Is the age of innocence dead?

Saturday in London town was very hot, hopefully a - hors-d-oeuvre - for the next few months. I was unfortunately in an underground bunker for part of the day, trying to listen to a lecture given my an eminent psychoanalyst. Thankfully the room was air conditioned - as we all produced so much 'hot air'. One of the themes was the insidious corruption of our public institutions like - the police, the church, the BBC, the legal profession and politics, to name but a few of - emotional neglect, physical and sexual abuse. Emotional neglect has sadly been a overlooked area of intervention and research for many years. Where will this societal abuse end? Only one institution has so far escaped this noxious malady - the Crown. God knows what would happen if that institution was similarly found wanting? Unfortunately we forget history at out peril. These things have been going on for millennium - this of course doesn't make them any less terrible, but as the founder of psychoanalysis - Dr Sigmund Freud discovered to the collective shock to the Viennese bourgeoisie, there is an unconscious, and not always unconscious wish to to destroy innocence. The political and moral issue for us in the 21st century is - are the necessary laws in place to - protect these innocent children, and are they sufficient? Unless this legal touchstone can be met, public institutions will be found wanting. This is a Janus like conundrum.