Charles Napier, pictured in 2012 when he was convicted of 23 counts of abuse. Napier had been treasurer of the group PIE (photo: Press Association)

When it was discovered that Jimmy Savile, the television presenter and media personality, knighted for his charity work for sick and disabled children, was a prolific child abuser, the story of the true scale of child sexual abuse was finally acknowledged. The myth that child abuse is a rare occurrence committed by mentally-ill loners was put to bed. As more and more of Savile’s victims spoke out, so did those who had been abused by other celebrities in the 1970s, reassured that they would finally be believed.

But what was uncovered was sexual abuse of children not only by television personalities, but also by politicians and other so-called VIPs. There have been rumours for decades about a child abuse ring operating from Westminster, involving senior politicians, allegedly including Greville (now Lord) Janner, Cyril Smith, and the late Leon Brittan.

At the time of writing, numerous allegations concerning the former Prime Minister Sir Edward Heath have emerged. In the early 1980s, when I volunteered on a Rape Crisis line, I heard Heath’s name in relation to sexual offences against children from two separate callers, one year apart, with no connection to each other. Over the years I have heard from a number of child protection advocates and campaigners that it was “widely known” that Heath was involved in organised child abuse rings. Such evidence was of course circumstantial.

However, a number of police investigations are now under way, following allegations from a retired police officer that criminal charges for pimping against Myra Forde, a former brothel keeper, were dropped, after she allegedly threatened to claim that Heath had abused children. Forde was later twice jailed for operating a brothel in Salisbury, Wiltshire, where Heath lived after retiring from active politics. The barrister who prosecuted Forde has since claimed in a letter to The Times that the case was actually dropped because three witnesses refused to give evidence. Forde has dropped her allegations, but ten police forces are now investigating Heath.

There was, and there remains to an extent, a conspiracy of silence. Children were rarely believed when they alleged abuse, particularly if the accused was a powerful person.

The conflation of sexual abuse with sexual identity began during the early days of the so-called sexual revolution, and carried on throughout the gay liberation movement in the 1970s. The word “paedophile” to describe a sexual identity began to be bandied around with impunity, but no other word in our language is so dangerously misused. It means, literally, “lover of children”. Child sex abusers seek solace in this term, and it is easy to see why it is to their advantage to embrace the label. Suggesting that child abusers “can’t help it” lends support to the notion that they are simply another sexual minority — as the commonly held but flawed view suggests with regard to the “gay gene”, predetermining sexual attraction and orientation — and that such men are pre-programmed to abuse children.