How's About That, Then?

Either people are trying to steal a slice of the estate of a very famous and wealthy bachelor with no direct heirs.

Or else "everyone", including Esther Rantzen by her own apparent admission, knew for decades that he was preying on young girls, but did nothing about it. That is easily enough to require the forfeiture of Rantzen's CBE, which was awarded in 2006 specifically "for services to children".

It must be one or the other, if not a bit of both. So, which is it?

Either the late Sir Jimmy Savile was innocent of these offences, and the Crown Prosecution Service, which has a very mixed record on these matters but would have loved the scalp of an immensely well-known Catholic philanthropist with, paradoxically, connections to Margaret Thatcher, could find no case against him as recently as 2007.

Or else, as his sadly far from unusual views on the Gary Glitter case would suggest, he held, he acted on, and he benefited from other people's adherence to, views on sex between adults and at least adolescents, if not even younger children, which in his long heyday were the norm among media types, among senior Police Officers, among prosecutors (or not), among people who thought of themselves as civil liberties lawyers (some of whom have gone on to become judges or Cabinet Ministers), among social workers, among academics in the field, and so on.

The only institution that manifested, however imperfectly, some level of disapproval of such acts themselves was the Catholic Church. Moving priests might not have been the best response, but it was at least any response. From Roman Polanski, to Jonathan King, to the dramatic output of Channel Four (which you and I own), to the recent case in Rochdale, it is perfectly clear that the view that such acts are normal, natural, and actively to be encouraged is still as alive and well in the "responsible" circles as it was in the 1970s.