"Children should be seen and not heard." I never did care much for that expression. Even as a child, I could detect oppression a mile off, and for me that phrase was oppressive. Now, in light of the revelations that for 50 years Jimmy Savile was presenting a paedophilic lie to a public tricked into adoring him, I realise how dangerous such beliefs are.
Fast forward to 2012, and those who cannot accept they have been hoodwinked by a cunning confidence trickster for the past 50 years are now trying to say that victims are wrong for waiting until he died to come forward. Yet these children, now adults, were terrified to come forward. It was safer to be seen and not heard.
They were terrified of not being believed. They were terrified of what the consequences would be if they were believed. They were terrified of being the ones who threatened the charity work he was using as a cover for his misdeeds. The victims who did come forward to the police while he was alive found their complaints ignored.
Those who should have come forward, did not. These same people - other celebrities 'who knew', agents and assistants - are still not exactly falling over themselves to come forward now either. In some ways this is understandable, for they should be in the dock for treating his depravity like a joke. "We all knew about Uncle Jimmy" they smirked, as though he was nothing more than a slightly more paedophilic version of Benny Hill.
This is serious though. Anyone who knew Savile's behaviour was more than just a little tomfoolery, and kept his dirty little secret for him, should be put on trial.
The BBC should also be closely examined over their mishandling of the affair. For 40 years, they put Savile on television and radio, gave him children's programmes to work on and made a hero out of him - meaning that in some small way we were all victims of the decades-long stunt.
Following the emergence of the scandal, one which took an ITV documentary to reveal, the BBC response has been defensive, then inconsistent, before finally realising that an independent investigation is inevitable.
This is more evidence that the BBC is far too big an institutionalised beast, and should be broken up, with its local and national, TV and Radio divisions split, so that institutionalised power bases cannot be formed so easily. If there is a call to break up the Murdoch press over transgressions due to its size and crass bureaucracy, then a call to split up the BBC in the same manner is a perfectly acceptable one.
The BBC is not the only organisation with questions to answer. Police forces received numerous complaints about Savile's sick actions over the years. Any police or Crown Prosecution Service failings must be examined.
Then there are the "charity" visits to hospitals where nurses told child patients to pretend to be asleep. I can understand how the nurses felt. Sometimes it is easier not to act, for speaking up often opens up a vault of greater unpleasantness. Anyone who has worked in a public facing role, perhaps in a bar or a restaurant, will have experienced the situation where someone deeply unpleasant occasionally visits. The desire is to impose a permanent ban of the person from the premises, but often it is easier to tolerate the oaf, usually with the comfort of knowing they will be gone in half an hour. Life can carry on as normal until their next visit.
However, this is insufficient in this situation. If these health practitioners knew something, they should have done something. This was about someone taking children to his grubby car to abuse them.
The children who were victims of Savile were let down by everyone. The abuses were allowed to happen by those charged to look after them. Although the misery they experienced was clearly known about, they were left to suffer in silence. To put it another way, they were seen but not heard.
