Historical sex abuse investigations

[Rum]

A headline story here in the UK today concerns a report just published by the police following the investigation of allegations against the ex prime minister Edward Heath, who died in 2005 and was our PM many years before that. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-41503143)

The report draws no conclusion about guilt but does say that if he had still been alive (he'd be 101!) they would have sufficient information to interview him under 'caution' (i.e. having read him his rights etc).

The allegations are around underage rape of boys and other rapes of slightly older males. He was unmarried and widely believed to be gay but of course back then..

His reputation, such as it was (he was a slightly left leaning Conservative and led a disastrous government), is now ruined. There is no prospect of 'justice' and his alleged victims no doubt feel that nothing has come of their stories being shared. Lose lose as far as I can see.

On the other hand is it was not for similar investigations happening we would all still be blissfully unaware that the likes of Jimmy Savile kiddy fiddled his way around the country for much of his life.

So what to do? Ruin perfectly innocent reputations or let sleeping dogs lie?

[Svartalf]

seriously, what's the interest of airing this now that he's dead and beyond justice?

[cronus]

obviously a valuable investigation if it uncovers a ring some of whose ageing members might still be chopped off....if found.

[mistermack]

obviously a valuable investigation if it uncovers a ring some of whose ageing members might still be chopped off....if found.

But none of the accusers mentioned any kind of ring.

I really doubt that there's any truth whatsoever in these claims. There were originally about seven people alleging abuse. Then the chief constable of Wiltshire (I think) invited anyone out there to have a go. Literally.
And hey-presto ! Then there were forty.

The chief constable today said that there were seven cases that he thought would have warranted questioning under caution. That means that there were about 33 that were a pack of lies.

Ted Heath, I never liked. But he was worth millions, and just like Jimmy Saville, people are tempted to have a go, maybe they can get a share of his estate. Just like Saville, he had no kids.
It's open season, now that it's politically incorrect to point out that people have an obvious motive to allege abuse, when a rich person dies.

Fatty Lawson got the same treatment, and it was a pack of lies. So did Lord McAlpine. So is all this. It's utter bollocks.

[JimC]

Even if there are some lies amongst the allegations, it's clear enough that there are still plenty of occasions where a public figure of the past got away with serious sexual misconduct for years, swept under the carpet at the time. So, mm's implication of "it's all bollocks", if followed by those in authority, would potentially let real sex predators off the hook. You can't stop investigating potential cases just because some people make false accusations - it simply means the need for very thorough police work...

[mistermack]

It's bollocks, even if it happened.

If you were abused, and said nothing till the man was dead, you don't deserve to be believed.
Why waste millions of pounds on an investigation into a dead man that can't possibly get at the truth?

Those cops, having spent so much taxpayers money on nothing, HAVE to justify it somehow.
At the end of it all, all they could say is that if he were alive, they would have questioned him under caution.
About seven, out of forty accusations.

If they are saying that they wouldn't even have questioned him about thirty odd cases, then those cases MUST have been bollocks.
I'm just saying the other seven were bollocks too, but after over a million pounds spent, they couldn't say that it's all bollocks.

[Rum]

I wonder how much you think about stuff before you post sometimes. Not a lot I must conclude.

'If you were abused , and said nothing till the man was dead, you don't deserve to be believed'. What sort of utterly nonsensical, ill informed, not to say insensitive crap is that?

In a long and not always pleasant career in social work I had a couple of years in a clinic working with abuse 'survivors'. A common feature among the adult survivors who had been abused as kids was that when their abuser was dead they finally felt safe to talk. The family therapy unit I was attached to worked with the wreckage of what was left, people sometimes not knowing about it all until after the parent was gone. Their lives were sometimes in ruins.

Imagine what that must be like if you are the victim of a senior politician?

[mistermack]

I'm saying that they don't deserve to be believed, because they waited till the accused couldn't make a reply.
You are taking the accusers' side. There are two sides to every allegation.

How would you like it, if someone falsely accused your own millionaire father, after he was dead, with the intention of stealing your inheritance?

We still have to have a presumption of innocence till proven guilty.

Even if you were abused, and genuinely suffered, if you don't do anything about it in reasonable time, you don't deserve to be believed. You might deserve sympathy. I'm not saying that you don't. But to deserve to be believed, you have to act in reasonable time. It's just a fact arising out of the situation.

[JimC]

So they shouldn't have investigated Jimmy Saville?

[mistermack]

So they shouldn't have investigated Jimmy Saville?

Jimmy Saville is the same as all the others. He's not here to answer back.
If you believe the police programs you see on the telly, in real life, with real crimes, the first 24 hours are vital, in gaining evidence for a conviction.

How the fuck does that tie in with investigations starting up 24 YEARS after the alleged incident?

If someone accuses me of something I'm supposed to have done last week, I can remember roughly what I was doing, where I was, and who I spoke to, so I've got a chance to prove that the allegation is false.
If they accuse me of something from a quarter of a century ago, (or in Heath's case, half a century ago) what chance has anyone got of picking holes in the story? A lot of the people who could give you an alibi, for example, will probably be dead.
It's ludicrous to proceed as if an allegation is some sort of evidence, when there is a potential pot of gold for the accusers as an obvious motive to make a claim. As far as I'm concerned, wherever there is a chance of a payout, you have to ignore the claims of the accuser, and look for independent evidence.

[Rum]

There are many reasons why the victims of sexual violence do not immediately come forward. Fear of retribution is one. Fear that despite the fact that they were abused they don't want the perpetrator to be punished. Guilt that they contributed to the abuse in some fashion. Denial. Mental anguish of all kinds.

It simply isn't as black and white as you portray it. The police admit as much and it seems to me that this isn't a situation where there is always one answer.

I think one can only go on a case by case basis. The Savile situation built up an overwhelming body of circumstantial evidence and should have been pursued. Heath I suspect is another matter and should perhaps have been left alone.

[mistermack]

I do get the point that you're making about victims. They might have good reasons for not coming forward. But that's not a reason to drop the standards for evidence to "he said it, so it must be true". It's not a reason to drop the standards at all. Especially when there's an obvious financial motive for making an allegation.

There was an overwhelming number of allegations about Saville, but only after he was dead, and his assets were there for the taking. They could all be false. Who knows? Saville could have been careful about the ages of the groupies he fucked. Maybe he was, maybe he wasn't. He's dead, that's the point.

If there are 500 allegations about him, I'm not surprised. It's a chance of free money, and he obviously took what was on offer on lots of occasions. Whether he broke the law and was abusive is a different story, but, if you don't claim, you don't gain, so lots of them are having a go. Probably on a no-win no-fee basis.

I'm perfectly prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt. 500 X nothing is nothing. The number of allegations doesn't prove a thing. Not when there's a chance of scoring a windfall.
They could be 500 scammers, that's perfectly possible. I wasn't there.

[Rum]

You trotted out this argument when Savile was in the news a while back as I recall. The fact is you are wrong. There were a number of complaints made by girls in the region of 11 or 12 years of age going way back however they were not followed up at the time, usually because of the times - pre awareness one might say. Those complaints were amalgamated with the retrospective ones. You are simply incorrect. He was a serial molester without doubt.

Heath is a different case and the reports in the last couple of days besmirch his reputation for little gain in my view.

[cronus]

You trotted out this argument when Savile was in the news a while back as I recall. The fact is you are wrong. There were a number of complaints made by girls in the region of 11 or 12 years of age going way back however they were not followed up at the time, usually because of the times - pre awareness one might say. Those complaints were amalgamated with the retrospective ones. You are simply incorrect. He was a serial molester without doubt.

Heath is a different case and the reports in the last couple of days besmirch his reputation for little gain in my view.

I always felt uneasy about him when he was on TV, as a kid. I had a sense he was a bad one. Think there a lot like me.

[mistermack]

You trotted out this argument when Savile was in the news a while back as I recall. The fact is you are wrong. There were a number of complaints made by girls in the region of 11 or 12 years of age going way back however they were not followed up at the time, usually because of the times - pre awareness one might say. Those complaints were amalgamated with the retrospective ones. You are simply incorrect. He was a serial molester without doubt.

Heath is a different case and the reports in the last couple of days besmirch his reputation for little gain in my view.

I don't think you're right about that. I see no link, and from memory, the complaints were made about thirty years after the so-called events, rather like Heath's, but while he was still alive.

I'm not saying he was a nice guy, he was fucking horrible. But that doesn't mean that his legacy is fair game for any slag bag that dropped her knickers in the seventies just to say she'd shagged someone famous. And there were many thousands of them about. To be honest, they are just as bad as he was.
Now of course, they have "new" memories of how it happened, brought on by trauma, and the sight of his Rolls Royce.