A tragic past

Would you be unable to live in a house where some terrible tragedy occurred, or would you be able to ignore it and carry on with life as usual?

Kincora Boys Home in east Belfast (just down the road from here) is currently being demolished to make way for a new housing development.

The home was once the scene of serious organised child sexual abuse, causing a scandal and attempted cover-up in 1980, with claims of state collusion. It has been quietly rotting ever since, with a lot of people wanting nothing to do with it.

But one developer isn't put off by the site's seedy reputation and work is about to start on a £1.8 million apartment block comprising nine flats.

It's hard to say what my reaction would be if I actually set foot in one of the new flats, but I'd like to think I wouldn't be put off. If the building itself has gone, and the scandal happened over 40 years ago, I'm sure I could easily ignore the history and just get on with my life.

But would it be as simple as that? If I actually lived in one of the new flats, would I be constantly reminded of the past to the extent that it haunted me and forced me to move out?

Certainly a lot of people wouldn't even contemplate living there, given the site's associations. The very idea would horrify them.

Jenny is quite sure she couldn't live in a place that had such a dark pall hanging over it. She couldn't possibly ignore what had gone on there previously.

It remains to be seen whether the new apartments will be sold easily or whether prospective buyers will give them a wide berth.

Pic: Kincora Boys Home

Bad vibes

There are certain homes I would never buy if they had unsavoury associations from the past. Some people may not be deterred by such things but I'm sure I would always be aware of the bad vibes.

For instance, if there had been a murder at the house, or child abuse, or domestic violence, or the house had been haunted, or been a brothel, or housed a terrorist (or even been a bomb factory). I wouldn't want anything like that hanging over my head.

There's a derelict house not far from here, Kincora House, that was the centre of a child sexual abuse ring in the nineteen seventies. Nobody wanted to live there after that discovery and it's due to be replaced by a new apartment block.

Of course you might not know of any such goings-on unless it had been all over the media, or unless a nieghbour told you. You might only find out after you've moved in, or you might never find out if it's been successfully hushed up. Somehow I doubt the estate agent would tell you.

But a lot of people aren't bothered by such associations and can happily ignore them. Abigail Dengate lives in a house at Margate, Essex, where a serial killer buried two bodies. She says "People have had a lot to say about this house and its history but to us it's just a home. I wasn't thinking about who once lived here and what he did."

Well, perhaps I have an over-active imagination, but I'm sure I would think of the murderer pottering around the house, working out how he would kill his victims and what he would do with the bodies. I would think of the victims screaming or pleading for their lives.

It would certainly put me off my cornflakes.

Pic: Kincora House, Belfast 

Endless abuse

I know this is grim reading, but I was horrified by the sheer scale of the sex abuse scandal in Oxford-shire, not to mention the generally pathetic response of police and social workers, who allowed the abuse to go on for so long.

It's reported that over 370 girls were systematically assaulted, raped and tortured over a fifteen year period, and that those who should have protected the girls and stopped the abuse either turned a blind eye, trivialised what was happening, or blamed the victims for provoking the abuse. And not one person has been subsequently disciplined or sacked.

I don't know where to begin in dissecting this whole appalling saga, which speaks volumes about the incompetence of public servants who are meant to be shielding the vulnerable but end up shielding the predators.

There was clearly a well-established network of men carrying out the abuse, but they were able to continue their atrocities for many years before finally being arrested.

The case review just published says that not only were police and social workers generally in denial, but they blamed the girls for their "precocious and difficult behaviour", accused them of putting themselves at risk, ignored underage sexual activity, and denied the girls had been groomed and violently controlled.

It's hard to know what can be done to prevent such widespread abuse happening all over again in the future. If trained professionals whose specific job it is to protect vulnerable children utterly fail to do so, will further training or new legislation make any difference? If those who are meant to keep children safe simply don't seem to understand the concept of safety, how will they ever change?

I can't see any effective remedy short of sacking all those who allowed this nightmare to go on for so long, and employing people with a genuine concern for children's well-being who will stop sexual and emotional abuse the moment they discover it.

And the whole insidious culture of blaming the victim, which is still so rampant, must be reversed once and for all and attention focused on those who allowed so many victims to pile up year after year.

Knight errant

I'm shocked and totally disgusted that during the several decades that Sir Jimmy Savile was abusing girls and young women, everyone around him knew about it but did precisely nothing. People at the BBC, other presenters, the media, they all knew but kept their mouths firmly shut.

All this time the public were still blissfully ignorant, seeing him as a funny, lovable eccentric who raised millions of pounds for charity and was a role model for alienated rebels everywhere. They hadn't a clue what he was really up to behind the innocent facade.

Why is there always this entrenched conspiracy of silence about these perverts, particularly the ones in high places? Why does nobody say a word for fear that they're the ones who'll be jumped on and not the little toerag they're exposing?

The journalist Janet Street Porter, revealing on BBC's Question Time how widely Savile's abuse was known about, defended her own silence by saying that as a woman in a male-dominated workplace nobody would have taken her seriously.

Others were silent for a variety of reasons. Because Savile's public reputation seemed impregnable. Because they knew other people would close ranks. Because he threatened to stop helping charities if anyone told the truth. Because they feared some sort of retaliation.

But it's this endless conspiracy of silence that allows abusers to get away with it not just for years but often for decades. How on earth can keeping silent still be more normal than protecting vulnerable young women and girls from lasting psychological and emotional trauma?

In the name of common decency and humanity, these shameful cover-ups have to stop.