Why Are We Having an Inquiry into Paedophile Allegations? Let the Police Do Their Job

By Dan Hodges Politics
The Telegraph
July 10, 2014

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danhodges/100279447/why-are-we-having-an-inquiry-into-paedophile-allegations-let-the-police-do-their-job/

What would you do if you thought a child was being abused? Phone the police? Contact the social services department of your local authority? Or phone the Home Office and ask to be put through to Theresa May?

Before this week I think the answer to that question would be fairly obvious. Now I’m not so sure.

As we speak our government is on the hunt for paedophiles. It’s looking for them in the hospitals. In the broadcast media. The church. Among the judiciary. Our government is even hunting them within the government.

At the same time, Ministers have embarked on a hunt for the people who did not hunt the paedophiles. Apparently, there is a “magic file” in which all the paedophiles are named. Or at least some of the more high-profile ones. Or at least, we think they’re high profile. We don’t know for sure, because the file has gone missing. Why? Who made it vanish? Our government wants an answer.

Or does it? It’s emerged that the woman the Government has appointed Paedo-Finder General may herself be implicated in the “establishment cover-up” of these horrific crimes. Well, we don’t know if there have actually been any crimes. And therefore we don’t know if there’s been any cover-up. But they’re bound to be horrific none the less.

You see, Elizabeth Butler-Sloss’s brother – the former Attorney General – once failed to prosecute an infamous “establishment” paedophile by the name of Peter Haymen. Haymen was an “establishment paedophile”, as opposed to just an ordinary paedophile, because he worked for MI6. And Butler-Sloss’s brother let him off scot-free, on the spurious grounds there wasn’t enough evidence to stand up the case in a court of law. Which apparently raises questions about his sister’s independence. Though not in the eyes of her nephew, the actor Nigel Havers, who has today claimed his aunt is herself the victim of “politically motivated” smears.

The country has flipped. Totally and utterly flipped.

The allegations of systemic child abuse are serious. They must be investigated. But we already have an established public body that has both the capacity and the resources to look into allegations of child abuse. It’s called the police service.

As the Savile investigation has shown, at times the police were not diligent enough in discharging their duties in relation to his grotesque activity. But unfortunately, we can’t just abolish the police and hand their duties to a retired judge because of one man's crimes. The police need to learn from their mistakes, and do their jobs better.

Similarly, there is no such thing as “historic child abuse”. We have no statute of limitations on crimes of this nature. Children were either abused, or they were not. These are matters for a criminal investigation, not a public inquiry.

If, and only if, the police uncover evidence of widespread and systematic abuse, then there may well be grounds for examining why these crimes went undetected. There is certainly a case for looking into how Savile was able to conduct his sickening reign of terror. But at the moment Lady Butler-Sloss appears to have been handed the remit of investigating just about every allegation of child abuse ever made in any British institute anywhere for a period spanning over half a century.

Some people have warned there is a danger this whole saga could degenerate into a witch hunt. They’re wrong. It’s already a witch hunt. As I type this Westminster is sinking beneath a tidal wave of rumour and innuendo. The names of MPs, celebrities and other well known individuals are being bandied about in an unedifying game of “hunt the child molester”. Living individuals are having their reputations tarnished now. Today. The ducking and burning is already under way.

And based on what? A single “dossier”, produced by a single maverick Tory MP, itself based – it appears – primarily on gossip and title-tattle he picked up in the bars and corridors of the palace of Westminster.

Just think about this for a second. We supposedly live in one of the world’s most mature democracies. And yet if just one Member of Parliament jots down the name of a few people he decides may be guilty of child abuse that can now become the catalysts for not one but two formal public inquiries. Have we gone totally insane?

The answer is yes, we have. There are currently calls to make “covering up child abuse” a criminal offence. But what constitutes a “cover-up”? I was told in a Westminster pub in 1993 that Jimmy Savile was a necrophiliac. Should I go to jail because I didn’t take that information to the police?

And why stop at child abuse? What about other crimes? Are we going to turn ourselves into a nation of informers, under pain of prosecution?

Yesterday the solicitor acting for some of the alleged victims of child abuse commented on Lady Butler-Sloss’s appointment. "There needs to be not a shred of doubt that this inquiry is not an establishment cover-up,” said Alison Millar, “and the concern really is that she is just too close to the establishment.”

Well yes Ms Millar, if you raise doubts, then there will be doubts. If you say she is a creature of the establishment then some people will indeed come to view her as a creature of the establishment.

This is where we’ve got to. “I think x is a paedophile.” “Why?” “I’m not sure.” “OK, let’s have an investigation into whether x is a paedophile.” “You’re investigating x to see if he’s a paedophile? I knew it! I always thought x was a paedophile.”

Our government is hunting paedophiles. So it will find some. And then we’ll demand more hunts. And there will be more. And it will find more. And so it will go on.