People with good memories

Almost daily now, we read of yet another woman who has suffered "sexual abuse" from men in power positions. These range from offensive remarks to unwanted bodily contact. For the moment, these complaints are centred around the Parliament in Britain but it is possible that they will spread elsewhere.

Don't get me wrong, no woman (or man for that matter) should have to put up with any kind of abuse whether it is verbal or physical. The right time to deal with it though was when it occurred, not ten or more years later. If it was serious, then it should have been reported to the police for them to deal with. For less serious abuse, surely there were those in authority at the time who would have listened and dealt with it.

Let us be clear, I'm not referring to the kind of things that people like Stewart Hall, Jimmy Saville and Rolf Harris etc got up to. Their abuses were way beyond serious. The abuses we are now reading about are in a different league altogether.

The fact is that many of these incidents were either brushed off as relatively harmless or dealt with by a sharp rebuke and should have been left in the past filed as "dealt with". Nothing good will come of raking up these past memories ten or more years on. In fact a lot of harm can be done even if nothing is eventually proved to have happened.

In most cases these accusations boil down to one persons word against another. Let's face it, one persons saucy remark many be taken as grossly offensive by another especially if the person making the remark is in a senior position.

I don't recall any actual incidents but I am sure some of the things I have said in the past  to women could have been taken the wrong way. Thankfully, nobody has yet come forward to complain about me to the papers.