Nick Le Mesurier

I recently heard of a case Dissociative Identitity Disorder (DID). This rare and somewhat contested condition is thought to result from experience of extreme stress, in particular childhood sexual abuse. Sufferers are said to have many, sometimes dozens, of personalities and for this reason the condition used to be known as Multiple Personality Disorder. In this instance the victim had been systematically tortured by a group of men for many years since infancy.
  In my recent research work in prisons, during which I interviewed a number of older prisoners, I met many who were there because they had committed sexual offenses against children. I don't know exactly what they did, except in a few cases, though some of them were serving very long sentences. I know that all of them came across to me as reasonable, often likeable people, who seemed to me like blokes everywhere, who were interested in the welfare of their family and friends, their minor ailments, work, money, football, and so on.
  Is it possible that some of the men I met had also done, or wanted to do, or watched pictures of people doing the sort of things to others that the men described above did. Did those men also have jobs, families, pets, mortgages, and enjoy a game of football?
  Alan Bennett wrote a monologue, called Nights in the Gardens of Spain, which concerns an 'ordinary' suburban housewife who murders her husband who has for years been abusing her, not just alone but often in front of and with the help of other men. One of these other men, whom she has never seen, turns out to be the narrator's husband, himself an ordinary man, who is revealed by his habit of whistling softly through his teeth, a sound she overheard often while the men took their pleasure of her.
  I don't think we can say that those who do such things are very different from those who don't. The difference is that they do them. The point is you can't always tell them apart.