Former newspaper owner Eddy Shah has
said underage girls who engage in consensual sex can be "to blame" for the abuse
they experience.
Mr Shah told the BBC: "If we're talking about girls who just go out and have
a good time, then they are to blame."He added rape charges involving girls who "threw themselves" at celebrities could be a legal technicality.
Mr Shah was recently cleared of raping a schoolgirl after telling a jury there had been no contact between them.
The 69-year-old founder of the newspaper Today, who lives in Chippenham, Wiltshire, was found not guilty at the Old Bailey last month of raping a girl at upmarket London hotels when she was between 12 and 15.
His comments to Radio 5 live presenter Stephen Nolan come after a prosecutor was suspended and a judge placed under investigation after it emerged a 13-year-old girl was labelled "predatory" and "sexually experienced" during a Snaresbrook Crown Court case where a man admitted abusing her.
'Witch hunt'
Mr Shah also commented on Scotland Yard's Operation Yewtree investigation,
set up in the wake of allegations of sexual abuse by BBC DJ Jimmy Savile and
other television stars from the 1970s and 1980s.Mr Shah said: "Rape was a technical thing - below a certain age. But these girls were going out with pop groups and becoming groupies and throwing themselves at them.
"Young girls and young men have always wanted a bit of
excitement when they are young. They want to appear adult and do adult
things."
When asked if he was implying that underage victims could themselves be at
fault, he said: "If we're talking about girls who just go out and have a good
time, then they are to blame
What the hell is wrong with some people?
Are people forgetting the basic, fundamental issue here?
We are not talking about eighteen year olds and above, who, having reached the age they can legally go out, have a "night on the town, on the pull, as some do. We are talking about young teenage girls, thirteen years old or so, and the blame should ALWAYS lie with the person who took advantage, who wielded the power, who SEXUALLY ASAULTED or ABUSED these children.
Note the word children.
Thirteen to sixteen, is under the age of consent for a reason, in case these people aren't aware. These so called "celebrities" who abused their status's and abused these children and young teenagers could quite easily have said NO.
NO.
Get it?
What is so difficult with that?
They are (supposed to be) the "responsible" adults here!!
No wonder the culture of Saville and others was allowed to continue, unabated, for so long.
This victim blaming culture needs to stop, and stop now, or we will be stuck in the position we are in for ever and will never be able to move forward.
It is ironic to hear so many adults blame and condemn children for being complicit in behaviour considered to be adult-only, when the problem is adults failing to be adults, not children failing to be children. Adults are required to protect children as part of every functioning civilized western culture, even if the definitions and limits of childhood responsibility vary.
ReplyDeleteWhen adults do not protect the child from being used to satisfy an adult's selfish sexual impulses, the child is simply never to blame. An adult cannot be readily "seduced" by a person who is sexually unattractive to him, and no one has said the child "raped" or forced the adult. Would the adult who was said to be "predated upon" by the young girl have submitted to, say, an older woman or another male? Would every predatory adult have rendered this same man unwilling to make adult decisions regarding use of his own body?
Victim blaming is illogical, immoral and destructive of the entire society as well as the victim. It also promotes the idea that adult males are not in any control of their sexual impulses and greater physical power over
smaller women or children. It is ultimately as demeaning to the majority of adults, especially men (all those who would not misuse sex as an instrument of selfish power and unethical control over others) as to the victim who is so disgustingly blamed.
Thank you for the points you raise on this blog about prevalent - but dangerously unhealthy - views towards victims and survivors.
Elle