It was late 2009. I was in the office of a senior trader.

“I’d like to talk to you about XY.”

“Ah yes. I wondered when someone would come and talk to me about that crook.”*

I remained silent.

He went on: “He runs a desk of crooks.”

Three things to note about all scandals when they finally erupt.

1. The first is this: “The real scandal is not that no-one knows. It’s that everyone knows.” Or could have known if they hadn’t taken steps to avoid knowing or asking questions. 

This statement was said about the children’s heart unit at Bristol Royal Infirmary in a report published in 2001 about events over a nine-year period between 1984 – 1995. Nine years: it doesn’t take much thought or imagination to realise how many people at all levels there must have been over such a period who knew or suspected that something was wrong. As at Bristol, so it is in most scandals since then, including those occupying so many column inches and pixels in recent days and doubtless many more. How many BBC journalists, for instance, were aware of the sex scandals involving their “talent”?

2. When asked why, if they knew or suspected XY was a crook/sex offender/general low-life, they said or did nothing, the silence while they try to think of an answer that doesn’t make them look stupid / complicit / embarrassed can last an awfully long time. That senior trader finally responded by saying that he made sure to keep his clients away from the crook, evidently forgetting he was working for a corporate entity not himself, let alone his other legal/regulatory obligations.

Most of the time it comes down to the usual rationalisations: “I wasn’t sure / I didn’t have the evidence / More than my job’s worth / Not my job / I have a mortgage/family etc ., / No-one would believe me / I’d lose my job/be blamed etc.,.” It boils down in the end to a spectrum from wanting a quiet life to plain old lack of courage. It is all perfectly understandable, of course, but the more senior a person it is, the less acceptable it is. Or should be. If we want to delve into an earlier royal affair, ponder the words of Andy Webb, the journalist who uncovered the Panorama/Diana interview scandal and its cover up.

“It would have been a huge ask of the Head of a News Division, having recently seen the most famous, the most significant piece of news coverage in the Corporation’s history, having gone round the world, having won prizes and plaudits, how much moral courage do you need to pull the plug on the story …. by saying that it was gained through an egregious ethical breach? Who would have been brave enough to do that? It’s my feeling the bosses were not brave enough to do that and it prompted the cover up.”

Not brave enough.

That summarises what all inquiries have said and will say about why people did not act or speak up.

3. Senior people who bore some responsibility will do their level best to present themselves as virtuous victims and/or brave seekers of the truth and/or lied to, hoping this will divert attention away from their own past actions and failures. See one G Brown, for instance. Or K Starmer. Or they will lie low – pretty much the entirety of Royal Mail/Post Office management when the unfounded prosecutions were actually happening, long before Ms Vennells appeared on the scene. Or they will be privately grateful that a suitable scapegoat has been found to embody the guilt of many. In the Epstein affair, the UK (with its perfect – quasi-Trollopian – mix of guilty female groomer, herself daughter of a crook, gay Minister labelled the Prince of Darkness and a former actual Prince, notable mainly for his libido, greed and stupidity) is the scapegoat. All the very many senior men in the US or elsewhere who abused girls, traded favours, misused confidential information and so on are unlikely to be investigated, let alone charged or face any accountability for their crimes and seedy revolting behaviour.

There will be much talk about taking such crimes seriously, about VAWG (a cliche now almost as pointless and irritations as “lessons will be learned” because in both cases nothing is ever done or was ever intended to be done), about not allowing the rich and powerful to use their wealth and law courts to stop the truth coming out, about getting justice for the victims and so on. 

Amongst this outbreak of public moral tut-tutting remember the following:

• If raping trafficked women and girls is a no-no – and it is, then this applies to every man using a prostitute, since most of them have been trafficked and/or coerced. Even the dimmest men would have had plenty of evidence to put them on notice of this. How many men does that include and how many of them will face any accountability? 
• It was barely a couple of weeks ago that the Scottish Parliament voted against a Bill to criminalise those buying sex (men) while decriminalising those who sell it (women).
• Most men convicted of the possession of child abuse images, many of the very worst kind, never serve a prison sentence. It is not, of course, a victimless crime. Far from it. But it is one where the consequences for the perpetrator (and those who view are perpetrators at one remove) do not match the horror of what has been done to children.
• The public inquiry into the abuse of girls by grooming gangs is proceeding very slowly indeed. 13 months after the Casey report was commissioned, the public inquiry’s Terms of Reference have finally been published in the last week.
• The UK government has failed to take steps to stop the use of Slapps, used by the rich and powerful much like the libel laws as “a way of using power and money to silence legitimate journalism” (in the words of a former justice secretary).
• The proposed Hillsborough law has been postponed for further drafting. Watch closely what happens to that law and what those amendments will mean.
• The new Cabinet Secretary, Antonia Romeo, will be responsible for managing the process of disclosure of government documents relating to Mandelson to the Intelligence and Security Committee. This is not a court process. Control of information is a very powerful tool and one governments do not give up easily or at all. Another one to watch. 

Oh – and if any of these cases end up with criminal charges, the disclosure process will be a nightmare. Do not underestimate the capacity of the police and/or CPS to mess this up.** Royally.

* Mr XY continued working in the financial sector until 2023.

** I still bear the scars from the UK’s biggest fraud trial 12 years ago.

Cyclefree