Jimmy Saviles"papal knighthood"

An Open letter regarding the removal of Jimmy Savile's "papal knighthood"

Dear Sirs,
It is with a wry, arched eyebrow that I read that Vincent Nichols has decided to write to Rome to ask that the papal knighthood be removed for Jimmy Savile and that in response

Frederico Lombardi has come out condeming his crimes, suggesting that all victims of abuse come forward. 

The eyebrow in question was easily raised particularly because from dealings  with both Nichols and Lombardi ,we have found them both  quite  cynically predictable and slimy,  and I know that they both do a great line in "deflection" Lombardi even suggested that we all "join forces to fight pornography in other churches". 

Said eyebrow moves a little higher when I read that the great Tory Papist Lord Patten has said that the BBC needs to tell the truth and face up to the truth about itself in relation to the Savile scandal. The same Lord Patten who at the time of the papal visit said that any meetings between ratzinger and (carefully selected) abuse survivors would need to be carried out in private for obvious reasons?

As one of the founders of Survivors Voice Europe, an organisation of empowerment for survivors of clergy abuse, I cannot help but think that from the vatican perspective, this prolific sex offender, all his allies and cohorts and anyone that allowed the crimes to happen through the BBC are, to coin a phrase, manna from heaven! For the church the focus can be taken off their centuries of international child abuse crimes, their enabling, cover-ups and their evasion behind the so called sanctity of canon law – crimes that are still going on.

One might ask why I feel compelled to write about this but the correlations between the BBC and the catholic church are too close for comfort.  The impervious, arrogant, narcissistic flagrancy of the abusers, all protected because in both the church and the bbc case, the ‘bella figura’ of their public image far outweighs the value of a child’s life and potential. Institutional abuse, collusion and an overwhelmingly well-fed sense of their own importance – not much to choose between either of them!  It feels like the "knighthood " was given from one pedophile ring to another. What next - beatification?

Nichols – I suggest you are ill-placed to have any commentary on how this situation should pan out.  For our organisation and for me personally anything you have to say will only be seen as a gleeful deflection of your own organisations persistent, ongoing crimes. When you and your church have tidied up the filth in your own back garden, then perhaps you may find humility, empathy, compassion and congruence enough to have an opinion.  I suggest that rather than obsequiously write to rome to ask for an honour to be removed, you write to your pope and demand that the lessons and experiences coming out of this contemporary, sickening scandal help to educate the catholic church about how they can start to deal with their own disease and corruption.

Sending in the meantime our kindest, warmest thoughts to survivors of abuse everywhere with particular attention to those of us who had the crimes compounded by the institutional cover up and neglect that ensued.

Sue Cox 

Survivors Voice Europe

 

The season of grief

Today I feel like shit, it is nothing that anyone can do, nothing indeed that I can do, it is just one of those days when the thick unpenetrable armour that I usually wear must be in the wash! Everything around me seems sad, every overly sentimental song or Christmas stuff in the shops every reference to anything vaguely emotional is like a knife in my heart. it is like every pain I have ever felt is on the surface again. and that knife keeps twisting.

I am not given to sentimentality,I don’t do “new age stares” or maudlin  stories, I don’t even do soft and gentle!  the reason being that I cannot bear it! I would not be able to function, so the armour stays put!

It is of course Autumn, and as a practitioner of Chinese medicine I know that it is seen as the season of  grief, the mist and the leaves falling off the trees all around,everything starting to die, and the time when people seem to be always reflecting.That doesn’t ever help! 

I grieve for my son, for my childhood , for my peace of mind,for what might have been,  remembering the abuses, the hardships, the violence,the loneliness,  immersed once again in pain.

It WILL pass, it always does, and later today the armour will be dried and ironed and back on me! And I  won’t shed a tear, I won’t show any emotion, I will have dry eyes and  the tough exterior I prefer to be visible, and I will get busy! 

All will be as normal. 

Until the next time.

Twisting the knife

It would be very easy for every survivor-focused organisation to jump on the very unpalatable and horrific bandwagon that is the Jimmy Savile/BBC et al saga to highlight their particular cause – I am sure they all will, and so will we! It is vital to  use such a high profile case to spotlight the real issues. But as a charity focused specifically on survivors of the most prolific of all child abuse cover-ups in history across the globe, we think it right to take a more global view on what this saga represents for our society.
 
We were struck by the alleged random comment from one of the many names involved in Operation Yewtree that because this particular story had captured the interest of the public they needed to do something about it?  
 
What we fail to understand is why the systematic abuse and cover up by the catholic church fails to capture the interest of the public – but more importantly why so much time, effort and obviously money will be put into a full enquiry about a tinpot presenter who during his lifetime had he been found out would have been pursued by our legal system.  Why is there no enquiry or like Enda Kenny, a clear, definitive standpoint about other child abuses, thousands of them, by the catholic church who institutionally enable, collude and cover up their crimes all under the banner of the sanctity of canon law?  
 
We feel a sense of dark connection to all survivors of abuse and can empathise with the obvious disgust that Savile’s victims may well be feeling to know that so many so called professionals including nurses and colleagues are coming out of the woodwork, wringing their hands saying that they were aware of the rumours, some even allegedly witnessing these abuses and doing nothing to report it or stop it.  It is galling to realize that as a survivor you have been sacrificial, unimportant in the face of the greater good – in our case the holiness of the church, and if it is to be believed, in Jimmy Savile’s case his ‘great charitable work’. Such flagrant psychopathic, predators rely on an aura of arrogant imperviousness and as a country we should hang our heads in shame for allowing such people to remain untouchable.  
 
At what point are we going to say that a child’s life and potential is more important than money, than politics, than religion, than the reputation of so-called celebrities, than charities – surely a child’s life has to be the most important thing on our planet today. What could possibly be more important? 

Because Savile was well known, this case has garnered national attention but it is important to remember that childhood sexual abuse is widespread,and impacts on thousands of peoples lives every day.Thats why shedding a light on this issue is crucial.    
We call on our Government, on all churches, on the police, on the British public on anyone who believes that what they are reading about in the press is the tip of an iceberg of covered up abuses across the spectrum of institutions.  We ask that a full enquiry be had, as much money if not more to be put into investigating the list of crimes against children that are systematically negated, ignored, covered up and shoved under the carpet, especially by institutions that hide behind their self-created canon law, their diplomatic immunity and any other such ‘get out of jail free’ cards.  We demand that all our political and global representatives take a unified standpoint on the rights of children across the world, that no child’s potential be taken away by the failure of the adult world to protect them from these ‘hiding in the open’ criminals – and it is a failure of all societies starting with the first time an adult hears or witnesses these abuses and closes the door on it, preferring not to be involved.  And we call upon anyone, anywhere who is aware of child abuses to come forward, be brave and report it. Maybe then, when enough people come out it will then be big enough to capture our attention and therefore somebody will take a stand and do something about all the rest.
 
For us the latest revelations are not about whether he did it or not, whether he should be stripped of his title, whether the BBC covered it up (although we have our thoughts) or whether anyone else was involved – for us this sadly highlights the deep flaws in a society that is suddenly outraged as oppose to having an inherent almost biological sense that these criminals are allowed to carry out their travesties on children and get away with it. We know that paedophiles live in our midst, we know that there is no place for them in our society, we understand that they are flawed but that does not mean that we have to accept, allow, collude and enable their deviancies.  Neither does it mean that because ,in our case ,they wore a black cassock and a dog collar and are seen as "next to god" that they are above the law.  

We send our sincerest, empathic, kindest thoughts to all survivors of abuse but here specifically those of us who had the crime compounded by the snivelling, cowardly accomplices that allowed the criminals to get away with their crimes and the pathologically self-absorbed institutions who gave these perpetrators fodder for their predelictions all behind the safety and arrogantly locked closed doors. 

And from a personal perspective. The overiding legacy for me of being sexually abused by a priest , and then not cared for, was  a profound feeling of being "Unworthy of concern,""Insignificant", and "Sacrificial" That default position was further compounded for all of us by the church's lack of compassion and appalling disregard of survivors of their pedophile clergy.This is a life sentence. Made worse by various governments,who have ignored  our decades of screams  for an independant inquiry into the handling of these crimes, and have faced denial,been blamed,  been lied to, belittled, called liars, manipulated and completely disregarded.

I do hope that the BBC and our Government makes good on their promise to hold an "immediate inquiry" into Savile's crimes,and the culture which enabled them, and I am pleased for his victims that their abuses are being taken seriously.

 

But as they do that, know that unless they give the same attention to ALL of these crimes they are twisting that knife further into our hearts and putting  catholic clergy abuse survivors right back into feeling exactly what we have always been made to feel- abused again, and "Unworthy of concern", "Insignificant" and Sacrificial"

ALL child abuse is a crime against humanity

 The truth about Jimmy Saville has shocked the nation as he emerges as a prolific sexual predator, who preyed on young girls for decades. And it is indeed shocking! Absolutely appalling that his crimes were never reported and that so many people were damaged. 
But I do have to wonder - why the hell does it take the deviations of a weirdo "celebrity" to send shock waves across the country? 
Why the hell isn't the entire world  shocked by the behaviour of catholic priests who not only committed  these  same crimes, but did  it in the guise of being "next to God" It seems the country has not been quite so appalled by the thousands who have suffered at their hands.

This is not to detract from the horrors of Saville and his cronies, there is no such thing as a "worse" abuse, ALL sexual abuse of children is a crime against humanity. But why do we scream in horror at this particular pedophile, and yet disregard the sharks in dog collars, hiding behind canon law?  In this the BBC has an appalling record , and have always been known to be very selective in their coverage of these crimes. They hardly reported the twenty-thousand people who marched in protest of the pope's visit in 2010. They even appointed Chris Patton, with his  direct line to the vatican as DG!

Mark Williams Thomas programme about Saville did a fabulous job at exposing this creep, and indeed Mark has shown himself  always to be very much on the side of the survivors of these crimes. He would NOT however,  have been given the support to produce such a programme by the BBC!  

 No longer can they sit in that ivory tower and decide what the general public should or should not see or hear! They have shown themselves to have a lot to answer for by disregarding Saville and others' behaviour. 

Self appointed children's champion Esther Rantzen's display of wringing of hands and tears was only surpassed by her monumentally stupid comment that "even" the pope thought Saville was ok!!!  Well I am quite bloody sure Hitler thought Himmler  was a good chap too! Ratzinger really is no criteria! The fact that she then went on to admit her collusion, that she and others knew what was happening!  begs the question what actually are her motives  as the founder of childline? The cynic in me might think that it is a lot about ego, and very little about children.

This is an appalling time, and as the shocking details emerge, and there will no doubt be more of them, I can only hope that it will at last open the eyes of everyone to the other victims of abuse, to  spare a  thought for the thousands upon thousands of catholic clergy abuse survivors who are fighting daily for the  acknowledgment of the crimes  against them, and who would be delighted to be treated with the same  respect and  sympathy given to Saville's victims.
It is timed we held a mirror up to ourselves as a society and STOP colluding with these criminals, and  the enablers  who cover up for them,  or "turn a blind eye" They are equally guilty. 
 Please stand and be counted for ALL children who have suffered at the hands of these greedy selfish criminals. And please know that at  the side of some of the clergy, even Saville's disgusting reign  pales almost into insignificance.

Rest In Peace

I have just read the report of the nephew of Jimmy Saville who says he is "disgusted" that people could come out and talk about their abuses by Saville after he is dead, and "not here to defend himself"
Echos of my own experience here. I was told by a cousin that it was "despicable" to speak about my abuses when the people concerned weren't there to "defend" themselves! In my case the priest who abused me and my Mother who refused to deal with it.
This is complete ignorance.
Ignorance of childhood sexual abuse is one of our biggest hurdles, stupid people who simply have no clue what exactly this experience does to a human being's ability to cope, to talk about it, to even stop feeling ashamed of it, despite being the wronged party.It is precisely this ignorance that makes victims less likely to come forward, they know that the church especially does a nice line in "victim blame" and  it would appear that the same ignorance pervades elsewhere.
Firstly lets be clear- the IS no defence for these crimes. But don't we all wish these people were still around to face the consequence of their actions. The power they have to instil fear into their over their victims to "keep quiet" is a common feature of pedophiles.
In my case, a perverted sense of loyalty meant that I could not have talked about it while at least my Mother was alive.I was far too afraid!
What I think in their  ignorance, they are also  trying to say is that these people should be allowed to "Rest in Peace"
Rest in Peace!  I wish I could have had some bloody peace! I wish I could have lived my life without nightmares and damage, without fear and guilt.
Rest in Peace! I am quite sure the children who have been so defiled have never, nor can ever completely have any peace!
I also sincerely  hope the rest of the people who colluded with Saville, as well as the catholic church which is also a  great "enabler" don't ever get to "Rest in Peace", until they acknowledge the crime against humanity that childhood sexual abuse is, and begin to make amends to all those they have harmed.