Headlines this week have been full of "cover-ups" of horrendous human behaviour involving baby deaths and multiple rapes.

It’s time soft and wishy-washy terminology like "cover up" was scrapped and replaced by what people guilty in all these disgusting cases actually do; they lie, collude, conspire and plot to mislead and corrupt to save their own and others’ skin.

Sustained dishonesty rather than take accountability for their own mistakes to hang on to reputations.

Using "cover-up" lightens the offences and is insulting to victims.

Things aren’t “brushed under the carpet,” they are deliberately hidden in a web of lies.

Institutions described as having a corrupt culture are rotten because of the people in them, either at the top or influential conclaves of liars.

It’s people who make an institution corrupt. People and personality are at the heart of everything.

Prioritising self and reputation over willingness to admit mistakes, accept liability and take accountability for behaviour is as old as the hills.

We hear more about it now and it seems we’re anaesthetised to it; always expect it.

But how does it start? Individuals lie but how does it spread to groups in it together, colluding in dishonesty.

Once the lies start, individual rottenness spreading to group think, conspiracy and lies and the evil spirals. 

This week, we learned Britain’s most exclusive store, Harrods, covered up the sexual assaults of more than 20 women by its former owner Mohammad Al Fayed, with five alleging the billionaire, who died last year, raped them.

An investigation says the department store failed to intervene and helped keep quiet the women’s allegations to make them go away, with one victim talking about sums of money in exchange for her shredding all evidence and signing a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) with a member of Harrods’s HR team present when the shredding happened

She was told it would be in her “best interest” to keep quiet.

Harrods of today has apologised admitting the business failed its employees.

Who are these people who think any of the above is ok? Power and fear of losing it often kicks off corruption, playing on people’s fears forcing others to collude.

But how do people act against their conscience and become accessories to behaviour so vile, immoral and evil?

How do these people live with themselves? Do they justify they need their job? Fear for their safety? Or are more people susceptible to corruption and dishonesty than we think?

The process of conspiracy and collusion is a fascinating study of human nature.

Fear of a billionaire megalomaniac is one thing, but how do people paid to care for the welfare of others get involved in lying about baby deaths to bereaved and broken parents?

These are people shopping in the supermarket near you, sitting next to you on the train, drinking in the same pub and dancing at your wedding, complicit with horrendous lies.

As an Independent Review of Nottingham Maternity Services, the biggest in UK history, investigates the cases of at least 1,939 babies and mothers over a 10-year period between 2012 and 2022 who say they have experienced poor maternity, bereaved parents whose baby death was found to have been “preventable” say no one has been investigated, sanctioned, disciplined, or dismissed, with no accountability by the people who failed to prevent the tragedy.

What type of conversations go on in hospitals to cause these situations? Caregivers hiding the truth and lying? Where is the compassion, the humanity, the care?

A Daily Mail exclusive yesterday asked if there was an Establishment cover-up to protect Prince Andrew and other VIPs in the thrall of Jeffrey Epstein?

Is it any wonder that citizens do not trust public institutions and people in them when lying is justified by people with responsibility within institutions after deaths?

In May, then Prime Minister Rishi Sunak apologised for the of failures in the infected blood scandal, calling it a decades-long moral failure after a public inquiry into 30,000 people infected from contaminated blood treatments found authorities lied time and time again and exposed victims to unacceptable risks.

With doctors, government and the NHS of letting patients catch HIV and hepatitis about 3,000 have since died and more deaths will follow.

Back in 2021, Lambeth Council presided over a "culture of cover-up" that led to more than 700 children in south London care homes suffering cruelty and sexual abuse.

This meant people charged with public responsibility allowed innocent children to be abused in five homes from the 1960s to the 1990s. That is 30 years of different people colluding with abusers.

Elsewhere, in hospitals, we can read NHS ombudsman’s reports about care plans being altered by staff after people died.

And the Hillsborough tragedy where police lies were rife.

The use of language about what is essentially hideous human behaviour spreading through workplaces is doing all the victims of horrendous experiences such injustices and gives the impression that what went on weren’t that bad, more slight misdemeanours that were ‘’swept under the rug" rather than widespread conspiracy to avoid being found out and perverting the course of justice.