November 15, 2026 — 5:00amSaveYou have reached your maximum number of saved items.Remove items from your saved list to add more.No gift articles leftYou’ve used all of your gift articles. 3 more will become available on the 1st of every month.CloseAAAIt’s time to conduct a sex-predator edit of the children’s bookshelves.Craig Silvey’s Runt was removed a couple of weeks ago when he was sentenced to seven months’ prison for possessing and distributing images and videos of prepubescent children being sexually abused.HarperCollins is phasing out its back catalogue of Walliams’ bestselling children’s books.GettyThe less said about that, the better, as the details are too vile, but sadly Silvey didn’t adhere to that directive. The best-selling author self-published a 9000-word explanation of himself, to convey how the complexity of his unique personal suffering led him to seek out and share sexual exploitation materials of vulnerable and extremely young children. He barely mentioned his victims.The allegations against David Walliams seem mild by comparison, but are still egregious. Walliams, whose popular children’s books probably feature on the shelves of most Australian homes, is the subject of a joint investigation published by Britain’s ITV and The Guardian this week.The journalists reported that for decades, Walliams has displayed a pattern of predatory sexual behaviour involving multiple women and girls. The reporting includes testimony from two women who say they were 15 years old when Walliams contacted them. One accused him of sexual assault. The other he found on MySpace, an internet haven for teens in the early aughts. Like all (alleged) predators, he knew where to hunt.Related ArticleWalliams denies he is a sexual predator and denies having any sexual contact with the 15-year-old girls. He claims that encounters with other women were consensual and he believed all of them were over the age of consent (16 in the UK). He said in a statement that, looking back, he realised he had “behaved thoughtlessly” towards women with whom he’d had sexual encounters.It seems to have been the first time he thought about them at all.As one woman told the ITV documentary, if he hadn’t been rich and famous, he would have just been “some random creep called Dave”. Another wondered why he didn’t go after women his own age. Another, a low-paid young show-runner working on Britain’s Got Talent, said that he made her feel “disembodied”, as if she was just a body, not a person.Walliams, a high-profile host on the show, dubbed this complainant “the arse”. It brings to mind Russell Brand, who saved one of his victims’ name in his phone as “T”. As he explained in court, that stood for “Tart”.Related ArticleThese men consider themselves attractive, it is clear, but at the same time were detached from caring whether the women they preyed upon were enjoying the experience at all. They don’t seem to have viewed the women and girls as fully human.As with Silvey and his 9000-word opus of self-justification, they reserve their sympathy for themselves, while asking it of others. But they are incapable of extending it to their alleged victims.Walliams, through his aggressive lawyers, seems to have had some girls and young women sign NDAs, the kind that prevented them from talking even to their therapist or loved ones about the most traumatic events in their lives. Walliams also sent a threatening legal letter to at least one 18-year-old girl, according to reports, demanding her silence.Before publication, the reports about Walliams had been subject to a privacy injunction before the British High Court. Walliams’ lawyers argued that his mental health was so bad that he was in danger of killing himself if the reports were aired. Noting he was undergoing treatment, the court said the reporting “concerns matters of substantial public interest” and lifted the injunction.Related ArticleAgain, Walliams’ concern for his own mental health did not extend to the wellbeing of his alleged victims. Worth noting in the documentary is how the consciousness of the complainants, now adult women, has grown over decades. As girls, they described being confused, shut down, shy and sometimes frozen when Walliams made his moves on them.One woman, Alex, says she was groomed by Walliams from age 15 before having sex with him at 17 and 18, recalling she “hadn’t experienced anything like that before”. When he didn’t use a condom during their first encounter, she thought, “that’s not good”. “But I was too young. I really don’t think I would have had the ability to get the words out at that point, to say, ‘Don’t do that’.”“When we were 18, that’s just what men did,” says another complainant, Jade. “But now we know it was wrong.”Looking at a photograph of her teenage self with a late-30s Walliams, she notes how uncomfortable she looks. “Poor baby,” she says of her younger self.Related ArticleEarlier this year there was a political debate about consent education, which is now universally taught in Australian schools. Nationals leader Matt Canavan railed against the “lecturing” of young men and the “anti-boy ideology” he said was contained in the Respectful Relationships curriculum materials. He said it was counter-productive and would drive boys to toxic voices online.Asked to endorse consent education in schools, Opposition Leader Angus Taylor refused, missing an opportunity to unequivocally support it as he should have. Instead, the aspiring prime minister said that teachers were pushing agendas in the classroom. He provided no evidence to back his assertion.That both male leaders would cast doubt on consent education is deeply disappointing. The point of it, of course, is not to demonise boys. It is to give children and teens the language and the consciousness to identify what is happening to them if their boundaries are crossed.The girls in the Walliams documentary were unable to articulate what their bodies knew was wrong, let alone stop it. Now, thanks to consent education, they can name these inchoate feelings. They are armed with the new language of consent. They are taught about grooming, control, gaslighting and coercion. If you can name it, you are better able to know it’s wrong and report it.Sexual predators will always be among us. They’re on our children’s bookshelves. There are two things that give us the best chance at stopping them from hurting people. The first is arming young people with enough knowledge to know and speak up when they are being abused. The second is creating a culture that will listen to them.Both are within our control.Jacqueline Maley is a senior writer and regular columnist.Get a weekly wrap of views that will challenge, champion and inform your own. Sign up for our Opinion newsletter.SaveYou have reached your maximum number of saved items.Remove items from your saved list to add more.No gift articles leftYou’ve used all of your gift articles. 3 more will become available on the 1st of every month.CloseFrom our partners
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