Monsters, Inc.

Today, Rolf Harris, the avuncular presenter, comedian, artist and sex offender who came across as cuddly and inflicted more than that on his victims, was sentenced to five years, nine months. At 84, he may still be alive after ‘good behaviour’ (essentially not committing a crime whilst in prison, which is frankly a joke to cut the sentence in half). The leniency of the time is because it has to reflect 1970s sentencing guidelines when the bulk of the offenses on trial occurred. Fresh charges from other victims may keep him penned in penitentiary but he has smeared the childhoods of many across 30 years and more of people who never even met him, just as Jimmy Saville has forever tarnished Top of the Pops. And as for the torment that his victims suffered, it is chilling to think.
The Red Riding quadrillogy now seems very prescient about paedophile rings at the highest levels of society. Added to Harris and Saville, there was the now disgraced Stuart Hall and the late Rochdale MP Cyril Smith. Apparently a senior Tory was caught with child pornography at Border Control but after the material was passed to superiors, it just disappeared and the MP got away with his crimes. Then there was the abuse at a care home by some politicians and a dossier handed to former Home Secretary Leon Brittan containing the names of high-profile politicians alleged to be in a child sex ring, which has also mysteriously disappeared. Moreover, an internal review of hundreds of thousands of Home Office files found 13 previously undisclosed “items of alleged child abuse” last year. How can this just have ‘lain on file’. Of such grave matters, it cannot be incompetence.
Belgium was rocked by a paedophile scandal in the 1990s, which unravelled with the eventual trial of serial killer and child molester Marc Dutroux as high-ranking members of the police force and government were accused to be complicit in abusing children. I wondered how Belgium coped with such a devastating breach of trust in the authorities and now I know. Just as Austria had Joseph Fritzl (and others with secret dungeons) so did Britain have such a monster of its own. One can see how such disgusting behaviour became embedded in the establishment – before his fall from grace, Oscar Wilde used rent boys for sex as much as he would use other boys as chimney sweeps; he wasn’t the only one – yet as historic sex abuse comes to light now, like with ageing Nazi war criminals, it is a race against time to ensure they do not escape justice like Saville did.