An open letter to the media, the BBC and all others concerned with the issue of child abuse, and in particular concerning the reportage of the Jimmy Saville case….

An open letter to the media, the BBC and all others concerned with the issue of child abuse, and in particular concerning the reportage of the Jimmy Saville case….

To whom it may concern,

The most frequent word being used to describe those who have been abused, harmed or assaulted by Jimmy Saville is ‘victims’, rather than the term ‘Survivors’ which we Survivors ourselves prefer to use.

There is a qualitative difference between the two words – one implies weakness, the other strength.

The etymology of the word ‘victim’ and its link to the word ‘victor’ is interesting, and worth reflecting upon. The victor tends to justify any abuses they perpetrate, or harm they cause, and thus they minimise the meaning of the lived experience of those amongst the ‘defeated’.

Yes, Saddam was a monster – yet did the Iraqi people deserve what was visited upon them by the International Community in the name of removing this monster?

Madelaine Albright’s infamous comment on the sanctions that preceded the removal of Saddam, was that “the price was worth paying – we think the price was worth paying.”  A price paid not by her, not by the US Government, or any other, not even by Saddam, but by the Iraqi people and their children.

There is also the use of the phrase “victim consciousness” which is often used to denigrate those communities and cultures who have been subject to massive and long term trauma and who come forward and seek acknowledgement of their stories as human beings, (rather than the simple and cold historical facts and statistics), from the inheritors of the Powers that traumatised them.

They are asked to ‘get over it’ – ‘ old history, not our ‘fault’, ‘things are different now’, ‘can we please move on’ etc etc….

These phrases are used to deflect honest reflection upon what has happened, and what the long term and present adverse affects are in meaning, and in the lived experience.

Vulnerability is not the same as weakness. One cannot describe the boys and girls assaulted by Jummy Saville as being weak, and ascribe that value of weakness to them as a quality they expressed that led to their abuse. One cannot in all fairness ascribe the value of weakness to those who suffer from the adverse affects of intergenerational trauma. Vulnerability is closer to the truth.

To Survive trauma and abuse most often means to live past the events themselves, scarred and wounded, and to slowly and painfully try to re-assemble oneself so as to continue to live as best one can.

Often this has to be done without adequate support or understanding from those closest to the Survivor, let alone the wider community and Society. This takes a formidable  unacknowledged strength.

Not all Survivors make it, and it’s not through weakness that this happens. It’s through vulnerability, and through that heart breaking sense of abandonment that comes with denial, that comes with the all too common reflexive unwillingness of Society to accept that a pillar of Society could behave in such manner, a refusal to believe the Survivor because it threatens the projected image and self image of what are held to be central tenets or solid Institutions of Society.

”How could someone who did SO MUCH GOOD do so much evil?”

A Survivor would never ask that question in the way the media has framed the reporting of that question. A Survivor would never ask it in that tone of bewilderment.
 The Survivors of Jimmy Saville's abuses are not concerned with the reputation of the BBC, as much as they are concerned with truth, recovery and restorative justice and the protection of present and future children.

So I am calling on all media, and anyone else concerned with these matters, to cease using the word ‘victim’ to describe those who were abused, and to use instead the word Survivor.To attribute strength to those who come forwards, and to those who are unable to come forwards, just for their willingness to continue living and coping with what they have been through.

I would also add that using the word ‘victimisation’ to describe the abusers actions towards the vulnerable is more reliable and accurate. The victimiser alters the reality of the abused. The victimisers is the culprit.

Finally, I note that in all of the reporting, the stories and histories of Survivors appears to be being screened out. This is a grave omission. It cannot, and must not stand if truth, justice and genuine resolution is the intent of those who are writing and acting on this matter. Kindest regards

Corneilius Crowley

Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe

The BBC and an Empathic Civilisation, from the cradle...

The roots of a genuinely humane and empathic Society are to be found in how we parent, as individuals, families, communities and Societies. Likewise the roots of a violent society.

PROTECT THE CHILDREN, NOT THE BBC

The psychology of any given family, community or society is both revealed and perpetuated in how that family, community or Society relates to and treats the children. Change that and you can change everything.

There is a spectrum of Societies ranging from egalitarian empathic to totalitarian violent, ans the best predictors of the evolution of either end of the spectrum, and everything in between is in how the natural child-mother bonding process mandated by our biology is either supported or undermined.

The biology and neuroscience of the natural development and utility of empathy as part and parcel of the human species adaptation to and position within a nurturing biosphere, one which incrementally increases environmental fecundity through the behaviour and action of all it's constituents, is quite well understood, yet Governments, Religions and Ideologies and many 'great Institutions' are consistently ignoring this data, because it is now amongst the greatest threats extant to their Power, their status and their image.

If the majority of people we aware of this data, and could both comprehend it and recognise aspects of it within themselves, based on their own visceral lived experiences, a primary source of information about the world, then Hierarchical Power which abuses those within it's 'mandate'  as we know it would soon fail, because inert compliance would not be forthcoming from such people.

The BBC has a role to play in this. Only we, the people, can create the pressure necessary for that role to be fulfilled in such manner that all our children's futures may be prepared for in ways that will guarantee the best possible outcomes for their lives.



Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe

Charity, Power, truth and Jimmy Saville

I appreciate the genuine desire of so many people to 'help others' through the agency of Charity.

And yet, to offer such temporary and often distal help rather than directly and with energy move to confront the actual causes of poverty, (and all the various other areas of need labelled as 'good causes' - note the use of the word cause in this which avoids the actual cause.... how ironic!), to chose  to avoid a head on collision with the truth, in order to look and feel good, rather than to resolve the issues to the greatest degree possible when we as a community and society are very much capable of doing this, (we can send a robot to Mars, design nano-computers that can be ingested, build massive international events such as The Olympics, etc), to avoid that defining human and essentially humane task, out of fear of changing the status quo, losing a job, or for any other 'reason', feels, in my heart of hearts, like a betrayal.

Charity is, to a much larger degree than most will openly acknowledge,  the guilt sop of the middle classes, and the propaganda of the ruling classes. For the lower income classes, charity always begins at home.

The Jimmy Saville story illustrates this quite well, amongst other things.
 

He was famous, feted by Power and Royalty, a TV star to millions of middle class folk, and when allegations were made during his tenure in that elevated position, they were played down, ignored or rejected because of his fame, because of his utility as a charitable agent, and his public profile as a man of good works. His 'oddness' was always besides the point.

At present, the media discussion is about the perpetrator, his accomplices, 'others', the 'enablers', and the restoration of the reputation of the BBC rather than the stories of the Survivors, and how such trauma has affected their lived experience throughout their lives, including how it has affected their families and relationships, and how those adverse affects play out in our communities.

People appear bewildered that "someone who did so much good, could be so evil."

To tell the story of what it really means to be a Survivor in this Society would be to begin to explore from a much deeper base the development of a truly profound critical analysis of our Society.

There is an unwillingness to look honestly at the many ways by which natural human empathy (not sympathy, a totally different thing) has been sidelined and effectively repressed across all sectors of Governance, Commerce and Religion, locally, nationally and internationally, as evidenced by the consistent disbelief of Survivors stories.

What kind of Society would ignore a child's plea for help? What kind of Society would protect it's image of itself in ways that permit harm to children?

Can one really be alive and fully human in a Society such as ours, working on the basis of 'this is the best of a bad lot' whilst refusing to confront and change what is harmful within it, when we know this is possible?

What kind of family would behave thus?

The blood, sweat, guts and tears of those who are oppressed, harmed or abused are hurriedly airbrushed out of the Politicians (and others) calls for change. They will not spend time reflecting on these uncomfortable realities; to FEEL THE FULL IMPACT of which would undermine that image of the status quo. That is utterly selfish, mean and cruel - even if it is not always entirely intentional.

Someone posed this statement/question : "We will also not confront the difficulty of Saville as a victim.... and what caused him to perpetuate such harm....What has happened to people for them to be so? Where have we as a Society gone wrong?"

This is the central question in the Jimmy Saville case, and is mirrored in countless ways by the actions of State leaders who engage in war, and how their actions are 'justified' by media and Offices of State, is mirrored by The Vatican (Worldwide Clerical Abuse, The Inquisition, )and Anglican Churches (Indian Boarding Schools in Canada and USA) and beyond.
 
This is crucial: for unless we examine the genesis of abuse, we will not prevent it.....

Of course, we must hold the adult who harms others 100% accountable, and yet at the same time we need to look to see how the child became such an adult, and seek to ensure that we fully understand that and then alter all of that within our Society that breeds such psychopathy. Resolution is the only long term path worth taking.

The mistreated infant most often loses touch with his or her true self - suppressing the truth of his or her felt experience - in order to adapt to the mistreating situation, and this leads to a loss of empathy for others.

This then lends itself to the creation a sense of disconnection from others, from those who ought to be nurturing the child, and from all of that which nurtures us in life, and this sense of disconnection has a fear associated with it which compounds the fear and trauma of the original mistreatment and leads to a strengthening desire to control others (or oneself) to get perceived needs met. Perceived needs are often distorted, A natural organism will resist such control, and it is here that violence is 'utilised', to enforce the control. Abusers are violent because they feel the power of enforcement by violence is effective.

When a group of people with this psycho-dynamic operate, when they work together, they will inevitably insert their psychology and behaviour into that structure.

This explains the emergence of Institutions of Power that are cruel and violent, even if in name they are social institutions swith roles in Education, Religion, Governance or Commerce, whose stated intent is 'to improve life' for humanity.

This briefly explains how an entire society - or large swathes of a Society, enough to make a difference - can be rallied under the false flags of people like Hitler, Blair, The Pope, Abu Hamza and Bush.

We need, all of us to engage in this matter and to do so for a multitude of reasons - the many billions of Survivors of abuse - be it the Iraqi people, the Syrian people, the Palestinian people, the children in 'care home' and similar Institutions, the many aboriginal peoples whose lands are being invaded by commerce for profit, and not least for the benefit of all our own children and their children's futures.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe

The Essence of the Jimmy Saville story

This is the essence of the Jimmy Saville/ The Pope/ David Cameron/ George Bush/Tony Blair/ Saddam Hussien etc etc etc story - those who use Power do so because they lack empathy, and respect - the basis of love.

They were not born thus, but became thus largely due to their earliest childhood traumas... this is not to excuse what they do - they are adults, and adults are always, always accountable for any harm they cause to others - it is to say that as a society, as individuals and parents we must address who we relate to children, how we treat them...

As Charlie Chaplin is reputed to have said : "You need power only when you want to do something harmful. Love is enough to get everything done."

We all will do to our own, to a greater or lessor extent, what was done to us if we cannot resolve what we went through in those earliest days and months. Few can recall what occurred because we learn by experience, by feeling and by emotion at depth. That learning is the primary relational information we have, and it is mostly unconscious.

This that leaves a majority of people open to direct manipulation .... which is essential for Power and Mass Media to operate..... without that, they would fall.

The psychology of any given society, community or family is both revealed and perpetuated in how the children are related to and treated. Change that and you can change everything.

It cannot be change by Government dictat, as all dictats run counter to this change towards empathy, it must be changed at the grass roots and grow from there...

We are at across roads, in that so much information is emerging about abuse, and about the natural development of empathy in early childhood..

With this information, which concurs with common sense we can move forwards.....

Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe

Simon Jenkins, Jimmy Saville, The BBC and The Pope

Simon Jenkins, in today's Guardian, writes an article that tries to typify the public's response, and that of some media, to the Jimmy Saville story as a 'witch-hunt' that feeds paranoia. To him there are other far more important issues that deserve the front page headlines...

"In our rush to apportion blame for the actions of an individual, we risk becoming blind to the real issues of the day" 

And he writes of how other 'issues' or stories have been sidelined due to this stories prominence...

"Is Jimmy Savile and the BBC the biggest story on Earth? Apparently so. Today the British media placed it above Romney versus Obama, above the implosion of Lebanon and above the birth of the world's largest oil company. Savile was bigger than killer drones in Lincolnshire, bigger than Cameron's prison policy, bigger than the sensational Birmingham terrorism trial."

(though the fact remains that any reader or consumer of news might read the entirety of a newspaper, watch innumerable sources of on-line video news and still see all those other stories) and then Jenkins proceeds to say that nothing good will come of this, because a) Saville is dead and damned b) everyone in Institutions will be now driven to ensure no-one is allowed near a child without a chaperone :

"Soon doctors, lawyers and priests will have to practise, like the police, in pairs. Responsibility for our behaviour apparently no longer rests on us as individuals but on anyone whom a lawyer can claim was "responsible" for our contact with others. We are no longer our own masters. This is the royal road to Orwellian hell."

 

Jenkins is using hyperbole to distract his readers from the fundamentals of what the Saville story really means.

FACT : The abuse of power is at the root of most of the really serious problems we face, be it at the personal level or beyond.....

Those who seek power - be it at the personal level, at the political level or in the office or school - are often psychologically damaged (and therefore dangerous) people - while not all will be as harmful as Tony Blair, George Bush or Jimmy Saville, the multitude of those who seek and attain some degree of power and who look the other way, who justify their silence when they have access to evidence that deserves to be revealed, who fear to speak out because they might lose a job or damage their careers are an essential component in the abuse of Power by those prepared to cause harm to others.

Sue Gerhardt's analysis of Tony Blair and George Bush in her book 'Selfish Society' r2010 e-iterates what Alice Miller's 'For Your Own Good: The roots of violence in childhood mistreatment' clearly demonstrated in 1986.

If we really want an empathic, healthily functioning Society in the long term, we, all of us, have to address the way our Society relates to children, to parenting and education, to 'care' and in particular address the fact that Power sees children/people as potential workers, economic units essential for 'growth' and that Power underplays and undermines what we all need for genuine happiness, as we race towards the illusion that wealth (consumerism) generates happiness.

Simon Jenkins unwillingness to admit or acknowledge this is typical of those who prefer to protect the status quo. The tone of his article is dismissive, angry, petulant.

"Those running big organisations, in the public and private sectors, face a lethal pincer movement. On the one side is a rising tide of risk aversion, seeping into every factory, office and profession, stifling enterprise, "reassessing" risk, clogging decision. On the other is a fear of what happens should this process fail. Just as the concept of an accident has slid from legal status, so has the "honest mistake". When Entwistle today admitted and regretted his mistake in not asking in more detail about the Savile programme, his tormenters hardly noticed. Honest mistakes do not exist, being replaced by only the most serious and probably criminal negligence, fit only for the pillory, the stocks or the gallows."

George Entwhistle's honest mistake? ignoring evidence that Jimmy Saville, far from deserving a 'celebratory special' was a nasty, nasty harmful man, and ignoring the fact that the many Survivors of his horrific abuse would be further traumatised by the transmission of that 'celebratory special', and that those who had come forward would once again suffer from being ignored, rejected, not believed.

That was not an honest mistake, that was an act of incredible irresponsibility, and act that demonstrates a profound lack of empathy for all those adversely affected by Jimmy Saville's abuse. The Survivors and their families.

Nothing he has done yet is sufficient to repair this. George Entwhistle has a choice to make. To honestly admit his error, and respond as required or do what so many people in power are prepared to do .... avoid empathy, attend to the status quo, to the agenda of Power.

Just as David Cameron's Coalition Government's actions in cutting funding to services that support vulnerable people, cuts that have caused yet more pain and suffering to thousands of disabled people all over the UK are evidence of a deep lack of empathy for the reality of the lives of other less powerful people.
(I  do not hold Cameron alone responsible - every member of the Government, and all  Parliamentarians are equally culpable unless they counter these particular cuts with all their might, as these particular cuts in funding are 100% un-neccessary.)

Just as the Pope, and many Bishops and Curates, and others around the world who ignored Survivors testimony, or hushed it up to protect their Institutions revealed a profound lack of empathy for those who suffered so much at the hands of predatory priests, at the hands of men and women willing to visit intolerable violence upon children.

(The BBC's sickeningly fawning coverage of the Pope's visit to the UK in 2010 which sidelined the world wide story of intolerable suffering inflicted upon hundreds of thousands, if not millions of children over the past centuries in favour of a celebration  of the Pope parallels the Saville story.... a pattern is repeated..)

We CAN live without Institutions which are populated and controlled by adults who refuse to tackle this behavioural dysfunction head-on. We must.

Any institution that permits this kind of dysfunction for whatever reason, or tries to 'manage a crisis' from the perspective of protecting itself, suggesting that the crisis is the revelation  of abuse, and not the abuse itself - is an inhumane, psycho-pathological entity that does far more harm than good.

If the BBC wants to regain trust, then it must be 100% honest, and man up to the realities, no matter how much it hurts or costs... no matter who amongst the powerful is exposed as an abuser, a facilitator of abuse or an apologist for abusers...

I am furious, yet not at all petulant, when I say:

"Grow up, Jenkins, grow up!"
Let me make something clear here : George Entwhistle is not responsible for Jimmy Saville's behaviour. That responsibility lies with Jimmy Saville - he made his choices. Thus, he removed choice from many young peoples lives.

Entwhistle IS responsible for the BBC, and therefore for the BBC's response to these revelations, and is equally responsible to ALL the licence payers, and to all of those who have survived Saville's abuse. He is in the hot seat, and he elected to apply for that job.

He may well be on a very fast learning curve. So be it. He will not be forgiven for failing in his duty as an adult human being. Nor should he be  given any slack. The same applies to Simon Jenkins.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe