sexual abuse be made mandatory: that people in a position of power with children should have a legal obligation to report abuse if it has been disclosed or witnessed, or if indicators are present. </p>
<p>These are not new concepts. In 1997, the <a href="https://www-bmj-com.bham-ezproxy.idm.oclc.org/content/314/7081/622">Childhood Matters inquiry</a> into child abuse recommended the creation of the role of minister of state with specific responsibility for children. It highlighted the need for improved regulation of staff who work with children. Crucially, it put great emphasis on the notion of children having rights and a voice. </p>
<p>A subsequent <a href="https://learning.nspcc.org.uk/research-resources/2013/no-one-noticed-no-one-heard">study of disclosures of childhood abuse</a> carried out by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC), in 2013, found that over 80% of the children who took part had tried to tell someone about the abuse they had experienced and that 90% of these children had had negative responses. Opportunities for intervention were missed, action was not taken, children were not believed and no support was given.</p>
<p>These findings predate the IICSA report by nearly a decade. Understanding why the problem has endured and why there is such systematic failure at so many complex levels is fundamental. </p>
<h2>Professionals should be trained to hear what victims are saying</h2>
<p>Disclosure is a complex issue. <a href="https://journals-sagepub-com.bham-ezproxy.idm.oclc.org/doi/full/10.1177/1524838015584368#bibr61-1524838015584368">Research shows</a> that quite often children <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16289689/">do not directly say</a> what they have experienced. Professionals have to be trained <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22203619/">to understand</a> the nuances at play in what they do disclose. </p>
<p>Disbelieving children is <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/088626092007004008">not a new phenomenon</a>. Studies <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8306113/">have</a> frequently <a href="https://www.somer.co.il/articles/2001.variab.discl.am%20j%20orthopsy.pdf">demonstrated</a> that this is a crucial flaw in child protection systems.</p>
<p>Even when a disclosure is made, however, or when it is evident that abuse is taking place, many professionals in positions of power regarding children are not aware of the reporting procedures in place. They don’t know which mechanisms to use to report that information. </p>
<p>There is also a culture of silence around reporting, particularly when it involves effectively <a href="https://catalogue.sunderland.ac.uk/items/439292">whistleblowing</a> on colleagues. The inquiry’s investigations found there had often been a reluctance to report abuse, because protecting the organisation and individuals was seen as paramount. The report found that this was then coupled with organisational culture and how child sexual abuse can be normalised within this, which leads to any challenge to this being perceived as extreme. </p>
<p>Again this is not new information. It was highlighted by the NSPCC <a href="https://openlibrary.org/books/OL22390067M/Institutional_abuse_of_children_-_from_research_to_policy">in a 1991 report</a> into the institutional abuse of children. Clearly, more needs to be done to support those who want to speak up in the form of education and protective mechanisms for reporting.</p>
<h2>Why taboos need to be challenged</h2>
<p>Shifting organisational culture is notoriously difficult. This is the fundamental problem that underpins the issues of disclosure and subsequent reporting.</p>
<p>Coupled with these issues are those of how children are perceived within <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Importance_of_Being_Innocent.html?id=6mvccAUnbokC&redir_esc=y">society</a> and the power structures in which childhood is embedded. Children, while being seen as the innocent representations of <a href="https://open.spotify.com/episode/4TKAKrRT0pAPI6PNk8Tkvn?si=5cagSypyTk-zSNYaVrFN3A&nd=1">society</a>, are also viewed as inferior. Adults are deemed to know <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1099-0860.2008.00200.x">best</a>. </p>
<p>Yet listening to the child’s voice is vitally important. The report duly recommends the government should commission regular programmes to increase public awareness around child sexual abuse and ensure people know what to do if abuse is suspected. </p>
<p>The inquiry also advises that myths and stereotypes around child sexual abuse be <a href="https://www.iicsa.org.uk/key-documents/31216/view/report-independent-inquiry-into-child-sexual-abuse-october-2022_0.pdf">challenged</a>. The lack of reporting and listening to children when it comes to sexual abuse is linked to the taboos that surround talking about this topic within wider society: the mutual exclusivity of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kzu6vWi5HQc">children and sex</a>.</p>
<p>The United Nations convention on the rights of the child nonetheless <a href="https://www.unicef.org.uk/what-we-do/un-convention-child-rights/">defines</a> a child as someone under the age of 18. This provides a clear legal framework within which to identify power structures and what constitutes abuse. The perception of what defines a child within wider society nonetheless remains complex, especially when considering adolescence. However, if we do not address these issues, child sexual abuse will persist, undetected and unreported.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/193356/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sophie King-Hill does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The seven-year review into how state and private institutions in the UK failed to protect children has highlighted the central importance of making sure young people and children are listened to.
Sophie King-Hill, Senior Fellow at the Health Services Management Centre, University of Birmingham
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/181383
2022-05-04T15:58:02Z
2022-05-04T15:58:02Z
Jimmy Savile: how the Netflix documentary fails to address the role institutions play in abuse
<p>Jimmy Savile was one of the UK’s most serious serial sexual predators. Over several decades the television personality groomed and abused up to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/jan/18/jimmy-savile-abused-1000-victims-bbc">1,000 boys and girls</a> in TV studios as well as patients at NHS hospitals across Britain. That he was able to do so without being apprehended, even being knighted in 1990, is the subject of a new Netflix documentary series by Rowan Deacon. </p>
<p>Deacon uses remarkable archive footage and interviews with survivors, journalists and individuals who worked closely with him, to show how Savile hid decades of sexual abuse in the full glare of the celebrity spotlight. Savile always implied that he had a secret life, even while insisting that he had no secrets. The continuous clips highlighting his “wink, wink” views of “young ladies” and “sexual adventures” confirm that the signs were there for all to see. </p>
<p>Jimmy Savile: A British Horror Story presents its subject as a fame-hungry manipulator who, through his carefully cultivated relationships with British elites, was able to abuse and intimidate his victims, evade justice and fool the nation. But despite its high production values and impressive use of archival material, it leaves key parts of the scandal under-examined. </p>
<p>In one segment, Savile’s longtime producer, Roger Ordish, says: “You never really got behind the mask.” And certainly, Savile was a skilled image worker and manipulator of celebrity and morality, people and situations, time and place. </p>
<p>But, <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1749975520985385">as our research shows</a>, he was not alone in constructing his image. Like the official inquiries after Savile’s death, the documentary fails to capture the pivotal role Britain’s core institutions played in producing his “untouchable” celebrity icon mask. </p>
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<h2>How British institutions made Savile into a celebrity icon</h2>
<p>Validation from the BBC was crucial to Savile becoming a celebrity personality. And the corporation’s support continued to underpin his charmed career. As the BBC’s biggest star, he was embedded across numerous primetime BBC radio and television programmes and afforded a direct line to the inner circle of programme makers. </p>
<p>For decades, Savile-centred programming was core to the BBC’s marketing logic. He was a Saturday evening television fixture in tens of millions of UK households. The BBC projected him into that most foundational of social institutions: the family. </p>
<p>As his television presence grew, so did Savile’s charitable work. His celebrity underpinned his philanthropic endeavours, which in turn boosted his national standing. Over three decades, he raised more than £40 million for the NHS and other other charities. These high-publicity moral feats reinforced his status as the go-to celebrity. </p>
<p>In an increasingly powerful interdependence, institutions and charities depended on Savile for his fundraising Midas touch. They, in turn, made him a celebrity philanthropist. Savile was rewarded with board positions within NHS organisations and the like, as well as unfettered access to restricted areas and behavioural latitude. </p>
<p>It was for this charitable work, more than his celebrity achievements, that Savile was made OBE in 1972. He was subsequently knighted, by both the Queen and the Pope, in 1990. </p>
<p>By then, the BBC, the NHS, the Department of Education and Science (as it was called in the early 1990s), the state, the church, the monarchy, the military and the nation were all involved in his collective validation. Savile was so deeply institutionalised – so self-assured as a <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1367549419861630#:%7E:text=On%20one%20hand%2C%20national%20treasures,talent%2C%20hard%20work%20and%20dedication">national treasure</a> – that he interacted with everyone, from royalty to the general public, entirely on his own terms, and despite rumour, gossip and allegation about his sexual predilections that had persisted throughout his celebrity career. </p>
<h2>Savile’s lasting legacy</h2>
<p>By marginalising the empowering role of institutions in Savile’s crimes, both the Netflix documentary and official inquiries ultimately preserve the reputations of those institutions, and absolve key individuals of responsibility. To date, few have been brought to justice for enabling, covering up or failing properly to investigate what he did.</p>
<p>In a 2001 interview with Irish journalist Joe Jackson, Savile <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/news/interview-with-the-alleged-paedophile-1.555409">reportedly commented</a>: “Whatever is said after I am gone is irrelevant. If I’m gone that’s it. Bollocks to my legacy.” The savvy media operator might be surprised to know that 11 years after his death, his legacy continues to taunt British society. </p>
<p>Savile’s case has become the benchmark against which related offenders and offences – alleged or proven – can be assessed. </p>
<p>Official investigations have dissected his life and crimes from every angle. There can be few further shocking revelations. Despite this, his Jekyll and Hyde persona continues to prove irresistible to directors and playwrights. To date, there have been at least ten documentaries and one play about Savile’s rise and fall. Comedian and actor Steve Coogan is set to play Savile in a forthcoming primetime drama on BBC One, entitled The Reckoning. </p>
<p>And if continuous media coverage has only amplified his notoriety, it also represents an act of bearing witness. It reminds us of Savile’s unique place in British postwar national life, of the scale of his offending and of how he “fixed it” so the truth disappeared in plain sight. It provides an important outlet for survivors to recount the life-altering impact of being silenced or ignored. It encourages others to come forward.</p>
<p>Powerful celebrities, from Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby to R. Kelly and Ian Watkins, have long been able to rely on institutional and cultural protection as well as legal and PR strategies, to manipulate the media, neutralise allegations, silence victims and abuse with impunity. If we are to have any reasonable chance of preventing such cases in the future, we need to pay attention to the role that interlocking institutions – from media conglomerates to religious institutions to universities to governments – play in masking them.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/181383/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
In focusing on Savile as an individual, this investigation downplays the role Britain’s major institutions played in producing his celebrity icon mask.
Chris Greer, Professor of Sociology, University of Essex
Eugene McLaughlin, Professor of Criminology, City, University of London
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/176290
2022-04-27T15:38:34Z
2022-04-27T15:38:34Z
I spent three years in a paedophile hunting team – here’s what I learned
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/455585/original/file-20220331-27-3n0889.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=278%2C259%2C6090%2C4121&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/programmer-on-computer-219655585">frank_peters / Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>By the time you finish reading this article, at least one new case of child sexual abuse will have been reported. In the US, a child is sexually assaulted <a href="https://www.rainn.org/statistics">every nine minutes</a>. In the UK, this figure is closer to one <a href="https://www.nspcc.org.uk/about-us/news-opinion/2020/child-sexual-offences-rise/">every seven minutes</a>. The sexual abuse of children is a horrifying and widespread problem that <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-50302912">police admit</a> they cannot arrest their way out of. </p>
<p>High-profile cases of systemic child sexual abuse – Jimmy Savile, Jeffrey Epstein, Larry Nassar, cardinals, bishops and priests – have placed the threat front of mind and led members of the public to take matters into their own hands. Social media has given them the means to do so effectively. </p>
<p>Pretending to be children online, hunters wait for predators to initiate sexual communications. When predators ignore reminders that they are talking to “children”, hunters expose them in livestreamed “stings” once they have sufficient evidence of grooming. Several <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/sentences-increased-for-men-involved-in-attempted-child-sex-offences">cases</a> have shown that talking to decoys as though they were a real child can be grounds enough for sentencing.</p>
<p>These stings take place in public (where a predator has asked a child to meet him in a park or shopping mall) or at the predator’s home. In the UK alone, over 150 hunting teams were collectively responsible for 1,148 confrontations with suspected paedophiles in 2021. Their evidence helped secure prosecutions in <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-50302912">hundreds of cases</a>.</p>
<p>I spent <a href="https://journals.aom.org/doi/abs/10.5465/amj.2020.1492">three years embedded</a> with one of the UK’s most prolific hunting teams. An analysis of 356,799 words of private, online team chats during this period, and 831 pages of field notes and interviews, offers unique insights into what it’s like to hunt another human being. </p>
<p>For many involved in these groups, there’s the thrill of the chase. But some also found a deep sense of purpose in confronting a moral pandemic. Many hunters themselves have experienced abuse, and this colours how they view their hunting activities. “So many in this community have been deeply affected by these scum”, one said. “If I can save one child from seeing the world through a survivor’s life then I am blessed”, another added. </p>
<p>Hunters spend nearly as much time judging each other’s stings as they do baiting predators. They do so to reaffirm the purity of their motive – to keep children safe – compared to other teams they accuse of hunting purely for entertainment by poking fun at predators or being physically or verbally abusive.</p>
<p>Still, almost all teams value viewing figures and having an audience. As one explained:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The two we did this weekend have some great exposure: a quarter of a million and 200,000 [viewers]. </p>
</blockquote>
<h2>The hero’s journey</h2>
<p>The way paedophile hunters talk about their work follows a narrative akin to the hero’s journey found in tales like Batman. A selfless hero saves his community from an evil threat when formal institutions (police, politicians) fail to do so. Having restored the moral order, the superhero recedes into obscurity. </p>
<p>Hunters refer to sexual predators as “monsters” and “vile beasts” that prey on “the innocent”. They constantly remind each other to “keep safe” during stings, even as hunters outnumber predators four or more to one. </p>
<p>This attitude offers a logic and a moral justification for what hunters do. Believing that “police should be grateful we are doing their job for them”, they position themselves as society’s last line of defence. </p>
<p>These characters feed off each other: the more impotent the police or parents are perceived to be, the more vulnerable the child, the more beastly the monster, the more heroic the hunter. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Silhouette of a medieval knight on horse carrying a flag against a sunset background" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/455595/original/file-20220331-27-wxqqli.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/455595/original/file-20220331-27-wxqqli.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/455595/original/file-20220331-27-wxqqli.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/455595/original/file-20220331-27-wxqqli.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/455595/original/file-20220331-27-wxqqli.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/455595/original/file-20220331-27-wxqqli.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/455595/original/file-20220331-27-wxqqli.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The hero’s journey.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/silhouette-medieval-knight-on-horse-carrying-402695434">rudall30 / Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Relationship with police</h2>
<p>While police broadly welcome citizen involvement in fighting crime, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-50302912">they think hunters unhelpful</a>, even given the role of the evidence they collect. The police accuse hunters of acting on insufficiently robust evidence and jeopardising ongoing investigations. They also say hunters fail to safeguard suspects with learning difficulties who may prove difficult to prosecute, nor do they take sufficient action to protect suspects and their families from reprisals by neighbours and psychological injury.</p>
<p>It can be difficult to understand why hunting teams persist with live streaming stings when less harmful alternatives are easily available. They could, for example, simply hand any evidence to police, upload sting footage only after convictions are secured in court or avoid filming the target’s face to not reveal his identity online.</p>
<p>Since predators are typically released on bail following arrest, hunters argue that live streaming alerts the public of a predator in their midst. Parents deserve to know “there’s a nonce roaming the neighbourhood”, they reason. </p>
<p>My experience suggests that hunters persist with live streaming stings not because they are not aware of less harmful alternatives, but because it is the apotheosis of their quest. The sting is the final battle between good and evil that tests the character of a hunter and must be played out before a live audience – any subsequent convictions in court are, for some teams, neither here nor there. What police presume is a means to an end is, for hunters as heroes, an end itself.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/176290/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mark de Rond does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Paedophile hunting follows the archetype of the ‘hero’s journey’.
Mark de Rond, Professor of Organisational Ethnography, Cambridge Judge Business School
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/67393
2016-10-25T13:59:16Z
2016-10-25T13:59:16Z
As Jimmy Savile’s flat is demolished, we shouldn’t always erase buildings with horrible histories
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143086/original/image-20161025-31486-1qjfp8i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Buildings have histories, too – and some of them are unsettling.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-259113221/stock-photo-skyscrapers-at-early-foggy-morning-in-the-city-district-flock-of-birds-flying-over.html?src=ebCoH2vPaeRbmjjEOINL4A-1-7">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The horrors committed by <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/jimmy-savile">Jimmy Savile are now known around the world</a>. Among the places that it was suspected – although unproven – that he took advantage of his position and abused people was his Leeds penthouse, which was <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-37696898">recently demolished</a> by its new owners. Although the flat reportedly was in poor condition – <a href="http://news.sky.com/story/jimmy-saviles-penthouse-flat-in-leeds-demolished-10623754">and planning permission has been granted</a> for a new apartment to replace it – one could argue that the memories associated with Savile would make it unlikely that the old property could have been rented or sold on for its real value. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"788782795229368324"}"></div></p>
<p>Buildings associated with some crimes can be seen almost as the perpertrator’s accomplice in the public eye. Some are found guilty of housing them – and demolished. But can architecture really be blamed for vile acts that take place in and around it? And can buildings atone and be reused?</p>
<p>When we look back at history through the built environment, some architecture with a harrowing history has survived and been adapted to new uses, with altered meanings and memories. After the conquest of Mexico, for example, the Spaniards built churches and monasteries on top of pre-Hispanic pyramids, <a href="http://bigstory.ap.org/article/2b88a1b5536c42ef8be9f27a160b6e5f/mexican-experts-find-early-burial-1st-colonial-cathedral">recycling sacred meanings and customs instead of creating new ones from scratch</a>. </p>
<p>The imposition of new cultures, religions, languages and customs was performed in parallel to the destruction of earlier ones. And yet, when we visit these sites today, the buildings help us to read the past and its layers, built with different materials, styles and intentions. They become part of the tourist trail, and even though they trigger conflicting emotions, we are able to distance ourselves from those horrible memories. The tragedy of the almost complete annihilation of the Aztec civilisation, for example, has over time been diminished by the construction of new narratives and identities, such as those of colonial Mexico. Add distance (in time) and new meanings will emerge in architecture.</p>
<p>In September 2015, Dachau Concentration Camp received a new influx of people. The former Nazi camp, which has since become a memorial site to the <a href="http://www.kz-gedenkstaette-dachau.de/">200,000 people imprisoned and tens of thousands murdered there</a>, is now home to refugees, fleeing a 21st-century terror. The solution may seem surreal to many of us, but the possibility of this site to support life rather than to distort it, seems a positive one. “I just wanted a roof over my head,” <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/19/the-refugees-who-live-at-dachau">Ashkan, one of the refugees said</a>. Add pressure – there were 800,000 refugees in Germany in 2015 – and architecture will evolve to fulfil new purposes.</p>
<h2>Raw memories</h2>
<p>Politics and more controversial historical figures can also determine the future of the built environment. What about the house Adolf Hitler was born in, for example? The <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/hitlers-birth-house-to-be-razed-and-replaced-1476729581">Austrian government is tearing it down</a> to prevent neo-Nazis using it as a pilgrimage site, but how will the disappearance of such a building (where Hitler only spent his first three years of life) reshape Austria’s Nazi past? The fact remains that Hitler was an Austrian national, and erasing this particular space can’t change that.</p>
<p>Confronting difficult memories, however, can also help us to reflect on the past and promote a different future. The controversial Centre for Memory and Human Rights, located in a former detention centre (ESMA) in <a href="http://www.efe.com/efe/english/life/former-argentine-clandestine-detention-center-protected-by-u-n-blue-shield/50000263-2930821">Buenos Aires, Argentina</a>, recently received the UN Blue Shield recognition. This initiative recognises the importance of protecting symbolic architecture, especially in the context of armed conflicts.</p>
<p>Thousands of people were tortured and disappeared in ESMA – a clearly difficult past to come to terms with. And yet, protecting such a negative heritage could help to create a “permanent culture of repudiation” against acts that “must not happen again”, as Argentine Human Rights Secretary Claudio Avruj said at the opening ceremony. In this case, ESMA, despite standing on the spot where these horrible episodes took place, has become a vigilant watch guard, ensuring that the past is not repeated. </p>
<p>But would it be possible for this building to be used for something else? Could it possibly go back to its original function as the Higher School of Mechanics of the Navy? Would that be appropriate? Probably not. In this case, the location’s past requires that it is given a whole new – and more positive – purpose.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143070/original/image-20161025-31493-3vb8sg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143070/original/image-20161025-31493-3vb8sg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143070/original/image-20161025-31493-3vb8sg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143070/original/image-20161025-31493-3vb8sg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143070/original/image-20161025-31493-3vb8sg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143070/original/image-20161025-31493-3vb8sg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143070/original/image-20161025-31493-3vb8sg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Constitution Hill: prison with a new purpose.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/africa-deluxe-tours/22332706615/in/photolist-5vJELA-5vJECh-chUJvf-chULsG-chUK3o-chUJEh-chUL9u-chUKcw-chULU5-chUJLb-chULKG-chUKS5-chUM2J-chUJSU-chUKnL-A1jgGA-A2tGBK-A2sXBM-z5r4a3-zJRWYy-HFxJfG-JsH2u1-aDGYrG-e28pXX-92ZsL-HFtnx6-HFtoT2-JsH1iJ-HFydFu-JsHT91-HFycsN-z5AkBH-z5sbiE-A2zVa8-x2k75M-JsHU73-JsHSWN">Africa Deluxe Tours via flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Last month, I visited <a href="https://www.constitutionhill.org.za">Constitution Hill</a> in Johannesburg, South Africa. It is the site of an infamous former prison, where Gandhi and Nelson Mandela spent long periods of their lives, and was recently converted into a memorial and museum. Appropriately, it is also now the site of the Constitutional Court, which protects human rights in the country. </p>
<p>I was there with a colleague from the UK, and we both had a very conflicting experience there. While visiting the remnants of the former prison, we could also hear in the background, a party, music and a stand-up comedian who was celebrating, with many others, Heritage Day. The juxtaposition between the building’s past horrors and the sound of people having fun in the same location was, to say the least, bizarre. But not necessarily wrong. In this case, the built environment provided a platform for promoting new and happy memories, conquering a terrible past by supporting a better present and future.</p>
<p>But returning to Savile and his penthouse: is British society ready to reappropriate locations associated with such obscene crimes? When it comes to properties such as the <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/fred-west-house-to-be-demolished-1356745.html">Cromwell Street home</a> of serial killers Frederick and Rosemary West, or the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-24329092">Derby home where Mick and Mairead Philpott laid a fire</a> that <a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/mick-mairead-philpott-sex-son-5366589">killed six of their own children</a>, which were both demolished, perhaps we are better off erasing some parts of our history. It just shouldn’t always be the case.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/67393/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ana Souto does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Here’s how we can repurpose places that have witnessed unspeakable crimes.
Ana Souto, Senior Lecturer in Architectural History, Nottingham Trent University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/66421
2016-10-03T15:01:54Z
2016-10-03T15:01:54Z
Louis Theroux’s new Jimmy Savile documentary is a horrible misstep
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/140101/original/image-20161003-20243-1fhef2k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Theroux the looking glass. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.bbcpictures.co.uk/image/11888212?collection=11888212+11888225+11888238+11888199&back=L3NlYXJjaC9zaW1wbGU%2Fc2VhcmNoJTVCZ2xvYmFsJTVEPXRoZXJvdXgmYW1wO3NlYXJjaCU1QnN1Ym1pdCU1RD1TZWFyY2g%3D">BBC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="https://vimeo.com/76002148">original</a> BBC documentary by Louis Theroux in 2000 about Jimmy Savile, the former British TV star thought to have <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/06/01/jimmy-savile-panorama-study-_n_5429071.html">sexually abused at least 500 women and children</a>, was uncomfortable viewing even before his crimes were common knowledge. Watching with the benefit of hindsight, one moment that really sticks out in When Louis Met Jimmy is when Theroux finds a notepad with his ex-directory phone number on it. “There’s nothing I cannot get,” Savile tells him.</p>
<p>Theroux revisits the moment in his new documentary, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b07yc9zh/louis-theroux-savile">Louis Theroux: Savile</a>. It is a statement of Savile’s power that helps us understand why his victims – a number of whom Theroux interviews in the film – found it so difficult to speak out while Savile was alive. Some are clearly still haunted by their failure to do so.</p>
<p>Theroux mostly acts as witness to their testimonies, aware of his own complicity in the myth-making that ensured their silence for so long. Yet as much as these victims deserve to be heard, the way their testimonies are framed is troubling. Louis Theroux: Savile is meant to be about the relationship between these two men. By persistently asking Savile’s victims how he got away with it, Theroux ends up effectively implicating them. </p>
<p>To be fair, there is never any question that he accepts their accounts of feeling some responsibility. But all the same, allowing them their moments of self-blame without making any comment leaves the viewer with the sense that their silence and his ignorance are equivalent. It’s a lost opportunity to reflect on the structures which supported Savile and effectively silenced these women. </p>
<h2>Shattered histories</h2>
<p>Theroux also confronts three women who in different ways question the accounts of Savile that have emerged. First up is Janet Cope, Savile’s PA of nearly 30 years, who echoes much of what she has said in the press before. Savile emerges from her description as controlling, manipulative and cold. But ultimately, she defends him. “He didn’t do it,” she says categorically, noting that the allegations relate to a “different era” when she was “grateful if somebody gave me a pat on the bum”. </p>
<p>Another interviewee is Gill Stribling-Wright, a researcher and producer on Savile’s BBC shows who knew him for decades. Stribling-Wright tells Theroux she hasn’t read Dame Janet Smith’s <a href="http://www.damejanetsmithreview.com">report</a> into Savile at the BBC. What, she asks, would she do with it if she did? </p>
<p>The sense of the psychic trauma inflicted upon those close to Savile is even sharper in the account of Sylvia Nicol. Nicol worked with him at Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Buckinghamshire, south England, where <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/feb/26/jimmy-savile-abuse-stoke-mandeville-hospital-inquiry">his abuses</a> have become notorious. She still has photos of Savile half-hidden in her home, and a large Lego bust of him intact in her garage. “I’m a victim” she tells Theroux, “a victim of losing those memories”.</p>
<p>These interviews raise difficult and uncomfortable questions about the private legacy of a disgraced public figure. With Savile now so thoroughly expunged from the archive that the BBC <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-29308337">apologised</a> after a clip of him was mistakenly shown on a Top of the Pops rerun, how do those who cared for him, who worked with him, whose lives were intertwined with his, make sense of their own histories now? </p>
<h2>Questionable decisions</h2>
<p>At the same time, some serious gaps undermine Theroux’s efforts to understand how he (and others) were duped. Most seriously, Savile appears as a complete one off. There is no mention of the broader <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/11393099/Operation-Yewtree-The-successes-and-failures.html">Operation Yewtree</a> enquiry into celebrity sexual abuse, nor the convictions of the likes of Rolf Harris, Max Clifford and Stuart Hall and the other arrests that followed the Savile revelations. </p>
<p>The new documentary acknowledges that the Savile investigations resulted in major enquiries in the NHS, BBC and the police, but Theroux interviews no representatives. He focuses almost entirely on individual and not institutional culpability.</p>
<p>That the individuals in focus are all women is meanwhile deeply troubling. The structure pits woman against woman, moving between the victim testimonies and the interviews with Cope, Stribling-Wright and Nicol. </p>
<p>What about all the men who benefited from their connection with Savile? Who abused alongside him. Who eulogised him on his death. Who defended him by their own inaction within the NHS, the BBC, and the police. </p>
<p>That Theroux does not find a single man willing to be interviewed gives a very distorted picture. If none of Savile’s male friends, family or colleagues were willing, that in itself would require comment. Theroux’s own footage from his 2000 documentary shows at least two of Savile’s male friends. Despite the liberal revisiting of that original, neither appear here.</p>
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<p>The one other man who does appear is Tony Hall, director general of the BBC, speaking at the release of Smith’s report in February. Hall is removed, watched by Theroux on television in a press conference at the time. Unlike some of Theroux’s female witnesses, Hall has no personal links with Savile and is apologetic and willing to acknowledge responsibility. </p>
<p>Theroux’s documentary barely scratches the surface of the questions about BBC failures raised by Smith, as Mark Lawson, The Guardian’s arts critic, has <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2016/sep/29/when-louis-theroux-met-jimmy-savile-again-gullible-bbc">already pointed out</a>. But neither Lawson nor Theroux acknowledge Smith’s fundamental point about the “macho culture” at the BBC that enabled Savile’s abusive career. </p>
<p>There is nothing macho about Theroux’s self-examinations, but in choosing to only place women in the dock alongside him over a 75-minute documentary, he has inadvertently contributed to a culture in which women are held responsible for men’s violence against them. It is a horrible misstep. It suggests there is still a lot of work to be done to unravel the <a href="https://theconversation.com/sexist-coverage-of-jimmy-savile-story-is-hiding-in-plain-sight-just-like-he-did-55457">unthinking sexism</a> which helped him to abuse with impunity.</p>
<p>The only interviewee to directly challenge the blame implicit in Theroux’s questioning is Angela Levin, a former Daily Mail writer, introduced as the source of the rumours he originally heard about Savile. “Don’t blame this on me,” she asserts. </p>
<p>Certainly there are as many important questions to be asked about individual responsibility as that of the institutions in this whole saga. But by asking these questions only of women this documentary contributes to the problem it attempts to unravel. And it lets abusive men, and the institutions which enable them, off the hook.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/66421/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Karen Boyle does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Filmmaker’s mea culpa is admirable but badly flawed.
Karen Boyle, Chair in Feminist Media Studies, University of Stirling
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/65373
2016-09-21T12:12:39Z
2016-09-21T12:12:39Z
National Treasure reminds us you can be family man and monster at same time
<blockquote>
<p>They think I’m Jimmy fucking Savile.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So says veteran TV comic Paul Finchley, played by Robbie Coltrane, not once but twice in the first part of Channel 4’s <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/11393099/Operation-Yewtree-The-successes-and-failures.html">Yewtree</a>-inspired drama <a href="http://www.channel4.com/programmes/national-treasure">National Treasure</a>. Just like all the real-life cases that went before this story of a well-loved star accused of rape, Savile <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/starring-bafta-winning-robbie-coltrane-julie-walters-and-andrea-riseborough-national-treasure-is-a-a7309601.html">casts a long shadow</a> over everything that takes place. </p>
<p>Some of the household names implicated in the UK’s Yewtree investigations – <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-27540137">Stuart Hall</a>, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-28163593">Rolf Harris</a> – were subsequently convicted of sexual offences. Others were publicly named but never charged. What does it mean for a man like this to be arrested in the full glare of publicity? That’s one of National Treasure’s central concerns. </p>
<p>Finchley – played by a superb Coltrane – is not an entirely sympathetic character. His wife (Julie Walters) vows to stand by him, despite repeated infidelities which extend to spending the night with a woman in prostitution after he is accused of rape. His uncomfortable relationship with his daughter Dee (Andrea Riseborough) also raises the possibility of further revelations to come. </p>
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<h2>Camera angles</h2>
<p>Finchley is introduced as a surprisingly small figure smoking in an alleyway, dwarfed by his surroundings. He is attending an awards ceremony to honour his comedy partner (Tim McInnerny), and we are privy to his nervousness before he takes the stage. He transforms under the spotlight. But when he returns home he fears he has made a fool of himself. He senses he is being replaced by a new generation of comedians overseen by extremely young TV execs (notably all men).</p>
<p>Positioning the viewer with Finchley is a smart move in a drama about celebrity sex abuse allegations. It recreates on a small scale the conditions in which such allegations become public. The accusers are, so far, anonymous women. The accused is someone the audience already has some investment in.</p>
<p>The UK soap Eastenders chose to do the opposite when it revealed in the early 2000s that Kat Slater, one of its best loved characters, had been sexually abused by her Uncle Harry, who was not a regular in the show. Around that time I took part in a panel discussion about the programme with then executive producer John Yorke, who revealed that the original intention had been to make victim and perpetrator existing characters: Janine Butcher and her stepfather Roy. </p>
<p>They abandoned the idea because they felt that it would be too traumatic for the audience if such a well established and sympathetic character was accused of child sexual abuse. Compared to some of the celebrity abuse revelations in recent years, of course, this seems almost quaint. </p>
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<p>Since Savile’s <a href="http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xv03is_exposure-the-other-side-of-jimmy-savile-3th-oct-2012-full-documentary-itv_news">unmasking</a> as a prolific sex abuser in 2012, he is now so synonymous with these allegations that it is difficult to remember that he was ever the “national treasure” whose death <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2059396/Jimmy-Savile-funeral-Golden-Coffin-taken-farewell-tour-Leeds.html">prompted tributes</a> from far and wide. Finchley, like so many others, now claims “everybody knew he was dodgy”.</p>
<p>Claims against Savile <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/jul/13/jimmy-savile-man-who-knew-him-best-dan-davies-in-plain-sight">did exist</a> in his lifetime. Savile himself was somewhat candid about his sexual interest in girls under the legal age of consent. His every interaction with women seemed to be peppered with sexual innuendo and unsolicited (and often unwanted) touching and kissing. This public everyday sexism – witnessed, and implicitly tolerated, by literally millions – became a kind of alibi for more serious forms of abuse. </p>
<p>National Treasure hints at a similar trajectory. Finchley is married with a daughter and grandchildren. But as he walks into the awards ceremony the camera lingers just a little too long on the female production assistant and only picks out women in his audience. As well as leaving an uncomfortable meeting with his daughter to pay for sex, his lawyer reveals that “quite violent porn” has been found on his phone. Finchley appears to be someone with a clear sense of sexual entitlement. </p>
<h2>Making headlines</h2>
<p>Another way in which National Treasure gets the echoes of real life horribly right is the way the press <a href="https://theconversation.com/sexist-coverage-of-jimmy-savile-story-is-hiding-in-plain-sight-just-like-he-did-55457">reports this</a> as a story chiefly about sex rather than abuse. The headlines confronting Finchley the day after his arrest – “TV Star’s Sex Shame” – could almost be lifted straight from the initial reports of the Savile allegations. </p>
<p>The claims against Savile following his death were neither immediately believed, nor initially recognised as abuse. They largely were lumped together with stories about a secret lover and a woman claiming to be his lovechild. The press first saw sex. They only saw abuse once the number of victims multiplied, their ages dropped and the institutional cover-up angle gained traction.</p>
<p>And as Savile morphed into the nation’s most despised paedophile, the gendered dimension to his crimes and the contexts which facilitated them was sidelined. The Savile case is now routinely referred to as child sexual abuse <a href="https://www.nspcc.org.uk/globalassets/documents/research-reports/yewtree-report-giving-victims-voice-jimmy-savile.pdf">although</a> a significant proportion of his victims were 16 or over. </p>
<p>Similarly, the revelation which rocks the Finchleys at the end of episode one is that one of his accusers is 15. “They think you’re a paedophile,” his wife gasps. Feminists have <a href="http://www.troubleandstrife.org/articles/issue-33/weasel-words-paedophiles-and-the-cycle-of-abuse/">long argued</a> that media representations of “paedophiles” are hugely problematic. Media “paedophiles” are a breed apart – monsters, not family men. Their crimes are also a breed apart, so that links are infrequently made between men’s sexual abuse of adults, particularly women, and their sexual abuse of children. As Savile became Paedophile No 1, his adult victims were once again marginalised.</p>
<p>But what of Finchley: Legend. Father. Monster?</p>
<p>National Treasure so far looks like it might be able to reconcile these labels, to show that one man can be all of these things and that “monsters” are not immediately visible as such. But we are still missing part of the puzzle. Finchley’s alleged victims have yet to make it to screen. Whether they fare better in a post-Savile world remains to be seen. It’s certainly worth watching to find out.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/65373/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Karen Boyle does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
New television series chillingly echoes the Jimmy Savile case – and how the public reacted.
Karen Boyle, Chair in Feminist Media Studies, University of Stirling
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/55457
2016-02-26T17:37:04Z
2016-02-26T17:37:04Z
Sexist coverage of Jimmy Savile story is hiding in plain sight – just like he did
<p>In the opening statement in <a href="http://www.damejanetsmithreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Opening-Statement-of-Dame-Janet-Smith-25.02.16.pdf">her report</a> on Jimmy Savile’s years abusing girls, boys, women and men at the BBC, Dame Janet Smith refers to a “macho culture” as an important element that enabled Savile to get away with decades of criminal behaviour. She may have absolved the BBC of institutional responsibility, but director general Tony Hall <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/video/2016/feb/25/bbc-savile-inquiry-tony-hall-apologises-to-survivors-of-sexual-abuse-video">has accepted</a> that the question of whether BBC bosses knew of Savile’s abusive behaviour does nothing to address the question: “How could you not have known?”</p>
<p>In this sense, the “macho culture” Smith identifies takes on an institutional character – institutional sexism – which the BBC clearly can and must tackle. Yet it is not the only institution where macho culture and sexism prevent us from seeing the reality of men’s abusive behaviours. The same problem is alive and well in the way the press has covered the story. </p>
<p>Savile’s abuse of women and girls at least was an open secret, existing, as the title of Dan Davies’ <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/jul/13/jimmy-savile-man-who-knew-him-best-dan-davies-in-plain-sight">biography</a> suggests, in plain sight. The problem wasn’t that people didn’t know. It was that – among other factors – the macho culture prevented them, prevented us, from recognising it as abuse. </p>
<p>Davies’ biography demonstrates how Savile was adept at implicating others. He notes, for instance, that Savile explicitly referred to sexual contact with teenage girls in his <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/As-Happens-Jimmy-Savile/dp/0214200566">1970s autobiography</a>, and that he’d openly “joke” that his motto was “don’t get caught”. In the now infamous 1974 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6Hx7Q2oC5U">Clunk Click programme</a>, where Savile hosted Gary Glitter, he joked about “giving” Glitter two girls before both men drape themselves over the young women on set. The TV audience at home saw this too, but most of us didn’t see it as abuse either. Celebrity men helped themselves to women, and too many of us went along with it. </p>
<h2>Now then, now then</h2>
<p>It would be nice to think this was a relic of a bygone age, but my work on more recent press reporting of Savile suggests there is no room for complacency. The UK press’s coverage of Savile between his death in October 2011 and three days after the <a href="http://www.itv.com/news/update/2012-10-04/watch-the-itv-documentary-on-jimmy-savile/">ITV broadcast of Exposure</a> in October 2012, which named him as a serial abuser of girls (the evidence of his abuse of boys came later), shows a similar sexist complicity to that of Savile’s addresses to journalists and on-screen behaviour.</p>
<p>At the time of his death, for instance, newspapers frequently referred to Savile as a “ladies man” or “womaniser”, also noting rumours of “underage sex”. The way he sexualised every interaction with women and girls – from incessant flirting to groping, demands for kisses, and comments on their attractiveness – was seen as part of what had made him a lovable eccentric. A national treasure.</p>
<p>Even when the stories of abuse first emerged, this perception persisted. They were labelled, in a variety of contexts, as “sex claims”, allegations of “child sex” and “underage sex”. Not: “sexual abuse claims” or “allegations of child sexual abuse”. This was at a time when coverage of Savile was dominated by stories relating to consensual sex (the emergence of a <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2069358/Jimmy-Saviles-secret-lover-Sue-Hymns-talks-VERY-unconventional-life-together.html">long-time hidden lover</a>, and a potential <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2174601/Forget-DNA-test-I-NOT-Jimmy-Saviles-long-lost-love-child.html">love child</a>). The abuse stories were arguably presented in a way that fitted this broader narrative – a narrative about sexual scandal and secrets - and initially the actual abuse was invisible.</p>
<p>For instance one of the first mainstream news outlets to cover the story (after it had been <a href="http://www.theoldie.co.uk/article/jimmy-savile-a-multiple-cover-up">broken by</a> The Oldie), was the Sunday Mirror, which ran with an <a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/bbc-axe-investigation-sir-jimmy-157675">intro about</a> “sex claims”, referred to Savile’s “colourful lifestyle” and described him as “iconic” and a “cigar-chomping star”. Although this report was about the dropped BBC Newsnight investigation on Savile’s abuse of vulnerable young women and girls at Duncroft School, not once were the allegations described as allegations of abuse or assault. The most damning language was to suggest his behaviour was “inappropriate”. Euphemism and salaciousness trumped accuracy. </p>
<p>Even when the story became one of abuse, the persistence of the label “underage” is also disturbing. Think about the phrase “abuse of underage girls”. Isn’t there an implication here that there is an age at which one can consent to the kind of abuse Savile was accused of: groping, attempted rape, rape? That’s also why the persistent labelling of Savile as a paedophile is unhelpful. Yes, he abused children. But he also abused adults. Smith’s report isn’t a report exclusively about child sexual abuse: indeed, a majority of Savile’s BBC victims were legally adults. However, that they were over the age of consent is immaterial: they did not consent.</p>
<p>Fast forward four years to the day the report was released. The Mail Online, anticipating the report, ran with a headline: “Damning Jimmy Savile BBC Sex Report to be Released Today.” But Savile wasn’t damned for having sex at the BBC. He – and <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-35658025">Stuart Hall</a> – were damned for sexually abusing women, girls, (and in Savile’s case) men and boys at the BBC.</p>
<p>Surely one of the most potent legacies of the Savile case has to be that this conflation of sex and abuse in the media’s treatment of allegations against powerful men has no place in a civilised society.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/55457/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Karen Boyle does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The report into Savile BBC abuse points to disturbing echoes in how the media has covered what happened.
Karen Boyle, Chair in Feminist Media Studies, University of Stirling
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/53649
2016-01-29T19:33:39Z
2016-01-29T19:33:39Z
Outrage over leaked Jimmy Savile report is as much about the BBC’s future as his crimes
<p>Dame Janet Smith’s long awaited report on the culture and practices of the BBC in the time Jimmy Savile worked there has seen the light of day – or at least, some of it has. Draft chapters were leaked to the investigative website <a href="http://www.exaronews.com/articles/5751/top-of-the-pops-exposed-by-janet-smith-s-inquiry-into-abuse">Exaro News</a>. And in the context of the impending <a href="http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/research/key-issues-parliament-2015/media/renewing-bbc-charter/">renewal of the corporation’s charter</a>, the report is a political gift to its enemies.</p>
<p>The Smith Review was established in October 2012 and completed in May 2015, but the publication of its report was apparently delayed by the risk of prejudicing criminal investigations that were then ongoing. There were suggestions by <a href="http://www.exaronews.com/articles/5672/bbc-seeks-to-delay-smith-review-until-after-renewal-of-charter">Exaro</a> last year that the BBC was seeking a delay to the publication of the completed report to protect itself until after its charter is renewed (the current charter runs until 31 December this year).</p>
<p>But it now appears that the full release of the report will come around <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/jan/20/bbc-jimmy-savile-report-dame-janet-smith">six weeks</a> after Exaro’s exclusive. And if media reports on the leaked draft accurately reflect its content, BBC Director General Tony Hall and the rest of the current management of the corporation have a tough time ahead.</p>
<h2>Target BBC</h2>
<p>For the BBC’s alleged failure (under previous management) to safeguard children on its premises and to deal with Savile’s activities is being cynically exploited. Both hostile politicians and journalists are holding up elements of a still-unofficial report as emblematic of the wider failings of managerialism inside the corporation.</p>
<p>Certainly, the BBC’s sworn enemies would be perfectly justified in putting the corporation in their journalistic crosshairs should any specific child protection failings be established. But the reflexive effort to blame the corporation almost exclusively for Savile’s crimes even before the full report is released conveniently forgets it is a uniquely placed cultural institution – one that’s political enemies want to see it undermined by any means. </p>
<p>This is the cynical calculus behind the furious blame game – and it neatly diverts attention from the role of the press and politicians in allowing Savile’s behaviour to remain out of public view. </p>
<h2>Legal fears</h2>
<p>Other institutions failed to expose Savile’s crimes, and the media at large was among them. Even when they wanted to report on the issue, they feared they would face costly legal battles they could not win. Ex-Sunday Mirror editor Paul Connew has <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/savile-story-dropped-sunday-mirror-because-paper-could-not-afford-lose-libel-battle">explained how</a> he sat on a victim’s testimony of Savile’s sexual abuse because the paper could not afford to tangle with Britain’s libel laws.</p>
<p>Other newspapers didn’t even seek to take on Savile. His brand of savvy entrepreneurialism, fix-it pragmatism and rule-breaking populism was admired by many of those currently damning the BBC. Meanwhile, politicians were involved in decisions that gave Savile direct power over very vulnerable people.</p>
<p>In 1988 Savile was appointed to head a <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/jun/26/edwina-currie-regret-jimmy-savile-broadmoor">task force managing Broadmoor</a>. Yet none of the media forces currently gunning for the BBC are decrying Broadmoor as having been a failed institution unfit for purpose, or moving that it should perhaps be privatised because of something awful that happened decades ago.</p>
<p>The fallout from the Savile affair has exposed the absurd mismatch between what we expect of the BBC, a cultural institution, and the standards to which we hold the NHS and a psychiatric institution such as Broadmoor. </p>
<p>Surely we should be asking why the Home Office, the government department with overall responsibility for Broadmoor when Savile was at large, allowed children to be sent there in the first place. Yet the fact that Jimmy Savile was able to access supposedly secure parts the country’s most secure psychiatric institution has commanded nothing like the same public and media attention as have attacks on the BBC. </p>
<p>Political failure regarding the management of Broadmoor is astonishing, and the consequences for Savile’s victims every bit as serious as for those he targeted at the BBC. But in the cynical media-centric political game the scandal has triggered, that hardly seems to matter.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/53649/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Simon Cross does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Forthcoming details from Janet Smith report have drawn predictable outrage but there’s also a hidden agenda at play.
Simon Cross, Senior Lecturer in Media and Culture, Nottingham Trent University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/46412
2015-08-27T03:50:52Z
2015-08-27T03:50:52Z
Why does it take victims of child sex abuse so long to speak up?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92971/original/image-20150826-15907-1c5vt87.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Former Prisoner star Maggie Kirkpatrick was found guilty of a charge of child sex abuse dating back to the 1980s.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Tracey Nearmy</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Last week, former Prisoner star Maggie Kirkpatrick was <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/maggie-kirkpatrick-prisoner-star-the-freak-found-guilty-of-child-sex-abuse-20150820-gj3rv8.html">found guilty</a> of the abuse of a 14-year-old girl in 1984. Kirkpatrick joins entertainer <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-07-01/rolf-harris-guilty-of-indecently-assaulting-four-girls/5542644">Rolf Harris</a> and Hey Dad! actor <a href="http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/hey-dad-star-robert-hughes-sentenced-for-child-sex-charges/story-e6frfmq9-1226920177279">Robert Hughes</a> as the latest Australian celebrity to be convicted of sexual abuse.</p>
<p>These cases raise a murky set of questions about the extent of child sexual abuse and the impunity enjoyed by prominent figures.</p>
<p>The UK has been grappling with these questions since hundreds of people accused entertainer Jimmy Savile of sexual abuse after his death in 2011. He is now recognised as one of Britain’s most <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-20981611">prolific sex offenders</a>. </p>
<p>UK police have been investigating an expanding set of scandals regarding the alleged involvement of high-profile men in the sexual abuse of children in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. These scandals have now engulfed a number of <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/may/26/vip-paedophile-ring-woman-waives-anonymity-link-politician-abuse">current and former politicians</a>.</p>
<h2>Disclosure is often made later</h2>
<p>These allegations of sexual abuse are “historical” in two ways. First, they pertain to incidents of abuse that are often decades old. </p>
<p>Second, it is no exaggeration to say that these allegations are remaking history. These disclosures of abuse challenge our cultural memory and collective understandings of public figures. They tell a more complex and disturbing story than the version of history that we are most familiar with.</p>
<p>Understandably, the credibility and substance of these allegations has come under considerable scrutiny. Why didn’t victims say anything at the time? And is it justified to pursue their allegations now, decades after the fact? </p>
<p>At times, these questions have had a legalistic and sceptical tone to them. They recall entrenched myths that a rape victim who doesn’t raise “hue and cry” immediately after the event is untrustworthy.</p>
<p>An immediate complaint of sexual abuse is relatively unusual. It is more common for children to delay talking about the abuse or to never report it. One <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/2010-03375-007">retrospective survey</a> of Canadian adults abused as children found that one-fifth reported the abuse within a month, but 58% delayed disclosure for five years or longer, and one-fifth never disclosed the abuse to anyone. </p>
<p>Studies with adult survivors <a href="http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Kamala_London/publication/5690103_Review_of_the_contemporary_literature_on_how_children_report_sexual_abuse_to_others_findings_methodological_issues_and_implications_for_forensic_interviewers/links/0c9605225fc703e5ab000000.pdf">consistently find</a> that most didn’t tell anyone about the abuse when they were kids. Only a small proportion of incidents are ever reported to the authorities.</p>
<h2>A long road</h2>
<p>Disclosure is not an event but a process. Many factors are at play in enabling or constraining a child to speak directly about abuse and bringing that complaint to the attention of the authorities. The age and development of the child, the relationship of the child to the perpetrator, the severity of the abuse and the availability of support <a href="http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ramona_Alaggia/publication/233389089_DISCLOSING_THE_TRAUMA_OF_CHILD_SEXUAL_ABUSE_A_GENDER_ANALYSIS/links/0fcfd50a0f83d2a221000000.pdf">dynamically shape</a> the disclosure process. </p>
<p>Multiple stressors in the child’s family and community context, and social and cultural attitudes that shame and blame victims, can <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2809444/">create environments</a> in which disclosure is fraught with difficulty. The process of disclosure <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0145213404002431">often involves</a> behavioural and indirect cues, and accidental disclosures, as much or more often than a conscious decision to tell someone about the abuse. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92974/original/image-20150826-32483-12krsix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92974/original/image-20150826-32483-12krsix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92974/original/image-20150826-32483-12krsix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=848&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92974/original/image-20150826-32483-12krsix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=848&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92974/original/image-20150826-32483-12krsix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=848&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92974/original/image-20150826-32483-12krsix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1066&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92974/original/image-20150826-32483-12krsix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1066&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92974/original/image-20150826-32483-12krsix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1066&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rolf Harris’ offences took place between 1968 and 1986 – but only in 2014 was he jailed.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Andy Rain</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It is often assumed that disclosing abuse is naturally in the interest of victims. However, children may withhold disclosure because they <a href="http://sol-reform.com/News/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Hershkowitz-et-al-Disclosure-of-CSA.pdf">accurately believe</a> that the adults in their life will be angry with them or not support them. </p>
<p>Research with adult survivors has found that <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1300/J070v12n01_05#.VduyOpOqqko">many did disclose</a> in childhood only to experience blame and minimisation. Abuse may then continue in spite of the disclosure. </p>
<p>Negative and shaming reactions to sexual abuse disclosures have been shown to <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1300/J070v12n01_05#.VduyOpOqqko">significantly increase</a> the risk of mental illness and distress in the victim. <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/betrayalbook/">Feeling betrayed</a> is corrosive to mental wellbeing.</p>
<p>In “historical” allegations, the years that elapse between abuse and a court case are often indicative of the long journey that survivors take to recover from abuse and find a forum in which their complaint will be heard. Initial disclosures of abuse are likely to be to friends, partners and other people who the survivor trusts. </p>
<p>In court, the husband of the woman Kirkpatrick abused recalled a conversation in the mid-2000s in which his wife said that, as a teenager, she went to the house of “the nasty one on Prisoner” and <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-08-19/maggie-kirkpatrick-court-child-sexual-abuse-claims/6707792">“some sexual things happened”</a>. It was several more years before she made a formal complaint. </p>
<p>Even when disclosure occurs in a formal setting – such as to police – survivors are not guaranteed an adequate response. One of Robert Hughes’ victims reported him to police in the late 1980s and again in the 1990s but was apparently told <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/mother-of-hey-dad-victim-speaks-out-20140511-zr9gl.html">nothing could be done</a>. </p>
<h2>The disclosure paradox</h2>
<p>The paradox is that, in order to detect sexual abuse, we depend on abused children to speak out, but they are often in environments in which they can’t rely on support or understanding. </p>
<p>In this impossible situation, non-disclosure is a way that victims of abuse protect themselves from further betrayal and harm. Extricating themselves from unsupportive environments and finding opportunities to speak about their abuse is a complex and fragile process that can take many years. </p>
<p>It seems that the pertinent question in “historical” abuse allegations is not:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Why didn’t victims say something at the time?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Rather, it should be:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Why do abuse victims have to wait so long to speak and be heard?</p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<p><em>Editor’s note: On December 8, 2015, Maggie Kirkpatrick’s conviction was overturned on appeal.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/46412/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael Salter does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Many factors are at play in enabling or constraining a child to speak directly about abuse and bringing that complaint to the attention of the authorities.
Michael Salter, Senior Lecturer in Criminology, Western Sydney University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/43930
2015-06-26T15:53:33Z
2015-06-26T15:53:33Z
One small law reform could bring justice to hundreds of child abuse victims
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86533/original/image-20150626-1431-5555xu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Justice could become more accessible for Scottish child-abuse victims</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/s/child+abuse/search.html?page=11&thumb_size=mosaic&inline=245100133">fresnel</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In recent years, institutions in the UK and elsewhere have been accused of inflicting terrible cruelty on children in their care. In Scotland, for example, the Shaw Report <a href="http://www.gov.scot/resource/doc/203922/0054353.pdf">exposed</a> a catalogue of historic physical, emotional and sexual abuse of children in care between 1950 and 1995. In 2004, then first minister of Scotland, Jack McConnell, <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/4056927.stm">made a public apology</a> in parliament to victims of such abuse. </p>
<p>The effects of such abuse are often devastating and long-lasting for the victims. Yet despite the fact that many perpetrators have been convicted in the criminal courts, the victims have had little success in recovering compensation through the civil courts to date. More than ten years after McConnell’s apology, the Scottish government <a href="https://www.holyrood.com/articles/news/ministers-consult-removing-time-bar-child-abuse-cases">has launched</a> a consultation that could make a huge difference to these civil actions in future. It could radically change victims’ prospects of access to justice – and ought to be followed closely south of the border, where a similar problem endures.</p>
<h2>The stumbling block</h2>
<p>The simple reason why so many of these actions fail is that they are time-barred <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1973/52/contents">under the</a> Prescription and Limitation (Scotland) Act 1973 as having being raised too long after the event. There are similar time limits on such actions <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1980/58/contents">in England and Wales</a> in the Limitation Act 1980. </p>
<p>Time-bar rules are designed to ensure that civil proceedings are brought while the evidence is still relatively fresh – and certainly before any evidence is lost or forgotten. The general rule in both jurisdictions is that actions must be raised within three years of the injuries being sustained. It is true that where the injuries were inflicted on a child, the three-year period does not begin to run in Scotland until they reach 16 (it is 18 in England and Wales). Thus if a child in Scotland is abused from, say, the age of ten until the age of 14, the clock only starts running on the child’s 16th birthday. This would mean that any action would have to be raised before the victim reached 19 (or before they reached 21 in England and Wales). </p>
<p>This extension for children has often not been enough in practice, however. The difficulty for survivors of historic child abuse is that, not surprisingly, many remain silent for many years. Some have sought to suppress their memories, while others have feared that they would not be believed. Indeed in the English case of Ablett v Devon County Council (2000), Lord Justice Sedley <a href="http://www.newlawjournal.co.uk/nlj/content/sins-past">said that</a> “silence is known to be one of the most pernicious fruits of abuse”. </p>
<p>Victims have often only made allegations well into adulthood, frequently as a result of media reports, such as in the case of <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/jun/26/jimmy-savile-sexual-abuse-timeline">Jimmy Savile</a>. They have accordingly faced time-bar arguments from those whom they have sought to hold responsible when they have launched civil actions. The new Scottish consultation is consequently looking at removing this time bar. </p>
<h2>The problem with the counter-arguments</h2>
<p>In the past, alleged victims have attempted to use certain other rules to get around the time bar, but without much success. In Scotland, for example, the law says that the limitation period doesn’t run against a person of “unsound mind” (in England and Wales the equivalent rule <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2005/9/contents">refers to</a> lacking capacity to conduct legal proceedings). While many pursuers have experienced memory suppression and induced reticence, the courts <a href="http://swarb.co.uk/mce-v-hendron-and-de-la-salle-brothers-scs-11-apr-2007/">have been clear</a> that such conditions do not amount to unsoundness of mind. Despite the abuse apparently causing severe mental illness in some cases, such as <a href="http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Post-traumatic-stress-disorder/Pages/Introduction.aspx">post-traumatic stress disorder</a>, this does not appear to have led to successful arguments. </p>
<p>Lack of awareness is another possible argument. The Scottish legislation provides that time only begins to run against a person when they become aware of two things: that they have suffered injuries that are sufficiently serious to justify litigation, and that they were caused by the defender’s wrongdoing. (The English legislation contains a similar “date of knowledge” provision.) </p>
<p>Legal teams have argued that victims have repressed memories and did not become aware that they were entitled to sue until relevant newspaper reports surfaced. But the courts <a href="http://www.scotcourts.gov.uk/opinions/2010CSIH69.html">have repeatedly</a> held that the pursuer was aware within the terms of the legislation. As a further restriction, the legislation says explicitly that a victim not knowing they have a right of action is not relevant here. Courts have <a href="https://www.scotcourts.gov.uk/opinions/2012CSOH109.html">also said that</a> a pursuer’s fear that no one would listen or believe them is irrelevant in relation to awareness. </p>
<p>Finally the Scottish and English legislation allows a court to permit a time-barred action to proceed where it is “equitable” to do so. Many historic abuse victims have sought to rely on these provisions. But in the only Scottish historic abuse case to reach the House of Lords, <a href="http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200708/ldjudgmt/jd080521/bowden-1.htm">AS v Poor Sisters of Nazareth (2008)</a> (a case about alleged abuse of children at Nazareth House in Glasgow), the lords rejected such an argument. This was principally because of the length of time which had elapsed and because the defenders would be prejudiced by loss of evidence. In rejecting such applications, the courts also appear to have been influenced by the fact that attitudes to physically chastising children have changed in recent decades and that defenders’ behaviour should not be judged by modern standards.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86537/original/image-20150626-1442-c6ioef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86537/original/image-20150626-1442-c6ioef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86537/original/image-20150626-1442-c6ioef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86537/original/image-20150626-1442-c6ioef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86537/original/image-20150626-1442-c6ioef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86537/original/image-20150626-1442-c6ioef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86537/original/image-20150626-1442-c6ioef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86537/original/image-20150626-1442-c6ioef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Justice not served.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/s/justice/search.html?page=3&thumb_size=mosaic&inline=289956974">izet ugutmen</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The case for reform</h2>
<p>One is left with a profound sense that, as far as victims of historic abuse are concerned, justice has not been done. Indeed one Scottish judge, Lord McEwan, <a href="http://www.scotcourts.gov.uk/opinions/2008CSOH165.html">remarked in 2008</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I have an uneasy feeling that the legislation and the strict way the courts have interpreted it has failed a generation of children who have been abused and whose attempts to seek a fair remedy have become mired in the legal system.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>That is a damning indictment. Another Scottish judge, Lord Clarke, observed in <a href="http://www.scotcourts.gov.uk/opinions/2007csih27.html">McE v de La Salle Brothers (2007)</a> (a case involving alleged abuse at St Ninian’s Residential School in Stirling) that parliament did not have in mind issues such as repressed memory when it passed the 1973 Scottish Act. He argued it was therefore not appropriate to stretch the statutory language, making clear that if a problem existed, it was for parliament to solve it. </p>
<p>This helps to explain why abuse survivors have been agitating for the removal of the time-bar in relation to their claims for a number of years (see chapter six of the <a href="http://www.gov.scot/resource/doc/203922/0054353.pdf">Shaw Report</a>, for example). It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that in Scotland, as well as England and Wales, the current legislation as framed and interpreted does not adequately provide for them. Both the Scottish and UK parliaments therefore need to address this problem as a matter of urgency. The Scottish government has taken the first step with its consultation. The debate will hopefully also extend south of the border and culminate in legislation in both jurisdictions. While we wait for that to happen, those who have been so grievously wronged in childhood can at least hope that some positive change may finally be in sight.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/43930/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Eleanor received funding from the Clark Foundation for Legal Education to assist in the writing of the seventh edition of the Prescription and Limitation book which was published in May 2015 by W Green</span></em></p>
At last, one of the biggest obstacles to suing the perpetrators of historic child abuse could be on the way out.
Eleanor Russell, Senior Lecturer, Law, Glasgow Caledonian University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/42860
2015-06-12T12:07:40Z
2015-06-12T12:07:40Z
Review: An Audience with Jimmy Savile – this is a vital play
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84820/original/image-20150612-1475-t9g3su.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Savile on stage.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Helen Maybanks</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In October 2012 ITV broadcast <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/reviews/exposure-the-other--side-of-jimmy-savile-itv1-wednesdayhunted-bbc4-thursday-8200567.html">The Other Side of Jimmy Savile</a>, in which several women alleged that they had been sexually abused by Savile when they were children. </p>
<p>Savile, who died a year earlier, in October 2011, had occupied a variety of “entertainer” roles, including presenting a number of iconic, national TV and radio programmes. He was, in his life, one of the country’s most famous celebrities; knighted by the Queen and a good friend of the then prime minister, the late Baroness Margaret Thatcher.</p>
<p>The ITV programme opened up what proved to be a deluge of allegations of abuse. It now seems clear that Savile sexually assaulted several hundred children and women over half a century. The assaults occurred in a huge range of settings across the entire country, including hospitals, TV studios and institutions for children in state care. It is thought that he may be the country’s most prolific sex offender. The extent and depth of his criminal behaviour was well summed up by Peter Spindler – the senior Metropolitan Police Service officer who led the inquiry into Saviles’ offences – who <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/video/2013/jan/11/jimmy-savile-met-police-video">stated</a> that he had “groomed the nation”.</p>
<p>Three years later and a play on the man has opened in London, based on Savile’s life or, more specifically, his crimes. <a href="https://www.parktheatre.co.uk/whats-on/an-audience-with-jimmy-savile">An Audience with Jimmy Savile</a> tells of “how one man used fame, intimidation and manipulation to fool the very institutions we trust and how one brave woman fought back”.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84837/original/image-20150612-1481-1039m34.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84837/original/image-20150612-1481-1039m34.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84837/original/image-20150612-1481-1039m34.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84837/original/image-20150612-1481-1039m34.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84837/original/image-20150612-1481-1039m34.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84837/original/image-20150612-1481-1039m34.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84837/original/image-20150612-1481-1039m34.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In rehearsal.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Helen Maybanks</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Immediate reactions to the idea of such a play, featuring a now reviled character who committed such heinous crimes, have considered it tasteless, even exploitative. Some commentators have questioned whether the play has come “<a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/jimmy-savile/11652362/Jimmy-Savile-resurrected-on-stage-how-soon-is-too-soon.html">too soon</a>” and playwright Jonathan Maitland has been denounced as a “sick fuck” on social media.</p>
<p>With just a bit more reflection, though, it should become clear that while art – including drama – often entertains, it can and does – and indeed should – also occupy a crucial role in helping us to better understand social ills, however unpalatable, and better respond to them. </p>
<p>So the real question is whether An Audience with Jimmy Savile achieves this.</p>
<h2>A nightmare world</h2>
<p>There are two major and distinct, but equally important, components to the play. The first of these is a partial biography of Savile, much of which is concerned with revealing the ways in which he used either manipulation or coercion to facilitate sexual abuse and also avoid detection, investigation or prosecution. Savile, played by the impressionist Alistair McGowan, comes across as a megalomaniac; a truly chilling, twisted and amoral character.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84835/original/image-20150612-1491-1f3nhcs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84835/original/image-20150612-1491-1f3nhcs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84835/original/image-20150612-1491-1f3nhcs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84835/original/image-20150612-1491-1f3nhcs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84835/original/image-20150612-1491-1f3nhcs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84835/original/image-20150612-1491-1f3nhcs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84835/original/image-20150612-1491-1f3nhcs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Alistair McGowan on set.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Helen Maybanks</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It has to be said that McGowan’s portrayal of Savile is brilliant. But the sense of the inner turmoil which he (McGowan) was going though in having to give himself over – drama wise – to such a despicable character does come through. So far from this play being exploitative, it becomes clear that McGowan and the rest of the cast have made a personal and emotional sacrifice in entering into the nightmare world of Jimmy Savile. And for that, they deserve our respect and praise. </p>
<p>Many people may like to see Savile as an aberration, a “monster” – but that would be wrong. He was a man. He was feted by politicians, “knighted” by the Vatican and defended by one of the country’s leading QCs, George Carmen. In one especially powerful moment, Graham Seed, playing the part of TV host, Michael Sterling, reminds us that Savile was “the most loved man in Britain”. </p>
<p>Just one of the many essential messages to come out of the play is that Savile was, in reality, distinguished only by the scale of his offending. Other than this, he is only one of many thousands who have, and continue, to use influence and force to sexually abuse those less powerful than them and avoid justice – be they fathers, partners, grandfathers, uncles, brothers, boyfriends, neighbours, strangers.</p>
<h2>Telling the other story</h2>
<p>The second major component consists of a victim’s story – that of Lucy, played by Leah Whitaker. Lucy reveals to us the pain and anguish victims suffer as a result of sexual abuse but also the other trauma they often have to endure: scepticism on the part of family members; denial by society; hostility from the police; and having to confront legal mountains. </p>
<p>This is one of the play’s most critical features. One of the biggest and most enduring pitfalls in society’s response to sexual offences has been a fixation with and a rush to condemn offenders, a reaction that only serves to marginalise victims and their needs. An Audience with Jimmy Savile establishes a truly impressive balance between enabling the spectator to better understand these offenders, while developing a meaningful empathy with victims. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84836/original/image-20150612-1453-16t52b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84836/original/image-20150612-1453-16t52b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84836/original/image-20150612-1453-16t52b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84836/original/image-20150612-1453-16t52b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84836/original/image-20150612-1453-16t52b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84836/original/image-20150612-1453-16t52b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84836/original/image-20150612-1453-16t52b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Leah Whitaker playing Lucy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Helen Maybanks</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For me the play also contains a number of equally vital, wider messages. It stresses the need to moderate the power of individuals and organisations and for there to be a distance between powerful institutions, such as the government, media, police and church. It calls for us to be wary of charismatic personalities. And above all, the play highlights an urgent need to combat sexism.</p>
<p>There is further evidence in the recent past of these messages not being heeded. Just think of the <a href="http://www.polity.co.uk/book.asp?ref=9780745628882">unholy alliance</a> between government, police and the media conglomerate formerly known as News International over, ironically, the response to child sexual abuse. </p>
<p>On July 7 last year the home secretary, Theresa May, announced the setting up of the historical abuse inquiry into the handling of child sex abuse concerns. The inquiry has been given an extraordinarily wide brief, covering “public bodies and other non-state institutions”. I have <a href="http://theconversation.com/is-fiona-woolfs-child-abuse-inquiry-falling-apart-before-it-has-begun-33111">previously argued</a> that the inquiry should be focused upon the original fears by which it came about: that “senior political figures” had sexually abused children and had their crimes covered up by the police and MI5. </p>
<p>As the Goddard inquiry continues to struggle to get off the ground, this play reminds us that while Savile is gone, sexual abuse and its cover up by the powerful – however and from wherever they derive their power – continues.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/42860/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bernard Gallagher has, in the past, received funding from the Department of Health, the Home Office, the Economic and Social Research Council, the NSPCC, and The Nuffield Foundation. He is a trustee of the British Association for the Study and Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect.
</span></em></p>
The cast have made a personal and emotional sacrifice in entering into the nightmare world of Jimmy Savile. And for that, they deserve our respect and praise.
Bernard Gallagher, Reader in Social Work and Applied Social Sciences, University of Huddersfield
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/39527
2015-04-21T12:09:50Z
2015-04-21T12:09:50Z
Greville Janner is just the latest twist in a slow-burning scandal
<p>After a Leicestershire Police investigation that interviewed more than 2,000 people and produced allegations which span two decades, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-32329924">declined to prosecute Labour peer Greville Janner</a> over 22 allegations of child abuse and sexual assault. </p>
<p>According to the director of public prosecutions, there is enough evidence for him to be charged, although the CPS made it clear in its statement that it was not determining whether Lord Janner was guilty of any criminal office – but Janner is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and is unfit to stand trial.</p>
<p>Coming on the heels of allegations that London Metropolitan Police officers were involved in covering up an historic VIP child sex abuse ring, with <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/mar/27/claims-met-police-cover-up-child-abuse-three-more-inquiries-ipcc">17 separate allegations</a> under investigation, this is just the latest development in an ever-widening multi-institutional scandal that has been amplifying for more than two years.</p>
<p>Driven by a series of investigative reports by <a href="http://www.exaronews.com">Exaro news</a>, the cycle of scandal-hunting, activation, amplification and justice has thrown the spotlight back onto the Metropolitan Police. </p>
<p>In March 2015, Scotland Yard’s deputy assistant commissioner Steve Rodhouse <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-31998446">called for victims and witnesses to contact the police</a> in relation to 18 concurrent investigations into alleged historical child sexual abuse. </p>
<p>In the same month, the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) announced that Scotland Yard had voluntarily referred 14 allegations of corruption involving senior officers who it was claimed had suppressed evidence, hindered and/or terminated investigations and covered up VIP child sex offences. </p>
<p>Later that month, the IPCC announced that it would manage the investigation of three more claims of police corruption relating to alleged child sexual abuse, and that the investigation would cover a period dating back to the 1970s. </p>
<p>On the same day, the IPCC also revealed that it would be overseeing an investigation into an allegation that the Greater Manchester Police had inadequately investigated an incident involving Cyril Smith.</p>
<p>While this latest phase has been slow-burning in terms of media coverage, the seemingly endless series of interconnected scandalous revelations is locking British public institutions into an uncontrollable scandal amplification spiral that threatens to shred their credibility and rewrite British post-war social and cultural history.</p>
<h2>Life cycle</h2>
<p>As we have written on The Conversation <a href="https://theconversation.com/notes-on-a-scandal-the-jimmy-savile-case-is-all-too-familiar-20379">before</a>, most potential scandals never break; they are contained. Hearsay, rumour and gossip remain just that. For an institutional child sex abuse scandal to be publicly activated, certain key elements must align. </p>
<p>As <a href="https://theconversation.com/complicity-and-conspiracy-in-rotherham-should-teach-us-how-to-handle-future-cases-30979">events in Rotherham</a> have shown, it is not enough for someone to be prepared to blow the whistle. Victims come forward, individuals complain, bystanders and witnesses know that abuse is taking place, and rumour and gossip are rife – and yet complainants can still be ignored, silenced, dismissed or discredited. </p>
<p>Witnesses at all levels of an institutional hierarchy can remain in denial. Senior managers can place the reputation of the institution above the rights of clients and employees and engage in concerted ignorance or cover-up. The overdue <a href="http://www.damejanetsmithreview.com/updates/">Smith Inquiry</a>, now due to report in May 2015, was established to determine the extent, if any, of such behaviour in the BBC during <a href="http://cmc.sagepub.com/content/9/3/243.short?rss=1&ssource=mfr">Sir Jimmy Savile</a>’s employment. </p>
<p>To reach the tipping point where the scandal is activated, there must be a news agency that is sufficiently persuaded by the available evidence to risk legal action and publicise the allegations. There must also be an audience that is sufficiently interested and prepared to take seriously those allegations, and to demand an official response. </p>
<p>This means that scandal activation requires a specific interaction between multiple players and interests – victims and/or whistleblowers, news organisations, pressure groups, moral entrepreneurs and the public.</p>
<p>If the transgression is sufficiently serious, the story sufficiently newsworthy, the public interest sufficiently strong and the resulting media and public outcry sufficiently loud, then scandals will activate regardless of institutional attempts at suppression and cover-up.</p>
<h2>On the hunt</h2>
<p>After decades of still-unexplained silence, the media feeding frenzy that resulted from ITV’s activation of the Savile scandal – and the public outcry and demands for official answers that resulted – kick-started a process that has engulfed multiple individuals and institutions and has now spiralled beyond the control of any one of them. </p>
<p>But in the case of Janner, Cyril Smith, and the accusations of organised abuse by the powerful over many decades, something else is at play. The interlocking phases of scandal activation, amplification and justice have precipitated a further phase in the scandal cycle: scandal hunting.</p>
<p>Scandal-hunting may be engaged in by media organisations, official authorities, child protection agencies and moral entrepreneurs, each of whom may be driven by different ideological and moral motivations, but all of whom share the common goal of amplifying existing scandals or activating new ones. Scandal-hunting results in the widening of the net and the thinning of the mesh, so that more and more individuals and institutions get caught up in the process of investigation and accusation. Even if the accused are not charged and tried in a court of law, they may find themselves having publicly to prove their innocence in the face of a <a href="http://tcr.sagepub.com/content/16/4/395">trial by media</a>. </p>
<p>This is what’s happening today, as the IPCC investigations and Met operations gather momentum. As more individuals are named by these official inquiries, and more institutions are potentially implicated in the facilitation, denial or cover-up of historical institutional child sex abuse, the scandal amplification spiral is unpicking the reputations of people and institutions at the core of the British establishment. </p>
<p>The self-perpetuating cycle of institutional child abuse scandals is testing the limits of the formal criminal justice system, while simultaneously making a mockery of it. </p>
<p>Abuse survivors who have been disbelieved, dismissed and discredited for decades are finally starting to see justice as their abusers are <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-30591158">convicted and sentenced in courts of law</a>. And, after nearly falling apart before it began, the massive public inquiry now chaired by <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/feb/11/justice-lowell-goddard-establishment-links-child-abuse-inquiry-truth-reconciliation">Justice Lowell Goddard</a> will investigate the extent to which “public bodies and other non-state institutions have taken seriously their duty of care to protect children from sexual abuse in England and Wales”.</p>
<p>Yet several CPS prosecutions, for instance in <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21925205">Rochdale</a>, have already failed to convict. In the face of high-profile not-guilty verdicts or decisions to take no further action, complainants are recast as opportunists, liars and fantasists. The CPS and criminal justice system are ridiculed for launching witch hunts and bringing the cases to court in the first place. The alleged offenders may be innocent in law, but their professional and private lives and reputations may be irreparably damaged through trial by media. </p>
<p>In such cases, the only real winners are the media, since whatever the outcome of the “justice” phase, the story keeps rolling and the scandal-hunting continues.</p>
<p>There is much work underway – and plenty of questions to probe. No one has yet explained what exactly could have motivated Metropolitan Police officers to go to such lengths to cover up allegations of child sexual abuse by VIPs. Even if these allegations are true, we still do not know what types and levels of corruption we would be dealing with, whether police officers benefited personally in terms of bribery (or were blackmailed), or if the Metropolitan Police Service benefited politically.</p>
<p>Whatever the answers to these questions, the investigation of an alleged police cover-up of institutional child sex abuse on behalf of the British political establishment could make this scandal more explosive even than the Savile case. As this scandal continues to amplify, it will open up a decades-long period in the histories of the British establishment and the police – a period that many involved have done their very best to bury and forget.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Chris Greer will be giving a talk entitled Researching Historical Institutional Child Sex Abuse Scandals: The Savile Effect at the University of Melbourne on Thursday 30 April 2015. Click <a href="http://articulation.arts.unimelb.edu.au/?uom_event=researching-historical-institutional-child-sex-abuse-scandals-the-savile-effect">here</a> for details.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/39527/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Accusations of historical child abuse against the powerful are mounting. Is a trial by media about to kick into full gear?
Chris Greer, Professor of Sociology, City, University of London
Eugene McLaughlin, Professor of Criminology , City, University of London
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/39879
2015-04-09T05:32:32Z
2015-04-09T05:32:32Z
Jimmy Savile play may revolt some, but it’s a necessary part of confronting the horror
<p>The announcement that a <a href="https://www.parktheatre.co.uk/whats-on/an-audience-with-jimmy-savile">play about Jimmy Savile</a> is to be staged in London this summer has raised eyebrows. Unsurprisingly, but isn’t it too early? Should such things be represented onstage before an audience at all?</p>
<p>Doubtless there is more to emerge from Savile’s despicable and clearly criminal exploitation of a system of public charitable service. Police investigations are still going on and further material is likely to emerge. This causes many to question whether material of this kind should be shaped into a play while the story is still unfolding. The CEO of a charity that helps victims of child abuse <a href="http://www.itv.com/news/calendar/update/2015-04-07/savile-play-is-cashing-in-on-pain-says-charity/">has said</a> that the play is “cashing in on pain”.</p>
<p>These qualms doubtless come from the idea that theatre is fiction, and that even if it’s a “true story”, dramatic elements have been introduced into the narrative. The play, An Audience with Jimmy Savile, is by journalist and author Jonathan Maitland. The comedy impressionist and actor Alastair McGowan is to take the part of Savile – and the play will repeat actual words that Savile used in his many public appearances. But the script is <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/apr/06/audience-with-jimmy-savile-play-jonathan-maitland-alistair-mcgowan">unlikely to be completely verbatim</a> and there is the question of how the victims’ voices should be handled.</p>
<h2>Far from journalism</h2>
<p>However close Maitland keeps to the source material, this play will not be journalism. Material gathered as part of a journalistic investigation, whatever slant is put on the narrative, has a claim to represent reality directly. The photographic power of film and television gives us unprecedented access to “reality”, even though we are often aware that what we see is a representation of that reality. The recent Leveson inquiry exposed the lengths to which some journalists were prepared to go in the way of shaping narratives to satisfy the covert agendas of their editors. </p>
<p>But while journalism may be “dramatic” in its revelations, it is different from an art form that selectively represents reality. It remains to be seen what shape Jonathan Maitland’s play will take, since all plays have beginning, middles and ends – and the Savile saga has yet to end. </p>
<p>The unknown quantity in this whole project must be the voices of the victims. It will not be sufficient to expose Savile’s thoroughly corrupt strategies. Maitland says that there will be readings from witness statements. But care will need to be taken to ensure that their voice carries an appropriate and authentic emotional power. </p>
<p>We need to remember that many of Savile’s victims have already been asked to relive their ordeal – and we may feel that representing it at all might simply force a painful re-enactment by those who have suffered enough and who, so far, have received little redress. </p>
<h2>The perfect time</h2>
<p>So yes, there are many reasonable objections. But we need to remember that drama, by its very nature, confronts its audiences with the society in which they live, no matter how unpalatable that confrontation might be. It is by definition controversial, a principal way that any culture talks to itself about issues of the day. Drama shapes these issues into a plausible narrative. </p>
<p>We need also to remember that good drama is not “entertainment” in the sense that it diverts us from the business of living; rather it engages us in the business of living (and dying), in the ethics and politics of living – and in questions of “truth”. It forces us to confront ourselves. That we may not like what we see is not a reason for suppressing it.</p>
<p>Maitland’s insistence that the play is not “exploitative” is well taken, and it is clearly his intention to give Savile’s victims a proper voice. Those who think that this whole project is inappropriate will need to answer the question that is most frequently asked about this and other cases of appalling behaviour: why was it allowed to happen? The simple insistence upon this question is reason enough to stage such a play.</p>
<p>The answer to that question may well help us towards a more open, a more transparent, more just and more humane society than the one that allowed the odious Savile and a number of senior members of the establishment to thrive and to escape punishment.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/39879/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Drakakis is a member of the Labour party. He is also an emeritus professor of the University of Stirling</span></em></p>
Is it too soon for this dark episode to be recreated on stage? Not if it is handled properly.
John Drakakis, Professor in English Studies , University of Stirling
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/38124
2015-02-26T14:34:52Z
2015-02-26T14:34:52Z
Why we never learn: abuse, complaints and inquiries in the NHS
<p>In a Commons debate in 1971, Keith Joseph, then the secretary of state for health and social services, said: “There is no doubt that the occasional scandal does an enormous amount for a social service.”</p>
<p>Joseph was speaking about a White Paper released in response to the first major scandal uncovered in a British hospital. In 1967 a nurse at Ely Hospital, a long-stay mental health institution in Cardiff, told the press about the systemic brutality against vulnerable patients.</p>
<p>Joseph was right – scandal can provoke change. But the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/407187/KL_lessons_learned_report_FINAL.pdf">Lampard report into Jimmy Savile</a>’s activities in NHS hospitals over nearly a 50-year period highlights that yet again, <a href="https://theconversation.com/before-jimmy-savile-there-was-mr-g-the-1920s-philanthropist-who-abused-children-in-hospitals-38061">lessons have not been learned</a>. </p>
<p>Since the Ely scandal (and there was widespread, institutionalised abuse in hospitals well before then that was not properly investigated) there have been more than 100 formal inquiries into NHS failings. These include, to name just some of the most prominent: the abuse of mentally ill patients at <a href="http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1978/nov/21/normansfield-hospital">Normansfield Hospital in 1978</a>; nurse Beverly Allit’s attacks on children at <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/chances-to-stop-killer-nurse-were-missed-allitt-report-highlights-understaffing-1393483.html">Grantham and Kesteven hospital in 1992</a>, and the <a href="http://www.nursingtimes.net/nursing-practice/francis-report/">Francis report into practices at Stafford hospital</a> in 2013. They include verbal, physical and sexual abuse of children, the elderly, the mentally ill, and sometimes of NHS staff.</p>
<h2>Let’s have an inquiry …</h2>
<p>Inquiries are usually set up by, and report to, the secretary of state for health. Since Ely, they have become routinised – adopting similar objectives: establish the facts, learn from events, provide catharsis through reconciliation, reassure and rebuild public confidence, identify those accountable, and also to meet a political objective of showing the public that “something is being done”. </p>
<p>History show that whether the minister takes action is dependent on wider factors, such as the power of the medical profession, poor industrial relations, economic crises and wider institutional barriers to change.</p>
<p>Serendipity plays a role too in the impact of inquiries. When the minister for health, Keith Robinson, was confronted with allegations of abuse of elderly residents in public institutions in 1965, his initial reaction was a refusal to investigate cases where patients or their relatives wished to remain anonymous, for fear of possible reprisals from NHS staff. </p>
<p>The <a href="http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb97-aegis">pressure group AEGIS</a>, formed by Barbara Robb, collected evidence which was published in 1967 under the title Sans Everything. One of her key allies was <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/obituary-professor-brian-abelsmith-1303950.html">Brian Abel-Smith</a>, an academic who was an informal government adviser on health policy, and a hospital governor. Abel-Smith suggested that Robinson appoint Geoffrey Howe QC to chair an inquiry. </p>
<p>When Howe was worried that the report of his 16-month inquiry would be “buried” by senior civil servants, Abel-Smith persuaded the new secretary of state, Richard Crossman, to publish it in full, and to set up a “Post-Ely” working party to consider how to implement the inquiry’s recommendations. Abel-Smith also advised Crossman to set up a Hospital Advisory Service to perform regular inspections of hospitals and to establish a <a href="Health%20Service%20Ombudsman">Health Service Ombudsman</a> to handle patient complaints.</p>
<h2>… and do nothing</h2>
<p>Progress on setting up the Hospital Advisory Service and Health Service Ombudsman was hindered by an obstructive medical profession. They could see no justification for another complaints procedure, as medical negligence cases were handled by the General Medical Council. Although patient complaints were the subject of an inquiry by Sir Michael Davies QC in 1976, there was no further action till a 1981 Health Circular to NHS authorities. </p>
<p>Before the <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1985/42/enacted">1985 Hospital Complaints Procedure Act</a> there was no consistent approach across the NHS. Patients rarely made formal complaints: in 1971 there were 9,614 written complaints about hospitals. By 2011-12 this had increased to 107,259, partly an impact of new initiatives such as the <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1671516/pdf/bmj00152-0006.pdf">1991 Patient’s Charter</a> which set out explicit rights for patients.</p>
<p>Until the 1980s, hospital patients were much more subservient and unquestioning about their care and medical treatment. Rigid medical and nursing hierarchies also discouraged junior staff from making complaints or raising concerns about the competence of their fellow workers. Patients in mental health institutions were rarely heard from, even at public inquiries. Between 1961 and 1981 there were eight official inquiries into conditions and abuses in special hospitals such as Broadmoor – and no ex-patient was asked to contribute or give evidence.</p>
<p>NHS inquiries now strive for transparency. Increasingly, the public expects openness in the collection of evidence, and rigour in how it is analysed. The Lampard inquiry is unusual for its invitation to a group of historians to provide expertise – but this is absolutely critical to the correct interpretation of events that happened up to 50 years ago. </p>
<p>Historians, especially those working with <a href="http://www.historyandpolicy.org/">History and Policy</a>, are skilled in producing quick, succinct summaries of pertinent context. It is important that the hospitals in which Savile operated are assessed by the management and patient safety standards of that era, not what we would expect in a 2015 NHS hospital.</p>
<h2>Opportunity to learn</h2>
<p>Most of the 100-plus NHS inquiries that have been held since 1967 have highlighted common areas for concern: inadequate leadership, system and process failures, poor communication, disempowerment of staff and patients. To address many of these would require significant cultural changes to attitudes, values, beliefs and behaviours. </p>
<p>There have already been fundamental changes in British society since Savile’s first abuses of patients and staff in Leeds General Infirmary in the early 1960s. We now listen better to children, women are less tolerant of unwanted sexual advances and we are beginning to re-evaluate the cult of celebrity that allowed one man unrestricted access to some of the most vulnerable people in our public institutions. </p>
<p>What we have yet to do is to really learn from history, to put an end to this miserable sequence of systemic errors in the NHS and their subsequent exposure through a public enquiry. Jeremy Hunt commissioned the Lampard report – he is now obliged to ensure that its recommendations, unlike Ely and others, are fully and swiftly implemented.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/38124/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sally Sheard receives funding from the Wellcome Trust.</span></em></p>
The health service has a long history both of abuse and the failure to do anything about it.
Sally Sheard, Reader in the History of Medicine, University of Liverpool
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/38061
2015-02-26T12:42:34Z
2015-02-26T12:42:34Z
Before Jimmy Savile, there was ‘Mr G’ – the 1920s philanthropist who abused children in hospitals
<p>From Kate Lampard’s “<a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/jimmy-savile-nhs-investigations-lessons-learned">lessons learnt</a>” report, it is clear that NHS hospitals such as Stoke Mandeville and Leeds Infirmary failed to safeguard children from <a href="http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-31637320">sexual abuse at the hands of Jimmy Savile</a>. </p>
<p>The role of volunteers, casual staff, and fundraisers is hazy, and regulation of them even more so, with inadequate vetting procedures. While Lampard insists hospital leaders must do more, and offers comprehensive suggestions for how to implement change, historical research suggests that despite strong pressures for change, institutions do not easily learn from their mistakes.</p>
<p>After all, <a href="http://www.historyandpolicy.org/projects/project/historical-child-sex-abuse">concern over “indecent handling” of children has regularly emerged over the past 100 years</a> – only to recede, with little achieved to protect children from abuse.</p>
<h2>Money for access?</h2>
<p>In 1925, a 60-year-old businessman, magistrate and parish councillor, known as Mr G, was found guilty of indecently assaulting a 15-year-old girl. Mr G was also a charity fundraiser for St Thomas’s Hospital, London. He raised vast sums for the hospital – in today’s terms, £3m-£4m. He exploited this position to gain the trust of teenage girls who were helping him to fundraise. </p>
<p>The difference from the case of Jimmy Savile is that Mr G was prosecuted, convicted and sentenced to eight months in prison. But Mr G’s crimes are strikingly similar to Savile’s in the NHS and elsewhere, many of which also occurred as part of his hospital fundraising. </p>
<p>In an extraordinary ruse, Mr G invited girls to his home and workplace on the pretence that he had a new device that could project their images using radio waves. He asked them to undress so he could take their measurements to ensure their suitability for modelling or dance work – all undertaken whilst the girl’s mothers were in the room. Motivated by deference or prospects of employment, the mothers did not intervene.</p>
<p>Mr G’s crimes took place at a time of high visibility and concern over child sexual abuse. The issue had been prioritised in the early 1920s by newly enfranchised women voters, and by the new women MPs in the House of Commons. In an eerie foreshadowing of the current <a href="https://theconversation.com/child-abuse-inquiry-gets-new-chair-and-more-powers-but-is-it-enough-37176">historical child abuse saga</a>, the home secretary was forced to appoint an inquiry. </p>
<h2>Ignorance, carelessness and indifference</h2>
<p>The resulting Departmental Committee on Sexual Offences Against Young People made sensible suggestions about the need to tighten the law to protect the young: the defence of “reasonable belief” that a girl was over 16 should be abolished, young witnesses should be provided with a separate waiting room in the court, and their evidence should be given in camera.</p>
<p>The report’s authors also challenged institutions to respond to child sexual abuse with something better than “ignorance, carelessness and indifference”. </p>
<p>The report’s recommendations closely resemble today’s standards for safeguarding, and they show how good policy on child protection and the treatment of children in court has come frustratingly close to implementation many times before.</p>
<p>Tragically, however, the public outrage that greeted cases such as Mr G’s was insufficient to change the cultures of hospitals and schools. Despite Mr G’s eight-month prison sentence, there was little sense of outrage. The jury even praised his self-restraint for not committing a more serious sexual assault on the girls, and seemed more concerned with criticising the mothers for letting their daughters be measured and viewed by a man in the first place.</p>
<p>Police records suggest that for much of the 20th century, the vast majority of complaints and accusations of rape and sexual assault on children were never even brought to court. In many cases, fears of scandal and reputation trumped concerns about child safeguarding; parents often preferred not to press charges, as court appearances were regarded as too damaging to children.</p>
<p>Children who accused people in positions of authority were rarely believed. Even campaigners against child sexual abuse could not believe that offenders might be figures of authority or public esteem. Instead, offenders were suspected of being “mental defectives”, or victims of some kind of delusion. Cases involving clerics, teachers and scoutmasters were sometimes brought to court, but the general climate of disbelief meant that allegations were hard to prove. </p>
<p>Instead, the reputations of children and young people who made complaints were often the focal point of investigation. In most cases, child sexual abuse was unlikely to produce witnesses, and the evidence of children alone was insufficient to gain a conviction.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, concerns about sexual abuse and exploitation were often rolled up with other types of “immorality”. In schools, for example, there was a system of black-listing from the 1880s for teachers found to have committed “misconduct” – but that extended not just to teachers who abused or had relationships with pupils, but also to women teachers who got pregnant outside of marriage or were found to be living with male partners. And there was no misconduct system in place for private schools.</p>
<h2>Scapegoats</h2>
<p>When public concern about child abuse sex abuse hit a fever pitch in the 1880s, leading to much stronger measures against abusers and raising of the age of consent from 12 to 16 years, press campaigning played a pivotal role. But in subsequent decades, journalists have tended to focus on demonising individual offenders rather than discussing policy solutions. </p>
<p>Child abuse moved back up the press agenda in the late 1970s and 1980s, thanks to a combination of feminist campaigning, a backlash against “permissiveness”, and the exposure of a number of high profile scandals in children’s homes. But journalists generally turned their fire on convenient institutional targets, such as “incompetent” social workers and local authorities and excessively “liberal” judges. They put little effort into working out how prevalent of this type of offence really was, and how to prevent it.</p>
<p>“Ignorance, carelessness and indifference” remained characteristic of 20th century attitudes towards child sex abuse. This was not for lack of concern – earlier generations did condemn child sexual abuse, and periodically, tried to strengthen safeguards. However, history shows that for change to happen, firm leadership and transparent management across government and the voluntary sector is vital. A robust investigative press is also essential. Without these elements, potentially pivotal moments such as those in 1925 and 2015 will all too easily become missed opportunities.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/38061/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lucy Delap receives funding from the ESRC.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adrian Bingham receives funding from the ESRC.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Louise Jackson receives funding from the ESRC.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Louise Settle receives funding from the ESRC.</span></em></p>
The report on Jimmy Savile’s abuses in the NHS is eerily reminiscent of a 90-year-old case.
Lucy Delap, University lecturer in Modern British History, University of Cambridge
Adrian Bingham, Reader in Modern History , University of Sheffield
Louise Jackson, Reader, School of History, Classics and Archaeology, The University of Edinburgh
Louise Settle, Postdoctoral research associate, The University of Edinburgh
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/30979
2014-08-27T15:07:04Z
2014-08-27T15:07:04Z
Complicity and conspiracy in Rotherham should teach us how to handle future cases
<p>The <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/rotherham-child-abuse-report-finds-1400-children-subjected-to-appalling-sexual-exploitation-within-16year-period-9691825.html">confirmation</a> that 1,400 children were subjected to sexual exploitation over a 16 year period in Rotherham forms part of a wider picture of similar events. </p>
<p>The Catholic Church has still not worked out how to come clean about the wrongdoing in its midst without terminally destroying its reputation. Meanwhile, abuse by celebrities – including Jimmy Savile, Rolf Harris, Gary Glitter, Max Clifford, Jonathan King – has already created a set of deeply disturbing case studies. The British government’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/butler-sloss-stands-down-but-politicians-still-fail-to-face-the-facts-on-child-sex-abuse-29115">twin inquries</a> into allegations of abuse by high-profile figures parallels a similar effort already underway in <a href="http://www.childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au/">Australia</a>. </p>
<p>When we come to make sense of the recurring exploitation of children by their elders, conspiracy theories are tempting. Many are already wondering if something peculiar about “the establishment” enabled the paedophile rings it contained. Others have wondered if the actions of the Rotherham gang can be compared to the other cases.</p>
<p>Our reaction to these kinds of questions is distaste. It implies people act together to commit abuse because of their backgrounds so we avoid doing it. But groups of people do conspire, whether it is criminals plotting a bank robbery or journalists scheming for a salacious story. </p>
<p>When analysing the fine grain of shocking events like those that took place in Rotherham, we shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. We would do well to continue to look at the quite mundane human processes of collusion and complicity.</p>
<p>Psychoanalysts would point to collusive processes being unconscious defences to protect ourselves from anxiety or guilt and we quite consciously fail to take needed action about a problem if doing so puts our own interests at risk. If our career is in jeopardy, we might not interfere.</p>
<p>It is clear in all the recent high-profile examples of child abuse that collusion and complicity were commonplace. In Ireland the police passed on complaints about abusive priests to church authorities, instead of investigating them, and they turned away victims reporting crimes. In Rotherham the <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/rotherham-child-abuse-report-calls-for-resignation-of-police-commissioner-who-headed-councils-child-safeguarding-department-9692749.html">police knew</a> about girls being abused and re-framed criminal acts with a minor as being about consensual sex. </p>
<p>In Leeds senior police officers knew of <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24564933">Savile’s conduct</a> but did nothing. Elsewhere NHS managers and residential care workers allowed him repeated access to vulnerable people. In the BBC his colleagues knew of the repeated rumours but shrugged their shoulders.</p>
<p>These common psychological processes happen every day, with less serious consequences, when we turn a blind eye to discomforting events. But they also have a social context that we must acknowledge. </p>
<p>The story of Peter Righton is a prime example. Righton was a childcare expert and headed an inquiry on child abuse in Scottish children’s homes but was himself convicted of child pornography crimes and accused of abuse.</p>
<p>A <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hli-iPilDII">BBC documentary</a> about Righton revealed not just interpersonal complicity but a sort of social form of amnesia. Senior and respected academic social workers confessed in the documentary that they were not simply duped by a con man. Their lack of interference was heavily influenced by the fact that Righton was gay. Fear of accusations of homophobia inflected their misjudgement.</p>
<p>Similarly, in the Rotherham scenario, caseworkers, their managers and the police were inhibited, in some part, when dealing with clear evidence of criminal victimisation, by the fear of accusations of racism.</p>
<p>Politicians on the left and right have reacted to this complicity with indignation, as have the TV journalists interrogating the new police chief in the town. But an irony can be noted here. Both politicians and BBC staff have themselves been complicit in the past about covering up child sexual abuse. So many of us are potentially implicated in turning a blind eye that finger wagging must be done with some caution.</p>
<p>For abuse to go undetected in an organised system, two things are required. The abusers need to conspire, which means they have to develop a bond of secrecy and a norm of being furtive, deceitful, bullying and manipulative, as the need arises. And those getting wind of untoward events may, for a variety of reasons, fail to act or speak out.</p>
<p>The oft quoted view from Burke that “all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing …” is not only contested in origin, it is also reductive. It is not all that is necessary. Evil flourishes because people do bad things and as a result of many psychological and social phenomena that we are uncomfortable discussing. </p>
<p>We need to think carefully about what makes people act together to commit crimes of this nature. Issues of sexuality, race and social background aside, understanding how people act as a group and what stops others from taking action to stop them are vital if we are to stop cases like Rotherham from happening again.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/30979/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Pilgrim does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The confirmation that 1,400 children were subjected to sexual exploitation over a 16 year period in Rotherham forms part of a wider picture of similar events. The Catholic Church has still not worked out…
David Pilgrim, Professor of Health and Social Policy, University of Liverpool
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/28999
2014-07-11T11:53:37Z
2014-07-11T11:53:37Z
The sexual norms of the 1970s now look like the casual rules of a paedophile playground
<p>So it begins: two inquiries, both with the blessing of home secretary Theresa May, have been charged with getting to the bottom of how horrific allegations of child abuse by the elite and powerful were stonewalled and covered up for decades.</p>
<p>Peter Wanless, the head of the NSPCC, <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/nspcc-chief-peter-wanless-urges-authorities-to-make-child-abuse-cover-ups-a-criminal-offence-9594340.html">is to review</a> the Home Office’s own internal investigation into 114 missing files on child abuse, including at least <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10952480/Leon-Brittan-was-given-second-paedophile-dossier.html">one dossier</a> on a supposed Westminster-based paedophile ring delivered to the then home secretary Leon Brittan in the 1980s. This will be complemented by a wider review, led by <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-28203914">Baroness Butler-Sloss</a>, of all public and private organisations implicated in harbouring and covering up child abuse.</p>
<p>The week before these inquiries were launched, the psychopathology of Rolf Harris was being unpicked in the wake of his trial and sentencing for historic child abuse and sexual assault. This was on top of the other psychological post-mortems we are becoming accustomed to. These larger-than-life characters – former MP <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-27427952">Cyril Smith</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/saviles-nhs-abuses-show-we-still-need-to-grapple-with-the-crimes-of-celebrities-28573">Jimmy Savile</a>, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-27259318">Max Clifford</a> – were “hiding in our midst”. </p>
<p>Will the rogues’ gallery expand to include others who were hiding instead in the corridors of Westminster? This represents genuine political and analytical progress. </p>
<h2>Changed norms</h2>
<p>Society’s norms have changed, as <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/jul/06/norman-tebbit-theresa-may-cover-up-child-abuse-dossier">Norman Tebbit</a> noted in the run-up to the home secretary’s announcement:</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/TiQSHcpPk38?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">“You didn’t talk about those things.”</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the 1980s, “<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/28207066">incidents involving small boys</a>” were apparently just part of the rich tapestry of life for a few senior political patriarchs. Everyone sort of knew some senior figures might have behaved in this way, and everyone turned a blind eye.</p>
<p>The same is now widely accepted about some people working or appearing at BBC in the 1970s and 1980s, when boys and girls were targeted with apparent impunity by men such as <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/4388913.stm">Jonathan King</a> and <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-27917993">Gary Glitter</a>. Meanwhile, the idea of the “groupie” – the adolescent girl hungrily seeking out (and finding) each and every boozed-up band member she could - was a taken-for-granted cliché of stardom.</p>
<p>All in all, by today’s standards, the sexual norms of the 1970s are now starting to look like the casual rules of a paedophile playground. As for the safeguarding of public institutions it is surely now inconceivable, given the professionalisation of the lumbering “new public management” model, for a totally unqualified bullying serial abuser such as Savile to be given free reign at and oversight of a high-security psychiatric hospital.</p>
<h2>Beyond perpetrators</h2>
<p>But if the shift from an amused tolerance of sexual exploitation to sheer outrage counts as a major transition, we are also embarked on another. We are now, albeit grudgingly in many quarters, going beyond a narrow, almost obsessive interest with evil perpetrators. </p>
<p>There is a necessary line of inquiry still to be followed about the minds of these men (and occasional women). Forensic psychologists, moral philosophers and theologians who spend their careers debating evil is born or made should still be listened to. </p>
<p>But whether this is about the collaboration of bureaucrats and torturers (what Hannah Arendt, in <a href="http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/07/misreading-hannah-arendts-eichmann-in-jerusalem/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0&module=ArrowsNav&contentCollection=Opinion&action=keypress&region=FixedLeft&pgtype=Blogs">Eichmann in Jerusalem</a>, called the “banality of evil”) or predictable personal distress wrought by well-known sexual psychopaths in our midst, we must now to some extent “park” the perpetrators and look beyond them to their contexts.</p>
<p>It must be a major political and academic priority to understand the permissive conditions that prolific perpetrators will all too gladly inhabit. What we need to address now is not their evil acts, but the matrix of complicity surrounding them.</p>
<h2>Power always corrupts</h2>
<p>The “wide ranging” and “no-stone-unturned” inquiries just launched by May will have to unpick some very complex mechanics of power and protection embedded in the very fabric of the state, and operating in actions of its agents.</p>
<p>Why were complaints from the relatively powerless ignored by the “powers that be” so casually and so often, and to what extent does this still happen? Why did the police in England slow-walk, dismiss or ignore reports about Savile’s crimes, as with the police in Ireland about the cruelty of men and women of the cloth?</p>
<p>Power, at some point, always corrupts – and yet we are still surprised whenever this truism is demonstrated. Adults have power over children, which can be abused. Celebrities have power over their fawning, gullible audiences (namely all of us). Large organisations in society enshrine and structure power in their management arrangements, with those at the top simply having more resources to protect themselves from full scrutiny and accountability.</p>
<p>When looters are reported by citizens, they can expect to be “brought to justice” – but when politicians are accused of raping children, even by the children themselves, our reflex is to worry about a “witch hunt”. We elect our politicians and rarely ask why they crave power, and we are habitually fobbed off by their clichéd rhetoric of “wanting to make a difference”. </p>
<p>As for organised religion, the avalanche of evidence of decades of clerical abuse tells us that the most pious and sanctimonious in our midst are often those we should distrust the most. </p>
<p>Good luck to Butler-Sloss and Wanless. Let us hope that they do their onerous jobs as thoroughly as possible, so that some light can at last be shone on the contexts of complicity that fostered such evil acts.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Next, read: <a href="https://theconversation.com/as-child-abuse-investigations-take-shape-old-crimes-are-transforming-british-society-28925">As child abuse investigations take shape, old crimes are transforming British society</a></em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/28999/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Pilgrim does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
So it begins: two inquiries, both with the blessing of home secretary Theresa May, have been charged with getting to the bottom of how horrific allegations of child abuse by the elite and powerful were…
David Pilgrim, Professor of Health and Social Policy, University of Liverpool
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/28573
2014-06-30T13:27:46Z
2014-06-30T13:27:46Z
Savile’s NHS abuses show we still need to grapple with the crimes of celebrities
<p>The latest report on Jimmy Savile’s crimes in <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-28034427">28 NHS hospitals</a> over the course of several decades have added more unspeakable allegations to the BBC DJ’s already unparalleled list of abuses. </p>
<p>Among them were his apparent abuse of 60 people aged five to 75 in just one hospital in Leeds, and the possibility that the former children’s television presenter <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/jimmy-savile/10927139/Jimmy-Savile-abuse-revealed-60-victims-aged-5-to-75-at-Leeds-NHS-hospital.html">may have interfered</a> with dead bodies in a hospital morgue – all this thanks to essentially unlimited access to (and even accommodation at) various NHS institutions. </p>
<p>It’s clear that Savile was a prolific and dedicated sexual offender who can’t be pigeonholed as merely a paedophile, hebephilie, gerontophile or necrophile; his offending spanned all age, ethnic and gender divides. Savile was an opportunistic sex offender who played off his celebrity status, positive social perception and the access obtained by his charitable good works in order to manipulate the system and then go on to abuse countless individuals over his lifetime. The NSPCC places Savile’s victim count at at least 500, but it would hardly be surprising if it were higher. </p>
<h2>Patterns of behaviour</h2>
<p>What’s clear, especially from <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/interactive/2013/oct/16/jimmy-savile-police-interview-transcript">previously published police interviews</a>, is that Savile was motivated by power and control, and seemed to revel in the complex abuse network that he had created. There are clear parallels between the way Savile operated and other high-prolife sexual abusers like Ian Waktins and <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-27259318">Max Clifford</a>. Saviles celebrity statusnand national presence gave the public the impression that they intimately knew him and therefore shoulf implicitly trust him; his celebrity status, in a sense, worked to protect him from reprisal. </p>
<p>In addition, Savile’s erratic personality traits and reputation as a slightly odd person were overridden by his high-profile charity work. The idea that he was a force for good meant people dismissed any behaviour or requests that would have set off alarm bells if they came from anyone else. </p>
<p>This in turn was cemented by very public friendships with establishment figures, which effectively meant Savile seemed “strange but acceptable”. </p>
<p>Things are very different now. The public’s understanding of sexual violence in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s was nothing like as informed as it is today. The specialist police and professional training to deal sexual violence that we have come to rely on did not exist; the supervision and management of vulnerable populations (like the patients of <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/jimmy-savile-investigation-broadmoor-hospital">Broadmoor</a>) has changed enormously in the intervening decades. </p>
<p>This is not to say everything is perfect now – just that Savile’s crimes must be examined in context. That Savile was able to abuse for so long in such a widespread way reflects a lethal combination of his personal traits and the public and institutional culture of the time. It also flags up problems with our attitude to celebrity, and its potential consequences for the victims of the powerful.</p>
<h2>Safeguarding</h2>
<p>There is no particular reason to believe celebrities are any more or any less likely to be perpetrators of sexual violence than members of the public, at least in terms of their psychological makeup (although there is some evidence that celebrity is often linked with qualities such as <a href="https://www.csub.edu/%7Ecgavin/GST153/CelebrityStudy.pdf">narcissism</a>). More importantly, celebrity status can mean transgressive behaviour (drug abuse, pathological promiscuity, minor offences) is more likely to be tolerated, or even facilitated.</p>
<p>One of the main questions which has arisen from the post-Savile rash of celebrity sexual abuse cases is the culpability of the police, who have appeared to have been complacent, complicit or absent at various crucial points over the decades. Both the Savile saga and the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25426715">Ian Watkins</a> case (among others) threw up evidence of poor police follow-up on reports of abuse or the suspicion of it.</p>
<p>In the Savile cases at least, this lack of follow-through can be partly explained by attitudes to sexual abuse at the time, but Savile’s celebrity status and accordant power and influence were the principal reasons the police failed to investigate him properly. Policing has changed and improved since then – but there are still serious problems. </p>
<p>The evidence against Watkins included numerous reports to the police over a lengthy period of time and a pattern of problematic online behaviour in open forums. The aftermath of the case has seen six officers <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/may/21/ian-watkins-ipcc-six-police-officers-gross-misconduct-notices">served with gross misconduct notices</a> and three police forces subject to IPCC investigation. </p>
<h2>The contuining need for improvement</h2>
<p>Since the 1960s, we have gotten much better at discussing sexual abuse. This does not mean that the message has got fully across, or that we have had maximum exposure, but it does mean sexual abuse is more visible than ever. More people are reporting it, and more and more historic cases are not only being reported but also followed up with a newfound tenacity. </p>
<p>But as a society, we need to do more work. We need to help people to understand and recognise sexual abuse, to understand perpetrators as well as victims, and to know who to approach for help.</p>
<p>And while the discussions of celebrity sexual abuse we’ve now embarked on are important conversations to have, they must also take stock of the wider role of celebrity in society – and the particular vulnerability of powerful abusers’ victims. Given the culture of celebrity we live with, we must confront the problem of how to respond to abuses of power and influence like Savile’s. </p>
<p>Above all, we need to avoid a simplistic, knee-jerk policy reaction, as we have seen in the past with sex offender disclosure. Instead, we need evidence-based policy that does more than just appeal to public outcry – however justifiable that outcry might be. </p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/28573/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kieran Mccartan receives, and has received, funding from ESRC, Leverhulme Trust, Ministry of Justice, Cabinet Office, Department of Health and Bristol City Council.</span></em></p>
The latest report on Jimmy Savile’s crimes in 28 NHS hospitals over the course of several decades have added more unspeakable allegations to the BBC DJ’s already unparalleled list of abuses. Among them…
Kieran Mccartan, Associate Professor in Criminology, University of the West of England
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/26421
2014-05-09T09:16:07Z
2014-05-09T09:16:07Z
After Patten, the BBC needs a steady hand that can reshape it in testing times
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48071/original/ppchyc97-1399548633.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C797%2C449&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Under fire.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:BBC_Television_Center_protest.jpg">Briantist</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Representatives of the BBC have appeared before select committees of the House of Commons dozens of times in the last two years. Gruelling gladiatorial battles, these sessions take months of preparation – at least if the rules of notice are observed, though they frequently are not. </p>
<p>Occasionally hapless BBC officials have been given as little as three days to prepare for a roasting, rather than the month of preparation to which they are supposedly entitled. </p>
<p>Is the BBC really more deserving of these endless grillings than, for example, the banks? Or Paul Flowers, former chairman of the Co-op bank? Or the companies that argued for the privatisation of Royal Mail, then <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/apr/30/lazard-bank-royal-mail-shares-profit-flotation-margaret-hodge">profited from its underselling</a>? Does the BBC pose more of a threat to the nation than the firms to which (incredibly) we have outsourced army recruitment and which have <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/10359743/Army-struggling-to-find-recruits-since-system-was-overhauled-to-cut-costs.html">failed to meet their targets</a>? </p>
<p>The BBC, we are told, is “<a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2492363/BBC-big-left-wing-ignored-critics-immigration-Brussels-head-news-admits.html">too big</a>”, even as it has seen <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-15186116">dramatic cuts</a> in its resources. Over a long period of escalating antipathy, it has become a political whipping boy. </p>
<p>Of course it has made mistakes; all organisations do. The press, which now sees the BBC as a direct competitor, has fuelled the frenzy, and ferociously attacks anybody connected with the BBC in a way that we ought to find chilling.</p>
<p>But the BBC remains central to the British public’s everyday life. Old-fashioned television watching has remained <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-26221364">far more important than people believed it would</a>, and the BBC’s radio output is peerless and unique in the world; the corporation is seen as a great British success abroad, created the only British-originated websites in the <a href="http://www.alexa.com/topsites">world’s top 100</a>, and is one of the world’s top news sources.</p>
<p>And while Chris Patten’s unexpected and sad <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/news/press_releases/2014/trust_chairman.html">departure from the BBC</a> leaves the corporation with acute problem, it also presents an opportunity for the corporation to save itself.</p>
<h2>Changing of the guard</h2>
<p>Patten was, despite his <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/tv-radio/bbc-severance-lord-patten-accused-of-misleading-parliament-as-hr-boss-admits-she-made-mistake-to-mps-8801844.html">perceived mistakes</a> and the beating he has taken for them, a heavyweight political player in the first rank of public service. Having helped to mould <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/hong-kong-handover-patten-wipes-a-tear-as-last-post-sounds-1248360.html">Hong Kong</a> into the open and thriving place it has become, to <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/442130.stm">remake the Northern Irish Police</a>, and to lead the EU, he knew how to get what he needed. He is also a convivial, charming, clever man.</p>
<p>Keeping Patten as chair until after the 2015 election was part of a strategy to keep the BBC from becoming a political football as much as possible. That he was prepared to go on taking flak (the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25834244">Savile report</a> is still to come in, for example) was a testament to his stamina and was designed to secure the BBC against the oncoming storm. </p>
<p>That hope is now dashed, and a new chair must be appointed – a very delicate political task at the best of times. But the upcoming Scottish referendum and an unpredictable general election – one that promises to be peculiarly nasty both in its conduct and its consequences – are both deeply ominous. The speed with which the proposal to <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-26727068">decriminalise nonpayment of the Licence Fee</a> blew up, with no sensible political reflection from any party about the consequences for the BBC’s future, showed how febrile our politics currently is. </p>
<p>Patten’s job in all this was simply to hold the tiller until another settlement was reached. Adding to the loss of his steady hand, the scrupulously honourable <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/news/press_releases/2014/nicholas_kroll.html">Nicholas Kroll</a>, who has nurtured the BBC Trust into life, is about to retire, and will also need replacing. </p>
<p>The complex governance of the BBC Trust takes time to understand So one response might be that what is needed is continuity and a safe pair of hands. Diana Coyle (the vice-chair) might be persuaded to stay on; <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2009/nov/04/lord-burns-teflon-terry">Terry Burns</a>, who steadied Channel 4, has led what feels like everything, and knows everybody, might be called on to steady the ship.</p>
<p>It would be good to see a woman appointed – but above all the BBC needs the right person for one of the hardest battles in its history. Because the political climate has never been so inhospitable, the corporation needs to be more confident and more original than ever.</p>
<h2>The task ahead</h2>
<p>The new chair must have a passionate belief in the value and values of the corporation. They must be uncompromising about BBC independence, and a wily, strategic game player. The BBC has to understand the case against it – and believe in the case for itself. </p>
<p>In April, I gave a speech to corporation staff at a BBC News Festival. All of the other luminaries who spoke were rather gloomy about the future of the BBC. I said that the corporation remains at the centre of our national temperament, and is a crucial part of Britain’s global profile. The battle is on for its survival – but every story put out by the news teams who listened to me made the argument that would help win that battle. </p>
<p>So the new chair of the Trust needs to be well-connected, sociable and open-minded. They need to have independent judgement, yet be alert to the mood of the times and help shape the BBC anew. They must help the corporation reinvent its central values (as it has always had to) and reapply them in a changing world. </p>
<p>The BBC is a precious part of the nation’s political, intellectual and cultural life. It is ours. Accordingly, the new chair must cherish the BBC – and since this is 2014, they will also need the hide of a rhinoceros.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/26421/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jean Seaton has received funding from the AHRC, the Leverhulme Trust and the British Academy.</span></em></p>
Representatives of the BBC have appeared before select committees of the House of Commons dozens of times in the last two years. Gruelling gladiatorial battles, these sessions take months of preparation…
Jean Seaton, Professor of Media History, University of Westminster
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/21347
2014-01-17T09:05:15Z
2014-01-17T09:05:15Z
Preventing sexual abuse is a public health issue
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/39229/original/hpgsj57h-1389892028.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">There's more to fighting sexual abuse than prisons.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>We are in a time when the focus on allegations of sexual abuse is intense. Accurate and comprehensive statistics on the prevalence of sexual abuse remain elusive, but the figures that do exist indicate sexual abuse is widespread. Up to <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/an-overview-of-sexual-offending-in-england-and-wales">one in five adult women</a>, and one in 20 children have been sexually abused. Adult men are also victimised, with <a href="http://www.nspcc.org.uk/Inform/resourcesforprofessionals/sexualabuse/statistics_wda87833.html">figures</a> from the Crime Survey for England and Wales showing on average 72,000 men a year are victims of a sexual offence.</p>
<p>We have been working in this field for more than ten years, researching the experiences of victims, perpetrators, professionals and those at risk of committing abuse. From this vantage point, the time is right to revise our approach to sexual abuse that focuses less on the criminal justice system response (though that remains important), and more on sexual abuse as a public health issue. </p>
<p>Put another way, we could see sexual abuse as a disease that affects society. It can lead to long-term problems for individuals affected. Substance misuse, depression, suicidal ideation, are just some examples of this. Looking at the prevention of abuse from a disease perspective requires a focus on three groups: actual or potential perpetrators, victims and their families, and ourselves, the public.</p>
<h2>Perpetrators</h2>
<p>Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements were in place for more than <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/192840/mappa-annual-report-11-12.pdf">40,000 people</a> registered as sex offenders in England and Wales in 2012. </p>
<p>On this scale, of course we need a criminal justice system response, but also provide appropriate and effective treatment to those who are convicted for sexual offences. The focus must also be on how to prevent these offences occurring in the first place by providing support to those concerned about their own sexual thoughts and behaviour <em>before</em> they become offenders.</p>
<p>We are currently <a href="http://www.stopitnow-evaluation.co.uk/">evaluating the Stop It Now! Campaign</a> in the UK, which offers advice to those who are concerned they or someone they know may sexually abuse a child. It also supports families and partners when sexually harmful behaviour is identified. It is hoped this approach could be adopted across Europe, and we are working with project partners from Germany, Finland and the Netherlands to identify ways in which to reach potential sexual offenders effectively. Prevention is essential, from work with offenders, to those who are concerned that they may offend.</p>
<h2>Victims</h2>
<p>We must always ensure the needs, rights, and voice of victims/survivors of sexual abuse are heard. Victims ultimately want to prevent sexual abuse happening to others. One of our <a href="http://www.natcen.ac.uk/our-research/research/attitudes-to-sentencing-sexual-offenders/">recent studies with victims</a> (or survivors as many prefer to be called) and the public was undertaken on behalf of the Sentencing Council for England and Wales. Some people that we spoke to accepted that, once in prison and where it works, treatment should be offered to offenders in order to reduce the chances of re-offending. </p>
<p>We know from our separate study of sexual offenders against children that many regard Cognitive Behavioural Therapy as enormously helpful in enabling them understand what led them to commit their crimes, come to terms with what they have done, and make better choices in the future.</p>
<p>While it may be beneficial for some offenders to receive psychological and behavioural support, it is only right that victims are equally supported. Indeed we know that the extent to which they have access to advice during the investigation and judicial process greatly influences their satisfaction with the outcome once the case ends. Significant steps have been taken to address these issues in recent decades, yet victims’ experiences still vary greatly. </p>
<p>As the victims we work with make clear, their needs do not stop along with the court case and some do not wish to report the offence: they should be able to access long-term counselling whatever their circumstance. Across the country budget cuts are leading to the closure of services for victims, and as media focus on sexual abuse continues unabated the number of victims coming forward and seeking support increases. Rape Crisis, for example, has a waiting list to provide counselling despite their best efforts to expand and meet need as more and more people come forward seeking support for abuse that may have happened many years ago, or yesterday.</p>
<p>Again if we see sexual abuse as a public health concern, we must ensure that appropriate, effective treatment to reduce symptoms and help people fully recover are available across the country. We know from our research with survivors of abuse that this support needs to be long-term, intensive and consistent for it to be effective. This is not a quick fix.</p>
<h2>Bystanders</h2>
<p>There is a third element to this too, which touches on the responsibility professionals have to report abuse, and also the role we all can play in preventing and responding to sexual abuse. The Savile case and others currently in the media has cast light on opportunities that were missed by people and organisations to intervene. </p>
<p>Passive acceptance does not help. Nor does the demonisation of sexual offenders; this means we cannot see them when they are people we trust or know. We can educate ourselves and others on the risk factors to look for, we can listen to victims when they try to disclose abuse, and challenge behaviour we do not think is appropriate. It may be difficult, but we must try to help sexual offenders integrate back into society so they can make a positive contribution, not just revile them. We must all also bear the responsibility for preventing abuse and doing all we can to help victims or those at risk.</p>
<p>We need a responsible, open discussion that acknowledges the part we all can play, not to just stand by watching each story unfold.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/21347/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Carol McNaughton Nicholls works for NatCen Social Research. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephen Webster and colleagues receive funding from various government departments following a competitive tendering process. For example our research with the Sentencing Council informs this article.</span></em></p>
We are in a time when the focus on allegations of sexual abuse is intense. Accurate and comprehensive statistics on the prevalence of sexual abuse remain elusive, but the figures that do exist indicate…
Carol McNaughton Nicholls, Senior Research Director, National Centre for Social Research
Stephen Webster, Director of Crime and Justice, National Centre for Social Research
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/20379
2013-12-17T06:43:30Z
2013-12-17T06:43:30Z
Notes on a scandal: the Jimmy Savile case is all too familiar
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/37892/original/25wnyx6g-1387216300.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The court of public opinion: Jimmy Savile's house, defaced after his crimes were exposed.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">PA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>For all its extraordinary impact, the Jimmy Savile scandal has not unfolded in an exceptional way. The media and justice systems’ treatment of the affair is only the latest example of a relatively new type of scandal: the institutional child sex abuse scandal. </p>
<p>Institutional CSA scandals emerged only recently as a focus for sustained public concern because of the longstanding taboos that for decades kept child abuse hidden from ‘official’ visibility and marginalised from UK public debate. These taboos were only challenged in the 1980s by sustained feminist <a href="http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/glq/summary/v010/10.2angelides.html">campaigning</a>, media coverage, and public testimony from individual survivors, finally making open allegations possible and the pursuit of justice for victims a political priority. Yet because news coverage of abuse continued to focus on the dominant idea of “stranger danger” and the powerful image of the “predatory paedophile”, still little attention was paid to the more prevalent problems of institutional and familial abuse. </p>
<p>Since the 1980s, a succession of scandals has exposed the sexual abuse of children in <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/may/12/michael-aubin-child-abuse-jersey">care homes</a>, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/nov/18/publicschools.topstories3">schools</a>, <a href="http://blogs.post-gazette.com/scandal/timeline.php">universities</a> and various <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/church-of-england-issues-unreserved-apologies-to-victims-of-chichester-child-abuse-after-investigation-reveals-extent-of-failures-8695416.html">religious</a> institutions, and forced the problem of institutional child sexual abuse onto the political and journalistic agenda.</p>
<p>Through an <a href="http://cmc.sagepub.com/content/9/3/243.full">empirical examination</a> of the Savile story, we have been developing a model of how institutional child sexual abuse scandals unfold. This model is also applicable to past scandals of this type; it shows how the Savile case, far from being anomalous, has in fact followed an established pattern. Understanding that pattern can help identify the forces which keep these stories from emerging – and the ones that drive them once they do.</p>
<p>Based on <a href="http://cmc.sagepub.com/content/9/3/243.full">our reading</a> of the available data and official reports, we propose that an institutional scandal progresses through the following phases: latency, activation, amplification and justice.</p>
<h2>Latency</h2>
<p>In the first phase, “latency”, the ongoing or past sexual abuse is known about or suspected by others but remains secret or concealed. Gossip, hearsay, rumour and speculation generate “open secrets” – at times, as in the case of Savile, so open that they extend even beyond the institutional site of abuse. There may be accusations and complaints, or even threats from those in the know about blowing the whistle, but as long as the abusive behaviour is not made public the scandal will not be “activated”.</p>
<h2>Activation</h2>
<p>To progress from the “latent” to the “activated” phase, a news organisation must not only know about the alleged sexual abuse, but also commit to report it – and crucially, it must name the alleged abuser or abusers. Any doubts about an allegation’s reliability and the risk of libel and defamation charges will discourage news agencies from reporting allegations they think, or even know, to be true. Even in an era of information overload and heightened awareness of child abuse, scandal activation is not inevitable. But once allegations are made public, few crimes generate more vociferous and collective outrage than institutional child sexual abuse. And once an institutional scandal is activated, it is virtually impossible to stop.</p>
<p>The typical institutional reaction, as was seen in the BBC’s response to the Savile allegations, is to prioritise the protection of its reputation. There are three primary techniques of reputation protection: denial of abuse, denial of the knowledge of abuse, and denial of responsibility for abuse. Whichever of these is used, public denial is the main force that drives and animates an activated institutional child sexual abuse scandal.</p>
<p>Since public naming requires editorial assurance that there is enough evidence to substantiate the allegations, the default editorial position at the point of scandal activation is that the accused is guilty. Institutional denial, therefore, is universally interpreted as a form of calculated lying. Those accused of lying about or covering-up child sexual abuse will be plunged into a volatile “trial by media” in which claims and counter-claims are publicly scrutinised for validity. This begins the “amplification” phase. </p>
<h2>Amplification</h2>
<p>In the “amplification” phase, attention shifts from the crimes themselves to the institutional context which facilitated or enabled them. For a child sexual abuse scandal to be “amplified”, the transgressions of individuals must be connected with allegations of “institutional failure” that elevate the scandal to a systemic level. Institutional failure can range from procedural incompetence and mismanagement to a range of criminal behaviours, including non-disclosure and deliberate cover-up. </p>
<p>It is in this phase that we hear talk of cultures of denial, cover-up and impunity. An amplifying scandal can implicate and expose failings not only within a single institution, but across a range of institutions. Scandal amplification creates a swarming effect, as news organisations compete to scoop their market rivals by printing fresh allegations and denunciations that reinforce the image of the accused as guilty.</p>
<h2>Justice</h2>
<p>The “justice” phase of an institutional child sex abuse scandal comprises restatement of the primary transgressions, new disclosures of incriminating evidence and supplementary transgressions, and intensifying denunciation of the individual(s) and institution(s) involved. Faced with mounting evidence of guilt, the accused may choose to tender a public confession and apologise. As many public figures have learnt to their cost, continued denial or defiance may be self-defeating, merely intensifying “trial by media” and the public censure once guilt is confirmed. Public censure consists of a range of status degradation ceremonies, from public shaming through to resignation, dismissal, criminal prosecution and imprisonment.</p>
<p>Because of the stigma attached to child sexual abuse, there is no such thing as a de-activated scandal. Those found guilty in the “court of public opinion”, even if the case never reaches a court of law, forfeit the right to be forgotten, or forgiven. In an age of “trial by media”, historic sex crimes are no longer “historic”.</p>
<p>Official reports into institutional child sex abuse invariably generate intense public appetite for further scandalous revelations and evidence of further cover-ups and whitewashes. And attempts to address past failures such as the Catholic Church’s recent announcement that it is establishing an expert commission to advise on how to combat clerical sex abuse are dismissed as <a href="http://bostonherald.com/news_opinion/columnists/margery_eagan/2013/12/eagan_francis_gives_hope_amid_doubt">window dressing</a>.</p>
<p>Had it not been for the resolve of the ITV Exposure team to name Sir Jimmy Savile as a prolific sexual predator, his “national treasure” status would still be intact. As scandal reporting increases public awareness of institutional child sex abuse and outrage at institutional denial, the pressure to punish the guilty and secure justice for victims will intensify.</p>
<p>Even the most powerful and beloved institutions, from the BBC, to hospitals, to the Catholic Church, may be subjected to “trial by media”. It remains to be seen what effects the tighter regulatory regime proposed by Lord Justice Leveson will have on the willingness and ability of journalists to investigate – and where appropriate activate – complicated institutional child sexual abuse scandals.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/20379/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
For all its extraordinary impact, the Jimmy Savile scandal has not unfolded in an exceptional way. The media and justice systems’ treatment of the affair is only the latest example of a relatively new…
Chris Greer, Professor of Sociology, City, University of London
Eugene McLaughlin, Professor of Criminology , City, University of London
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/21304
2013-12-11T04:10:14Z
2013-12-11T04:10:14Z
ABC could learn from BBC realpolitik over spy leak fallout
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/37319/original/dx4dm8vb-1386649544.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Known for good political antennae, ABC chief Mark Scott has come under fire for his decisions around the Snowden spying leaks.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Alan Porritt</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The current stoush between the ABC and the government sees two competing perspectives on the role of public service media in play.</p>
<p>The Coalition, on the one hand, regards the ABC as duty bound to serve Australia’s national interests in its news coverage of stories like the Indonesian spying revelations. </p>
<p>As government of the day, it takes upon itself the right to determine what the national interest is – in this case, not having Australia’s intelligence efforts against foreign governments made public, and certainly not in cooperation with The Guardian, a private news organisation with a global reputation as a progressive, left-of-centre outlet.</p>
<p>The managers of the ABC, on the other hand, define the national interest to be broader than whatever the current government says it is, implying that it may include blowing the whistle on the state security apparatus, in the event that the spooks have behaved inappropriately, illegally or both. </p>
<p>The ABC, <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-12-03/abc27s-mark-scott-hits-back-at-australian-over-bromance-spy-st/5131014">says Mark Scott</a>, must have editorial independence in making this judgement, and cannot be seen to be dictated to by any government, regardless of ideological complexion. He says the ABC’s independence is crucial to the performance of its public service role, and to the ongoing credibility of its journalism.</p>
<h2>This isn’t partisan</h2>
<p>Had the Snowden revelations appeared during the Gillard-Rudd years – recalling that the ALP was in charge when the spying on Indonesia’s president is reported to have occurred – the response would have been more or less of the same: angry criticism from the prime minister, directed toward an organisation perceived to be unruly and disloyal.</p>
<p>In the UK, interestingly, the worst clashes between the public service BBC and the government over the former’s journalism happened under New Labour, during the war in Iraq. </p>
<p>Andrew Gilligan’s 2003 <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2003/jul/09/Iraqandthemedia.bbc">reportage of the allegedly “sexed up dossier” which gave Blair’s government justification to invade Iraq</a> was <a href="http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/politics/domestic_politics/alastair%2Bcampbell%2Bversus%2Bandrew%2Bgilligan/3498447.html">condemned by Tony Blair’s communication director Alistair Campbell</a> and others. </p>
<p>The fallout saw the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/news/2003/jul/19/guardianobituaries.iraq">suicide of the whistleblower</a>, and <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/3448943.stm">the resignation of the BBC’s Director General and Chairman</a> in what was the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/3437471.stm">worst political crisis in the BBC’s 90 year history</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/37321/original/jrdj5py4-1386649769.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/37321/original/jrdj5py4-1386649769.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/37321/original/jrdj5py4-1386649769.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/37321/original/jrdj5py4-1386649769.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/37321/original/jrdj5py4-1386649769.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/37321/original/jrdj5py4-1386649769.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/37321/original/jrdj5py4-1386649769.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Former Director General of the BBC Greg Dyke leaving the BBC in January 2004. He resigned after heavy criticism of the BBC’s editorial decisions.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Jeff Overs</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>So this is not a left-right issue. Recent research has shown slightly <a href="https://theconversation.com/whose-views-skew-the-news-media-chiefs-ready-to-vote-out-labor-while-reporters-lean-left-13995">more News Corp journalists than ABC staff support the ALP</a>. </p>
<p>Nor is it only a consequence of a conservative right-of-centre government wishing to have a pop at the public service (although Abbott and his colleagues do enjoy a bit of that when the opportunity comes along). </p>
<p>And can the fact that News Corp media are <a href="http://blogs.abc.net.au/nsw/2013/12/news-limited-steps-up-criticism-of-the-abc-fairfax-commentator-mike-carlton.html">engaged in a propaganda war against the ABC</a>, as they <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8227915.stm">have been in the UK against the BBC</a>, is not good enough reason to dismiss the critics as motivated by the financial interests of the Murdoch family.</p>
<h2>Legitimate questions</h2>
<p>The ABC is publicly funded, and does therefore have special duties and responsibilities over and above the commercial news media. </p>
<p>It is legitimate to ask if those responsibilities permit collaboration with a foreign news organisation to report a US whistleblower’s allegations about the Australian secret service’s spying operations on a close and powerful neighbour like Indonesia.</p>
<p>I say that as a strong believer in the democratic importance of public broadcasting, and public service journalism in particular. I’ll happily pay my taxes to support the ABC, as I did the BBC, on the basis that it is excellent value when compared to the cost of pay-TV subscriptions. </p>
<p>In the UK, Sky charges nearly four times as much for a yearly subscription as the cost of the BBC licence fee (the equivalent of about A$200 a year).</p>
<p>More importantly, public broadcasters are key to the kind of consensual political culture enjoyed in Australia, where fairness, balance and a degree of journalistic impartiality are rightly regarded as essential underpinnings of pluralism and multi-party democracy.</p>
<p>The privately-owned news media is also an integral part of any democracy, but the news and journalism on which we all rely for information and analysis of events should not be the exclusive plaything of billionaires, which is what would happen in Australia if the ABC was marginalised or abolished.</p>
<p>To avoid that, the ABC must take care to preserve its special place in the hearts and minds of the Australia people. In the current stoush it must justify its reportage of sensitive matters which may indeed impact on national security, and be very clear that it is on the right side of the argument. </p>
<p>The stakes are too high for mistakes, and the enemies of public service media too powerful and cocky at this stage in the political cycle to be given a shot at an open goal.</p>
<p>After the Gilligan controversy in the UK the BBC was muted, and remains so, not least because of its <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20286888">obvious failings in the Jimmy Savile scandal</a>. Its managers know how close the broadcaster came to a catastrophic loss of political confidence in 2003/04, and how vulnerable they remain at a time of financial austerity and wholesale cuts to the public services.</p>
<p>ABC managers know that they too are vulnerable to the cost-cutting agenda of a right-wing pro-market government, and cannot afford to take the moral high ground without regard to the bigger political picture. It is not a time for offending the Coalition, or even being vulnerable to the accusation of same.</p>
<h2>On reflection</h2>
<p>The ABC must be scrupulously even-handed in its collaborations with the private sector. Co-productions and commercial partnerships on infrastructure are one thing – explosive journalistic exposes are another. The BBC, I suspect, would not have partnered with The Guardian on a story like this. </p>
<p>Its 2012 partnership with the non-profit Bureau of Investigative Journalism, in which false allegations of child abuse were made against a senior Conservative politician, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20277732">led to major errors, libel accusations and further political crisis for the broadcaster</a> in the wake of the Savile affair.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/37322/original/2d7y9pcr-1386650042.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/37322/original/2d7y9pcr-1386650042.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=369&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/37322/original/2d7y9pcr-1386650042.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=369&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/37322/original/2d7y9pcr-1386650042.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=369&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/37322/original/2d7y9pcr-1386650042.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/37322/original/2d7y9pcr-1386650042.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/37322/original/2d7y9pcr-1386650042.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">George Entwistle, another former BBC Director General, surrounded by reporters and police after resigned from his position in the wake of a BBC Newsnight documentary report on child abuse.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Facundo Arrizabalaga</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The ABC, in partnering with the Guardian Australia, is not accused of journalistic failure like the BBC, but of <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/01/abbott-criticises-abc-guardian-australia-spying">raising the profile and commercial prospects of the latter</a>. Is it the job of a public service broadcaster, ask the critics, to work so closely with one commercial outlet in a crowded market of struggling private providers?</p>
<p>The ABC should perhaps have contented itself with reporting the Guardian revelations second hand. That horse has bolted, however, so it might be prudent for the organisation to demonstrate soon that it can work in a similar way with News Corp Australia or Fairfax – that is, to cooperate in breaking a story that the powerful don’t want the Australian public to know about.</p>
<p>But the government is wrong to suggest that for the ABC even to report this story, with or without a partnership with The Guardian, is somehow un-Australian. </p>
<p>On the contrary, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/03/rusbridger-home-affairs-nsa-key-exchanges">as Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger insisted in London last week when asked if he “loved his country”</a>, it is an entirely patriotic thing to blow the whistle on unaccountable national security agencies when they begin to infringe on individual freedoms and privacy rights. </p>
<p>The real damage to the national interest would be in ignoring Snowden on the assurances of the spymasters that, actually, everything is okay.</p>
<p>As long as no actual harm was done to Australian security personnel in vulnerable situations overseas or at home, there is no reason why this story shouldn’t have been told by the ABC. All over the world the NSA leaks have prompted high level reflection on the checks and balances which exist to rein in our intelligence agencies, and to prevent creeping authoritarianism.</p>
<p>But the ABC also has to think about realpolitik, and the risks of being seen to be in any sense partisan. Its survival matters too much to us all.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/21304/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brian McNair does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The current stoush between the ABC and the government sees two competing perspectives on the role of public service media in play. The Coalition, on the one hand, regards the ABC as duty bound to serve…
Brian McNair, Professor of Journalism, Media and Communication, Queensland University of Technology
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/11922
2013-02-10T23:54:16Z
2013-02-10T23:54:16Z
Child abuse inquiries as catalyst for deep change in the Catholic Church
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/19932/original/2qgqr7nq-1360023023.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Justice Peter McClellan (centre), Chair of the Royal Commission into child sex abuse, delivers a media statement with his fellow commissioners in Sydney.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Damian Shaw</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The awful record of the institutional Catholic church’s leadership in dealing with the scandal of clerical sex abuse of minors has clearly, and rightly, been a trigger for the federal government’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/royal-commission">Royal Commission into sexual abuse</a> of children in Australia. </p>
<p>This is a record that has already prompted other inquiries here and overseas.</p>
<p>It would indeed be wrong to ignore the failings of other churches and secular institutions as recent events in Britain have revealed, most notably, the lax performance of the BBC in the scandalous behaviour of their pin-up star, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20981611">Jimmy Savile</a> over decades of impunity in abusing children.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/19933/original/hxpthd7j-1360023268.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/19933/original/hxpthd7j-1360023268.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=779&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/19933/original/hxpthd7j-1360023268.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=779&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/19933/original/hxpthd7j-1360023268.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=779&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/19933/original/hxpthd7j-1360023268.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=979&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/19933/original/hxpthd7j-1360023268.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=979&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/19933/original/hxpthd7j-1360023268.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=979&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">British DJ and television presenter Jimmy Savile OBE, who is alleged to have committed several hundred counts of sexual abuse offences between 1955 and 2009. (Photo by R. Poplowski/Fox Photos/Getty Images)</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Fox Photos/Getty Images/R. Poplowski</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The tentacles of this scandal have reached to a variety of other secular institutions, including children’s homes and hospitals. The <a href="http://www.childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au/LettersPatent/Pages/default.aspx">terms of the Australian inquiry</a> , as announced by the federal government, have reasonably addressed such concerns by including institutions other than the Catholic Church in the Commission’s remit. Closed institutional power over the vulnerable, wherever it exists, is a key factor in the perpetuation of abusive conditions.</p>
<p>Even so, the Catholic Church has and continues to have major problems dealing with this issue of clerical sexual abuse, and virtually every day produces new evidence in a variety of countries, not only of abuse by clergy, but of negligence, cover-up, concealment, and deceit that have contributed to dreadful injustice to victims.</p>
<p>Significantly, these problems have combined with other tensions and stresses within the church to expose an even deeper crisis in the church’s structures and doctrines, and have contributed to a broad disaffection of laity and significant sections of the clergy with the church’s leadership and its exercise of authority. In Ireland, for example, the previous widespread attitudes of respect and deference towards church authorities and institutions have almost entirely disappeared, conspicuously amongst the young, but even dramatically amongst the older generations.</p>
<p>The sex abuse crisis has crystallised for many Catholics an alienation from church structures and authority that began with the papal encyclical <a href="http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_25071968_humanae-vitae_en.html">Humanae Vitae</a> of 1968 reasserting the standard ban on artificial contraception. </p>
<p>It has been confirmed by the passing of the years as a crucial turning point in the Church’s grip upon the obedience of Catholics, since it is clear that a vast majority of Catholic laypeople disregard the ban with no compunction and that hardly any clergy in the industrially advanced world advert to it in their preaching. It is true that some American bishops made contraception a sort of issue, along with the more central one of abortion, in their ill-judged intervention in the recent American election, but the total failure of that intervention to have a significant impact on the outcome merely makes my point.</p>
<p>Sadly, loss of authority on this matter has reinforced the determination of church leaders to hold the fort on a range of disciplinary and doctrinal issues that the reforms of <a href="http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/">Vatican Council II</a> opened the way to review. This has produced numerous exercises of arbitrary, unconscionable and clumsy disciplinary measures against clergy, such as the forced resignation of </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/19939/original/ndm8ffc7-1360025426.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/19939/original/ndm8ffc7-1360025426.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=742&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/19939/original/ndm8ffc7-1360025426.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=742&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/19939/original/ndm8ffc7-1360025426.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=742&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/19939/original/ndm8ffc7-1360025426.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=933&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/19939/original/ndm8ffc7-1360025426.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=933&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/19939/original/ndm8ffc7-1360025426.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=933&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Former Bishop of Toowoomba William Morris, who was removed from the position by Pope Benedict XVI in 2011.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Catholic Media Office</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>Bishop Morris of Townsville, the disciplining of the Irish priests, Fr. Tony Flannery and Fr. Brian Darcy, for writing about issues that the Vatican regards as closed, the clamping down on the organisation representing American nuns, the United States Leadership Conference of Women Religious (USLCWR) which has had the indignity of being placed under the guidance and oversight of, guess what, a man, the Archbishop of Seattle. The Vatican apparently found fault with the Conference’s fidelity in promoting church teaching particularly on life issues.</p>
<p>Since the liberalising winds of Vatican II, the various orders of nuns have been in the forefront of new thinking and fresh policies in religious life.</p>
<p>Much of this campaign of repression, as indeed, the child sexual abuse and the cover-ups, are connected with the Church leadership’s obsession with all matters to do with sex and the regulation of it. This is not indeed new, because since the early years of Christianity, there has been a concern with the control of sexual conduct. </p>
<p>Such concern was understandable in certain contexts and cultural backgrounds, involving dubious sexual practises in societies surrounding the early church, but this was augmented by a later obsession with the supposedly supreme virtues of virginity, and a grudging concession that married sex was only legitimate when geared (somehow) towards reproduction. </p>
<p>Add St. Augustine’s view that Original Sin was transmitted through the generations by the “lust” accompanying sexual reproduction and you have a heady mix. One might have expected that this history would have produced more vigilance in detecting and confronting sexual crimes by the clergy, but by a weird irony this deep suspicion of sex seems to have been an element in the collusive attitudes of church authorities to the sexual abuses of children by its ministers. It is as if the belief that all sexual activity is somehow tainted makes the egregious destruction of childhood innocence just another failing to be expected. Or perhaps the concentration on policing sexual misdemeanours of the laity helped blind authorities to the offences of the supposedly chaste and celibate clergy.</p>
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<span class="caption">Pope Benedict XVI at the Saint Peter Basilica in Vatican City.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Claudio Peri</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Of course, another potent factor in the secretive and dictatorial reactions of too many Catholic leaders to the current crisis is the fear of a loss of authority. This is not merely the outcome of a selfish attitude to the loss of personal and institutional power and status (though one can never underestimate the effects of that in human affairs) but a genuine alarm at the splintering of what the authorities see as orthodox belief. </p>
<p>This reflects a rigid conception of what it is to be a Catholic Christian, a conception that has long historic roots in thundering denunciations of heresy, promulgation of excommunications, division of Christian communities, and persecutions. Other communions, of course, have a similar record, but the tendency to centralise authority in the papal office and its administrative support team in Rome has created a uniquely authoritarian, indeed dictatorial, style of leadership. </p>
<p>The style is not new, of course: it dates back to the consolidation of Roman clerical power in the reforms of the 10th century which also introduced the regime of priestly celibacy. Yet it has proved extraordinarily resistant to the widespread demise in the modern world of the secular models of imperial and monarchical sovereignty from which it was largely derived. </p>
<p>This picture of the role of authority has been buttressed by a distorted image of the history of Catholic doctrine as a constant preservation, with some elaboration, of an initially given “deposit of faith”, inerrantly propounded and defended by papal authority. I have no space to expose the defects in this image, but it is built so deeply into the present structure of the Catholic Church that it would require a drastic change in the church’s system of governance and its self-understanding to root it out.</p>
<p>Defence of the image and fear of its reshaping is behind so much of the Vatican’s reactionary efforts to overturn what its officials see as deviant developments from Vatican II.</p>
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<span class="caption">Justice Peter McClellan, who will head the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Damian Shaw</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When priests question the ban on even discussing the ordination of women, or “colonial” bishops dare to point out that the drastic decline in vocations to the priesthood could have something to do with clerical celibacy or with denial of women clergy, the fury from above and from those below who share the Vatican picture of authority is immense.</p>
<p>Also reinforcing the anxieties of Roman authorities is the increasing evidence that large numbers of ordinary Catholics have already made up their minds about the irrelevance of the Vatican and Episcopal fulminations against artificial contraception, homosexual practice and gay marriage, pre-marital sex, assisted reproduction, and even certain aspects of euthanasia and abortion. International surveys have consistently shown this cleavage between official teaching and the sincere beliefs and practice of the flock. For instance, <a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/117154/catholics-similar-mainstream-abortion-stem-cells.aspx">surveys in the United States</a> regularly show that the official Vatican line on contraception and abortion has very little influence upon what Catholics think. One <a href="http://www.catholicsforchoice.org/topics/politics/documents/Poll.pdf">recent poll</a> of American Catholics in 2009 found that only 14 percent agree with the Vatican’s position that abortion should be illegal.</p>
<p>A 2008 poll showed that 86 percent of Catholics approve of abortion when a woman’s health is seriously endangered, 78 percent think it should be possible for a woman to obtain an abortion when a pregnancy is the result of rape, and 66 percent supported health insurance coverage for abortion when test results show that a fetus has a severe abnormal condition. </p>
<p>On contraception, a 2008 United States <a href="http://www.catholicsforchoice.org/topics/catholicsandchoice/documents/Factstellthestoryweb.pdf">poll showed</a> that “sexually active Catholic women older than 18 are just as likely (98%) to have used some form of contraception banned by the Vatican as women in the general population (99%). Even among those who attend church once a week or more, 83 percent of sexually active Catholic women use a form of contraception that is banned by the Vatican.” Recent Gallup Poll figures have <a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/117154/Catholics-Similar-Mainstream-Abortion-Stem-Cells.aspx">shown that</a> 40 percent of Catholics (compared to 41% of non- Catholics) found abortion “morally acceptable”. In another poll, 44% of regular Catholic churchgoers found homosexual relations morally acceptable and 53% of them agreed that heterosexual relations outside of marriage were morally acceptable. The percentages in both cases were higher amongst the non-regular church-going Catholics (61% and 77% respectively).</p>
<p>These figures tell a remarkable story. Outside the United States the situation is often similar, if not more dramatic, certainly in predominantly Catholic European countries. The Vatican either ignores this disjunction between official teaching and general belief and practice or treats it as a sign of widespread apostasy. </p>
<p>But the time for such lofty disregard is over, and the crisis about the institution’s profound failure to deal with the sexual predations of its clergy should be an opportunity to abandon the defensive and arrogant attitudes to the modern world and to so many of the church’s own adherents that has been for too long the church’s leaderships’s stock in trade. </p>
<p>It is an irony that this opportunity will come courtesy of the righteous fury and just judgement of elements in that very “outside” modern world so scorned by the Vatican.</p>
<h2>UPDATE:</h2>
<p>Pope Benedict XVI has announced his retirement. Given his commitment to negating the impetus of Vatican II and his weak leadership in the child abuse crisis, his retirement signals an opportunity for the Church to provide new, consultative, non-dictatorial stewardship and to re-examine its self-image. </p>
<p>I am not confident that the cardinals, especially those appointed by Benedict and his predecessor John Paul II, will have the character and nerve to do so. But if they do, then the words of Malcolm in Shakespeare’s Macbeth about the executed Thane of Cawdor will have a special relevance. To paraphrase the Bard: “Nothing in his papacy became him like the leaving it.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/11922/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tony Coady is a Catholic.</span></em></p>
The awful record of the institutional Catholic church’s leadership in dealing with the scandal of clerical sex abuse of minors has clearly, and rightly, been a trigger for the federal government’s Royal…
Tony Coady, Professor of Philosophy, The University of Melbourne
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.