In the 1960s and 1970s, there weren’t paedophiles. There were dirty old men, for sure, but somehow they seemed to be less socially unacceptable than today’s paedos. Stories abounded over those we now condemn as kiddy-fiddlers, regarded as the lowest form of human life in C21, but back then, just a bit of an oddball loner who liked to touch little boys. Hell, many of the people we saw as dirty old men weren’t, or probably weren’t, but then one, a scout group leader, would be arrested by the police. Those good old days when everyone was far more innocent and forgiving, eh?
So you see, there really were paedos, probably as many as there are today, quite possibly in plain sight. We have one in our village, a now elderly man who I have never, once, spoken to in over 30 years of living across the road from us. “He was chemically castrated,” they told us when we moved in. “He’ll be literally castrated if he comes anywhere near my kids,” but he never did. But speaking of plain sight, that’s almost the norm. Jimmy Savile operated in plain sight and so did Barry Bennell, who has died in prison.
Barry Bennell? Should I know him? Lots of former footballers knew him when he was a talent scout for Crewe Alexandra, Stoke City and Manchester City. He abused countless young boys, aged 11 upwards. One of them was Andy Woodward, who published a harrowing memoir called A Position of Trust about the abuse he was subjected to by Bennell. I still have nightmares after reading it last year. Christ alone knows how Woodward and his fellow victims coped. Some just didn’t and still don’t.
Bennell was jailed on a number of occasions for his evil crimes and, as the judge foretold, he died in prison. He had suffered from cancer and had been beaten up by fellow prisoners. So it would be hard to have any sadness at his passing and of course I don’t. Regret, maybe, that he did not live longer behind the four walls, terrified to his dying day that he might be attacked and attacked again and have a long lifetime to consider the other lives he destroyed. But as with such people, he probably is what he is; a man who was born with the urge to abuse children and never lost it.
With all crime, the victim always suffers the most. If Bennell’s victims survived their abuser, they still live with what he did to them. Anything he suffered, by way of losing his freedom, is over now. No more suffering from the one who caused the suffering. And that is why I will always oppose the death penalty. Because reprisal by state murder ends the suffering of the perpetrator. “Ah but what if it was your son…” is a fair argument but it wasn’t and I can still be objective. And as I don’t believe there is a hell for people like Bennell to go to, I just want him to suffer for as long as possible in the nearest place to hell we have for him and his like. His death is a deliverance but it’s all over for him now.
