LONDON -- The child sex abuse scandal engulfing Britain’s public broadcaster, the BBC, has been producing disturbing headlines in the UK for almost a month, and the signs are this is just the beginning. Since the scandal broke, 300 victims have told police that they were abused by BBC TV host Jimmy Savile, suggesting this number may yet rise.Read the rest here.
Savile hosted TV shows, worked for charities and was even awarded a knighthood by Queen Elizabeth II. More than just a TV personality, he was a national institution. He was perhaps Britain’s answer to Dick Clark, hosting the UK’s equivalent of “American Bandstand,” the very British sounding “Top of the Pops.”
Savile died last year, but it is another institution, the one he worked for, that has become as much the focus of this scandal. The BBC says new allegations have been made against nine current BBC staff or contributors since the revelations about Savile. Prime Minister David Cameron told Parliament: "These allegations do leave many institutions, perhaps particularly the BBC, with serious questions to answer."
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Saturday, October 27, 2012
Britain's Famed BBC Is Rocked By Child Sex Scandal
This is worse than Penn State by an order of magnitude...
Hmm. The narrative has shifted slightly. Near the beginning of the exposé of this scandal, there were credible (and very disturbing) allegations being made against several "Establishment" figure - not just the national broadcaster - including hospital management and even senior politicians. Broadmoor Hospital, Stoke Mandeville, and others: these are hospitals which live in the public conscious for their pioneering work (Broadmoor, with the criminally insane; Stoke Mandeville, with the long-term sick). Government officials and politicians now dead have been named in allegations, and living politicians have been hinted at. Links seem to be being established between abuse in these English hospitals and the horrendous and systemic abuse of children in care homes in Jersey. There are even some lines of enquiry involving Approved Schools (now defunct educational and training institutes for those children excluded - for various reasons, usually behavioural - from mainstream education).
ReplyDeleteNow certainly, it seems likely that Savile abused minors on BBC premises, but it seems equally likely that he conducted widespread abuse completely unconnected with the BBC, and possibly in concert with other abusers. And the BBC has demonstrated some appallingly bad journalism - not to mention judgement - on this topic. But still, one could be forgiven for thinking that the BBC is the root of the problem.
Funny, that.