Normal

Everything felt normal yesterday. That might sound boring, but it's what's heaven's all about to me at the moment. There were familiar people, cosy chairs, the smell of old books, plates of food. I had lots of conversations and I was able to say with conviction that yes, I'm feeling a lot better. I could have added that I felt this way because I was pretty sure nobody in the room was trying to do me any harm, at least not on purpose, and that I really loved them all to bits. But I'm getting used to not talking about 95% of what I'm actually thinking. My world and that of other people don't seem to have that much in common. I wonder what people who don't have pain, paranoia or apocalyptic concerns actually worry about. Mortgage rates? I used to do that back in the days of spare thinking capacity. I've forgotten what that was like, but it sounds nice.

Saying that, I've been in normal mode for a consecutive number of days, I'm cheerful and getting things done. The pressure around my skull is creeping back though. I'm tired of walking though life like a human pincushion, but I do get the odd day off. There's also the full range of sensations from prickly through to thumping. I can't complain at the lack of variety.

Sometimes I think about all I could have been capable of if I'd been allowed to think in peace, but it's best not to. This is me being cheerful, by the way. Ha-ha-ha.

A place of safety

I feel like writing about something nice.

I realised, when I tried hypnosis for relaxation many years ago, that I had a problem. You're meant to imagine a safe place, but I don't have one of those. There's my granny's cabin, which comes close, but whatever peace there was, I knew to be temporary. Still, it was a place of freedom, which was more than worth having.

The only thing my father ever taught me was to swim under water. What I actually mean is he showed me how to do it and expected me to follow, ignoring how scared I was. He said it was easy and laughed on one side of his face. I remember seeing his body like a square projectile under the water; familiar and uncompromising.

Holding my head under water has always terrified me. Sometimes I dreamt about drowning, or trying to save people and not doing it very well. There's people in my family who have drowned. Perhaps it's one of those cell-memories.

I went away in a mess, so imagine my surprise when I forgot to take tablets and just existed for a while. One day, I walked right into the vast, turquoise bathwater, put a mask and snorkel on, deep breath, and disappeared for what was left of the holiday. I thought about my father and what he thought he'd taught me, but didn't. I overcame that fear. And I was amazed that under the water, perfectly afloat and surrounded by the sound of my own breath, I felt safe.

Dissociation sounds like a good idea

My perspective on the world and on my own life has changed so many times over the last year or so, I've stopped counting. Twitter and blogs have helped me get closer to the truth. Lately, things I've seen and researched in the world around me, and things I've seen closer to home, have started to converge, and I'm no longer sure what's true and what's something else that might look like truth, but isn't. The best case scenario is that I've lost the plot. There's a cure for that.

In my search for help I turned, among others, to an EMDR shrink who told me I had a dissociative disorder of a co-conscious variety, but that I was too unstable to have EMDR, and that I should see a psychiatrist specialized in dissociation for a proper diagnosis. I was quite gobsmacked. I've avoided any sort of diagnosis like the plague for all these years, because I was scared that any label could stop me from getting a job or life insurance, make my friends run a mile or you name it. Instead, I secretly self diagnosed as PTSD and at times depressed and decided to leave it at that. But now I've decided to give up on the idea that I'm coping marvelously, because clearly I'm not. Seeing a psychiatrist is another story. I'm about as keen on that idea as a date with Dracula.

Thinking about my strange behaviors as parts has made things fall into place like eggs into a basket. I've never thought about myself as "we", or been aware of voices, but I know that certain functions only seem to be available to me at certain times. There's all the things that "the judge" doesn't seem to allow me to do or say. There's "Julia" and "the scream" who I use in photos and to frighten people for fun. I have a "professional" who convinces people to give me a job more often than not. There's "fix it" who must sort out other people's problems at all cost, and who takes these problems on as her own, which probably doesn't help anyone. There's "deaf" who's only physically present and can't hear what people say. My biggest enemy at the moment is "freeze"which keeps me nailed to the sofa for days. "Paranoia", wow, he just rules. There might be a little girl who I hate for not speaking up when I was younger, but I don't like thinking about her.

One things' for sure, if I'm dissociative, then so are half of the people (the most interesting half) of the people I know. I know that I seem be drawn towards people who, like me, have had great traumas in their lives, or who behave as if they have but can't or won't remember.

The idea of dissociation is quite comforting now that I've got used to it. I've stopped feeling quite so guilty about having no concentration and not hearing what people say to me. If this was the only problem I'd be laughing.

Dissociation is also coming in handy now that I'm in crisis mode, although it's only partly working. I wish I could talk about it, but "the judge" is not the only one who thinks that's a bad idea. What's left of the world as I know it could end, but I have a feeling it already has, and not just in this neck of the woods. There has to be something on the other side of this. I've been reading the Bible. If Heaven will help, I'm ready for that. In any case, I'm not alone.

Still here

I am not going to start harping on about how it’s not fair and how CSA victims/survivors deserve better, and what a disgrace it all is. OK, maybe I am.

The truth is that I’ve been put off blogging since the #paedobritain fallout. I’ve been tempted to take down my blog, because I’m scared that personal information will be used against me. I put it out there in the first place because it helps me, it’s an act of defiance. But I’m asking myself what the cost might be, and have decided to stop blogging about my personal shit for the time being, until I’ve sussed things out as much as is possible, until I decide properly what risks I’m prepared to take. Although anything that could identify me has probably been screenshot already. Hey-ho.

I was going to go down the route of screen-shooting and proving stuff, and then I said to myself, no. Not going there. Anyone who’s interested can go on Topsy and follow the trails. Sniffing around Topsy is not a great way to spend your time, and I don’t like doing it, because it runs contrary to the whole idea of Twitter in the first place, to exchange ideas in the here and now. Personally I was so pissed off I couldn’t leave it alone.

In terms of the people taking part in the sorry saga, more of the actors on the one side appear to have links to the Huffington post than would be statistically expected, which is interesting.

A statistically significant number of actors on the other side of the saga seem to be in it to discredit Stephen Meesham (who may or may not merit it, I don’t know), the Waterhouse Enquiry, and random CSA survivors and campaigners. That’s also interesting.

This is a selection of methods I’ve seen used too good effects from several quarters:

Flattery and making someone a “favoured friend” (unfortunately works very well on yours truly)

Making survivors feel embarrased about “complaining” or “playing the victim” (also known as telling it like it is)

Encouraging tribalism (“our side” against “their side”)

Suggesting that every enquiry is worthless (agree most are cover-ups, but still contain valuable information)

Suggesting that all resistance is useless, nothing will ever change (agree system is rotten, but I won’t stop fighting within it and against it)

Continuing to include people’s names in twitter convos even when they’ve unfollowed or blocked someone to give impression of continued support

Continuing to quote people on blogs and on twitter when they’ve explicitly withdrawn their support for someone

Using patronising language

Using threathening language or namecalling

Changing the subject instead of answering straightforward questions

Twisting people’s words

Making mountains out of molehills

I can’t help noticing also, that whenever there’s a controversial case related to CSA, paedophile rings, ritual abuse and murder cases, satanism etc., there are virulent “pro” and “anti” groups on twitter and in the bloggosphere.

The “pro” and “anti” Meesham lobbies remind me of the “pro” and “anti” McCann campaigns. I think at times those who want to obscure the truth feed both sides of such campaigns, at the same time discrediting and drowning out those who are not part of an “organised effort”. Usefully, it’s often difficult to tell which is which. When people, like me for example, are driven to point this out, we unwittingly play into the hands of puppet-masters by helping to discredit lies and truths equally.

All it should mean when we see these “pro” and “anti” campaings, I think, is that there’s a lot of vested interest in hiding the truth. It should make us want to take a really good look and use our own judgments, rather than be put off and run away.

I’d promised myself to stay out of the “pro” and “anti” Meesham debacle, but I hate being taken for a ride. I feel let down, and I know others do too, but perhaps we shouldn’t. It’s not personal. I believe there are people driven by money, the desire for attention, the need to protect their own murky pasts, or the desire to promote the agendas of others, for reasons which can’t be fully understood at the moment.

In spite of everything I’ve just said, we could just be looking at a bunch of self-promoters, riding rough-shod over the CSA agenda. I don’t think so anymore, but I could be wrong.  I’ve been wrong about people before.

I will get over this, I’ll stop taking it personally, I’ll re-saddle my horse and get back on. I’ve learned a lot, and that can only be a good thing. I’ve even learned a new word (sock-puppet) which always makes me laugh.

Twitter and the bloggosphere is not so different from real life, i.e. notoriously difficult but not impossible to navigate. It doesn’t matter if we get it wrong sometimes. It doesn’t mean we’re naïve or stupid. It’s human to want to trust people and to want them to take our sides.

We should be flattered that so much effort is put into derailing us. We must be really powerful. We must be really important.

Even sock-puppets and attention seekers can be fun to talk to. I’m going to try to stop thinking that they’re trying to steal my soul and just get on with it. I still think #paedobritain was a great idea, no matter who came up with it and why.

Let’s keep talking!

Paedophilia. As a career move, you could do worse

You may have heard rumours that Margaret Tatcher's cabinet was riddled with paedophiles. 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2224167/Former-Minister-says-Thatcher-aide-paedophile-preyed-boys-home--Hague-known.html

You probably know that the same Margaret Tatcher was close friends with the worst paedophile Britain has ever known, Jimmy Savile. That Savile  was handed the keys to Broadmoor hospital and was made head of a task force to introduce reforms by Health Minister Edwina Curry. She says, of course, that she has nothing to hide. 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/jimmy-savile/9623780/Edwina-Currie-I-have-nothing-to-hide-over-Jimmy-Savile.html

It's funny though, that when asked by one of Savile's victims here on twitter, whether she had ever seen Savile with a child, she did not respond. At one point, I gently reminded Curry of the question she'd been asked. Silence. Like she says, she has nothing to hide.

Ken Clarke was the Secretary of State for Health (1988-1990) at the time when Savile was handed the keys to Broadmoor. That's the same Ken Clarke who has been accused of molestation by former child actor and investigative journalist Ben Fellows. A complaint has been lodged. We've heard nothing more about it.

http://the-tap.blogspot.be/2012/10/is-ken-clarke-member-of-savile.html

This is the same Ken Clarke, by the way, who created a bit of a furore in 2011 when he suggested that "date-rape" is not really rape, and was forced to apologize.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/8520940/Kenneth-Clarke-questions-whether-date-rape-is-really-rape.html

In the only way that politicians ever apologize, of course, by insisting that that he'd been been misquoted, misunderstood. Whatever. 

There are so many interesting politicians in the UK who've enjoyed great careers by hobnobbing  with or covering up for paedophiles, or by discrediting those who try to expose them.

Take Clare Short, for example. When MP Geoffrey Dickens spoke gathered evidence and spoke in parliament to expose paedophiles, putting his life at risk and exposing himself to death threats,

http://google-law.blogspot.be/2013/02/geoffrey-dickens-mp-in-fear-for-his.html

Clare Short accused him of cynical self promotion.  

Margret Hodge was made Minister for Children by Tony Blair, after she has successfully covered up child abuse in children's homes in Islington.

http://theneedleblog.wordpress.com/2013/02/13/the-orwellian-minister-for-children-margaret-hodge/

Hodge has also privately expressed the view that the Evening Standard had paid former residents of children's homes to make up stories about abuse. 

I could keep going, telling you about the young Tony Blair being caught cruising for sex in toilets, the same Blair who as prime minister ordered a news blackout on Operation Ore, preventing high ranking politicians being prosecuted for "child porn".

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_wayne_ma_070405_tony_blair_declares_.htm

I could go on and on, and one of two things could happen. You could say, "hey, this can't all be a coincidence". Or you could say, "hey, this is nothing buy circumstantial evidence, coincidence, hearsay, unsubstantiated rumors". Paedophiles and the people who support them for their personal gain are extremely good at covering their tracks. They have infiltrated politics, the judiciary, the police, our media, our universities. They are brazen and manipulative. In a way, the more outrageous their behavior, the less inclined the public are to believe it's true, because it's just too outrageous to be true. This is human nature. Good people have a hard time believing that people are evil. 

So I've decided to present to you the case of Elio di Rupo, Prime Minister of Belgium since 2012. Sometimes it's easier to see how things work with a bit of geographical distance. Also, in this case, the evidence from whistle blowers in the police and from his victims is overwhelming and well documented. He has of course never been taken to court. His victims have mostly been paid off or disappeared, one appears to have died at a rather young age.

Belgian MP Laurent Louis (much more about him in a later post) tried to expose Mr di Rupo as a paedophile, and to expose the cover-up of the paedophile ring associated Marc Dutroux. He sent a letter to his fellow MPs and all media outlets in 2012 with this in mind. 

Was Mr di Rupo questioned? Ha-ha, you must be kidding! Laurent Louis, on the other hand, was forced to undergo a psychological assessment to prove his sanity in order to remain an MP. He has also been harassed, threatened and beaten up. When trying to expose the Dutroux coverup in parliament, all his fellow MPs stood up and left in protest. He is due in court later this year on trumped up charges, among other things he's been accused of leaking the names of Dutroux's victims, names that had been printed by every newspaper in Belgium since the case started! When Mr Louis questioned a minister in parliament about a large amount of missing files related to paedophiles, she claimed to have taken the files home, and that the cleaning lady threw them out by mistake!

Last week, Mr Louis was accused of being the brain behind a foiled military coup in the former Belgian colony of the Congo. You couldn't make it up. 

As a matter of no interest whatsoever, I'll treat you to a couple of amusing coincidences. As well as both of them being paedophiles, Jimmy Savile and Elio di Rupo were/are both freemasons, and both have strong links to Leeds. Savile, as we know, was born and spent much of his life there, and di Rupo worked there for a number of years as a University lecturer. Ah, academia. One of the favorite haunts for paedophiles. Along with politics, the judiciary, the media, education, child protection etc etc

Extract from di Rupo's interview with the BBC in 2008:

"Embarking on adult life, Mr Di Rupo left behind his Catholic upbringing, and described himself in the 2008 interview as an "atheist, rationalist and free mason". Already as a student in Mons, he had become active in the Socialist Party and his political career took off in the city, where he rose to become an MP and mayor. One of his achievements in Mons was to set up an international festival of love films in 1984, an annual February event held, appropriately enough, around St Valentine's Day." 

Aaaah. Festival of Love Films. Isn't that nice?

Before showing you the evidence of prime minister Elio di Rupo's career as a paedophile (article roughly translated from French, I take responsibility for any errors), I'll just show you some recent pictures of di Rupo hobnobbing with world leaders who made special visits to Belgium. Make no mistake, the paedophile rumours, let alone evidence, surrounding di Rupo are so strong that no national security service could have missed it. America and Israel are obviously not fussed.

Elio di Rupo welcoming Israeli prime m

THE ELIO DI RUPO CASE

Article appeared in L’Investigateur, issue 89, 3 May 2001

http://www.pedopolis.com/pages/les-affreux/elio-di-rupo/elio-di-rupo-politique-belge-fortement-soupconnable.html (link to the article in French)

We know that in Belgium, pedophilia is not viewed as a defect, but rather a springboard for a career in a country where paedophile networks are even more influential than the Masonic lodges. Used as a means of political blackmail, pedophilia doesn’t break careers, it helps them. This vicious circle is represented at all levels of political, economic, cultural, social and religious life in this country. 

The best example is that of the former Vice-President of the Government of Belgium, Elio Di Rupo, now president of the Socialist Party (sic. Prime Minster since 2012!). The Supreme Court under the authority of Councillor Fischer has just decided not to follow up his dossier! Another paedophile is free to act with impunity in Belgium.

DI RUPO’s PAEDOPHILE RECORD

There are actually countless testimonies and complaints against Elio Di Rupo on which weighs a heavy silence, one that nobody is particularly eager to lift. Let's look at the details found in the original criminal case against Elio Di Rupo to which we had access.

A police record dated 4 December 1996, with the number 46492, with the testimony of a the boss of the gay nightclub "The Cancan". The boss testifies that This pattern qualifies Di Rupo homosexual who frequented the bar twice a month in the company of young callboys. 

A police record from Namur, with the number 12852/98, in which Jean-Marie Rulens, client  boy prostitute at "The Brick" nightclub in Liège. He states that Di Rupo was always at the club, amusing himself with boys aged around 14, and he paid them 15,000 belgian francs as a “treat”. He also stated that Di Rupo had practiced fellatio and sodomy with minors. We met with Rulens who confirmed the report and gave supporting details.

A note from prosecution number 3766117528/96, which refers to the declarations of the same Rulens and which identifies two minors aged 13 and 14, SP and CV, having sexual contact with Di Rupo and a man called Grafé for "fees" of between 3,000 and 5,000 francs. 

In the report, Di Rupo stated "There was never any violence against the minors, who were willing." We found these two boys: they confirm having sex, one when he was younger than 14 years old, with the so called "Elvis" in nightclubs.

A record from Wavre Police station dated 29 October 1996. Monique Delneste told officers assigned to the case about the comings and goings of young people in the company of Elio Di Rupo in a nearby building. We interviewed Ms. Delneste and visited the building to conduct the investigation that the local police forces didn’t complete. Other testimonies from neigbours are in exactly the same vein as that of Mrs. Delneste.

A report from the National Police Brigade dated 9 October 1996 also emphasizes the “special relationship” between Di Rupo and boys. It also speaks of a certain E.M., who was a “protege” of the then Deputy Prime Minister, who has been found dead.

A report from Brussels Police Station, dated December 3, 1996 and bearing the reference number 3766118068/96. It tells of sexual relations between Di Rupo and boys aged 16 to 18 years. The report states: "Given the reputation of Mr Di Rupo, we will not pursue the case further."

A record from the Police Judiciary in Brussels, with the number 46663 in which states Mr. Robyns, the driver of Jean-Pierre Grafé (note: former minister), November 5, 1996. The driver will refers to "orgies" noting that his own role was limited to simply "serving drinks."

A confidential note from MM. Demanet, Attorney General and prosecutor in Charleroi, dated 28 November 1996. He speaks among others things of a certain Jean-Luc Finet, charged with possession of child pornography tapes. His diary included the name and address of Elio Di Rupo.

Another police record in which the minor L.H. claims to have slept with the famous Mr Trusgnach (the young man who played a key role in a previous whitewash Mr Di Rupo), in the apartment and the bed of the former minister Jean-Pierre Grafé.

Countless anonymous letters that would interest us even though there were several that indicate Di Rupo was caught redhanded in Mons with a minor under 14 years in a white Saab. This car comes up quite often in anonymous letters. This testimony is also confirmed by two police officers.

Testimonies and anonymous letters describing a car accident in which Mr Di Rupo was accompanied by a young boy in... Sars la Buissière, not far from the house of Marc Dutroux.

Testimonies that prove that Trusgnach, Di Rupo, Grafé and a big cheese from the National Bank, whose identity is known to us, were frequently seen together in the gay bars “Le Garage” and “Le Tunnel”.

Many other clues and varied pieces of information, often anonymous and therefore not credible enough to be used as evidence. But what is surprising is that there is no trace of such anonymous letters in the files of the investigators. Letters which indicated precise addresses and names who could be interviewed and checked for veracity.

VICTIMS SPEAK 

We also met some of the victims of of Di Rupo. We needed to know more about the nature of his his casual encounters. We investigated and discovered his new meeting place in two linked apartments in a residential complex situated next to the Clinique Saint-Luc in Brussels. The apartments allow visitors a discrete entrance via different buildings are in the name of an old gentleman, a powerful member of the Socialist Party, Mr Raemackers, whose love of young boys is a secret to nobody, least of all to the law. A judicial investigation was also opened following on from our investigations, against Raemackers.

Finally, neighbors, traders and private individuals living on the lower floors and apartments nearby, confirm, without being able to certify the exact ages of the young men who accompanied Di Rupo, that this address in Marekelaan was still used as his meeting place until at least 1998. 

We also met with the father of one of the victims of Di Rupo who tells us: "My son boasted a political bigwig put his hand down his pants. It was only later that I learned it was actually Elio Di Rupo. "

NEW TESTIMONY OF TWO COPS 

But the clearest evidence was provided by two municipal policemen in Mons in August 1989. One evening and on two occasions the two policemen surprised Elio Di Rupo next to Lac du Grand Large in Mons with a boy of 12 and a boy of 13 in his car. This was during their regular patrol of an area which was well known as a “secret sexual play area” for illegal and perverse activities.

"The kids had their lower bodies naked," tells one of the officers.

The police obviously noticed the identity of the well known Italo-Belgian and the children who are adults today still remember what happened to them. The two police men had at the time made no written record, as their communal hierarchy at the time recommended that they did not. However, they changed their minds after we spoke to them, and finally three years ago, a complaint was deposited with the Officer of the Police Judiciary, Michel Steylemans. The latter received their deposition and finally, two years later, passed it on to the court. We already know the result: case closed. 

David Aaronowich showing pretend sympathy for victims *gags*

Beware the imperfect memory. Sometimes the real victim in a child abuse scandal is the person wrongly accused

David Aaronowich, The Times Newspaper, 20 April 2013

Imagine you are one of two unfortunate people. First you are J, in your mid-forties. More than 30 years ago, in your early teens, you were repeatedly sexually abused by a number of people, one at least of whom is fairly famous. At the time you were confused and powerless and even inclined to blame yourself for what was happening. Although you told one or two adults at the time, they didn’t believe you, or even became angry with you. Since then you have suffered from depression and have found it hard to give or take love. But now, watching the Savile story unfold, you feel strong enough to come forward and tell the police what happened. Perhaps now there can be a little justice.

Now you are X. You’re a 65-year-old man who was once in the public eye. A friend rings you up one day and asks you in slightly embarrassed tones if you know what people are saying about you. Gradually you realise what is happening. There is a police operation looking into historic child abuse involving famous and powerful people. No names of those who are accused have been released, but various hints have been dropped and now online sources — websites and Twitter — have begun to name you as one of the anonymous abusers. Someone — a victim, apparently — recalls you visiting a children’s home and attending a drunken party where you took part in abuse. And it isn’t true. Your head is in a spin. Your sense of self seems to dissolve.

And now wake up. There are far more Js than Xs, I am fairly certain. More abused kids who weren’t believed than people who have been wrongly accused of abuse. And as The Times revealed yesterday on its front page, the habit of keeping accusations against celebrities, VIPs and politicians secret from other parts of the force can only have led to important information not going where it might have been used to better investigate and prosecute crime.

As regular readers know, I have said it over Savile and said it again over the grooming cases that the stance of disbelief that greeted many of the victims of child abuse was worse than a shame. And this internal police confidentiality has no doubt worsened the situation of abuse victims and allowed celebrity abusers to carry on abusing. It’s an irony, of course, that the motive may well have been to prevent corrupt officers selling gossip to newspapers. Gossip that might have been true. Or might have been untrue.

Because how do you balance the situations of J and X? And what about X minus? The dead X, who cannot sue or refute an allegation? How do you deal with the possibility that what the victim remembers is false?

“So they’re lying, Mr Aaronovitch?” come back a score of tweets and e-mails. “You too join the ranks of those who disbelieve the victims. You are part of the problem.”

I think that people can be and often are wrong without ever telling a deliberate untruth. This has to do with how memory works and how it can be altered. Reading a book this week by the journalist Will Storr reminded me of the case of Carol Felstead, a nurse who died in 2005. In The Heretics Storr describes the series of fantasies, events and therapists that led to Felstead claiming that she had uncovered formerly repressed memories of incest and family abuse.

Storr visited some of her therapists, including a senior person at the British Medical Association and another who works at the prestigious Tavistock Institute. They all believed Felstead’s new memories of family abuse and had helped her to recover them. But what, asked Storr, about her 1997 fantasy of being raped in Conservative Central Office by a former Cabinet minister using a claw hammer? “It could have happened,” was in essence their reply. One spoke of another patient of hers who claimed to have been sexually assaulted by Margaret Thatcher. “From the way she said this,” the therapist went on, “I could see this had been deliberately done. She’d been drugged by people using Spitting Image masks.”

What Felstead did was an extreme case of what is called confabulation, or “honest lying”, and is a particular problem in historic abuse. Imagine a confused memory of an event in early adulthood, iterated and reiterated, perhaps in the context of support groups and suggestive questioning. Does that not sound a little like what might have led to the false accusations against Lord McAlpine, hinted at on Newsnight last autumn?

Now add confirmation bias to confabulation. Felstead’s therapists obviously felt that her account of her abuse fitted their preconceptions. They zoned out information that sat badly with reality or found improbable explanations that suggested that their theories still worked. In the same way the police or other authorities dismissed without proper investigation the evidence of abused youngsters because they had the wrong histories, the wrong accents or the wrong appearance.

I raise this because of some of the reporting of Operation Fairbank and its offshoot, Operation Fernbridge. Fairbank was set up after the Labour MP Tom Watson told the Commons, at the height of the Savile revelations, that — among other things — there were serious accusations against famous people that had gone uninvestigated.

Fernbridge is a specific investigation into allegations that, in the early 1980s, teenagers were abused at a Richmond children’s home and at a nearby guesthouse. The investigative journalism outfit Exaro has published nearly 40 different short reports on Fernbridge since November, many of them dovetailing into stories carried in other newspapers.

Early on, Exaro’s editor claimed that there would be “seismic” revelations involving several former Conservative senior ministers. And Exaro’s work has, as they more or less admit, been expedited by systematic leaks from within the police operation itself. Exaro was somehow present when two men (neither of them famous) were arrested by police last month. On February 16 Exaro reported that police were “preparing to arrest” a former minister.

Of course, all this has fuelled online speculation about the identity of the still unarrested minister, about who the other ministers and celebrities are and what they supposedly did. Eccentric lists circulate. Confident claims are made. I’ve read them and they are easily found.

So there are victims and there are victims. And what this column is saying is let’s be careful — both ways — not to deal with one at the expense of the other. Who would want to be either J or X?