The Pathology of Sexual Predation

"People like Jimmy Savile and anyone who tried to have sex with very young girls have always been naturally totally condemned but there was an enormous distinction between the real predators -- damaging and abusing and vile -- and the sexy chancers who are being arrested now.
"It is very difficult for the present generation to understand the atmosphere either in the fifties or ... the rock world in the sixties."
Briton Virginia Ironside, 1960s journalist for the Daily Mail 

"There must be men the length and breadth of Britain who observe scandals like Jimmy Savile's and sleep uneasily remembering past conquests. Soon, pervert, soon."
Grace Dent, writer, the Independent

Britain is on a spree. Suddenly news and social media celebrities, comedians, rock stars, broadcasters, are all being targeted with the broad brush of narrated-accusations with no hope of evidence-gathering or presentations to seal cases brought against them, of having sexually abused adolescents. Ever since it became common knowledge that the now-deceased British television host Sir Jimmy Savile had been a savage pederast, corrosive memories of sexual abuse sufferers have surfaced.

Women have come forward with their own sad and sordid tales of groping, sexually exploiting men whose were held in high respect and who led a secret life as predators. Police in the United Kingdom have arrested TV presenters, producers, comedians, Order of the British Empire holders, and royal portraitists alike, on the general charge that they forced their brutishly unwanted attention on teenaged girls during the 1960s and 1960s.

Society in general was so tolerant of these little peccadilloes on the part of talented, well-connected men, that they simply turned away from acknowledging the rumours, and even evidence that was presented to them, that these sterling characters were horribly tarnished. The harm they did to young girls and boys never seemed to be considered as a problem. Some were warned that they should exercise more care, others that they were looking for trouble, but none were stopped.

It was that kind of tolerance for the celebrated that allowed Jimmy Savile to spend fifty years randomly ravaging young girls. BBC drivers chauffeuring Jimmy Savile kept it to themselves when they delivered weeping pre-pubescent victims of the great man back to their homes. Some of his colleagues, hearing of Savile's pedophilia, gave him well-meaning (for him) subtle warnings. Police who responded to the claims of assault reported an absence of evidence.

That lack of responsible response ensured that children would continue to be savaged by him. He assaulted children at every opportunity in all venues available to him; at BBC headquarters, in hospices and hospitals, in the back of Rolls-Royces, forcing himself on an estimated two hundred unfortunate children, victimized as much by society's uncaring stance as they were by this disgusting menace. Children under age ten were among those victimized by Jimmy Savile.

"The Jimmy Savile witchhunt is going a bit silly now. We are all starting to speculate and accuse ... even in jest", blogged English comedian Jim Davidson shortly after the revelations about Savile became a sensation. "I don't know who's next", he concluded. He was. He was informed by cellphone from police that he was yet another celebrity who had become a target under Operation Yewtree, a police force set up to bring sexual predators to heel and to justice.

When BBC host Stuart Hall, then 83, was arrested by Operation Yewtree, with 14 charges laid against him, he characterized them as "pernicious, callous, cruel and above all spurious". A slur on the good name of an old man who had led a meritorious life, entertaining the public, whose behaviour was above suspicion. Someone was clearly out to slander him and horribly slur his legacy. Soon enough he admitted to putting his hand up the skirt of a nine-year-old child in the 1980s. That memory had stayed with him just as it had with his victim.

"What we have here  is the manipulation of the British criminal-justice system to produce scapegoats on demand. It is a grotesque spectacle" wrote barrister Barbara Hewson, utterly outraged at the unjustness of it all. Operation Yewtree represented nothing so much as the "persecution of old men"; perhaps then, balancing out the "persecution of young girls" which they so passionately engaged themselves with.