Within the occasion this was to lead to a two-yr delay, during which Eric’s abusers had been left free to continue raping their way around Greater Glasgow, and Eric himself was crucified by the tabloid press whereas being forbidden to defend himself as a result of the matter was sub judice. However Eric told no-one else prior to the story being leaked, nor did he go into particulars over the ‘telephone – so it is rather unlikely that he may have been the unintended supply of the leak even if his ‘phone was being tapped by a reporter. They handled him quite politely, as a witness relatively than a suspect, and advised him they understood that pornographic material had been left at his home by another person. It was clear that at that point Eric was far too incoherent to be a useable witness. Beyond that point there may be nothing comparable between the two! At this level the Crown accepted that Eric had appeared in these “mooning” photographs solely beneath extreme duress. One showed two youngish boys dropping their pants someplace on the banks of the River Clyde, and the opposite showed one of those boys and Eric (who was then a college pupil in his early twenties), additionally doing the same.
The wise move would have been to speak to his psychiatrist about it after which interview him once more in a month or two when his mental state had stabilized. Being in a state of hysterical collapse Eric did actually tell one person in regards to the police go to – he known as his pal and colleague Charles Kearney, informed him that the police had raided his home and asked him to return and accumulate him, as he himself was too shattered to stay where he was and too dazed to drive. Although in principle he was eager to give proof, in practice he was so sick that being pressed to remember the abuse intimately decreased him to a state of hysterical collapse: eventually he physically ran from the police, and ended up curled up in a ball in a cupboard, screaming. Ideally he ought to have gone to the police, particularly once he had the tapes of Currens in his house as concrete evidence. This is particularly true considering that the police had watched Currens’ tapes and had seen for themselves what Eric’s abusers did for entertainment: neither they nor the Crown Prosecution Service can have been in any doubt that the testimony he wished to give would relate to extraordinarily critical crimes.
There isn’t a lifelike doubt that this was true: of the three men whom he named as his principal abusers, two are actually serving lengthy jail sentences for repeated rape of children. While investigating Currens police discovered a roll of film, shot at the very least five years previously and still undeveloped, on which were two “vulgar” snaps. As he grew older the sexual side of the abuse had tailed off to some extent, however once he became a star his abusers switched to extortion bolstered by bodily violence – slapping him round and threatening to reveal his years of abject sexual humiliation to the tabloids except he paid them to keep quiet. He handed the material over immediately and began to inform them what had been taking place to him, hysterical with a mixture of shock and relief – understanding that whatever else occurred, their arrival had put an finish to the years of abuse which he had suffered.
Even then, it was solely the arrival of holiday makers which put a stop to this interrogation. Now that the factor was out in the open anyway, and it was much less likely that they’d come spherical within the night time and cut his throat if he talked about them, he was determined to provide evidence in opposition to them and see them convicted – partly out of a pure need for revenge, but mainly to stop them abusing other kids. The closer builders get to “virtual intercourse,” the higher the chance of falling into the uncanny valley – our pure revulsion to the not-fairly human. It’s perfectly superb to admit that there are days when all I wish to do is to lock myself in the bedroom , get undressed, and fall asleep with a glass of wine in a single hand and a e-book in the other. Mood swings are very common because of these hormone modifications – it isn’t something you’ve much control over. They must also have been conscious that these men had been nonetheless lively and would proceed to rape and torture children till forcibly stopped. While he was still an acutely ill psychiatric inpatient, the police interviewed him – with neither a doctor nor a nurse current.