In praise of the BBC

The BBC has recently come in for much deserved criticism,because of the abuse perpetrated by Jimmy Saville over decades
This criticism is largely justified and polling shows  what happened, and the corporations sluggish response to what  happened, has caused many people to lose trust in the BBC as an institution.(Incidentally the Saville affair also shows why every church should take child protection seriously)

There is however much that is good about the BBC and especially about its current affairs flagship programme Panorama.

They did an amazing job of revealing the abuse happening at Winterbourne View residential home and without them this abuse may never have been revealed and the abusers punished for their crimes
see here

Those abused  were some of the most vulnerable members of society and in my view the crimes against them were as serious (,if not even more so) than the ones committed by Jimmy Saville,
I say this because the victims for the most part were so vulnerable they lacked the means to complain and when they attempted to do so they were not believed.

I heard one woman say that one of the reasons Winterbourne View happened was that," very few people visited the home who were not paid to be there" This was a reference to the fact that these young adults are often placed in home hundreds of miles from their families who thus managed to visit them rarely, if ever.
This meant that these vulnerable people could  be abused unseen behind locked doors,unseesn by the world

Panorama returned to this subject last night The hospital that stopped caring  and again showed that abuse is still going on , and people are still being placed in care hundreds of miles from friends and families so really it is down to the legislators, and indeed all of us to get this sorted so that vulnerable people made in Gods image  don't have to suffer  any more and are supported to live in communitites where they know and are known- but thank you Panorama for highlighting the issue and well done the BBC!





* I do understand that not all homes are like this, that there are many brilliant caring professionals working in this sphere,and that carers should be trained and paid properly, but having said all that there is no excuse for what happened at Winterbourne and may still be happening in other places