Our faith in convention has failed

AT the dawning, unfolding stages of a scandal, it is usual to suggest that the majority of those in an organisation facing earth-shattering allegations are innocent and that only a tiny minority of their colleagues are wrongdoers. The innocent-until-proven-guilty theory is cloned with the a-few-rotten-apples hope because we struggle to conceive that an institution or a process once held in the highest regard should have rendered ineffective low standards or corruption.

The first allegations of clerical child abuse were so