SINCE ACCUSATIONS SURFACED last month that renowned British TV Jimmy Savile host sexually abused young victims for decades without being exposed, scores of adults have come forward to claim that their own allegations of sex assault in the past were ignored.
Worries that Britain’s institutions — and its media — have for years been too conservative in handling claims of child abuse have jolted the nation’s public debate, prompting an abrupt turn that culminated in the prime minister being handed, on live television, a list of high-profile figures named in internet rumors as possible sex offenders and the very public assertion by a politician that he is not a child molester.
With the country reeling over how to respond to a torrent of new abuse claims, Prime Minister David Cameron Friday warned the media and the public of the danger of shredding the reputations of innocent figures.
‘Witch hunt’
“Effectively, you are casting lots of aspersions about lots of people without any evidence,” Cameron said. “You have to be careful you don’t start some sort of witch hunt against some people who might be entirely innocent.”
The BBC, already criticised over its reluctance to broadcast allegations of child abuse carried out by the late Jimmy Savile, one of its prominent stars, now faces questions about its handling of abuse accusations levelled against a senior political figure.
Last week, BBC’s “Newsnight” aired a report on allegations related to sex abuse in Wales in the 1970s and 1980s. The programme interviewed abuse victim Steve Messham, who claimed that previous reports into the Wales scandal had failed to examine abuse by someone he described as a senior Conservative Party figure at the time.
McAlpine identified himself
On Friday, Alistair McAlpine, a Conservative Party member of the House of Lords, identified himself as the target of online rumors — saying he was likely the political figure referred to, but not named, in the “Newsnight” report. McAlpine, who was Conservative Party treasurer in the era of Margaret Thatcher, insisted he had never been involved in the abuse of children and suggested that he had been the victim of mistaken identity.
On Friday, Messham confirmed it had in fact been a cast of mistaken identity, telling the BBC he had offered “sincere and humble apologies” to McAlpine for making false allegations of sexual abuse.
“After seeing a picture in the past hour of the individual concerned, this (is) not the person I identified by photograph presented to me by the police in the early 1990s, who told me the man in the photograph was Lord McAlpine,” Messham said in a statement, according to the BBC.
The BBC’s decision to broadcast Messham’s initial claim came as it conducted an internal inquiry into why “Newsnight” had shelved an investigation into Savile late last year, weeks before the organisation screened tribute shows about his life and work. Savile, who presented music and children’s shows on BBC, died in October 2011.
Unrelated sexual abuse
When its rival ITV aired allegations about Savile last month, the expose led to a widespread discussion of other, unrelated sexual abuse in Britain in the recent past — including cases in Wales in which Messham was a victim.
Amid frenzied speculation, Cameron was on Thursday handed a list of individuals who have been the subject of internet speculation during an interview by ITV’s “This Morning” program. In his haste, the show’s presenter Phillip Schofield fleetingly showed the note to a camera, revealing some of the identities.
McAlpine said that rumors spreading online and the actions of the BBC and ITV had left him with little option other than to comment. “In order to mitigate, if only to some small extent, the damage to my reputation I must publicly tackle these slurs and set the record straight,” he said in a statement.
The politician said that he had never abused Messham or any other child, and had never visited children’s homes or a hotel in the Welsh town of Wrexham where the victim told the BBC that sex abuse had taken place.
The BBC said in a statement that its broadcast was in the public interest even as McAlpine’s lawyer threatened to sue.
Meanwhile, Britain’s television standards regulator Ofcom confirmed that it had received complaints about ITV’s “This Morning” over its handling of the child abuse issue.
‘A grave error of judgement’
“The action of presenting a random list from the Internet of alleged ‘suspects’ to the prime minister, live on television, was a grave error of judgment,” said Conservative lawmaker Stuart Andrew, who is among those to have filed a complaint.
Schofield, the ITV presenter, stressed it was never his intention to identify anyone on the list and apologised if viewers were able see names.
“I was not accusing anyone of anything and it is essential that it is understood that I would never be part of any kind of witch hunt,” he said in a statement.
ITV said in a statement it was “extremely regrettable” that a “misjudged camera angle” may have made names briefly visible. The broadcaster echoed Schofield in insisting that the programme was not making any accusations against anyone in particular.
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