Of course that isn’t quite true. It was going on for decades and a lot of people knew about Saville;
victims, co-abusers, the authorities, friends and colleagues - and surely his
family must have known. Yes, judging by the way they ripped out his hideous
gravestone memorial under cover of night they must have known something. Not
everything perhaps, but something.
What strange things families are? Most have their secrets, things
they don’t want anyone else to know - a beater, an abuser, a violent drunk, a
liar, a cheat - things that they find too uncomfortable to share. It’s not all
simpleton children hidden away in attics and mad twin brothers, shame can be
made of much smaller things than that. Shame, that’s what the denial and
covering-up is about. Nobody likes to be shamed.
With family secrets everyone in the immediate
vicinity usually knows anyway. They know about the deformed monster chained-up in the cellar. They are just too polite, embarrassed,
frightened, indifferent, or sick of it to say. It’s just his way … He doesn’t mean any harm… I’m sure that it was a
mistake - or worse still… I don’t
believe you.
Yes, blood is thicker than water, but mud is thicker than blood and there’s no excuse for doing nothing. In Saville’s case his family did nothing because of the rewards they received. According to his niece, he bribed them into silence. If Saville’s family had outed him for what he was, and not left him to get away with it over and over again, maybe so many innocent people wouldn’t have been hurt.
Yes, blood is thicker than water, but mud is thicker than blood and there’s no excuse for doing nothing. In Saville’s case his family did nothing because of the rewards they received. According to his niece, he bribed them into silence. If Saville’s family had outed him for what he was, and not left him to get away with it over and over again, maybe so many innocent people wouldn’t have been hurt.
I dont for one minute think you fall into this category, but I feel a lot of commentators and certainly the purveyors of common chatter I hear are quite enjoying the view from the top of Mount Self-Righteous Indignation.
ReplyDeleteThe late Patrick Campbell once said something to me that remained in my thoughts
" If "ifs' and 'buts' were candy and nuts, we'd all have a very merry xmas"
Who knows, perhaps I do fall into that category, but as I explained in earlier posts - I really can understand a man making a mistake. With him it though it was a cynical campaign of continued sexual abuse over many years, often against the very weakest members of society. To me that is truly evil. I think there is no doubt he was a very bad and clever man. But then I only met him once so can't really judge.
DeleteThe other thing that probably makes me so edgy on this is that, as one who has known abuse myself, I feel very deeply for his victims.
DeleteThe suffering of his victims, the truly horrendous nature of his crimes and his pure and undiluted wickedness is never in doubt. I met him rather more than once but can only repeat what many others, more qualified, have already said - although a strange and unlikeable man, his crimes weren't printed on his t-shirt and weren't written on his forehead and my point was rather more about people standing on top of their self built hill of indignation and pointing fingers in whichever way their own moral compass points them and spraying blame like some Benedrine puff-adder - present company excepted of course
ReplyDeleteYes, casting first stones and all that. By all accounts he was a very clever man - but then most truly bad people are.
DeleteI believe serial killer Fred West had severe learning difficulties whilst Ted Bundy was, as you suggest, highly intelligent so Im not sure the pattern always fits. I believe we are all capable of the most horrific acts and crimes but something in our brains stops us - I guess if we could identify those amongst us who's conscious had a serious flaw then we wouldn't be having this conversation right now
ReplyDeleteI take your point Margaret although I watched a docudrama on Fred West and he struck me as both clever and highly manipulative. Intelligence and cleverness may be different things.
ReplyDeleteI think you are right about us all having the capacity to do terrible things. All we really need is permission to do them as happens in most totalitarian regimes and war. Most people won't give themselves permission, somebody else need to do that for them. Thanks for making me think Margaret.