In this 2006 photo, former British glam rocker Gary Glitter goes to court in Ho Chi Minh City to appeal his jail term for molesting children. - Reuters photo
The past week has seen a landmark spotlight burning the issue of child abuse into the foreground like never before. At least not since the convictions of Gary Glitter, the 1970s glam rock singer, for downloading child pornography in Britain, and child sex abuse offences in Vietnam.
Anyone who grew up in Britain would know who Jimmy Savile was and how, with the benefit of hindsight and retrospection, there were lots of things “squiffy” about the man with the bad blond mullet, his awful shell suits and hermit-like existence off-screen.
The veteran TV presenter and DJ lived alone with his mother and after she died, he kept her room exactly as it was and dry cleaned her clothes once a year, according to some sources.
Even the BBC’s Louis Theroux’s interview with him concerning the allegations of paedophilia threw to light a very strange, unsocial creature, antithesis of his onscreen persona that led to hundreds of millions of pounds being collected for charities and his larger-than-life cigar-puffing “gung-ho” personality that brought him into contact with hundreds of thousands of children – sick, poor, orphaned, middle-class, vulnerable children.
He was the darling of the BBC; he was mates with Maggie Thatcher the former British Prime Minister and given a knighthood.
Now the press is going after the behemoth machinations of the BBC for allegedly withholding and even obstructing information and proof from investigations that would have led to his being held accountable for his evil actions whilst he was still alive (Savile died in October 2011 aged 84).
NGOs and charities that were the beneficiaries of the vast sums from his fundraising activities are also being held accountable for their seemingly complicit actions in supporting what should have been apparent.
The mounting cases that have joined the blasting open of this Pandora’s box post-Savile’s death have been horrific. It seems that in Britain, fellow “stars,” cohorts of Savile and Glitter, now aged 68, are very worried that their own alleged abuses may be uncovered too. It seems the 1970s was a time of hedonism allowing for much debauchery. It was a time that no one asked for “birth certificates” before jumping into bed with passionate fans. (Last Sunday, Glitter was arrested but released on bail after questioning by London police in a widening probe into claims of Savile’s molest of underage girls.)
What upsets me greatly is how something of this magnitude was able to go unnoticed or suppressed despite various reports being made and the obvious lies from Savile in his defence. Surely no one, not even back then in the 1970s, thought that it was okay for a grown man to be alone with a child
in his caravan, in his dressing room, in any place? And surely if these children reported inappropriate behaviour, and children kept on reporting it, why was nothing done?
I don’t think we can apportion blame to any one institution or company here. What needs to be addressed is society as a whole. Because if 300 people and counting have stepped forward to claim abuse at the hands of this monster, spanning decades, we have to ask ourselves a simple question: Why didn’t they come forward earlier?
The answer has to lie in the murky waters of the system that surrounded them and the fact that they never thought anyone would believe them, do anything about it, not blame them or completely dismiss their trauma. Better to live feeling isolated, broken and in shame, in silence, rather than feel that their
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