UNSHOCKABLE…?

You’d think that with all of the hullaballoo in recent years about Operation Yewtree and the dreadful abuses of power that grew out of the celebrity culture in the last half century, that we’d have all become pretty much unshockable when it comes to matters of abuse in this country, and yet, when the revelations from Rotherham erupted last week, there were so many of us who were claiming to be completely shocked all over again, despite the fact that we know that this stuff is far more common than any of us would like to believe.

And yet, I think that we need to prepare ourselves.

After all, Rotherham is just one town and, let’s be honest, there are dozens of town just like it, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised to discover that something similar has been going on in just about every place where people gather together and somebody has to be put into the “protection” of another human being.

“It couldn’t happen here… This is such a nice town…”

Want to bet…?

“But how could anyone get away with it in a place like this?”

The way they do everywhere else… by enough people being prepared to turn a blind eye or simply not believe that someone in such a position would be capable of doing such a thing or believing that they could get away with it, given how much they would have to lose if anyone ever found out.

Well, the blinkers are coming off, aren’t they? These people can and do actually do these things and, furthermore, they do seem to keep on getting away with it.

At least so far… Although, sadly, I don’t imagine that it will ever really stop happening...

I’m not trying to say that it’s just the human condition, and I’m sure that ninety-nine percent of people can be trusted to do what they’re supposed to do without ever wanting to do any harm, or abuse their position, but it’s the other one percent that shame us all, make us all feel guilty, and have made the rest of us wary of taking such jobs “just in case” someone makes a claim.

We all have to be checked out now – and rightly so – because the few have made the rest of us wonder about the rest of us.

Strangely, of course, it is those who most want to work with young people who society is now most suspicious of, because the people who have committed these despicable acts have been just the sort of people who have shaped their lives so that they are in a position to get close to those whom they seek out.

So this is the (if you’ll pardon the expression) perverse thing about it – Do we only allow children to be around adults who really don’t like being around them? Well, of course not. That would be ridiculous. But when every schoolteacher or volunteer now has to make sure that they are never alone with a youngster, or are frightened to be so, just in case there is an accusation of inappropriate behaviour later, then something’s either gone terribly wrong, or terribly right.

Of course, the Rotherham case has brought up some interesting prejudices about how society perceives such matters, and I don’t mean just the casual racism or the fear of being accused of racism that emerged when the case broke.

For example, we all seem to want “heads to roll” even though the heads that we want to see roll aren’t generally the ones who were committing the crime.

We also seem to generally assume that the victims of abuse are young girls, whilst forgetting just how many boys suffer at the hands of abusers, too. Then there’s the tricky little matter of assuming that all abusers are male, when it turns out that there are many, many females who seek out victims of both sexes to satiate their own deviant needs, and that being gay or straight doesn’t make someone any more or less capable of such misdeeds.

Finally, and perhaps most tragically of all, despite our hand-wringing about such things as “stranger danger” or victims being in the care system or out alone at night, the sad truth is that most victims suffer at the hands of their own immediate family or their most trusted friends, and statistically the place where you ought to feel the most safe is sometimes the most terrifying place in the world to be.

In a great many ways, despite the fact that there is a lot of goodness to be found if you still believe in it, and refuse to assume the worst of everyone, it’s can also be a ghastly world out there, my friends, and it’s almost certain that about one-in-four of the people you meet today will have come into contact with its seamier side at some point in their youth.

This does not in any way “normalise” it, but we do need to realise that this does not mean that one-in-four of the adults we meet is a creep or a weirdo, and that none of this is ever the fault of the victims, no matter how much that sad minority who choose to do such things might want you to believe that.