First there was abuse at the hands of a popular BBC host. There were scandals at private schools and in the church and talk of a pedophile ring in Parliament. Then there was Rotherham. Over the past two years, high-profile revelations of sexual abuse of children have painted a picture of Britain as a place where such abuse is not just endemic but systematically covered up - either because the perpetrators are of the very highest status or because the victims are of the very lowest. The main driver of abuse is impunity: Abuse happens in a context of permissibility," said Helen Beckett, an expert on the subject at the University of Bedfordshire. In 2012, it emerged that Jimmy Savile had raped scores of children as colleagues and the police turned a blind eye. Mr. Savile, who was a friend of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, used his charity work to gain access to his victims in schools and hospitals. In July, Britons learned of allegations that Cyril Smith, a former member of Parliament who died in 2010, abused boys in a care home in his constituency. The allegations against him and others were detailed in a file prepared three decades ago by a crusading lawmaker who described a pedophile ring of "big, big names." But the file mysteriously disappeared.