Guilty until proven innocent

There is a strong moral in the following true story.

It covers events that took place some 30 years ago in, coincidentally, the Welsh seaside town of Aberystwyth, and it concerns a company employee who was entrusted, each week, to deposit the business takings of several thousand pounds, in the night safe of the local bank.

On one occasion, his employers noticed that the takings for week X had not been deposited and they asked him why.

He told them that he had posted the bag containing the money into the night safe as normal.

Enquiries with the bank showed that they had not received the cash.

The police were called in and, following an investigation, arrested and charged the employee concerned, despite his protestations of innocence.

He was eventually brought to trial and sentenced to a prison term. During his spell inside his wife left him in disgust along with their small children.

After serving his term he was released but, due to his criminal conviction, he could not find work and ended up on the streets.
All of his friends and work colleagues disowned him.

He drifted on a downward spiral until, after a couple of years of unrelenting misery, he took his own life.

Some ten years after his death the bank concerned underwent renovations including a new fascia.
The old bank night safe was demolished and, in the course of the work a wallet full of cash was discovered lodged in a crevice within the shute.

Jimmy Savile is innocent

I never have liked trial by media or the lynch mob mentality.
They smack of insecurity, self guilt,of bullies and cowards.

 I've never liked Jimmy Savile either. Too much corny ooohing and aaahing for my money.

But it needs to be said that we cannot judge this man even if there is a growing wave of accusations from those who allege abuse by him. He is not here to present a defence.

He is dead and will by now have faced the most important judgement that any of us will receive.

It was wrong of the senior police officer who, when interviewed, described him as a "sexual predator".

If Savile was still alive such language would have rendered a potential trial null and void; we have only heard the voices of those in the defendants' box, we cannot hear the plaintiff's account.

Time for all those tabloid newspapers to stop their cant and hypocrisy and to look at removing the 'page 3' models instead.