Jimmy Savile
Jimmy Savile: what is not in doubt is that what he was accused of was not consensual. Photograph: Murdo Macleod for the Guardian Murdo Macleod/Guardian

Jimmy Savile, laid out in state in Leeds, revered as a great eccentric, gave a lot of us the creeps for decades. Women are now telling us how he raped them when they were children. We say in our jaded way: "Well, really, who knew?" Lots of people, as far back as 1973. Either the rumours could not be printed as "the girls" would not identify themselves, or he scuppered them by threatening to pull his work for "charidee". What if a few "girls" got a quick one from a superstar DJ? That's a small price to pay for the amount of money Savile raised for Stoke Mandeville, isn't it?

Anyway it's just what happened at the time. Not all of it was that glamorous, "I'm with the band" stuff. Jimmy Page was teaching a 14-year-old the tricks of the trade. The late, great John Peel was getting married for the first time to "an underage girl" he claimed had lied about her age. And I was being groped in the store cupboard by a wheezing shop owner. It was the price you paid for a Saturday job and we mostly avoided him. It was probably our own fault anyway for being vaguely female and wearing those sexy supermarket overalls. When I did meet Pamela Des Barres, top Led Zeppelin groupie, I found hers a sad ambition and was glad to be of another generation. She had to kid herself she was a muse, until, of course, Page replaced her with an actual kid.

Liking "young girls", never "children", was just a preference in a "gentlemen prefer blondes" way. I say no: this is not a preference, it is a perversion. It was in the 70s, and it is now, and I don't know what men my age are playing at defending this behaviour. Would they want their daughters marrying a Bill Wyman? I sat aghast as Michael Grade and David Hepworth were interviewed on Channel 4 News. Wasn't it all so louche then, what with Jerry Lee Lewis and his 13-year-old bride, and didn't every "girl" dream of being on Top of the Pops? You just couldn't move for "groupies". Savile is accused among other things of abusing children in an approved school in Staines. Rock'n'roll?

Are we still in the dark ages about what constitutes abuse and what constitutes consent? Apparently so. We may have arguments about the age of consent and whether lowering it, as in Spain or Italy, to 14, may make it more enforceable. What is not in doubt though is that what Savile was accused of was not consensual. The BBC must account for itself, for this looks like a systematic coverup. The details from the women are gut-wrenching. The trackie bottoms easily whipped off; the women who forgive him but cannot forgive themselves.

Many of our best journalists hinted at it but could not stand up these stories, partly because we continue with this ambivalent attitude to teenage girls. If Savile had abused boys, would it have been different? God knows. Like many a hack I have received enough bizarrely enormous Christmas cards from Jonathan King, who maintains not only his innocence but that his artistic credibility is comparable to Oscar Wilde.

But why are we so murky on the issue of consent? Do we secretly believe all women have to be pressured into sex except the ones that do it for a chicken korma? I refer, of course, to the girls in the Rochdale "grooming" case. These were children, but referred to by those "safeguarding" them as prostitutes. How can children be prostitutes? We don't believe what teenage girls say, while at the same time bemoaning their "sexualisation", which mostly comes down to wearing what is fashionable or actually school uniform. Sexual abuse, the abuse of power, happens within a culture that believes that sex education leads to sex, that abuse is a fairly modern invention and that only the nuclear family can protect children from it. All these things are untrue.

Children cannot give consent to have sex with adults: that's the law. We can stick with that. The argument that "I thought she was older/asking for it/would do it for a bag of chips" is utterly vile and irrelevant.

Sadly, I wish I was more shocked, but I have worked in enough jobs, and I include the media, where the sexual harassment of young women is condoned or ignored by "decent" men. In one liberal establishment we were gathered together by the boss to be told that sexual harassment was a dreadful business that happened in America. We women rolled our eyes. If grownup women's complaints are not to be taken seriously, what hope for a frightened 14-year-old girl?

Still, even when girls are believed, abusers are forgiven. Look at Roman Polanksi. A 13-year-old testified he had drugged and sodomised her, but, yes, he does make great films. When I spent the day with him, he was perfectly open about his sexual preferences. He likes them young, and it made me feel ill. "Great artist does bad things" is not news. Savile was not a great artist and known in the business as "Jim'll Fuck It". All of this was a very long time ago, as we keep being reminded. Those were the days, my friend, those guys thought they would never end. The terrible thing is, they haven't.