Noorilhuda's Blog - Posts Tagged "jimmy-savile"
SAYING YES TO PEDOPHILIA
Apparently it has been going on forever. The cloak of absolute silence, unquestioning support and aggressive defense of criminal sexual behavior with underage persons, children infact, is everywhere.
Whether it is the priest who covers for a dean of the Church of England, a TV organization turning a blind eye to persistent rumors about a celebrity DJ, oblivious headmasters of a £25,953 per term boys’ preparatory boarding school where teachers joined 7-13 year old students during baths, the former U.S. President and leading philanthropist whose best friend, a billionaire, had a taste for underage teenage girls allegedly kept as sex slaves, and talented actors’ unapologetic stance for the disturbing predilections of two legendary film directors - the bottom line is the same in each case: the good outweighs the bad: hence the sexual preference (or even the need) of Very Reverend Robert Waddington of Bradford, Dean of Manchester, is inconsequential in his larger service to spreading the word of God, raising the congregation and funds for the cathedral.
'He was a good man with a very bad habit.'
Sir Jimmy Savile died a happy satisfied rich old famous man of 84, never brought to justice for abusing hundreds of kids in all the years he toured UK and hosted BBC shows, and raised £40 million for charities. He was important to the pop culture evolution of the country. What he did in his personal life was nobody’s business - least of all BBC’s or the people he worked with - that is until 2012 when the s*** hit the fan.
'He was a knight with a very bad habit.'
The first duty of Summer Fields administration is toward protecting the school’s reputation, damage control and showing remorse for negligence - the fact that it failed to have a proper monitoring system for the guardians - the teachers themselves - to make sure any impropriety does not occur goes unsaid or is lost in translation.
Bill Clinton only ‘severed’ ties with Jeffrey Epstein when his exploits became public knowledge and became a liability for the personal celebrity, goodwill and undying political hope Clinton garners from all over the world.
Roman Polanski used holocaust and Woody Allen used his neurosis to garner sympathy and get away with sexual abuse of minors. And they did it with an arrogance and self-serving persecution complex that lesser talents found endearing: ‘all genius has a few cracks, let bygones be bygones: the rape victim has said as much, and Allen even married the underage teenager he was taking nude photos of! Everything is fine now’.
All this happened under the noses of people who ought to have known and acted better, but didn’t. And it happened in a know-it-all society rife with enlightenment philosophies, self-help gurus, survivor groups and cautionary tales.
All of this is literally a world away from Pakistan, where sexual knowledge of any sort is considered taboo and denial is the tool to tackle all unpleasant problems with - unless the perpetrator is caught on tape dumping a girl near a hospital! In September 2013, five-year old Sumbul was left unconscious, with bloodied clothes, near the green-belt of Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, one of the oldest and most prestigious ones in Lahore, Pakistan’s 2nd largest city. The doctors confirmed she had been raped ‘repeatedly‘ for more than an hour and by more than one person and ‘from both sides’. Her 3 year old cousin, a boy, who was also kidnapped, was dropped at Services Hospital. Both had been playing outside their residence in a small colony when they went missing.
http://www.dawn.com/news/1042790
http://www.dawn.com/news/1123863
A CCTV footage made the facial recognition of the man possible. Months of 24-hour media coverage yielded no result. 400 suspects were interviewed. All set free. The case went cold. The complicity of the community and friends (and inability of NADRA to ID him) made it impossible to trace this man. The brawny moustached fellow from the video still roams somewhere in Lahore.
Apart from the forced and illegal sex with minor girls, recently director Muhammad Al Naqvi explored the accepted (though unacknowledged) practice of sex with boys in the documentary ‘Pakistan’s Hidden Shame‘ that aired on Channel 4 (UK):
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/pa...
It tells the story of boys, some as young as eight, who are used and exploited by bus/ truck drivers (on lengthy rides across cities) in the frontier province called ‘Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa’, which borders Afghanistan. The culture that throws unattended vulnerable boys in the company of powerful men without impunity or accountability is apparently not just a Western phenomenon. And in Pakistan it is certainly not limited to KPK province either, though the first time I heard of the problem over there was as a newbie Associate Producer for a channel’s flagship current affairs show: In September 2003, several students of an all boys school (KPK was then called NWFP) complained to their parents about abuse at the hands of teachers. A huge scandal ensued. It didn’t go anywhere.
Getting rid of accused teachers is difficult, they get summary suspension - mostly with pay - and prosecution is hindered by unwilling families who refuse to go through the lengthy nightmarish and tedious judicial process that defames them. The venues open for boys to go and talk about their problems and move on is also limited.
In some cultures, it is not even considered abuse - it is a source of pride and honor to have a young vibrant good-looking boy by your side for example as you head a meeting of notables in Mardan and Charsadda (KPK cities), a Pashtun practice called ‘Bacha Bazi’. It is considered a sign of older man’s virility and attractiveness.
It may not even be considered an infraction or sexual relationship at all, since in some cultures it is not a ‘natural’ way of intercourse:
http://blogs.tribune.com.pk/story/898...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-1...
The West is familiar with the Michael Jackson phenomena.
Every culture has it’s own names for accepted and unaccepted homosexual behavior. Some quote the incestuous Romans, some the law of nature and others the pre-Islamic Arab tradition that unfortunately is still followed.
But these are all technicalities. The real issue is the idea that it is okay to have ‘harmless fun’, ‘explore anatomy’ and ‘show the ropes’ to young / underage girls and boys - and if you are important enough, powerful enough, fulfill another duty perfectly, someone will ‘have your back’ and support you implicitly, blindly, faithfully.
Literature is partly to blame for this phenomena of acceptance of perverted behavior: Lolita is a work of pedophiliac fantasy, Anais Nin’s conversations with her father show crass incestuous behavior and Nabokov’s Van and Ada were both mentally ill people - the libertine sentimentality with which the work is accepted makes it easier to find excuses for actions of other brilliant men of authority.
I have been meaning to write this post ever since the news of Stephen Collins’ inappropriate behavior with children first broke. Pakistan’s state-owned television PTV used to show many iconic and famous U.S., UK and Australian television series and films in the 80s and 90s, and ‘Tales of the Golden Monkey’ was one of them. I was in grade 2 or 3 perhaps. Collins was the first crush I ever had. He remained this charming handsome dimpled romantic hero in the decades that followed courtesy TV adaptations of Danielle Steele, Barbara Taylor Bradford, true story of Betty Broderick, the long-running 7th Heaven, and the film The First Wives Club.
A few years ago, I was thrilled to meet him as he came out of the backstage door after performing in the Mel Brooks broadway musical in which he played the bamboozled King Arthur. I got my picture taken with him and he said my English was so good. And that was that.
And then the ugly business of ‘revelations’. Ofcourse there is more than one reason to believe that the story was planted specifically by an angry scorned soon-to-be-ex-wife who was blindsided by the divorce proceedings and unfair terms of financial agreements thereof. Irrespective of the exact nature of the circumstances that brought the disturbing audio to light (and illegality of it all), it is a fact that Collins led a child to touch his genitals and exposed himself to another - and in some cases allegedly even before Tales ever aired! I am sure parents have changed clothes infront of their young ones every once in a while, without it holding any special meaning unless thought of retrospectively by the child as an adult. There is nothing sexual about changing pants or a blouse unless it’s an advert running on TV and we all know how those things go! But to initiate any act of undress infront of another family’s child and that too with the perverted interest in seeing the expression on the child’s face or giving them a ‘feel’ crosses a line.
It’s the same line an Allen crosses when he thinks it’s okay to take pictures of his girlfriend’s daughter, or a Weiss crosses when he initiates sex with a willing underage sexual partner who wants to be given a role in TV or film, or a ticket master who brushes his hand against the breast of a 12-year old ‘accidentally’. It’s the line of appropriate and inappropriate behavior and your celebrity or power should not make it okay to get away with it. I feel there is a double standard - a convicted rapist got rewarded with an Oscar and the #11 greatest TV dad is being laid off work for being a pervert. Pakistani mothers have to be quiet of the daughters abuse if they want to see them married off; And Pakistani mullahs quick to rally against American / Indian conspiracies will never be seen on the street condemning the malpractice of authority by their own kind. Wrong is wrong. There cannot be layers of wrong, or grey areas of wrong, or justifications of wrong - those are for the psychologists and jurists to opine over - but as a society, people and parents, we ought to know and act better.
By giving these people work, any sort of recognition for that work, or hiding their ‘foibles’ for the greater good is wrong.
The world would be a much better place if we recognized the achievements of a person while underscoring his sickness as well, instead of making excuses for him or rejecting the accusations altogether, or brushing them under a carpet over a legality, sentiment or connection. That way, there would be less sex offenders and molesters, because most of them would be in jail - where they belong.
Whether it is the priest who covers for a dean of the Church of England, a TV organization turning a blind eye to persistent rumors about a celebrity DJ, oblivious headmasters of a £25,953 per term boys’ preparatory boarding school where teachers joined 7-13 year old students during baths, the former U.S. President and leading philanthropist whose best friend, a billionaire, had a taste for underage teenage girls allegedly kept as sex slaves, and talented actors’ unapologetic stance for the disturbing predilections of two legendary film directors - the bottom line is the same in each case: the good outweighs the bad: hence the sexual preference (or even the need) of Very Reverend Robert Waddington of Bradford, Dean of Manchester, is inconsequential in his larger service to spreading the word of God, raising the congregation and funds for the cathedral.
'He was a good man with a very bad habit.'
Sir Jimmy Savile died a happy satisfied rich old famous man of 84, never brought to justice for abusing hundreds of kids in all the years he toured UK and hosted BBC shows, and raised £40 million for charities. He was important to the pop culture evolution of the country. What he did in his personal life was nobody’s business - least of all BBC’s or the people he worked with - that is until 2012 when the s*** hit the fan.
'He was a knight with a very bad habit.'
The first duty of Summer Fields administration is toward protecting the school’s reputation, damage control and showing remorse for negligence - the fact that it failed to have a proper monitoring system for the guardians - the teachers themselves - to make sure any impropriety does not occur goes unsaid or is lost in translation.
Bill Clinton only ‘severed’ ties with Jeffrey Epstein when his exploits became public knowledge and became a liability for the personal celebrity, goodwill and undying political hope Clinton garners from all over the world.
Roman Polanski used holocaust and Woody Allen used his neurosis to garner sympathy and get away with sexual abuse of minors. And they did it with an arrogance and self-serving persecution complex that lesser talents found endearing: ‘all genius has a few cracks, let bygones be bygones: the rape victim has said as much, and Allen even married the underage teenager he was taking nude photos of! Everything is fine now’.
All this happened under the noses of people who ought to have known and acted better, but didn’t. And it happened in a know-it-all society rife with enlightenment philosophies, self-help gurus, survivor groups and cautionary tales.
All of this is literally a world away from Pakistan, where sexual knowledge of any sort is considered taboo and denial is the tool to tackle all unpleasant problems with - unless the perpetrator is caught on tape dumping a girl near a hospital! In September 2013, five-year old Sumbul was left unconscious, with bloodied clothes, near the green-belt of Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, one of the oldest and most prestigious ones in Lahore, Pakistan’s 2nd largest city. The doctors confirmed she had been raped ‘repeatedly‘ for more than an hour and by more than one person and ‘from both sides’. Her 3 year old cousin, a boy, who was also kidnapped, was dropped at Services Hospital. Both had been playing outside their residence in a small colony when they went missing.
http://www.dawn.com/news/1042790
http://www.dawn.com/news/1123863
A CCTV footage made the facial recognition of the man possible. Months of 24-hour media coverage yielded no result. 400 suspects were interviewed. All set free. The case went cold. The complicity of the community and friends (and inability of NADRA to ID him) made it impossible to trace this man. The brawny moustached fellow from the video still roams somewhere in Lahore.
Apart from the forced and illegal sex with minor girls, recently director Muhammad Al Naqvi explored the accepted (though unacknowledged) practice of sex with boys in the documentary ‘Pakistan’s Hidden Shame‘ that aired on Channel 4 (UK):
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/pa...
It tells the story of boys, some as young as eight, who are used and exploited by bus/ truck drivers (on lengthy rides across cities) in the frontier province called ‘Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa’, which borders Afghanistan. The culture that throws unattended vulnerable boys in the company of powerful men without impunity or accountability is apparently not just a Western phenomenon. And in Pakistan it is certainly not limited to KPK province either, though the first time I heard of the problem over there was as a newbie Associate Producer for a channel’s flagship current affairs show: In September 2003, several students of an all boys school (KPK was then called NWFP) complained to their parents about abuse at the hands of teachers. A huge scandal ensued. It didn’t go anywhere.
Getting rid of accused teachers is difficult, they get summary suspension - mostly with pay - and prosecution is hindered by unwilling families who refuse to go through the lengthy nightmarish and tedious judicial process that defames them. The venues open for boys to go and talk about their problems and move on is also limited.
In some cultures, it is not even considered abuse - it is a source of pride and honor to have a young vibrant good-looking boy by your side for example as you head a meeting of notables in Mardan and Charsadda (KPK cities), a Pashtun practice called ‘Bacha Bazi’. It is considered a sign of older man’s virility and attractiveness.
It may not even be considered an infraction or sexual relationship at all, since in some cultures it is not a ‘natural’ way of intercourse:
http://blogs.tribune.com.pk/story/898...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-1...
The West is familiar with the Michael Jackson phenomena.
Every culture has it’s own names for accepted and unaccepted homosexual behavior. Some quote the incestuous Romans, some the law of nature and others the pre-Islamic Arab tradition that unfortunately is still followed.
But these are all technicalities. The real issue is the idea that it is okay to have ‘harmless fun’, ‘explore anatomy’ and ‘show the ropes’ to young / underage girls and boys - and if you are important enough, powerful enough, fulfill another duty perfectly, someone will ‘have your back’ and support you implicitly, blindly, faithfully.
Literature is partly to blame for this phenomena of acceptance of perverted behavior: Lolita is a work of pedophiliac fantasy, Anais Nin’s conversations with her father show crass incestuous behavior and Nabokov’s Van and Ada were both mentally ill people - the libertine sentimentality with which the work is accepted makes it easier to find excuses for actions of other brilliant men of authority.
I have been meaning to write this post ever since the news of Stephen Collins’ inappropriate behavior with children first broke. Pakistan’s state-owned television PTV used to show many iconic and famous U.S., UK and Australian television series and films in the 80s and 90s, and ‘Tales of the Golden Monkey’ was one of them. I was in grade 2 or 3 perhaps. Collins was the first crush I ever had. He remained this charming handsome dimpled romantic hero in the decades that followed courtesy TV adaptations of Danielle Steele, Barbara Taylor Bradford, true story of Betty Broderick, the long-running 7th Heaven, and the film The First Wives Club.
A few years ago, I was thrilled to meet him as he came out of the backstage door after performing in the Mel Brooks broadway musical in which he played the bamboozled King Arthur. I got my picture taken with him and he said my English was so good. And that was that.
And then the ugly business of ‘revelations’. Ofcourse there is more than one reason to believe that the story was planted specifically by an angry scorned soon-to-be-ex-wife who was blindsided by the divorce proceedings and unfair terms of financial agreements thereof. Irrespective of the exact nature of the circumstances that brought the disturbing audio to light (and illegality of it all), it is a fact that Collins led a child to touch his genitals and exposed himself to another - and in some cases allegedly even before Tales ever aired! I am sure parents have changed clothes infront of their young ones every once in a while, without it holding any special meaning unless thought of retrospectively by the child as an adult. There is nothing sexual about changing pants or a blouse unless it’s an advert running on TV and we all know how those things go! But to initiate any act of undress infront of another family’s child and that too with the perverted interest in seeing the expression on the child’s face or giving them a ‘feel’ crosses a line.
It’s the same line an Allen crosses when he thinks it’s okay to take pictures of his girlfriend’s daughter, or a Weiss crosses when he initiates sex with a willing underage sexual partner who wants to be given a role in TV or film, or a ticket master who brushes his hand against the breast of a 12-year old ‘accidentally’. It’s the line of appropriate and inappropriate behavior and your celebrity or power should not make it okay to get away with it. I feel there is a double standard - a convicted rapist got rewarded with an Oscar and the #11 greatest TV dad is being laid off work for being a pervert. Pakistani mothers have to be quiet of the daughters abuse if they want to see them married off; And Pakistani mullahs quick to rally against American / Indian conspiracies will never be seen on the street condemning the malpractice of authority by their own kind. Wrong is wrong. There cannot be layers of wrong, or grey areas of wrong, or justifications of wrong - those are for the psychologists and jurists to opine over - but as a society, people and parents, we ought to know and act better.
By giving these people work, any sort of recognition for that work, or hiding their ‘foibles’ for the greater good is wrong.
The world would be a much better place if we recognized the achievements of a person while underscoring his sickness as well, instead of making excuses for him or rejecting the accusations altogether, or brushing them under a carpet over a legality, sentiment or connection. That way, there would be less sex offenders and molesters, because most of them would be in jail - where they belong.
