Jimmy Savile

Imagine this; the day that the scandal over Jimmy Savile's hundreds of unprosecuted and unpunished crimes against children was revealed, a newspaper publishes the following headline: "Exclusive! Man who we all strongly suspected to be paedophile turns out, amazingly, to be pedophile." Much to Fleet Street's shame, no such headline was published, but it might have been one of the more genuine statements that could have emerged in this most troubling of scandals. There is so much that is distressing about this case it is hard to know where to begin, but a quick examination of the facts might help to focus the thoughts. On his death Sir Jimmy was deified by the press, he was exactly the kind of loveable eccentric that the British tabloid media loves to celebrate, his work for charity and his lesser known, and now darkly ironic, campaigns for public decency in the 1970s and 1980s with Mary Whitehouse created a persona of simple down to earth integrity. And yet...and yet no one was really fooled, were they? Jimmy Savile presented society with an awkward conundrum, do we harass any single adult man who has a desire to be kind to children and make their wishes come true? Do we cast aspersions about a man who visits sick children in hospital, who frequents hospices and care homes, ostensibly out of human decency? If we do, does this take us another step down the road to the kind of hysteria that sees all adult men as suspect? There is a simple and effective way to square this circle, and it is a strategy that would revolutionise nearly every known area of child protection, from dubious Top of the Pops presenters to under age drinking, and that strategy is one of full and complete openness and honesty throughout our society about the things that shame us the most. Evidently Jimmy Savile's crimes were known to many, many people, there were those who covered up for him, those that ignored his victims, those that were compromised by this manipulative sociopath, there was enough actual knowledge to arrest and jail him decades ago. It was not acted upon because child sexual abuse was then, and to some extent still now is, the great pink elephant in the room that we cannot bear to acknowledge, we can only bring ourselves to discuss at times of acute crisis. At the Living Room in Cardiff, we know all about these pink elephants, be they alcohol, drug, gambling or other addictions. There seems to be an acute parallel between the way in which we deal with the horror of child abuse, and the manner in which we discuss addiction in society, our sense of shame shuts all discussion down. The time has come for all of us, victims, addicts, loved ones, bystanders, accidental facilitators and even perpetrators who want to stop, to get honest and to talk. Jimmy Savile operated freely not because, as some have suggested, that he was too powerful and influential, but because we were too afraid, not of him, but of acknowledging the existence of abuse in our society. We are still too afraid to acknowledge openly what everyone knows privately, that as with abuse, addiction is rife everywhere we look, in off licenses, casinos, pubs, down back alleys, supermarkets and online. Both these twin evils will be present, each and every day, no matter how hard we try to ignore them, but they cannot thrive under the spotlight of the truth. A society that embraces guilt, shame and secrets will continue to produce abused children and addicted adults, one that fights tooth and nail for the truth and honesty will be that much healthier for its struggles.