13th November 2012
When David Cameron PM promised that government would show compassion including mentally ill he meant it. His leadership qualities became obvious recently when he ordered a number of inquires into child sexual abuse. The Prime Minister even agreed to a live show on BBC which led to the exposure of some names, allegedly paedophiliacs in politics. PM immediately did the right thing by setting some boundaries: one should respect that allegations have to be investigated properly. There is no point ruining other people's lives by unproven allegations.
One of the consequences of sexual abuse/rape is Post-traumatic Stress Disorder. Stress can lead to high levels of various hormones including cortisol which can attack memory cells. Victims sometimes quite simply cannot remember some aspects of their trauma. It may be that at times what is forgotten does not matter at all from the legal point of view. However, it does matter a lot if there is false identification of the perpetrator(s).
In many cases there would be no doubt whatsoever as to who is the perpetrator even after 80 years or so. Time in itself is not the only factor determining what is remembered and what is not. Psychologists have expert knowledge in how human memory works and could help those in need to know.
Police have to be given fair chance to investigate complaints of childhood sexual abuse be it institutions or elsewhere. There is no point sabotaging the legitimate issues of child abuse investigations by careless journalism and disclosures of names without proven allegations. No surprise that victims of abuse were appalled in case it damaged their cases because public assumed they were all unreliable witnesses.
While institutional cover ups of child abuse do exist even today so does the willful ignorance of those who could be more helpful including medical profession.
For many years registered medical doctors have allowed persecution of decent colleagues who had the interest in the prevention of child abuse. They even made false allegations against such good doctors. The medical regulator is a servant to NHS institutions and these doctors have been struck off medical register or their reputations damaged beyond repair although they never harmed anyone who was their patient or public.
British Medical Association repeatedly refused to consider human rights issues such as freedom of speech for doctors who expressed their knowledge about how abuse of children and even murders of members of public could be reduced.
The General Medical Council also refused to consider some ethical issues related to communications about child abuse history. The interests of religious institutions were protected primarily in cases of abuse by clergy. Patients did not matter at all. Evidence presented to them did not matter at all either.
The Labour government covered up suicide rates in UK population. Just in case any doctors wanted to use these for further research into effectiveness of the policies.
UK remained the European leader in the number of serial killers produced. One of the aetiological factors in the history of serial killers is the history of physical, emotional and sometimes sexual abuse in their childhoods. Of course, other factors come into play as well. Recently Mr Stephen Farrel was jailed for murders of a priest and another religious person. He claimed he was abused as a child by clergy member. This is the sort of thing that Dr Helen Bright predicted in 1999 but GMC declared her conduct serious professional misconduct. GMC has had their 'God's Hit Squad' working at the GMC Council and also Fitness to Practice(FTP) hearings as well as in FTP panel formation. The Privy Council have decided to keep very quiet about breaches of Article 6 of Human Rights Act 1998 at GMC.
Now, it seems BBC was left without proper medical consultations available to them when making programs. It is not enough just having editorial control. Expert knowledge is important and useful if applied.
