Ebola is a bio-weapon Obama is using to depopulate the planet; CIA agents drove both planes into the World Trade Centre; IS is the creation of Israel and the CIA, it’s leader is secretly Jewish; Rihanna, Jay Z, Kanye West and Beyonce all belong to the Illuminate. ‘You can’t make it up’ they say. Well, only one of these conspiracy theories have I made up and, absurd though it might seem out of context, with a few choice Tweets it could within days, maybe only hours, all too easily take on a life of its own. From the still expanding library of books, documentaries and movies mulling over the Kennedy assassination to the tedious annual revival of Jack the Ripper’s royal connections (this one just won’t go away), to Lady Di chased down a Parisian rabbit hole before ascending via the surrealism of a mourning nation into the tabloid sainthood of ‘People’s Princess’, it is clear we are a society in love with conspiracy theories; they keep coming, proliferating with the inevitability of cancer cells. There are even conspiracy theories about the construction of conspiracy theories. The actual answers (the CIA? Prince Philip? Freemasons?) are almost irrelevant.
The Con Theo; who is he? Why does he exist? What does his meticulous theorising explain about our basic psychological state in the 21st century? Could this desire to over-analyse the mundane facts in order to see worldwide networks, dark, manipulative forces controlling our every move, suggest the very real powerlessness we feel as individuals having no control over our own lives; or could it be a symptom of a more basic human need for the unexplained? Simple, mundane truth might have the merit of being true but none of the glamour of mystery, of shock and awe.
We love a mystery, we thrive on gossip and rumour. How else can we explain, for example, the British cultural trait of Agatha Christie, a woman who even outweighs ABBA in the milage she’s made from mediocrity: 90 books reprinted and reproduced in theatre, TV and movie production, year in year out, from a single narrative format of ‘murder’ and investigation so lacking in any resemblance to the real thing it can be reconstructed as a board game; a significantly successful one woman cottage industry. The Mousetrap, for example, has been doing the job in the West End 6 days a week, every week for over 60 years now, opening in 1952 when Kennedy was a mere Congressman and outliving many of it’s performers far-sighted enough to have seen its potential as a pension fund. Even more impressive is the fact that these ‘mystery’ narratives are recycled to an audience who already know Whodunit (offering less of a mystery to be solved than the comfort of a retold bedtime story). The only real mystery is the continued grip she still holds over the public consciousness, which can’t be explained by mere nostalgia for the lost glamour of Art Deco.
Mystery has surely been a primary emotion since our ancestors first gazed in awe at the rising sun dispelling the terror of darkness, and now science has explained the world (as ‘progress’ without purpose), we happily carry on constructing mysteries of our own, feeding this human compulsion for tension and resolution, this religious compulsion to see order confirmed in an otherwise chaotic world. Unable to accept the insecurity of an indifferent universe, we ‘know’ there must be a resolution, justice and a godlike judge (even in the shape of the unlikely characters of an eccentric pensioner or a pompous, asexual Belgian) to show us quite clearly, ‘in our own drawing room’, how evil cannot prevail; someone cares.
The same compulsion created more heroic, or perhaps camper, gods in the past by theorists who were less than rigorous (Apollo’s arcing chariot, for example, rising in the east to descend in the west, might offer us light but leaves him on his feet in a confined space for an 8 hour day shift with 4 hours overtime between May and August, a job description hardly seductive to a call centre worker, let alone a god used to the liberties of Olympus). However, the more science pushes back the boundaries of ignorance, the more explanations of logic and reason are dismissed with the vehemence of those challenging the truth of moon landings or holocausts. At the borderline where sense gives way to insanity (or ‘faith,’ as it has come to be known) is the human desire to remain in awe, to remain mystified, to remain in denial of reason and clarity. Try unravelling the Catholic Holy Trinity, for example: father, son and ‘holy spirit’; all three of these ‘persons’ are apparently separate, yet somehow the same ‘substance, essence or nature’. Can you see what it is yet? You can’t, any priest will smugly tell you, even Poirot would find no concluding evidence. This is a ‘holy mystery’; you’re not supposed to know the answer: it’s not a Rubick’s cube to be solved by some autistic child in 30 seconds of playground time, it’s a ‘sacred mystery’; it’s ‘Holy.’ There is no need for evidence, just belief.
Those most avidly seeking solutions to conspiracies, the radicals, the fundamentalists, often suspect the existence of secret sects and societies (Freemasons, Rosicrucians and, for teenagers, the ultra-cool Illuminati) whose ultimate goal is complete mind-freezing totalitarian control; the average Con Theo will toil away with passionate industry, mining untold depths of research for the crucial and condemning evidence of these sects, failing meanwhile to see the open workings of highly non-secret, highly controlling sects to which many of them already belong (Christianity, Judaism, Islam).
However, what if some of these conspiracies were discovered not to be semi-harmless ‘Where’s Wally?’ exercises for over-intellectual nerds; what if they were actually true? There must have been a time when accusations against the Catholic Church, for example, claiming rampant and institutionalised child abuse throughout its worldwide organisation were dismissed, if not as laughable, then insulting to the ‘holiness’ of the humble parish priest who had devoted his life to celibacy and God. Punishment would have been dealt with the severity only Muslims can muster today. Can you imagine the scenario in an Irish village where after weeks of suffering, some poor primary school alter boy breaks his silence, stuttering a confession to his open-mouthed parents: What?! Our Father Sean? A parish priest, a man of the cloth, sticking his penis up the arse of an alter boy? What kind of a mind have you at all, you dirty little get?
It’s the power of tradition: the tentacles of the deep rooted Church, woven so far into the fabric of society the one can no longer be distinguished from the other. A tsumani of spunk will have been shot before the slow turning of custom, habit and cultural blindness finally leads to a bitter awakening and eventual outrage.
Most people can’t or won’t accept an assault on their beliefs. The destruction of their faith in the comforting order of the universe is too high a price to pay. Incredible though it seems, a father would be more willing to see his son suffer week after week at the hands of a benignly smiling, middle-aged man (who claims to know nothing of the sexual world); the same hands he might warmly shake at the end of a Sunday service, keeping his eyes, ears and mouth closed rather than admit his religion was a front for a devious and manipulative machine engineering sexual abuse.
We can only wonder at the stoicism of those who knew what was going on, the mute collaborators in this totalitarian regime. What was the general zeitgeist when, as early as the 1940s Father Gerald Fitzgerald, a Catholic priest in the States, warned of substantial problems with pedophile priests? A general mocking of his name (‘So holy, God named him twice’) while parishes passed the parcel of any priest under suspicion (to avoid dangerous gossip or allow fair dibs with the same muffled alter boys?). How else could it have taken until 2002 before the full extent of the disease was revealed (to an ‘unsuspecting’ public) and, as so often with disease, too little too late means an inevitable demise. Yet as late as 2004 priests were still being moved out of the countries where they had been accused, into new homes, in touching distance of a new set of vulnerable children. In lovable Father Ted’s Ireland alone, between the 1940s and the 1990s, tens of thousands of children went on suffering abuse at the hands of priests, nuns, and church staff.
How righteous must the Con Theos be feeling now in 2015 with the deluge of so many buried childhoods exhumed, the staggering extent of abuse finally reaching the surface and compensation at last returning the people’s wealth to the people after centuries of systematic extortion in the name of ‘God’. To find abuse in the Church, an organisation pretending to garner and care for its ‘sheep’, its ‘little lambs’ has been eye-watering for some (Was there a misunderstanding of Christ’s catchphrase: ‘suffer little children’?), but only the beginning of a much wider deluge for others. Exposure has become the most frequent news item of our age, and no strata of society is immune:
Celebrity abuse. ‘Glitter’ is old news now but hardly unique in taking advantage of 70s teen groupies. The repeated appeal of ‘It was a different time’, rattled off like a Greek chorus at successive court tragedies, seems to be the only defence. More relevant is tabloid publicist Clifford’s 8 years for indulging in the same age group, a conviction suggesting ‘no one is immune’ from the Yewtree mission of search and destroy; an overreaction to the embarrassment of Saville’s happy death and burial beneath a pretentious gravestone and happy Fix it memories while his ‘open secret’ was ‘reluctantly’ withheld by the BBC (seemingly a hotbed of open secrets); a secret apparently not so open to the Saturday night TV audience where a lifelike Jim Henson muppet (dyed blonde hair, manic eyes, comic cigar) could bounce kids on his lap in full view of an unsuspecting public; ‘Yeah, bit suspect when you fink of it, but ‘es on national telly. Topawhich, look what he done for charity. Geezer’s a saint.’ Not even his Catholic credentials could give this care worker away; and who would have guessed at Harris with his giant paint brush, breathless delivery and wobble board, ‘a kid’s entertainer, for Christ’s sake. Even knows the Queen.’ Celebrity, it seems, is a passport for perversion.
VIP abuse. Brittan, Janner, Heath and jolly Dickensian fat man, Cyril Smith, the most prominent names in the (allegedly) protected pedo Parliamentary ring, a very select committee, indiscriminate of party politics; a cross-party support group whose iceberg depths make us look again with suspicion at an earlier Labour government’s links with a proposed lowering of the age of consent. In 1979 the Home Office blueprinted such a policy: so ‘sexual behaviour with a girl over the age of 13 (the average age of puberty) would no longer be deemed criminal, provided she was clearly as aware of what she was doing and its implication, as might be expected of a girl of 16’. Who was likely to benefit from this? ‘Yeah, well, Juliet was 13, and she was in Shakespeare. Cultural, innit.’ Coincidently, across the Atlantic, in 2007 the ‘Romeo and Juliet law’ was passed in Washington to allow consensual sex for underage girls (if the partners are within a 4 year age gap).
Immigrant abuse. The very title of this category probably transgresses some unwritten PC law, the sort of law (the unwritten sort) which enabled years of widespread, organised sexual abuse (abduction, rape, torture and sex trafficking) to carry on unmolested in Rotherham from 1997 to 2013. It took journalists from the Times, not the police, to uncover networks of Asian males (mostly from Pakistan) exploiting young white females throughout south Yorkshire. The South Yorkshire police, who should have been protecting these girls, far from doing any policing, were, in fact, a defensive block to all investigations. After 20 years of rampant abuse (as if trying to make up for the head start they’d given the Catholics), only 8 men have been convicted and half of these were sentenced for no more than 4 years apiece. Even now this activity remains uncondemned by Muslim leaders (so quick to take offence at a mere cartoon, a mere suggestion someone has burned a copy of the Quran - for which the punishment is death) and is seen as an unfortunate ‘new phenomenon’ among Asian men (just as the Mafia is an unfortunate character trait among Sicilians).
Domestic abuse. Apparently, in any one year we can expect 300,000 children to be sexually abused by someone they have been raised to love, respect and obey. An Englishman’s home is his castle, his children are his own flesh and blood; sright innit. Adoption is also a useful source; with the long record of neglect attributed to overworked social workers in this country, who can see what you get up to in your own home? If this is the conduct in an ordinary family household, imagine the availability in the average Children’s home (minor pleasure domes, it seems, for ‘concerned’ politicians and ‘saintly’ care working celebrities).
So, if the NSPCC statistics are correct, 1 in 20 children in the UK have been sexually abused in the past year and 1 in 3 of these had no one in whom they could confide. 90% were sexually abused by someone they knew. And these are just the the statistics of reported abuse. Similarly, the register of known sexual offenders numbers over 30,000. The full extent of this problem has yet to be uncovered but it must be so vast and so widespread there is simply not the manpower to police the crime; we may, in fact, eventually see it downgraded, like the law on smoking cannabis, or simply ignored like investigations of household break-ins. There were only 3,000 convictions for burglary last year within an estimated million incidents, statistics the Police find too overwhelming to compute. Leicestershire Police force, for example, in all seriousness, have recently introduced a response scheme in which they intend to ignore break-ins to all odd numbered properties. So, damage and theft of your property is ambling down the same road as damage and theft of your car; it’s seen as just another of the hazards of ownership. Could it be only a matter of time before damage and abuse of your children is an unfortunate hazard of conception; or have we already passed this point?
On-line grooming is already as common as dating and the responsibility is left to vigilantes to entrap groomers and bring them to court. How staggering therefore to see so little discussion of the problem in the media. Why, you might wonder, isn’t this headline news across the full spectrum of media every day? Another conspiracy?
So, what is the driver behind this compulsion? What is it about young boys and girls that excites such psychotic, relentless and presumably risk-taking behaviour from adults in every sector of society? What answer does science or even social science have for us? Is it social? Biological? (Chromosomes? A solution which might remind us of another conspiracy: the pink pound helped discover the pink gene), No one seems to know. Surely such an extensive phenomenon would produce extensive research. No, apparently not. It is, allegedly, impossible to define a stereotypical profile. There seems to be no single path to the pathological, there are just ‘too many factors’.
What does literature have to offer? For young girls: Nabokov’s Humbert Humbert’s attempt to recapture the unrequited love of childhood in Lolita (despite handing this relationship the cliche of a name) is an innocent and romantic explanation from an innocent and romantic author. His erotic deflection of desire suggests the world of the fetish, which might at least be understandable as a heterosexual compulsion, there are many; but the desire would surely be for a woman not a child. For young boys: Thomas Mann’s erotic ‘Platonic’ love for Tadzio is at best no more than a whimsical longing for classical literature and it’s ancient concept of ‘beauty’; at worst, a blatant ‘intellectual’ cover for rank and file paedophilia.
Could this ‘desire’ for the under-aged be connected to a seductive sense of entitlement, power and control? Who could have more power than someone grooming an innocent who looks up to them for protection and love? Who knows?
We are left gazing bewildered across a significant divide; us and them. Those on the far side, for want of a better word, we call ‘evil’, whatever that means. And only now are we beginning to see just how vast are their number, like discovering an ‘alternative reality’ game then realising it is neither alternative nor a game. If it is discovered, finally, that the ‘evil’ actually outnumber the ‘good’, is there a tipping point when they cease to be called evil? A point when sexual abuse is, like homosexuality, recalibrated as acceptable. Surely, here lies the material for one of the greater conspiracy theories.
DG 2015
The Con Theo; who is he? Why does he exist? What does his meticulous theorising explain about our basic psychological state in the 21st century? Could this desire to over-analyse the mundane facts in order to see worldwide networks, dark, manipulative forces controlling our every move, suggest the very real powerlessness we feel as individuals having no control over our own lives; or could it be a symptom of a more basic human need for the unexplained? Simple, mundane truth might have the merit of being true but none of the glamour of mystery, of shock and awe.
We love a mystery, we thrive on gossip and rumour. How else can we explain, for example, the British cultural trait of Agatha Christie, a woman who even outweighs ABBA in the milage she’s made from mediocrity: 90 books reprinted and reproduced in theatre, TV and movie production, year in year out, from a single narrative format of ‘murder’ and investigation so lacking in any resemblance to the real thing it can be reconstructed as a board game; a significantly successful one woman cottage industry. The Mousetrap, for example, has been doing the job in the West End 6 days a week, every week for over 60 years now, opening in 1952 when Kennedy was a mere Congressman and outliving many of it’s performers far-sighted enough to have seen its potential as a pension fund. Even more impressive is the fact that these ‘mystery’ narratives are recycled to an audience who already know Whodunit (offering less of a mystery to be solved than the comfort of a retold bedtime story). The only real mystery is the continued grip she still holds over the public consciousness, which can’t be explained by mere nostalgia for the lost glamour of Art Deco.
Mystery has surely been a primary emotion since our ancestors first gazed in awe at the rising sun dispelling the terror of darkness, and now science has explained the world (as ‘progress’ without purpose), we happily carry on constructing mysteries of our own, feeding this human compulsion for tension and resolution, this religious compulsion to see order confirmed in an otherwise chaotic world. Unable to accept the insecurity of an indifferent universe, we ‘know’ there must be a resolution, justice and a godlike judge (even in the shape of the unlikely characters of an eccentric pensioner or a pompous, asexual Belgian) to show us quite clearly, ‘in our own drawing room’, how evil cannot prevail; someone cares.
The same compulsion created more heroic, or perhaps camper, gods in the past by theorists who were less than rigorous (Apollo’s arcing chariot, for example, rising in the east to descend in the west, might offer us light but leaves him on his feet in a confined space for an 8 hour day shift with 4 hours overtime between May and August, a job description hardly seductive to a call centre worker, let alone a god used to the liberties of Olympus). However, the more science pushes back the boundaries of ignorance, the more explanations of logic and reason are dismissed with the vehemence of those challenging the truth of moon landings or holocausts. At the borderline where sense gives way to insanity (or ‘faith,’ as it has come to be known) is the human desire to remain in awe, to remain mystified, to remain in denial of reason and clarity. Try unravelling the Catholic Holy Trinity, for example: father, son and ‘holy spirit’; all three of these ‘persons’ are apparently separate, yet somehow the same ‘substance, essence or nature’. Can you see what it is yet? You can’t, any priest will smugly tell you, even Poirot would find no concluding evidence. This is a ‘holy mystery’; you’re not supposed to know the answer: it’s not a Rubick’s cube to be solved by some autistic child in 30 seconds of playground time, it’s a ‘sacred mystery’; it’s ‘Holy.’ There is no need for evidence, just belief.
Those most avidly seeking solutions to conspiracies, the radicals, the fundamentalists, often suspect the existence of secret sects and societies (Freemasons, Rosicrucians and, for teenagers, the ultra-cool Illuminati) whose ultimate goal is complete mind-freezing totalitarian control; the average Con Theo will toil away with passionate industry, mining untold depths of research for the crucial and condemning evidence of these sects, failing meanwhile to see the open workings of highly non-secret, highly controlling sects to which many of them already belong (Christianity, Judaism, Islam).
However, what if some of these conspiracies were discovered not to be semi-harmless ‘Where’s Wally?’ exercises for over-intellectual nerds; what if they were actually true? There must have been a time when accusations against the Catholic Church, for example, claiming rampant and institutionalised child abuse throughout its worldwide organisation were dismissed, if not as laughable, then insulting to the ‘holiness’ of the humble parish priest who had devoted his life to celibacy and God. Punishment would have been dealt with the severity only Muslims can muster today. Can you imagine the scenario in an Irish village where after weeks of suffering, some poor primary school alter boy breaks his silence, stuttering a confession to his open-mouthed parents: What?! Our Father Sean? A parish priest, a man of the cloth, sticking his penis up the arse of an alter boy? What kind of a mind have you at all, you dirty little get?
It’s the power of tradition: the tentacles of the deep rooted Church, woven so far into the fabric of society the one can no longer be distinguished from the other. A tsumani of spunk will have been shot before the slow turning of custom, habit and cultural blindness finally leads to a bitter awakening and eventual outrage.
Most people can’t or won’t accept an assault on their beliefs. The destruction of their faith in the comforting order of the universe is too high a price to pay. Incredible though it seems, a father would be more willing to see his son suffer week after week at the hands of a benignly smiling, middle-aged man (who claims to know nothing of the sexual world); the same hands he might warmly shake at the end of a Sunday service, keeping his eyes, ears and mouth closed rather than admit his religion was a front for a devious and manipulative machine engineering sexual abuse.
We can only wonder at the stoicism of those who knew what was going on, the mute collaborators in this totalitarian regime. What was the general zeitgeist when, as early as the 1940s Father Gerald Fitzgerald, a Catholic priest in the States, warned of substantial problems with pedophile priests? A general mocking of his name (‘So holy, God named him twice’) while parishes passed the parcel of any priest under suspicion (to avoid dangerous gossip or allow fair dibs with the same muffled alter boys?). How else could it have taken until 2002 before the full extent of the disease was revealed (to an ‘unsuspecting’ public) and, as so often with disease, too little too late means an inevitable demise. Yet as late as 2004 priests were still being moved out of the countries where they had been accused, into new homes, in touching distance of a new set of vulnerable children. In lovable Father Ted’s Ireland alone, between the 1940s and the 1990s, tens of thousands of children went on suffering abuse at the hands of priests, nuns, and church staff.
How righteous must the Con Theos be feeling now in 2015 with the deluge of so many buried childhoods exhumed, the staggering extent of abuse finally reaching the surface and compensation at last returning the people’s wealth to the people after centuries of systematic extortion in the name of ‘God’. To find abuse in the Church, an organisation pretending to garner and care for its ‘sheep’, its ‘little lambs’ has been eye-watering for some (Was there a misunderstanding of Christ’s catchphrase: ‘suffer little children’?), but only the beginning of a much wider deluge for others. Exposure has become the most frequent news item of our age, and no strata of society is immune:
Celebrity abuse. ‘Glitter’ is old news now but hardly unique in taking advantage of 70s teen groupies. The repeated appeal of ‘It was a different time’, rattled off like a Greek chorus at successive court tragedies, seems to be the only defence. More relevant is tabloid publicist Clifford’s 8 years for indulging in the same age group, a conviction suggesting ‘no one is immune’ from the Yewtree mission of search and destroy; an overreaction to the embarrassment of Saville’s happy death and burial beneath a pretentious gravestone and happy Fix it memories while his ‘open secret’ was ‘reluctantly’ withheld by the BBC (seemingly a hotbed of open secrets); a secret apparently not so open to the Saturday night TV audience where a lifelike Jim Henson muppet (dyed blonde hair, manic eyes, comic cigar) could bounce kids on his lap in full view of an unsuspecting public; ‘Yeah, bit suspect when you fink of it, but ‘es on national telly. Topawhich, look what he done for charity. Geezer’s a saint.’ Not even his Catholic credentials could give this care worker away; and who would have guessed at Harris with his giant paint brush, breathless delivery and wobble board, ‘a kid’s entertainer, for Christ’s sake. Even knows the Queen.’ Celebrity, it seems, is a passport for perversion.
VIP abuse. Brittan, Janner, Heath and jolly Dickensian fat man, Cyril Smith, the most prominent names in the (allegedly) protected pedo Parliamentary ring, a very select committee, indiscriminate of party politics; a cross-party support group whose iceberg depths make us look again with suspicion at an earlier Labour government’s links with a proposed lowering of the age of consent. In 1979 the Home Office blueprinted such a policy: so ‘sexual behaviour with a girl over the age of 13 (the average age of puberty) would no longer be deemed criminal, provided she was clearly as aware of what she was doing and its implication, as might be expected of a girl of 16’. Who was likely to benefit from this? ‘Yeah, well, Juliet was 13, and she was in Shakespeare. Cultural, innit.’ Coincidently, across the Atlantic, in 2007 the ‘Romeo and Juliet law’ was passed in Washington to allow consensual sex for underage girls (if the partners are within a 4 year age gap).
Immigrant abuse. The very title of this category probably transgresses some unwritten PC law, the sort of law (the unwritten sort) which enabled years of widespread, organised sexual abuse (abduction, rape, torture and sex trafficking) to carry on unmolested in Rotherham from 1997 to 2013. It took journalists from the Times, not the police, to uncover networks of Asian males (mostly from Pakistan) exploiting young white females throughout south Yorkshire. The South Yorkshire police, who should have been protecting these girls, far from doing any policing, were, in fact, a defensive block to all investigations. After 20 years of rampant abuse (as if trying to make up for the head start they’d given the Catholics), only 8 men have been convicted and half of these were sentenced for no more than 4 years apiece. Even now this activity remains uncondemned by Muslim leaders (so quick to take offence at a mere cartoon, a mere suggestion someone has burned a copy of the Quran - for which the punishment is death) and is seen as an unfortunate ‘new phenomenon’ among Asian men (just as the Mafia is an unfortunate character trait among Sicilians).
Domestic abuse. Apparently, in any one year we can expect 300,000 children to be sexually abused by someone they have been raised to love, respect and obey. An Englishman’s home is his castle, his children are his own flesh and blood; sright innit. Adoption is also a useful source; with the long record of neglect attributed to overworked social workers in this country, who can see what you get up to in your own home? If this is the conduct in an ordinary family household, imagine the availability in the average Children’s home (minor pleasure domes, it seems, for ‘concerned’ politicians and ‘saintly’ care working celebrities).
So, if the NSPCC statistics are correct, 1 in 20 children in the UK have been sexually abused in the past year and 1 in 3 of these had no one in whom they could confide. 90% were sexually abused by someone they knew. And these are just the the statistics of reported abuse. Similarly, the register of known sexual offenders numbers over 30,000. The full extent of this problem has yet to be uncovered but it must be so vast and so widespread there is simply not the manpower to police the crime; we may, in fact, eventually see it downgraded, like the law on smoking cannabis, or simply ignored like investigations of household break-ins. There were only 3,000 convictions for burglary last year within an estimated million incidents, statistics the Police find too overwhelming to compute. Leicestershire Police force, for example, in all seriousness, have recently introduced a response scheme in which they intend to ignore break-ins to all odd numbered properties. So, damage and theft of your property is ambling down the same road as damage and theft of your car; it’s seen as just another of the hazards of ownership. Could it be only a matter of time before damage and abuse of your children is an unfortunate hazard of conception; or have we already passed this point?
On-line grooming is already as common as dating and the responsibility is left to vigilantes to entrap groomers and bring them to court. How staggering therefore to see so little discussion of the problem in the media. Why, you might wonder, isn’t this headline news across the full spectrum of media every day? Another conspiracy?
So, what is the driver behind this compulsion? What is it about young boys and girls that excites such psychotic, relentless and presumably risk-taking behaviour from adults in every sector of society? What answer does science or even social science have for us? Is it social? Biological? (Chromosomes? A solution which might remind us of another conspiracy: the pink pound helped discover the pink gene), No one seems to know. Surely such an extensive phenomenon would produce extensive research. No, apparently not. It is, allegedly, impossible to define a stereotypical profile. There seems to be no single path to the pathological, there are just ‘too many factors’.
What does literature have to offer? For young girls: Nabokov’s Humbert Humbert’s attempt to recapture the unrequited love of childhood in Lolita (despite handing this relationship the cliche of a name) is an innocent and romantic explanation from an innocent and romantic author. His erotic deflection of desire suggests the world of the fetish, which might at least be understandable as a heterosexual compulsion, there are many; but the desire would surely be for a woman not a child. For young boys: Thomas Mann’s erotic ‘Platonic’ love for Tadzio is at best no more than a whimsical longing for classical literature and it’s ancient concept of ‘beauty’; at worst, a blatant ‘intellectual’ cover for rank and file paedophilia.
Could this ‘desire’ for the under-aged be connected to a seductive sense of entitlement, power and control? Who could have more power than someone grooming an innocent who looks up to them for protection and love? Who knows?
We are left gazing bewildered across a significant divide; us and them. Those on the far side, for want of a better word, we call ‘evil’, whatever that means. And only now are we beginning to see just how vast are their number, like discovering an ‘alternative reality’ game then realising it is neither alternative nor a game. If it is discovered, finally, that the ‘evil’ actually outnumber the ‘good’, is there a tipping point when they cease to be called evil? A point when sexual abuse is, like homosexuality, recalibrated as acceptable. Surely, here lies the material for one of the greater conspiracy theories.
DG 2015
