It is the story that will not go away. Britain has long had a voyeuristic obsession with paedophiles, which led to the public feeding frenzy that accompanied the revelation of Jimmy Savile's secret predatory life. Since then, the binoculars behind the venetian blinds have been focused towards Jeremy Forrest, the teacher convicted for having sex with a pupil aged 15.
I have long explained that Forrest needed a short but significant custodial sentence to at least cover taking the mystery girl (Lady X) to France. That is an appropriate punishment for the pain he put her family through, and provide a chance to reflect on his actions. I have also long said that the situation was never as straightforward as we thought. Critics still insist that Lady X was 'groomed' despite the premise of grooming being that the 'victim' is not aware they are being manipulated.
It is clear that in light of being fully aware of what grooming and paedophilia amounts to, Lady X still insists that she is in love with Forrest. She aims to marry Forrest and is supported by her father. Forrest has had unprecedented moral support from his own family. I will refrain from making a judgement for, as I already hinted at above, this case is complicated and I simply do not know enough about it.
Sadly, the authorities continue to bring great embarrassment upon themselves over this case. Police are now wasting their own time trawling Twitter to identify who named the mystery girl in defiance of the law, despite her name being as well-known as that of a minor celebrity.
While the stupidity of defying the law is without dispute, this is clearly a waste of police time and resources. Furthermore, if people are going to get in trouble with the law for naming people in defiance of the law, what about the companies that are facilitating it?
On one social media network and at least one search engine, to find out the name of the girl who entered the relationship with Jeremy Forrest is so easy that a five year old could do it, for the websites in question provide cues to make it more efficient for visitors to search for what they are looking for.
This demonstrates that once again the law in the UK is biased against people in favour of firms and corporations. If you are a company, do what you like. If you are a person, feel the full weight of the law.
If the law applies to the people, it should apply to companies too. Don't hold your breath though.
