The abuse of children was regarded by many people until the 1980s as not being an especially serious matter. Much of it was not even illegal until the turn of the millennium.
Sadly, any man will today scrupulously avoid having anything to do with any child lest an accusatory finger be pointed. Last week, I passed a small girl crying whilst out on my bike. I blush with shame to confess that I rode past without stopping to enquire about the cause of her distress.
Ah, the 'Gentleman Pervert' triumvirate; The Flasher, The Peeper and the Knicker Thief! Very common in the 70s and 80s, often wondered where they had gone.
Good article. I’m sure it wouldn’t have helped with some prominent politicians from the earlier era who are now known to have a less than savoury interest in children. The dreadful Cyril Smith being a prime example
I am a 73 year old male who attended a grammar school for boys. We had several pervy masters, all of whom were well known to us pupils, none of our lot were particularly dangerous, minor gropings being about the worst offence They were seen by us as rather a humorous part of school life, like Richard Griffith’s character in “The History Boys”.
I joined the Met in mid '70s..we wherever I served took this extremely seriously..as far as the law would allow even if only a bind over for breach of the peace could be achieved..I've seen people imprisoned for breach or refusal of bind over..and in one case the serving police officer son of a very senior officer was hauled off and dealt with severely..no pressure was allowed to be brought..we knew today's flasher was often tomorrow's Rapist..perhaps I was lucky to have good coppers around me and senior management who would stand firm..often to the detriment of their future career..hmmmm
Judges back then followed the legal maxim that judges DECLARE the law, they do not make it. If it seems alarming to our present sensibilities that they should make such apparently anti-child decisions, it was because they did not see it as their place to usurp the prerogative of the legislature. If there was a shortcoming in the law, it was for parliament to address it, not the bench. They were, of course, quite correct. Once you start doing that, you end up with activist judges, which is what we have in far too great a number today, substituting their ideology for the law. It was hard on the victims, but the world is a hard place.
Even the expression "interpret the law" originally meant simply reading it as it had been written down, i.e. to 'interpret' the letters in a time of general illiteracy. Judicial activists have used this expression to grant themselves exorbitant leeway in how they declare the law.
Despite being a boomer I escaped all of this but probably by good luck than management. I went to a mixed school, never joined the Scouts and perfectly normal relatives (as far as I can tell).
It is interesting that this behaviour was apparently largely ignored during the sexual revolution but has quickly become reviled in the public consciousness decades later. The revolutionaries could not make up their minds: did sex matter, or did it not? Was the age of consent an important moral imperative, or a reflection of the old society's sexual repression? Was 'free love' going to emancipate women, or would it lead to them being increasingly abused, assaulted, objectified and discarded by selfish and predatory men?
The failure to address these questions coherently has got the revolutionaries into all sorts of trouble. If sex does not matter, and there should be no disapproval towards its casual and prolific pursuit by young people and young women in particular, why is rape such a dreadful thing? Why is it worse than, say, spitting on someone? Sexual and moral conservatives can answer this, but sexual revolutionaries cannot. Likewise sexual and moral conservatives can easily justify age of consent laws, even if they concede that the precise age decided on is by necessity arbitrary to some degree; but sexual revolutionaries cannot.
We know that many of 'thought leaders' of the sexual revolution, whether acknowledged as such or not, including the loathsome Alfred Kinsey, subjected children to the most disgusting sexual abuse in the name of advancing their radical and iconoclastic theories of human sexuality. I wonder if childhood sexual abuse was awkwardly brushed aside by the more 'front line' revolutionaries, realising that it would be politically unpalatable to propose 'children's lib' alongside 'women's lib,' but knowing full well the general relaxing of attitudes toward sexual conduct was likely to make childhood sexual activity an 'irresistable fact' (through exposure to pornography, underage sex or abuse by adults) which sooner or later the conservatively-minded public would just have to accept and get over, thereby achieving the cultural revolution which would sustain the sexual one into the future.
It is interesting to me that this appears to be one of the few behaviours towards which the law and public attitudes have moved in a more conservative direction over the course of the sexual revolution - away from permissiveness, licentiousness, and amorality. It suggests to me the truth in Burke's principle, that "men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites, — in proportion as their love to justice is above their rapacity, — in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption, — in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters."
In this case the consequence has been a general tightening of sexual conduct punishable (and actively punished) by law following the unintended consequences of the sexual revolution of which childhood abuse was almost certainly one. I am quite sure that the intellectuals behind the sexual revolution knew quite well where this would lead and that childhood sexual abuse, for them, was a consequence by no means unintended. Rather it was hidden inside the Trojan Horse of general (and especially female) sexual emancipation sold to the youth of the 1960s. This, I think, explains why the acts you describe only became illegal relatively recently. Having loosened the restraints on men's own consciences, sexual deviancy reached a level intolerable even to the naive revolutionaries, who then had to about-face, like Stalin, and call for the force of law to intervene ever more and more to deal with the circumstances they themselves had brought about.
The irony is that nowadays the pendulum has swung so far the other way that people take children seriously when they ought not to, i.e. transgenderism
This is perfectly true!
Sadly, any man will today scrupulously avoid having anything to do with any child lest an accusatory finger be pointed. Last week, I passed a small girl crying whilst out on my bike. I blush with shame to confess that I rode past without stopping to enquire about the cause of her distress.
It is quite understandable. Any adult male near a child is now seen as suspicious!
It is extremely sad and unpleasant but I have also done the same thing and passed on by without stopping to help a distressed child.
That teachers must be killed
Ah, the 'Gentleman Pervert' triumvirate; The Flasher, The Peeper and the Knicker Thief! Very common in the 70s and 80s, often wondered where they had gone.
Yes, one seldom hears of 'peeping Toms' these days!
Fear -
we live in a primitive fear-based society!
You are doing Great Work, Simon -
you have really found your voice -
well done!
Thank you, you are most kind!
Good article. I’m sure it wouldn’t have helped with some prominent politicians from the earlier era who are now known to have a less than savoury interest in children. The dreadful Cyril Smith being a prime example
Yes, that kind of behaviour was widely hushed up because it was not viewed at the time as being all that reprehensible.
I am a 73 year old male who attended a grammar school for boys. We had several pervy masters, all of whom were well known to us pupils, none of our lot were particularly dangerous, minor gropings being about the worst offence They were seen by us as rather a humorous part of school life, like Richard Griffith’s character in “The History Boys”.
Yes, that is my recollection too. It was just one of those things, that certain teachers liked to grope us!
Having done a fair bit of mind, body spirit healing with Men,
sexual experiences are all too common,
and the greatest harm done
is almost always done by authority figures,
whose hypocritical shock-horror approach
scars a child for life -
unless they learn to Face the Fear,
and evolve.
/
Having exposed a Plymouth duty solicitor -
handed boys on a plate by police
for decades -
for blackmailing many into sex,
I know all too well
how police conspire to pervert "justice"
to coverup sex crimes by authority.
/
Yes, the reaction of adults is often worse than the actual experience.
I joined the Met in mid '70s..we wherever I served took this extremely seriously..as far as the law would allow even if only a bind over for breach of the peace could be achieved..I've seen people imprisoned for breach or refusal of bind over..and in one case the serving police officer son of a very senior officer was hauled off and dealt with severely..no pressure was allowed to be brought..we knew today's flasher was often tomorrow's Rapist..perhaps I was lucky to have good coppers around me and senior management who would stand firm..often to the detriment of their future career..hmmmm
Judges back then followed the legal maxim that judges DECLARE the law, they do not make it. If it seems alarming to our present sensibilities that they should make such apparently anti-child decisions, it was because they did not see it as their place to usurp the prerogative of the legislature. If there was a shortcoming in the law, it was for parliament to address it, not the bench. They were, of course, quite correct. Once you start doing that, you end up with activist judges, which is what we have in far too great a number today, substituting their ideology for the law. It was hard on the victims, but the world is a hard place.
This is quite correct, of course. We get a little edgy when we see judges trying to make law, as we saw during Brexit with the Supreme Court.
Even the expression "interpret the law" originally meant simply reading it as it had been written down, i.e. to 'interpret' the letters in a time of general illiteracy. Judicial activists have used this expression to grant themselves exorbitant leeway in how they declare the law.
Despite being a boomer I escaped all of this but probably by good luck than management. I went to a mixed school, never joined the Scouts and perfectly normal relatives (as far as I can tell).
Yes, it was all-boys schools which had the worst of those who were into this kind of thing.
It is interesting that this behaviour was apparently largely ignored during the sexual revolution but has quickly become reviled in the public consciousness decades later. The revolutionaries could not make up their minds: did sex matter, or did it not? Was the age of consent an important moral imperative, or a reflection of the old society's sexual repression? Was 'free love' going to emancipate women, or would it lead to them being increasingly abused, assaulted, objectified and discarded by selfish and predatory men?
The failure to address these questions coherently has got the revolutionaries into all sorts of trouble. If sex does not matter, and there should be no disapproval towards its casual and prolific pursuit by young people and young women in particular, why is rape such a dreadful thing? Why is it worse than, say, spitting on someone? Sexual and moral conservatives can answer this, but sexual revolutionaries cannot. Likewise sexual and moral conservatives can easily justify age of consent laws, even if they concede that the precise age decided on is by necessity arbitrary to some degree; but sexual revolutionaries cannot.
We know that many of 'thought leaders' of the sexual revolution, whether acknowledged as such or not, including the loathsome Alfred Kinsey, subjected children to the most disgusting sexual abuse in the name of advancing their radical and iconoclastic theories of human sexuality. I wonder if childhood sexual abuse was awkwardly brushed aside by the more 'front line' revolutionaries, realising that it would be politically unpalatable to propose 'children's lib' alongside 'women's lib,' but knowing full well the general relaxing of attitudes toward sexual conduct was likely to make childhood sexual activity an 'irresistable fact' (through exposure to pornography, underage sex or abuse by adults) which sooner or later the conservatively-minded public would just have to accept and get over, thereby achieving the cultural revolution which would sustain the sexual one into the future.
It is interesting to me that this appears to be one of the few behaviours towards which the law and public attitudes have moved in a more conservative direction over the course of the sexual revolution - away from permissiveness, licentiousness, and amorality. It suggests to me the truth in Burke's principle, that "men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites, — in proportion as their love to justice is above their rapacity, — in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption, — in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters."
In this case the consequence has been a general tightening of sexual conduct punishable (and actively punished) by law following the unintended consequences of the sexual revolution of which childhood abuse was almost certainly one. I am quite sure that the intellectuals behind the sexual revolution knew quite well where this would lead and that childhood sexual abuse, for them, was a consequence by no means unintended. Rather it was hidden inside the Trojan Horse of general (and especially female) sexual emancipation sold to the youth of the 1960s. This, I think, explains why the acts you describe only became illegal relatively recently. Having loosened the restraints on men's own consciences, sexual deviancy reached a level intolerable even to the naive revolutionaries, who then had to about-face, like Stalin, and call for the force of law to intervene ever more and more to deal with the circumstances they themselves had brought about.
Yup, rest assured, the sickos are out there, pay close attention, be suspicious, talk to your children….
I never trusted any adult when my daughter was little.
Paedophile teachers are still to be found in comedy shows.
The Inbetweeners (S2,E1 The Field Trip).
Yes, some people still find them a subject of amusement, unfortunately.