From celebrity criminal to criminal celebrity: the celebrification of sex crime in the UK

Following the death of Jimmy Savile in 2011, a number of high profile British celebrities have been questioned about or arrested and charged with sexual offences. This article explores whether the high profile and thematic framing of sex crimes antecedent to this will presage any significant changes in how that form of crime, victim and offender is understood. The events leading up to the large numbers of celebrities being accused of sex crimes in the UK are discussed and ways of understanding and conceptualising the emergence of celebrity sex offenders are presented. Dominant discourses about sex offenders and victims of sex crimes are then considered and the implications of recent developments for these discourses are explored. The argument is made that a focus on the ‘extra-ordinary’ that celebrity sex offending undoubtedly entails will deflect attention away from the family root of most sexual abuse.