Langham.

Chris Langham, award winning writer and actor turned national pariah is a victim, right?  His imprisonment for downloading some of the worst examples of child abuse (rape, torture, you know, the really nasty stuff) an overreaction that has destroyed the life and career of a good man.  A man who has done nothing wrong, a man with a laudably clear conscience.  Yes?  Certainly that was the message coming loud and clear from Langham’s ‘rehabilitation’ interviews, firstly in The Observer and then, still more forcefully, from his one hour TV interview with former comedy colleague turned psychotherapist, Dr Pamela Connelly nee Stevenson.  Now he is to address The Oxford union, speaking about his "vilification" in the media – further underlining his victim status.

Well, actually Chris, no.  No, no, no.  You’re not the victim; you’re not even a victim.  You’re the aggressor, the protagonist, the one who does, not the one who is done to. 

Reading and watching Langham’s self-pitying, self-indulgent and, to my mind, deeply cynical attempts to spin his crime into something that ‘happened to him’ has left me feeling angry, upset and frankly shocked by, not only the weasel words coming from the man himself, but the platform the media is giving him to air them, and the indecent haste with which it has happened.  And, predictably following such a self-serving media assault, I can feel the tide of revulsion for Langham and his crimes subtly turning.  Of course the readers of The Sun will never forgive him; he will always be the ‘TV pervert’ or ‘shamed star’ to them.  But from the people who count: the broadsheet-reading, media movers and shakers who commission scripts and open doors, the line is softening.

Aside from the counts of downloading images of child abuse, for which he was convicted, Langham was also charged with abusing a 14 year old girl (who is now 25).  In his interview with Dr Connelly, Langham refused to talk about this aspect of the case, claiming that it was “her story, not mine”.  In other words, nothing to do with him, just the made-up words of a disturbed young fan.  It’s worth recalling what he did admit to regarding this girl.  He admitted to taking her to a 5 star hotel for a weekend when she was 14.  He admitted that they shared a room and that he was helping her with her acting, including teaching her to kiss.  He admitted having sex with the girl when she was 18 and he was 50.  Whether or not you believe her claim that he sodomised her over that fateful ‘acting tuition’ weekend or not, the idea that ‘her story’ is nothing to do with him is clearly absurd.  In court, the young woman’s credibility was essentially destroyed by Langham’s top-notch legal team.  Inconsistencies in her version of events and dates, confusion and contradictions – she was clearly ‘unreliable’.  But it’s also the case that victims of abuse spend many years trying desperately to forget details, pushing memories into the darkest recesses of their minds.  It’s one of the things that makes it so hard to secure convictions and, guilty or not, Langham’s behaviour was, at the very least, wildly inappropriate.  Is it really too much to ask him to acknowledge that?

But my anger is fuelled, not just by Langham’s crimes, but by his arrogant refusal to take any responsibility for them.  Over and over he has asserted that he’s entirely innocent of any wrongdoing.  He left prison with the words “my life is ruined but my conscience is clear” and his TV interview ended with him telling Dr Connelly that he had “nothing to be ashamed of” and had “done nothing wrong”.  This, despite being repeatedly told how downloading images of child abuse contributes directly to the suffering of children.

For all my anger however, I am not a