I am sure I am not alone in refusing to buy into the self flagellation, public trial and corporate punishment of the BBC over their own role in badly reporting the ongoing child abuse stories unfolding almost hourly before our eyes.
Yes we can, if we wish criticise them for not publishing and or revealing earlier and more openly their in house concerns on Jimmy Saville's behaviour over the years. And yes individuals within the BBC may have their own skeletons to hide away in the corporations prop cupboard.
But then after acknowledging what they got wrong ask yourself a few simple questions. Such as, when Jimmy Saville abused young girls on the wards of NHS hospitals was it the BBC who let them in onto ward in the middle of the night? When accusations were made to the Police over his possible paedophile activities was it the BBC that the police referred to over any possible prosecution not the CPS? And were the BBC not Social Services running the Children's Homes where he and others committed their vile acts? And was it the BBC who tied up young boys at the home before then transporting them around the country to large houses where they were abused and used as personal sexual playthings by evil men?
And then we have the more recent accusations related to the Bryn Estyn children's home in North Wales, Newsnight may well be sued by Lord Mcalpine for their role in repeating and reporting the allegations being made against him, even though they didn't name him at the time, but can they be really be guilty of encouraging the trial by internet which had already began to gather pace online prior to their report being aired?
Of course its not the BBC who is responsible for these wicked acts and the current blanket press coverage focusing on their role is both ridiculous and becomes little more than a self lit smokescreen.
We are now in danger of forgetting that this whole story is really about wicked and depraved child abuse, and not about who has accused who of what? This story isn't about the BBC or Lord McAlpine's and his internet accusers, it is about children and young people, going back many decades, who were subject to cruel and depraved sexual abuse.
That abuse centred on (but does not end with) children's homes in north Wales - and specifically the
Bryn Estyn home near Wrexham this became news again earlier this month when victim Steve Messham spoke to
Newsnight, claiming that the Waterhouse inquiry, released in 2000, had
uncovered only a fraction of the abuse. This claim is also backed up by the questions asked by my good friend Tom Watson MP in Parliament.
But it was Steve Messham not the BBC who said McAlpine had abused him, and then withdrew his accusation a week later, saying he had been mistaken after the Police had shown him the wrong photo back in the 90's!
So what the hell is going on here, it was not the BBC it was the Police who had shown Steve Messham the wrong photo So are we not able to question, despite the obvious harm caused to Mr Messham as a result of his abuse, why in all the period of the 1990's to the current day he suggests he has only been shown and or has seen himself only two photos related to the case?
In his own words he says
"After seeing a picture in the past hour of the individual concerned,
this [is] not the person I identified by photograph presented to me by
the police in the early 1990s, who told me the man in the photograph was
Lord McAlpine,"
Lord McAlpine will of course seek his own recompense against those who named him prior to his own statement, and his lawyers I am sure will look very carefully at the role played by the internet in publicly revealing and repeating Steve Messhams accusations, but it is important for all of us I believe to concentrate not an individual accusation, but on the wider issues involved. Only then will we get to the truth instead of us all indulging in wild speculation as to what individuals and/or the BBC did or didn't do.
I still believe Tom Watson's claim that the abuse at Bryn Estyn Children's Home and others was carried out by a powerful group of Paedophiles which led all the way to the door of Number 10 during the Thatcher years and maybe even before her tenure, and I also believe that the current attacks on the BBC are far more than simply a coincidental sideshow.
Imagine if you will an establishment shook to its foundations by the whole scandal desperate for a quick diversion, in need of having the heat and light shone in a different direction, how could they possibly buy some time and sow confusion in the minds of the public, who could they use as a scapegoat? how could they manage and indeed change the news?
Well, simply by controlling it. If I was Lord Patten I would be more worried by who in high circles is deciding that it is acceptable to hang the BBC out to dry rather than simply castigating Newsnight and Panorama. I would be more worried as a Tory peer about any accusations of insider collusion rather than who will be the next Director General.
Premature publicity around the witch-hunt of dead celebrities and current political figures in absence of the facts is
now detracting from what should be the real purpose here, which is to find out the truth over the child abuse
that has gone on in the past and bring all those guilty to justice in the hope that the
victims (apart from the 12 who have all died prematurely since) some closure and make sure that such a cover up and collusion can not happen in the future.
The Public must not join the Police and the BBC and become obsessed with their own internal fault lines. They must not forget that by contemplating their own navels that by default they may be helping to conceal evidence that the abuse ever existed.
And they also mustn't be afraid to
go to all lengths to get to the truth, even though the establishment will as ever put every obstacle they can find in it's way.
