I'm just going to come right out and say it - I think most of these child abuse allegations from the 70s are just rubbish.

It's taken me some time to collect my thoughts on the matter, mainly because I have been unable to research something in my memory about child abuse in the Highlands and Western Isles of Scotland some years ago. Several children were removed from their parents and placed into care because of the fears of social workers about alleged occult practices and black magic. It was all hysterical nonsense of course but the fact remains that childrens lives were ruined and their parent's health and reputations sullied because of the overreactions of ill-informed do-gooders. I can't find anything on the internet about it now although it is quite clear in my own memory. The words of Barbara Hewson (pictured right) and the media's reaction to them have brought it back to me.

Although I think she was talking dangerous nonsense when she reportedly said that the age of consent should be lowered to thirteen, she put her finger on the issue when she said that most of the so-called victims were 'reinterpreting the past'
I can well imagine that some women who, when younger and in a different era, allowed famous men to take liberties with them and now, for the sake of their own conscience, need to become victims rather than instigators.

That's not to say that I think that any of Savile's accusers are lying. No, I think that the revelation of Savile's iniquity was the start of an hysterical reaction, a need to vindicate and a pathetic general arse covering attempt by the BBC and popular media.

To put it bluntly - if Rolf Harris is guilty of anything more serious than molesting an occasional Koala then it will shatter all my illusions and I'll never believe good of anybody ever again.

The rest will probably turn out to be, in Barbara Hewson's words, 'minor misdemeanours which would not normally be prosecuted decades after the event'. Where does the CPS imagine the real hard evidence is going to come from? Eye witnesses? DNA? Not likely and not possible respectively.

Plainly what the police and the CPS are hoping for are some kind of soul cleansing confessions by the celebrities concerned. If you'll admit to putting your hand up this girl's skirt in the BBC studios on such and such a date 40 years ago, we'll drop the prosecution - that sort of thing. Then the police, CPS, various do-gooders and the NSPCC can all go home and glow in the rosy delusion that they have done their jobs and the public can be proud of them.

It amounts to nothing short of extracting confessions under duress and I think it is every bit as culpable and reprehensible as the crimes of which these people have been accused and so publicly pilloried.