The scale, ruthlessness and ingenuity of Savile’s evil, a man close to those in power and honoured by them, has ensured that child sexual abuse is now a preoccupation of the popular media. A recent series of high-profile celebrity trials often appear as impotent retribution: too little too late. Here is the desperate hand-wringing of a failed and possibly even collusive society. Children’s homes, Christian orders, the BBC and the highest levels of the government all seem to have been involved.
Robert Montagu’s memoir is timely, for without sensationalism he bravely details his abuse between the age 7 and 11 by his father, the distinguished Conservative politician Victor Montagu, formerly Lord Hinchingbrooke.
He describes his father’s loneliness and his own search for love and attention, which is so often exploited by grooming. The abuse became an integral part of his life, perpetuated over many years – even unwittingly supported by family members who do not suspect or cannot take the time to look again at strange absences, intimacies and rather too many gifts and treats. His family had busy lives. Sisters were grown up, brother off to Cambridge and mother was painting and living with her girlfriend in London. He implies that for some it was not the abuse so much as the reporting that was the sin: attention-seeking or false memory syndrome.
Later chapters report the author’s bewilderment at how a Christian society could allow what often was a daily unwanted ritual, posing pertinent rhetorical questions to the church, his seducer and other family members.
This phenomenon is governed in part by cultural mores and has been widely explored in many disciplines – Plato discusses the Apollonian cult of sexual indulgence with prepubescent boys and the protocols for this in the context of marriage.
Robert Montagu’s frank, honest and brave account should not be missed, especially by victims, therapists and doctors. Here is tragedy, but also justice, possibly forgiveness and redemption – and vital lessons for modern society.
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