Former England hooker and one of the hardest men in UK sport Brian Moore revealed how he was abused as a child recently. It certainly will not lesson anyone’s view of Moore. Child abuse is more widespread than acknowledged and his honesty is to be commended even if it comes with a book to buy.
Where I do have issue is the stated assumption that behaviour necessarily stems from events and facts in our lives. It may reinforce the victim culture where some people think that their actions are excused in some ways by what happened to them. Social and anti social behaviour by all means your past can affect but is it necessarily true? Do we want a society where everyone lobs up a sob story to explain anything they do? Sure these things affect us but it’s better to overcome them than make excuses forever.
Victim culture and whining self pity have unfortunately replaced stoicism and mustn’t grumble as the UK national character. As followers of our Lambs and Sheep of national teams will no doubt concur. No matter how much people pathetically cling to bull dog and lion metaphors will not make them true (BTW Moore was known as Pitbull with some justification).
For every Swannie there are an awful lot of Bells and Buttons in UK sport.
I think his publishers know the only way to get publicity for a book is now to parade the victim status. Soon it will be the reverse — publicity for a celebrity whose private parts WEREN’T played with by some priest or kindly uncle (and they’ll argue that they were scarred mentally because they weren’t).