Away from the celebrity scandals and conspiracy theories, abusers are often the most ordinary of monsters

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/nov/07/abusers-often-most-ordinary-monsters

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Are we in the midst of paedogeddon? A huge, unnecessary moral panic about abuse triggered by the Savile revelations? Not exactly but something strange is going on. We have indeed been here before, but my hope is that instead of swinging between outrage and denial about child abuse, we may start to hear what victims and their advocates have been telling us for decades.

The MP Tom Watson says he has been shocked by what he has been told about coverups, Tory politicians and paedophile "networks". He seems genuinely horrified by the dark and disturbing information he has received. I understand a little because since I wrote about Savile a couple of weeks ago, asking that we focus on the victims and not the BBC or political point-scoring, I have also been the recipient of too much information.

While I imagine Watson has been privy to horrible stories about institutionalised sexual abuse, I have been inundated with stories from women who have been abused mostly in familial circumstances. Some of them are confused about whether they really have been abused.

It is terribly sad stuff, listening to adults who feel guilty about something that happened to them long ago, and who feel betrayed by those who should have protected them. This tangle of feelings may lead to damage that resonates through generations because the boundaries between sex and love became so twisted at an early age. My point is simple: the locus of most abuse remains the home but in the current climate it is easy to get swept into David Icke-type conspiracy theories.

The internet is awash with names of powerful men who are being outed as abusers with no evidence. We need to be clear. The abuse of those in care, children often already neglected, with behavioural problems, is something we have known about for some time. In the 1990s institutional abuse was being investigated by 41 out of 43 police forces. Yet the Waterhouse Inquiry reported a "cult of silence" about the level of abuse.

Is silence the right word? Rather, those abused as children have been screaming into a void. The culture pressed some kind of mute button when they spoke. We value neither them nor the people paid to look after them.

The low status of "carers" is an intrinsic part of this scandal. Residential social work is often done by low-paid and unqualified people. I know, as I did it when I was not much older than the teenagers in my care. The economy of care has actually worsened since then, as the private sector moved into care homes, pushing pay down. One of the shocking facts to come out of the Rochdale grooming scandal was the number of private children's homes in the area. Thus, we remove children from families and entrust them to those we pay little and don't bother to train. Social work is demonised by those who bang on about "paedos" but see all child protection as "health and safety gone mad".

Indeed this focus on paedophile networks becomes unhelpful and hysterical. Historically we have swung from Satanic abuse to a backlash of false-memory syndrome, where victims were again discredited. Feminists have been accused of pushing an "anti-family" agenda as though we don't have families.

To bring this back to the victims once more, we now have adult men who are naming high-profile abusers, a flurry of rumours and an attempt by the government to appear to be doing something. The recognition of abuse has been seen as a leftie/liberal delusion. Safeguarding and CRB checks have indeed been cack-handed and intrusive but it is important to remember they were born from a wish to protect children.

These allegations are not new and we know there has been a complete breakdown of trust between the victims and the police. Why haven't the police investigated the evidence they are said to have in North Wales?

We now see each institution trying to cover its tracks, be it the BBC, the police or the government. All are struggling to cope with information that is very old but to which they have turned a blind eye. Transparency remains a fantasy, which is why conspiracy thrives.

The nightmares of boys taken in Bentleys, girls taken to a flat to meet a celebrity, the banality of evil revealed in blood-streaked sheets, are enough. We do not need to concoct vast networks of paedophiles. This happened in our midst. This sudden need to apportion blame is about our guilt for not having listened. But those who have been abused are used to not being believed. Those who abuse count on this. The focus on Savile has triggered many to now tell their truths and, if we can bear to listen, it is heartwrenchingly apparent that, unlike Savile, many of these men who abused children are the most ordinary of monsters.

We don't need an inquiry to tell us this, or that "care" is often not care at all. We need, instead, the political will to provide the resources to look after our most vulnerable children properly and to prosecute those who rape them. Only then will we have "moved on" from where were 20 years ago.