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You are here: Home / British sex abuse: worse than you can imagine even though you know it is worse than you can imagine

British sex abuse: worse than you can imagine even though you know it is worse than you can imagine

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Brad DeLong’s first rule of George dubya would seem to apply here.

Figures from police forces in England and Wales published on Wednesday reveal that 1,433 men have been identified in reports of alleged abuse by victims, since the operation was set up in 2014.

Of these 216 are dead, 76 are politicians, both national and local figures, 43 are from the music industry, 135 from TV, film or radio and seven from the world of sport.

[…] Hundreds of institutions have been identified by victims of non-recent abuse as places where their abuse took place. These include 154 schools, 75 children’s homes, 40 religious institutions, 14 medical establishments, 11 community groups, nine prisons or young offender institutions, nine sports venues and 28 other places including military establishments.

Abused children apparently number over a hundred thousand. Those are just the ones we know about.

Reader Interactions

47Comments

  1. 1.

    PaulW

    Part of me is worried that the actual number is getting exaggerated a bit, because hundreds of thousands seems a bit too high a statistic here. But the sheer number does point to a serious and troubling trend of horrific behavior by too many people in positions of power… :(

  2. 2.

    Bobby Thomson

    Isn’t the real scandal that they only recently started investigating abuse? The numbers actually don’t seem that high when you consider they are nationwide, unrelated, and over a period of decades.

  3. 3.

    Tim F.

    @PaulW: Sorry, I initially said hundreds of thousands when the current number is not that much over 100k. Still an obscene number.

    @Bobby Thomson: Not unrelated. A large number of those fucks were working together.

  7. 7.

    Gin & Tonic

    Don’t mean to be cynical, but is there something about rich and powerful men sexually abusing children that is either new or uniquely British?

  9. 9.

    Barry

    @Gin & Tonic: “Don’t mean to be cynical, but is there something about rich and powerful men sexually abusing children that is either new or uniquely British?”

    At this point my money would be on the side that an honest inquiry in the USA would top that.

  10. 10.

    aimai

    @Gin & Tonic: No. Not uniquely British. Shared, probably, with other small states. They haven’t scrateched the surface of the horrors in Belgium, for example, or the Vatican qua city-state.

  11. 11.

    SRW1

    @Tim F.:

    A large number of those fucks were working together.

    That’s the really chilling thing about it, namely that there were guys who were protected by the police and the secret service. Apparently up to including homicide.

    Btw, there is a similar, though smaller scale, sex scandal in Germany. It has been known for some time that right after its founding the Green party there had some misguided ideas about the appropriateness of sexual relationships between kids and adults. Turns out that in the state of Berlin the party had some known pedophiles among its leadership in the 1980s who were tolerated to live these ‘ideas’ freely.

  12. 12.

    NotMax

    @aimai

    Population of Vatican City is about 800 (roughly half of those holding citizenship), so any numbers at all would by necessity be somewhat less.

  13. 13.

    Debbie(aussie)

    We here in the land down under are going through a Royal Commission into the institutional handling of the abuse of children. This is an article about today’s submissions in the city of Ballaratt.
    http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/may/21/ballarat-bishop-tells-abuse-victims-you-are-destroying-the-church-inquiry-hears
    It is monstrously disgusting. Somehow we have to stop the powerful from protecting those within their ranks who commit these foul deeds. We as a society no longer expect this to be swept under the carpet.

  14. 14.

    Peale

    O.K. But that 1,400 number is everyone who has been reported. It’s not one big huge scandal. It also includes the other cases of abuse. I don’t think this is 1,400 Jerry Sanduskies.

  16. 16.

    aimai

    @NotMax: Yes but percentages might be similar. Also the pedophile ring in the Vatican involves not children living in the city but teens and children who pass through (choristers in the case of the story that was breaking last time I was in Rome).

  17. 17.

    Elmo

    Am I the only one who sees that headline and immediately thinks “McMartin preschool?”

  18. 18.

    kc

    Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t many of these instances unproven allegations of abuse?

    Let’s not do McMartin all over again.

  20. 20.

    kc

    Officer leading Operation Hydrant inquiry says out of 1,433 alleged offenders 76 were politicians, 43 were from music industry and 135 were from TV, film or radio

    Ooh, scandalous. How many were convicted?

  21. 21.

    ruemara

    If there’s one thing the rich and powerful do, it’s indulge themselves. This sort of investigation here in the US would also net thousands of criminals and you may just have your hundred thousand victims. Sad to say, but you also may have results like millionaire convicted of raping his 3 year-old daughter who was given no jail time because it would be hard on him. Some people are more equal than others.

  22. 22.

    boatboy_srq

    @PaulW: As of 2014 the UK had 64 million people. England and Wales comprise about 85% of that total. The numbers are bad, but the rate appears to be fairly consistent with at least the US incidence (which with over 300 million will have a far higher total number). So, unsurprisingly tragic.

  24. 24.

    boatboy_srq

    @kc: Interesting that the perps are identified, at least by industry segment. One more reason for national health services: digging for this information from US sources is nowhere near as easy, straightforward – or, in this case, capable of yielding so much detail.

  26. 26.

    Bobby Thomson

    @Tim F.: some always do, but “a large number” is pretty vague and this includes people like Gary Glitter who committed their crimes in Asia.

  34. 34.

    Cervantes

    @Comrade Dread:

    I think I’d reconsider re-opening the Tower of London for this lot.

    If you’re thinking of killing them: most executions actually took place on Tower Hill, north of the Tower. In fact there was a more or-less permanent scaffold on the Hill for hundreds of years, only banished late in the 18th century.

    Ironically, pioneering Quaker William Penn was born in a residence on the Hill while the executions were an on-going attraction.

    Which, in a round-about way brings me to what I meant to say (before I was distracted): child-abusers are monsters but I’m still not in favor of the death penalty.

  35. 35.

    Cervantes

    @aimai:

    No. Not uniquely British. Shared, probably, with other small states. They haven’t scrateched the surface of the horrors in Belgium, for example, or the Vatican qua city-state.

    Friend of mine went missing in Chile years ago. We suspect he was captured and murdered because he stumbled into a child-abuse cartel run by Nazi emigrés for the benefit of the Pinochet elite. The facility was also used by Pinochet to torture and kill political prisoners.

  36. 36.

    MazeDancer

    In 2002, the US Department of Health and Human Services reported 896,000 cases of child abuse.

    One year.

    Just the reported cases. And unlikely those were rich and famous people in organized rings. Also, unlikely the daddymommy/uncle/grandma/stepdad/boyfriend/ molestation kept secret in families was part of that total. That is much more common than the evil outsider kind.

    It is also much easier to talk about the concept of the evil outsider than the evil insider in the family or church.

    The 2013 report says the percentage of abused children has reduced from 12% to 9% zones. Less abuse is always welcome news. But, again, the unreported “everything seems fine” numbers remain unknown.

    I once asked my therapist how many of her clients were child abuse survivors. She said 95%. This did include emotional abuse as well as physical and sexual.

    Here is a batch of “adverse childhood experiences” statistics, that gives quite high numbers, that I cannot link because that would be 3 FYWP links, but the site is www. childhelp. org/child-abuse-statistics/

  37. 37.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    @Elmo: I see strong shades of difference given the time period and the (apparent) lack of guided coordinated interrogation of children. The unwillingness of law enforcement to investigate the rich and powerful is both entirely plausible and well documented in other instances.

    All that said, we must always remember the McMartin preschool fiasco. I just think it’s an inapplicable comparison here, (ma’am).

  38. 38.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    @a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):

    IIRC, McMartin and other notorious abuse cases in the 1980s and 1990s crossed the line from “believe the children” to “feed the children the story you want them to tell.” It ended up screwing up a lot of the kids, unfortunately, because they were told by trusted adults that they had been abused, and found out later that it was all bullshit and they basically had been encourage to make it all up.

  39. 39.

    Tree With Water

    Only the dead outnumbered the politicians in that report. John Cleese once noted that a difference between America and Great Britain is that the British reflexively assume their politicians are sexual perverts, while Americans don’t. I laughed, of course, but it didn’t occur to me that he was being serious

  40. 40.

    mai naem mobile

    I know somebody who is involved in the recommendations made to prevent.this.from.happening. She said she has lost all trust in the system. She said it is so ridiculously widespread that she wouldn’t be shocked if something comes up with Prince Phillip when he passes away. I thought it was people were embarrassed or fearful of reprisal and didn’t report the crimes. But,nope, what bothered her reading all.this stuff was how a lot of this stuff was reported to authorities and it was not followed up on or.covered up.

  41. 41.

    jeannedalbret

    Storyline Prime Suspect 1993

    (Very sad the Brits did not pursue this story in 1993. Great show.)

    Detective Chief Inspector Jane Tennison moves to a new district and is put in charge of a vice investigation instead of homicide. But soon a homicide case impinges on her new job when a very young male prostitute is murdered in the apartment of Vera Reynolds, a female impersonator. Soon Jane is on the trail of the boy’s brutal young pimp (played by David Thewlis). But her investigation is complicated by the Old Boy’s Network, which is spying on her and is more concerned with preventing scandal than bringing the villain to justice. Written by Reid Gagle

    Plot Summary | Plot Synopsishttp://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106104/

  43. 43.

    Brachiator

    @Gin & Tonic:

    Don’t mean to be cynical, but is there something about rich and powerful men sexually abusing children that is either new or uniquely British?

    No, and it is not limited to the rich and powerful. As poster aimai noted, one of the largest and most sickening cases involved perpetrators in Belgium.

  44. 44.

    Tree With Water

    Google the lyrics to the 1968 Rolling Stone song, Stray cat Blues. They don’t perform that one anymore..

  46. 46.

    Tree With Water

    @PaulW:

    T Bogg posted a tweet from the molestor that quotes Sam Houston: “Do right and risk the consequences”. He instead took his cue from the republican party playbook, deciding to “brazen it out and risk the consequences”. And that pesky old ‘statute of limitations’ bugaboo pretty well guarantees that indeed he did just that, and can now retire a very wealthy guy.

    Still, and as sick as was Duggar’s behavior, he doesn’t have the blood of tens of thousands on his hands, or thousands of others who today live their lives maimed in body and spirit. Comparatively speaking, Duggar looks like a mere scofflaw..

  47. 47.

    mclaren

    If this kind of stuff is going on in Britain, what do you think is going on in America?

    I’m still betting that the reason for excavating an underground addition to Mitt Romney’s La Jolla mansion is so he could install a bunch of new cages to hold underage girls.

    And as for the Bush family… Has anyone looked into disappearances of young girls around the Bush family compound? Mutilated corpses found in the vicinity? Anyone? Bueller? Anyone?

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