Silent whistle-blowers - Evil needs our silence to prosper

Four stories came together in recent weeks and highlighted the disastrous consequences of silence in the face of blatant public dishonesty and immorality.

The kind of silence, cowed groupthink if you prefer, that allows tyrants, individual or institutional, to defy the expectations that decent and civilised societies hold dear.

Disgraced American cyclist and drugs cheat Lance Armstrong showed such an astounding indifference to any notion of integrity or self respect that he has ruined his reputation and the sport he championed. His lies may yet beggar him if even half the threatened court actions are ever presented to a judge. So great was his offence that the contagion has spread to the International Cycling Union and its president Pat McQuaid is under tremendous pressure over the UCI’s kid-glove policing of Armstrong’s systematic cheating and drug use.

It is not that his behaviour was not known, it was that not enough people or any regulatory authority had the determination or, more importantly, the confidence that they would be protected, which was needed to expose such a very powerful, defiant figure.

Yesterday, one of the great public and cultural institutions of the western world, the BBC, had something approaching their Fr Kevin Reynolds moment when the organisation’s director general George Entwistle told a House of Commons committee that an investigation into child sexual abuse claims against Jimmy Savile should not have been dropped. Savile used the celebrity his position conferred to sexually abuse young girls. He also facilitated others by providing them with access to young girls through his work at the BBC.

Like some institutions in this country, the BBC is trying to come to grips with the idea that someone as vile as Savile could operate with impunity under its aegis and in the full glare of his fame. Like many others wrestling with their consciences today, some of whom might have been able to stop him, the argument that it was a different time, a different culture is far less than satisfactory. This argument, however, might never have been necessary if proper whistle-blowing and child protection legislation had been in place when Savile and his counterparts in this country had a free hand because so many of us, for whatever reason, chose to see no evil, hear no evil.

The same principle could be applied to the shocking revelations at St Patrick’s Institution for young offenders. It is stretching it, though, to describe the litany of bullying and abuse reported as revelations because the appalling conditions have been highlighted in a series of reports stretching over decades. They continued, and still exist, because we were silent and tacitly endorsed them. This society is, and our general silence confirms this, happy to confine troubled and troublesome young people in something more like a gulag than a place that at least offers the prospect of hope.

Two pieces of legislation — on whistle-blowing and mandatory reporting of suspected child abuse — and a referendum are in the pipeline to address these issues and the silence that allows the dishonesty represented by Armstrong, the evil represented by Savile, and the inhumanity represented by St Patrick’s, to prosper in a society that for all its faults has higher ideals.

We, and our politicians, must do all we can to see that laws as powerful and reassuring as are needed to confront these issues are enacted as soon as is possible.