WHAT next? After the shattering of our 1970s innocence with the revelations about serial predator Jimmy Savile, the conviction of a grubby, groping Rolf Harris whose cheerful personality hid something much darker.

And with more celebrity names coming out of the Operation Yew Tree investigation, we now hear allegations that during that time of tie-dye, glam rock and power cuts, those in positions of national responsibility, in-cluding members of parliament, the police and the judiciary, also have historic questions to answer about their conduct around children. The Home Secretary was absolutely right this week to launch two full investigations into the way that possible warnings about child abuse were dealt with.

It will also look at whether those organisations tasked with helping vulnerable children took their duty of care to protect children from sexual abuse seriously.

Why has it come to this? Why has it taken so many years for allegations to come to light and action to be taken? Half the problem can be traced, in my view, in the chumocracy that for too long has been at the heart of the so-called “establishment”. Too many people with the same interests and the same out-of-touch sense of entitlement – whether derived from celebrity status or upbringing – are coming together to protect their own.

It is this sort of persistent separation that makes many of us determined to change things that are part of the system, like politics, to try to make it more representative, more real and more normal – some may say we have not succeeded yet but we will keep on trying.

The other, more worrying, part of the problem is the way that the voices of victims were ignored for so long.

Children were told to keep quiet, they were ridiculed, or threatened – with tragically the most vulnerable of all being more likely to be targeted for abuse. That, to me, is the real national scandal and we must do all we can to make sure that when victims speak out they are heard – and action is taken.