Restorative v. Retributive Justice is a debate as old as civilisation. Restorative Justice is possibly the most fashionable at the moment, in that it focuses on the needs of the victim – and offender. It is a more subjective form of Justice – encouraging the offender to make repayment to society through perhaps community service, or apologising to the victim in person, to understand the wrong he has done and repent. Retributive Justice is the ‘eye for an eye’ form of punitive justice – lock him up and throw away the key.
Both forms of justice require that the offender, once proven so, is available to play his part – either by being punished or to make repayment to the victim and society.
Jimmy Savile is not available to either form of ‘Justice’ – he is dead, and was dead long before he was formally accused or found guilty by the media. So what exactly is going on with these schedules of CFA enabled ‘allegators’ who seek ‘Justice’ belatedly? Who is to pay the price for their ‘Justice’ since Jimmy Savile is not available to do so?
They would say that those who ‘enabled’ these unproven allegations to occur. A difficult ‘second hand’ concept. Since there has been no investigation into whether the events ever occurred, a matter of national policy according to Yewtree, how can you possibly prove that anyone enabled them to occur?
It is said that ‘the BBC employed him and therefore had a vicarious duty in the event of him offending’ – certainly the BBC took no steps to stop him offending – but was that because they were incompetent, willingly turning a blind eye to his offending, or simply because they had no idea that he or anyone else could be offending? Obviously they had some clue that popular celebrities and underage age girls were a dangerous mix for an employer – and presumably that is why they insisted on an ‘over 16′ regulation for those coming in contact with their celebrities. Should they have insisted that all those coming on the premises produced a birth certificate? Should they have learnt to live with the heart broken wails of 16 year olds, no doubt suffering some incurable disease who had turned up ‘for their last chance’ to meet their chosen celebrity and Dad had forgotten to bring the required paperwork?
Possibly something they will have to do in the future now that society is holding them responsible for an event never proven to have occurred, but for which they are being held responsible as though it has been proven to have occurred.
Who else is the target of these CFAs? ‘Jimmy Savile’ cries the mob! He had all those millions and gold chains and everything, he should have to give some of that to me, me, me! They might have a valid point if Savile was alive, if the allegations were true, he would be a reasonable target – but Jimmy Savile ‘lies a mouldering in his grave’ – he has no millions, no gold chains.
‘Well his family then, why should they live a life of luxury’ – sorry wrong target again, he didn’t leave his millions and his gold chains to his family.
Savile left his money to a tranche of charities. Help the Heroes, and (ironically, in the present climate) a domestic abuse and child protection charity, amongst others. That is the target that the CFAs have in their sights. Those millions rightfully belonged to the charities, minus any debts on his estate, from the very second that he died. They would have been in safe hands by now, doing good work for legless servicemen, had Savile’s great-niece not decided that she was remarkably pi**ed off at not being named in his will and come up with a tale – now formally refuted in police statements by 11 members of his family – of how she was ‘abused by him’ by their account some years before she met him. The case represented a potential debt on the estate, and so, from that moment, the executors were unable to put the money to good use, they had to sit and wait to see what happened next.
What happened next will go down in history as one of the greatest shames ever to darken British shores.
Can you even begin to explain to me how ‘Justice’ is served by using an unproven allegation, that can never be defended, as requiring Leeds General Hospital to be deprived of a much needed new life saving scanner – where does that fit on the scale between Restorative and Retributive? How does taking money from Help the Heroes ‘encourage a dead alleged offender’ to make restitution to society? Perhaps you want to tell me that if the alleged victims get their money they will be able to seek professional help to recover from their trauma – not if they live in the north of England they won’t – the charity that might have helped them won’t have the bequest they were expecting to pay their rent, the ‘alleged Victim’ will have it – so how does that work? Will the ‘closed due to lack of funding’ sign on the front door bring them closure on their trauma?
As you will have noticed, every one of the CFAs was lodged before April 1st of this year – which means that the ‘old’ rules apply. The executors know that every single one of them carries a lethal ‘double fee for success’ burden. They have all been lodged by high flying law firms with high fee rates. If the executors were to contest each one – and the case ended up in court, where the victim was awarded a measly one pound for pain and suffering from an indecent suggestion 40 years ago – then the executors still have to pay hundreds of thousands out to each law firm, or in the case of the Duncroft allegations, conveniently most with the same law firm…a cumulative sum of money that could wipe out the estate, leaving the alleged victims with a pound each, the charities with nothing, and the executors – in this case the NatWest Bank, with a filthy reputation for having doubted the word of those poor wee girls. It is a no win situation.
Little wonder that 90% of personal injury claims (and psychiatric damage is counted as a personal injury to the brain) are settled out of court, not subject to rigorous investigation or cross examination, but to a pragmatic decision to fling some dough in the claimant’s direction, settle with the brief before the bills get too high, and as they say in Sarf London, ‘wipe your lips’.
Maybe you concede me the point on the charities, but still feel that suing the BBC is the right thing to do? Aren’t they all on golden handshakes, dishonourable people little better than bankers? Surely it’s all right to aim the CFAs at them, that is harmless enough isn’t it, almost a ‘victimless crime’?
Then let us look at where ‘BBC money’ comes from. Not Jimmy Savile, for a start, nor was he ever ‘under contract’ to them as Moor Larkin has painstakingly proved. BBC money comes from BBC licence fee payers. It doesn’t come willingly; it is in effect, a forced tax on owning a television – whether you watch it or not. Some people are either unable, or spectacularly unwilling, to pay that licence fee. Which is why the BBC employ an army of ‘enforcers’ to go door to door catching those using a television without a licence. ‘Enforcers’ come cheaper when you only employ them during the day, rather than having to pay them extra to go out in the dark when most people are watching television.
That is why the majority of the people that they catch are unemployed – no job to go to during the day and nothing to do but watch tele. The major portion of those people have a very good reason for not having a job – they are single mothers on benefits, looking after their young children during the day. 10% of all ‘criminal’ cases passing through the magistrates court (and it has been as high as 15%) come from this category.
So when you talk of the BBC ‘millions’, not just the millions that executives receive – but also the ‘millions’ that the CFAs are aimed at, they could well come from the benefits paid to single mothers to feed those children. The BBC have put aside £33,000 for each of the 120 untested allegations as potential compensation. Do you know how many single mothers they will have to take to court next year for each of those £33,000 pots?
242, that’s how many! 242 times 120 = 29,040. And that is punishing Jimmy Savile for something we will never know that he did, or teaching him the wrong he has done – how?
So when you meet a wee bairn on the streets with no shoes and a rumbling tummy, or a little girl too frightened to go home – you explain to them how this new fangled ‘child protection’ works; I wouldn’t have the nerve to try.
You explain to them that Mum can’t feed them today because the BBC took her to court so that a 55 year old woman can get compensation for a hand on the bum 40 years ago; you explain that there is no safe house in Newcastle to give that little girl refuge from a brutal father, because the executors can’t afford that and the lawyers fees. You go and face the anxious queue for a scan in Leeds General Hospital and tell them how it is right and proper that there isn’t a second scanner – because…
Well, because what? What exactly are you going to say? I’m damned if I know.
*Ms Raccoon is going to be off-line for several days now – If you put more than one link in your comment, your comment WILL be held up in the moderation queue, and there will not be anyone to release it. Try to remember! Just one link and nice and friendly….