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Claire Simpson: The difficulty for George Hook is that Irish society has changed

Presenter George Hook
Presenter George Hook Presenter George Hook

What happens when a whole society changes, leaving some people behind? Veteran broadcaster George Hook may be asking himself that same question after he was suspended by Dublin’s Newstalk radio last week following comments he made about rape.

In a show earlier this month, Hook discussed a rape case in Britain and questioned why a woman had gone back to the hotel room of a man she had just met.

"Is there no blame now to the person who puts themselves in danger?” he asked.

He later apologised but the damage was already done. Up to 20 members of staff at Newstalk signed a letter asking for Hook to be taken off the air, advertisers withdrew their support for his show, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar criticised the comments and in a final blow, his own colleague, Dil Wickremasinghe, herself a survivor of child sex abuse, said she would refuse to broadcast unless Hook was formally disciplined by the station.

In an eloquent post on her website, Wickremasinghe said she, like many survivors of sexual assault, didn’t report the crime because she thought it was her fault.

“I actually believed until I was well into my thirties that at the tender age of 13 I was to blame that my first sexual experience was with a 70-year-old man,” she wrote.

“Victim blaming is unacceptable, irresponsible and dangerous.”

Hook has since been suspended but perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that a 76-year-old man, known for courting controversial views, said something controversial. His weekday Newstalk show High Noon is billed as a “daily dose of no-holds-barred comment and opinion” - one dose too many for some. And Hook does have form. Just two years ago, during a discussion of a separate Irish rape case in which a woman was repeatedly assaulted by her boyfriend while she slept, Hook suggested the victim was partly to blame.

“You are sharing a bed with somebody . . . Is there not an implied consent therefore that you consent to sexual congress?” he said.

The Irish media landscape has seen more than its fair share of ‘angry old men’, including newspaper columnist Kevin Myers, who was sacked from the Sunday Times last month for an article on women and equal pay that provided a double whammy of anti-semitism and misogyny. It wasn’t the first time that an article by Myers had drawn censure. More than a decade ago, he was forced to apologise for a column in The Irish Times in which he repeatedly referred to the children of unmarried mothers as “bastards”.

Minutes before Hook’s suspension was announced, Mr Varadkar said the broadcaster’s comments pointed to a wider social problem, adding they were "indicative of attitudes that still exist in Irish society that need to change”.

The difficulty for Hook and Myers is that Irish society has changed its views. The 2015 marriage referendum, arguably the greatest landmark in Irish history this decade, has shown how great that change has been.

George Hook was born in 1941 - a time when Ireland on both sides of the border was in the grip of rigid theocracies. Sexual assault was often hidden and victims were ignored, branded as liars or counselled to shut up and get on with things. While we still have a long way to go, the strength of reaction against Hook’s comments showed that many people are tired of victims being told they ‘should have been more careful’; tired of putting the blame on women, rather than those who assault them, and tired of those who espouse those views.

Orla O’Connor, Director of The National Women’s Council of Ireland, said as much following news of Hook’s suspension.

Describing Hook’s comments as “unacceptable and dangerous”, she praised those who had taken a stand.

“The events this week, from sponsors pulling their sponsorship, to the courageous stance taken by staff both collective and individual, has shown that these views will no longer find a receptive audience,” she said.

I’ve no doubt that Hook and Myers are sorry for their comments. It must be painful to be told that the belligerent shtick which has been your bread-and-butter for decades is no longer acceptable. It must be even more difficult to realise the views you have held, perhaps all your life, are dangerous and potentially damaging. But as much compassion as I have for them, it’s the victims of their attitudes which deserve greater sympathy and understanding.