The reluctance of authorities to tackle child sexual abuse is not limited to the most recent horrors emerging from the north of England with mainly “Pakistani men” preying on young girls, many in social care. Fear of embarrassing Muslim sensitivities with concern about the political impact may have been part of the problem. But it is all too sadly a common occurrence across the field, no matter who the perpetrators are.
Priest abuse was ignored forever until groups of adults abused as children got together, starting in the 1990s, and filed lawsuits in the face of an unrepentant RC church. To date $5 to $6 billion has been paid out by churches in the USA over the past two decades. Private school teacher abuse has been outed again because groups of adults came together and the multiple allegations were less easy to rubbish through weight of numbers.
Child sexual abuse in general started to be exposed in the 1980s as Pluto moved into Scorpio. Ellen Bass’s 1988 Courage to Heal which offered self-help to abuse survivors ran into a savage backlash as the ‘false memory’ (denial) movement went on the counter attack. Because of the toxic debate which followed, a considerable quantity of therapy research was initiated which eventually buried the notion of ‘false memory’ as a get-out-of-jail free excuse. Ellen Bass, 16 June 1947, is a Sun Uranus in Gemini with a determined Saturn Pluto in Leo with a Taurus Mars and Moon; and Jupiter in Scorpio.
In England the Cleveland Child Abuse Inquiry 1987/88 led by Lady Butler Sloss produced a botched report suggesting that the doctors had got their diagnosis of abuse wrong. This misconception is still widely held today despite Beatrix Campbell’s heroic research efforts which provided evidence from The National Archives that the government in 1988 had been advised that “at least 80%” of the diagnoses of sexual abuse were, in fact, correct – and Margaret Thatcher knew that. Bea Campbell, 3 February 1947, is a redoubtable Sun Mars in Aquarius opposition Saturn Pluto in Leo with Jupiter in Scorpio.
Pluto exited Scorpio in 1995 as the Rose West trial in the UK was sickening the country with tales of serial killing and torture of young girls and women. The Solar Eclipse which oversaw her conviction fittingly was a New Moon in Scorpio with a brutal Mars Pluto conjunction.
The latest UK Child Abuse Inquiry instigated in 2015 went through three chairman in short order at the start, one of them being Butler-Sloss, which indicates a carelessness beyond the norm even for politics. Eventually Alexis Jay was pulled in because of her prior work in the Rotherham, Yorkshire abuse cases. She came out with a report in 2022 which has been largely ignored. She said that mandatory reporting was her “most important” recommendation and the UK was now “an outlier” in terms of international best practice, but a “watered-down” version proposed by the last Conservative government had been scrapped when the general election was called.
Alexis Jay, 25 April 1949, a Sun Taurus in a determined square to Pluto in Leo, Mars in go-ahead Aries in a tough-minded trine to Saturn in Leo and a Jupiter in Scorpio.
Interesting that all three of Ellen Bass, Bea Campbell and Alexis Jay have Jupiter in Scorpio and come out of the stubborn late 1940s generation..
The North Wales child abuse scandal was the subject of a three-year, £13 million investigation into the physical and sexual abuse of children in care homes. The 2000 report by retired High Court judge Sir Ronald Waterhouse QC, resulted in changes in policy and to the settling of 140 compensation claims on behalf of victims of child abuse. When it reported, Waterhouse was interviewed on BBC TV Newsnight and Jeremy Paxman to his shame led with the question of whether some had ‘invented’ their stories to claim compensation.
What puzzled me through the 1990s as I was knee deep in the ‘false memory’ wars was the oddity of how quickly buried the knowledge of child sexual abuse incidents was in the public mind. Lies, smears, distortions of the truth were more palatable and easier to believe. I watched one multiple abuse scandal emerge in real time during which abusive adults got decades in prison and by the end of it there was still a general/media belief that nothing had happened. As one child therapist put it – the event just got ‘sealed over’ as if it had never existed.
Not an astrological thought – but there is a hint in psychiatrist Dori Laub’s words “The fight against the obliteration of the story could only be won at the cost of the obliteration of the audience.” So terrible we can’t bear to look at it – until dragged kicking and screaming by the threat of massive, expensive lawsuits.
Maybe Pluto in Aquarius will start to make headway into righting a few social ills.
This is a ramble and not too astrological but the present north of England rape gang horror sees an unhealthy coming together of political cowardice over Asian perpetrators added on top of the standard see-no-evil approach to child sexual abuse. Prison sentences are sometimes handed out but the public turns away its gaze and the authorities are never brought to pay the price for their dereliction of responsibility.
In terms of the Muslim sensitivities I am always reminded of Joan Bakewell’s words at the time of the Ayatollah’s fatwa against Salman Rushdie – “it is the problem for a basically tolerant society when it takes in intolerant elements. It doesn’t know what to do with them.” I reckon that is where the rot started. My hope for Pluto in Aquarius is that it is fiercely intolerant of intolerance.
The post Child Sexual Abuse – too terrible to face first appeared on Astroinform with Marjorie Orr – Star4cast.
