Child abuse scandal exposes state inaction

Child abuse is a crime against the vulnerable by those who hold more power over them. It should therefore come as no surprise that anyone in a position of power including those in government or in industry or in entertainment can be the abuser. It is therefore a pity that most of the publicity about child abuse is about how the BBC dealt with reporting it in 2012 rather than the abuse itself. The attack on the BBC from other parts of the media stinks of hypocrisy. Some of the statements emanating out of the empire run by the ‘Murdoch criminal gang’ beggars belief. Their agenda [and that of others] of shutting down public service media is very obvious.

For years it would appear that sections of the media were aware of what was going on with these people in power and knew the abusers and the witnesses to that abuse. At the very least significant numbers of people had strong and well-founded suspicions about that abuse. What were they doing? What were the police doing? No-one doubts the difficulty of gathering evidence in child abuse cases, the crime being mostly done in secret without witnesses, but recent revelations about some of the child abuse seem to suggest it was not all that secret and there were witnesses.

If the management of the BBC knew what Saville was doing and what he was doing on BBC premises then they should have sacked him and reported his activities to the police. But it is not just the BBC. Some of the other stuff coming out beggars belief. Encouraging people to give money to hospitals or children’s homes should not entitle you to unsupervised access to vulnerable people and your own accommodation in the premises to carry out abuse. What were all the people who knew this was going on doing about it at the time? Why was this abuse not made public? Even if Saville was not an abuser why was he given free accommodation in these premises? Is it still practice to give ‘benefactors’ privileges? If so it should stop.

A prominent Tory politician was wrongly identified by one of the children who was abused. The solution is simple. The ‘decent’ Tories who knew what was going on and the press who knew what was going on and who should have spoken out then should at least speak out now and tell us who the guilty were.

In a decent society where all people should be afforded respect, the police should be expected to investigate thoroughly all accusations of wrongdoing. The fact that their efforts are being called into question says all about the fact that our society is neither decent nor respectful of all people.

This discussion about child abuse needs to be refocused away from the current BBC ‘mismanagement’ of reporting but concentrate on the actual abuse that took place and the actions of those who knew what was going on and did nothing about it. It is easy to understand why the children who were abused never spoke out. The adults, however, who knew should have raised it when it happened and must do so now.

Socialists must also point out the origins of child abuse and its absolute consistency with a society where there are terrible power imbalances and no proper checks and balances on the actions of the powerful. Ironically, the term ‘paedophilia’ or ‘paedophile’ is a misnomer, as child abuse has nothing to do with loving children, the roots of the word.

We need a society, which is open and transparent, where there is an end to the abuse of power inherent in class society. Common ownership of all the means of running society under democratic control will dramatically reduce all forms of abuse, including sexual abuse. In the meantime we must consistently expose the crimes of the powerful and demand they are thoroughly investigated, exposed and dealt with.