The editor-in-chief of Vice World News was from the U.K. which kind of explains the weirdly framed child abuse takes. Someone was curious about that before.
I never really liked Vice World News. One article tried to argue that the leader of some old NAMBLA like group was a "victim of society" which drove him to do that.
The bigger question is why anyone even cares about (or remembers) some fringe and irrelevant NAMBLA like figure from fifty years ago (who frankly was irrelevant even back then).
It feels like there are parts of the British media which have a morbid fascination with these things.
It really doesn't surprise me that there would have been people saying crazy things, however, I wouldn't even know who the guy was, if not for parts of the British media going on and on about him (even after around fifty years). And honestly, I doubt anyone else would either.
Also, whether it's Savile or this weirdo, it felt like outlets like Vice World News would try to make these sorts of things the world's problems, despite really being British matters.
We also have to ask whether part of the media's fascination with this strange guy played a role in the rise of QAnon like ideologies (a form of far right extremism) in the U.K. The guy himself has always been an irrelevant figure but the media's reporting on him might inflate his perceived relevance.
For potentially relevant context as to why Vice World News might have run that particular article that particular way though, in the U.K. in the 90s, there was a mass shooting where dozens of kids were massacred, and the shooter blamed being hounded by the media.