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Originally Posted by Chris
I'm thinking along the lines of passive, permissive attitudes rather than "yeah, paedophilia!" attitudes really.
What struck me during the Panorama report last night was how many people knew, or suspected, what was going on, or treated it as a sort of 'common knowledge'. It fits with much of what has been said about "groupie culture" over the past couple of weeks - essentially, that the idea that underage teens being felt up or shagged by celebrities a decade or more older than them, in their dressing rooms was perhaps a bit racy but not particularly serious.
It seems to me that a lot of people cared too little and allowed the outrageous to become mere background noise.
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I can see where you're coming from, but I'm also wondering how much of that should be seen in the context of the time. I'm not trying to condone what happened in any way, but I'm not convinced (as yet) that things were particularly bad at the BBC compared to other organisations. The reality is that Savile abused children in several organisations not just the BBC. Let's also not forget the abuse in the Catholic Church, and recently the US boy scouts. Then there's John Peel who legally married a 15 year old in the 60s.
Once again, I'm not condoning anything, but I think we should also be careful to exclusively chastise the BBC. I think that the fact this was allowed to happen was at least partly an indication of wider society at the time, and we shouldn't lose track of that.
---------- Post added at 20:29 ---------- Previous post was at 20:23 ----------
Quote:
Originally Posted by martyh
I would also say that the attitude is still prevalent in state run institutions as shown in the recent sex abuse case in Rochdale where at least one of the victims who was in care complained only to be ignored
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I don't accept that this attitude would be encountered more frequently in 'state run' institutions.