Remorse After The Fact

"Three things need to happen -- robust enquiries that get to the truth, police investigations that pursue the guilty and find out what has happened and proper lessons learned so we make sure these things will not happen again."
British Prime Minister David Cameron

British home secretary Theresa May has announced a sweeping inquiry into child sexual abuse, following widespread concern sex assaults by celebrities including as Rolf Harris and Jimmy Savile. Photo: Oli Scarff/Getty Images

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"The government will be establishing an independent panel with expertise in the law on child protection to consider whether public bodies and other non-state institutions have taken seriously their responsibilities to protect children from sex abuse."
"It is my intention that people should be able to speak openly in relation to the evidence that they give if they are called as witnesses and if they wish to give written evidence."
"I don't want to dictate to the enquiry how they are going to undertake their work but I'm sure the chairman and the panel will need to be alive to the fact that they will have to hear from those who have not felt able to speak out in the past."
Home Office Minister Theresa May

Home Secretary Theresa May said there would be a wide-ranging report into allegations of abuse at all levels of society

The Home Office itself will not be exempt from scrutiny as the chief executive, Peter Wanless, of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children is set to lead a review investigating the Home Office handling of historic allegations of child abuse His review, to take eight to ten weeks, will scrutinize the Home Office's investigation with special attention to the manner in which police and prosecutors used information given them once it emerged an internal review started last year was unable to trace 114 files on child abuse held in the Home Office archives.

After the death in 2010 of Liberal Democrat lawmaker Cyril Smith, it was acknowledged by prosecutors that in 1970 eight men had lodged accusations against Mr. Smith of having abused them when they were in their teen years. Mr. Smith was never charged although he should have been, according to prosecutors. When Norman Tebbit, a cabinet minister in Margaret Thatcher's 1980s government was asked whether a cover-up by the political establishment could have existed, he responded: "there may well have been".

This focus on the Home Office occurred when the former minister for the Home Office, Leon Brittan, denied being guilty of rape after he had been questioned by police over sexual offences he is alleged to have committed. He had been questioned under caution over an allegation of rape back in 1967, an attack that was said to have taken place at  his London flat. Through his solicitors Mr. Brittan stated: "It is true that I have been questioned by the police about a serious allegation made against me. This allegation is wholly without foundation."

The major inquiry will delve into child sex abuse in all areas of society with the inclusion of what may have taken place soiling the activities of some within political parties, within the sacred precincts of the BBC in churches, hospitals, schools and private companies; an all-encompassing investigative sweep to uncover the sordid and devastating predation on the vulnerable by the entitled. Recent high-profile celebrity sex-assault cases have shone a broad spotlight on a shameful prevalence in some quarters of child predation.

There will be an especial focus on the Home Office, the very government department tasked with oversight of police and prosecutors who received evidence of child abuse relating to political figures over the space of 35 years, and which appears to have protected the evidence to protect the child molesters. With the horrific revelations that Jimmy Savile, a now-dead popular entertainer, one who was knighted by the Queen, was in fact a serial sexual predator whose atrocities went on without stop for five decades, and the revelations of others involved in similar practices, official Britain had to acknowledge it had a problem it must confront.

Prime Minister David Cameron has stated he would ensure that action was taken to "leave no stone unturned"; a useful phrase, given that such slimily malevolent characters are known to lurk under handy boulders; in the earnest search for the truth relating to claims of an established protective shield of child sex abuse dating back to the 1980s. Jimmy Savile, a man widely admired for his putative good works and sterling character, is now known to have assaulted children in hospitals, children's homes, TV studios, and bodies in morgues.

British home secretary Theresa May has announced a sweeping inquiry into child sexual abuse, following widespread concern sex assaults by celebrities including as Rolf Harris and Jimmy Savile. Photo: Oli Scarff/Getty Images

- See more at: http://www.independent.ie/world-news/europe/britain-to-hold-major-new-probe-into-child-sex-abuse-30413253.html#sthash.2q7478Pp.dpuf

Jimmy Savile

British home secretary Theresa May has announced a sweeping inquiry into child sexual abuse, following widespread concern sex assaults by celebrities including as Rolf Harris and Jimmy Savile. Photo: Oli Scarff/Getty Images - See more at: http://www.independent.ie/world-news/europe/britain-to-hold-major-new-probe-into-child-sex-abuse-30413253.html#sthash.2q7478Pp.dpuf

He had an underground reputation, and many people in authority had knowledge of his atrocious behaviour, but they simply shrugged and did nothing under the belief that this was the way things were. The public's disgusted reaction to these appalling revelations has led to the arrests of a number of other celebrities including the imprisonment of others, entertainer Rolf Harris and publicist Max Clifford among them. A general aura of respectability and public acclaim is capable of hiding the most extreme wretchedly human behaviour.

Mr. Brittan, for one, as home secretary between 1983 and 1985, defended his handling of papers entrusted to him and which detail a network of pedophiles in operation around Westminster. In the 19802, he confirmed, he was given files by Geoffrey Dickens, a then-Conservative MP, about child abuse. They are now nowhere to be found in the files of the Home Office. Prime Minister Cameron has ordered a review to discover what had happened to the "dossier" of papers naming high-profile child abusers.