Roberto
Matta.
For the
last three weeks radio, TV and newspapers in England have been full of
revelations about Jimmy Saville a well-known celebrity molesting and raping
young girls.
Jimmy
Saville died a year ago, before he died there were rumours circulating about
him abusing young girls, however there were no allegations against him.
Which was
not surprising as he was regarded by many people as something of an untouchable,
because of his tireless work fund raising for charities.
Jimmy
Saville was well connected; he was friendly with Margaret Thatcher and
therefore quite likely also with Rupert Murdoch, the owner of several
newspapers who was close to Thatcher.
Two of
those papers, The News of the World and The Sun were always exposing
paedophiles but surprisingly they never ran any stories about Saville, I wonder
why.
The first
stories were of Saville molesting girls of 14 who appeared on his program on
BBC called; Jim will fix it as well as during his time as a dj at Radio 1.
He also
seems to have molested patients at Leeds hospital one of which was
brain-damaged, the other had a spinal injury and was also in a wheelchair.
As well vulnerable
girls in care homes and girls in an approved school, even inmates at Broadmoor,
where he was given an official role on a committee to reorganise the management
of Broadmoor.
These
stories are all very un-pleasant and what makes it worse is finding out that
Saville had been doing this for 60 years.
The first
incident occurred in the 1950s, in those years Jimmy Saville ran music halls all
over the North of England for the young people.
He was the
first person to use two turntables together to produce non-stop music for people
to dance to; this introduced mobile discos.
Apparently
in 1971 there was an inquest into the suicide of a young dancer on a popular
music program Top of the Pops on which Saville often was the presenter.
He was a
witness, who was sadly never called to give his evidence or to be questioned;
now it seems that this was an opportunity missed.
Maybe if he
had been caught back then, all his victims from 1971 until just before his
death in 2011 would have been spared.
Right now
police speak of 60 victims and more than 340 lines of enquiry and who knows how
many more victims of Jimmy Saville may be.
It is a
thoroughly unpleasant case which highlights the fact that vulnerable people who
should have been protected were abused.
While
others who should have been exposed were protected by what seems to be almost a
conspiracy of silence that surrounds child abuse.
I think it
is time that everyone talks about child sexual abuse maybe that will be the way
that we become educated and aware of how widespread it really is.
The Jimmy
Saville case has contaminated not only the BBC but also the National Health
Service as well as the Ministry of Health.
It shows
the need for a change of course for all organisations and institutions, the
culture needs to change; they should no longer protect individual offenders as
the Catholic Church has done.
Instead
they should expose the offenders and hand them over to the police, that way the
organisations will be protected not the perpetrators of child sexual abuse.
