THERE IS
AN activity currently under way in this country which is reinventing the 17th
century witch-hunts in a 21st century setting. Dozens, if not
hundreds of mainly celebrities have been
hauled in for questioning by the police. The offences they are being
questioned about concern all kinds of
sexual abuse toward women and children.
Ever
since the Savile creature was exposed as a pernicious recidivist sexual abuser of women and
children over several decades, society has allowed the police to behave as they
wish considering the nature of the crimes they are investigating. I was one of
those who believed that the police should be given a free hand, and, providing
their behaviour remained within the compass of the law, I cared little about
dawn raids, even if a knock on the door at a respectable time of day would have
sufficed.
Believing
that the police had good reason to question such people, I cared little about
the timing of their custody; especially as such celebrities as Gary Glitter and
Simon King, had already been sent to trial and had been found guilty. So when
Savile appeared on the radar as the worst example of such a disgraceful and
dehumanising practice; then enough was enough, and I, like millions of other
citizens felt that the police should be given a long leash in their attempt to round
up what now appears to be, in many cases, practices that occurred over 40 years
ago - the nature of which we remain ignorant of.
Child
abuse is, among the many sins that human beings are on a daily basis guilty of, perhaps the worst;
and as such, a blind eye is turned when an accused is brought in for
questioning under such circumstances.
THE
LATEST INVITATION by the police has been extended to Rolf Harris. An invitation
that will have effectively ruined his career[1]
whether proven guilty or innocent; and it is about time that this covert
behaviour by the police should face some kind of challenge.
Enter Rod Liddle writing in the Spectator. He, through his wit, has set
the ball rolling. It is unsettling to see what, so far, appears to be
celebrities from the 1970s being the most lucrative prey of the modern
Inquisitor.
Rolf Harris is being questioned by
the police in connection with sexual abuse, the details of which we are not
privileged to know. So we speculate based upon the
template of Jimmy Savile, to come to all sorts of conclusions regarding
Rolf Harris.
This cannot be fare to the
individual and should not be tolerated; but the politicians are on the side of
those who care little (including by the way our liberals), when questions of
sexual abuse are being laid against an individual. They will stay quiet for
fear of a lost deposit if they stand out against any questionable behaviour by
the police.
BECAUSE
THOSE TARGETED have, until now, been celebrities from the 1970s; this decade is
being treated as a particularly valuable ‘oil rich’ period, so to speak, for
the police. The police have received complaints from those who they say have
been abused by this or that celebrity during the 1960s and 1970s, and they are
pursuing such complaints with the full sympathy of the public.
What we seem to have is a collision
between the age of ‘free love’ and political correctness. From the 1960s to the
mid 1970s, sexual behaviour, which today
would be regarded as abuse, was seen as part of sexual liberation. This of
course did not include the sexual abuse of children. But it did include
behaviour that fell well short of rape, which rightly today is regarded as criminal
abuse. At the time, if a man made an unwelcome
touch of upon women’s thigh over dinner, then a slap in the face would
prove a sufficient deterrent. But today it would be regarded as an assault and
therefore would result in the arrest of the slapper followed by a term in
prison before being put on the Sexual Offenders Register
If Rolf Harris is proven guilty of
rape, or serious sexual abuse short of this, then he must accept the
consequences. But anything less should be disregarded and put down to the times
in which this 84 –year old lived.
So far Rolf Harris’s arrest has not
changed my view of the man and will not until, or if, he has his day in court
and is found guilty of a serious sexual offence against a women or child. It
shocked me when I read he had been questioned by the police. Harris’s name
should not have been published until he was charged with a crime. Someone leaked
details to the media and that someone had to come from within the police – if
so, Leveson would have taken a dim view of such behaviour.
There seems, in certain quarters, an
eager anticipation of the next celebrity to be hauled in to be charged with
what may turn out to be some modern perversion that 40 years ago was, rightly
or wrongly, tolerated. You would have had to have lived through the 1960s and
early 70s to understand the times. Political correctness was an eternity away,
and as different as the reign of Charles II was from that of Queen Victoria.
Times change, and with them how we treat each other – to quote from The Go Between; ‘The past is a foreign
country; they do things differently there’.
[1] It
has begun before Rolf is even charged with a crime. Channel Five has pulled its
transmission of ‘Olive the Ostrich’. We now hear that Mr Harris is suicidal.
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