Harm's way

My, that was a smug little piece by Felipe Fernández-Armesto (“Dens of inequity”, Opinion, 21 March). Apparently in his youth there was “no shame and no attested harm in a priest pinching a choirboy’s bottom, or in a boss squeezing a secretary’s knee”. What he actually means, of course, is no shame or harm to the perpetrator. Women and children were made to feel shame all the time: “What did you do? How were you dressed?” Some were incarcerated in prisons and mental hospitals for promiscuity if they dared to object.

Farah Mendlesohn
Anglia Ruskin University