h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I've been reading the allegations about Jimmy Saville, and wondering why so many people are saying 'I knew all along'. After all how did he get a knighthood if lots of people thought he was a paedophile?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/9577087/Sir-Jimmy-Savile-sex-abuse-claims-ITV-goes-where-BBC-fears-to-tread.html

It's also interesting that it's all coming out now, perhaps because you can't libel the dead so newspapers don't have to substansate their claims to the same level.

What do you think?

The thing that really struck me was how it reflects on all the people around him who worked with him, and now claim they knew all about it and didn't say a word.

I think a lot of it is confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance.

If you worked with him and had no idea, you don't want to think that you were duped, so you go back and look for signs that you knew all along. Otherwise you'd have to accept that you were a poor judge of character and that someone you didn't suspect was a paedophile. That would make you doubt whether the other people you trusted around your children and grandchild were in fact paedophiles.

So much easier to say 'oh yes, I knew all along'..

I worked with someone a few years ago who'd been on the beanbag on Jim'll Fix It because his cousin was on it being a butler for a day (I can remember that one )

He did not have much good to say about the man - he wasn't very nice to the kids really it seemed.

Doesn't make him a paedophile of course.

However, he was a real oddball and clearly not all there if one saw his rare interviews and I think that make people think he was maybe capable of it. The one comment I've heard was that they were surprised it was little girls and not little boys.

Still, it's easy to attack him now he can't defend himself.

I am absolutely not defending the man, but I have to take exception to the use of the term "little girls". From the article it seems they were 14 and 15 year olds. It's still not acceptable, I know that, but I can't be the only one who thinks there's a huge difference between a 5 year old and a 14 year old in these instances.

Youth and beauty is seen in the media as the thing to aspire to. The model in the magazine showing off the expensive designer clothes in provocative poses is maybe 15 at most, and she's being held up as the ideal. It's no wonder that women want to be her (hence plastic surgery and a multi-million pound diet & beauty products industry) and men want her on their arm.

I'm really not saying I'd condone men going after underage girls. I'm just saying I can sort of understand it. Am I alone in this?

Deb

Well I did say that those were someone elses words, but nevertheless, although I take your point, a little googling will reveal that there is a lot more substance to this than may initially be apparent. Also there are alleged incidents with girls as young as 12...

(Esther Rantzen apparently believes these allegations which means they *must* be true ).


None of which makes it any more true that everybody 'knew it already' of course.

"What do you think?"

I think Icy North's 'Headline Challenge' contributors would have a field day with this story:

'BBC in Savile Row: Suits Pending' (suit spending?), etc, etc.

Is it about time they banned Romeo and Juliet, which is a play about a thirteen year old girl and an older boy that get secretly married and do the deed?

Is it about time they (men in big corporations etc) stopped sexualising under sixteens in magazines and the media?

I remember seeing a Page 3 Girl in some newspaper which told me the picture was taken on her 16th birthday so she was 'Just Legal today!'.

I can't remember which newspaper, but I'm willing to bet folding money it carried 'horrified' stories about the schoolgirl who ran away to france with her teacher.

I suppose if he is found guilty they could do to him what Charles II had done did to Oliver Cromwell. Dig him up and hang, draw and quarter him.

If the ladies involved require counselling and receive counselling because of this then I suppose something good will come out of it.

I've heard people say they think he's guilty based on no further evidence than the fact that he seemed a bit unusual.

Of course, should these allegations be found to be true, let's hope the lesson will be learned, and celebrities in future won't be able to hide their misdemeanors within a fortress of charity work.

>>I remember seeing a Page 3 Girl in some newspaper which told me the picture was taken on her 16th birthday so she was 'Just Legal today!'. <<

It's strange how one day, one hour, one minute can switch "morality" so suddenly. The above story suggests that the just turned 16 year old had been waiting for the moment when she can be exploited by what Private Eye (apparently Auberon Waugh first used it) call the Dirty Digger.

1.

I am pretty certain that this is not the first time that this has been said about Jimmy Saville. I am sure that I remember there being some sort of rumblings about this back in the 70's. This may have been no more than local gossip though. I lived up near Leeds back then.

But then, allegations were mumbled about a number of men in the public eye back then and prior to that too. From time to time there have been rumours that Elvis Presley was brought young girls by Tom Parker and it is known that he at least expressed himself sexually about Precilla when she was 14. Jerry Lee Lewis married his 13 year old cousin (his management claimed that she was 15 - so that's fine then). I'm pretty sure that Jonathan King's preferences were known about too.

2.



No. You aren't alone in this Deb. Sometimes, driving home from work I muse on this as I drive past a couple of schools and a college of FE. Older men tend to have a bit of cash and could be seen as a bit of a catch. The older man may well be flattered by the attention. (I am flattered by the attention of women in their 30's these days. )

The turning from 15 to 16 is a very strange legal time. I worked with a man once who's argument was that a girl who was 15 years of age was in her 16th year and therefore fair game. A twisted logic which was never accepted by any judge that he appeared before.

That said, a 15 year, 364 day old girl looks pretty much the same as she does a day later.

Teachers have been know to trip over in this area. What the hell was going through the man's head! I think I can guess.

PP.

>>What the hell was going through the man's head!

Illness? It's bizarre for a mentally sane man, in a position of trust, to imagine he can leave the country with an underage girl and it simply not be noticed, or to think they can disappear. A maths teacher should have a clear understanding of logic, and his actions were anything but that.

>>A maths teacher should have a clear understanding of logic, and his actions were anything but that. <<

I suspect he was using the logic from his underpants. He certainly didn't appear to adhere to the "expectations" of his profession or the "expectations" of a British citizen of his age and associated "maturity".

<>

Well howsaboutthat then guys and dolls

More seriously, the victims of his alleged abuse have suffered so much over the years they deserve a medal.

No... wait ...

Watch out swl - now then now then now then, you're going to get called sick again

Medal.



And I am a bit ashamed that I ed.

PP.

Actually, I'm not sure what the point of an investigation is. They will end up with a load of allegations, but with no opportunity for the accused to either make a statement or face a trial.

PP.

There've been all kinds of rumours about Jimmy Saville: that he used his work at LGI as a cover so he could interfere with the dead, that he was in an inappropriate relationship with his mother, that he was gay. As far as I can tell, he doesn't have a single proven sexual contact which makes me wonder if he might have been asexual (yet another rumour).

We're almost certainly never going to get the truth. All this talk of how the women were afraid until now ignores the fact that for the last few years of his life he wasn't really compos mentis. When he barked at me and my friends a couple of years ago he certainly wasn't with it.