The recent spate of sex scandals appear to have claimed another high profile – and completely unexpected – victim: Santa Claus. With Christmas fast approaching, the beloved festive icon finds himself the latest celebrity to be accused of sexual misconduct. “He told me I was on ‘the naughty list’ and would have to be chastised if I wanted a present – next thing I knew, he had me across his knee and was giving me a bloody good spanking,” recalls thirty four year old Oldham electrician’s mate George Clunk, one of Santa’s victims who has chosen to go public with his traumatic experience. “I’d only gone into the bloody shopping centre grotto because my seven year old nephew wanted to meet Santa – I didn’t want a present in the first place!” With more and more accusers coming forward, a picture of the secret Santa is emerging: a ruthless sexual predator most Christmas revellers never see, who, for a number of years, has been abusing his position of trust to sate his perverted desires. “My eighteen year old son woke up in the middle of the night to find Santa standing by his bed,” forty nine year old housewife Edith Bang told the Daily Norks. “The bearded bastard told him that he wanted to see his ‘Christmas baubles’, before sticking his hand under the bed covers and groping my son’s testicles! He then asked if my son would like to feel the ‘presents’ in his ‘sack’, before exposing his genitals! It wasn’t even Christmas – it was the middle of October!”

Bang’s local MP, Tom Rattle has taken up his constituent’s case, demanding the authorities take action against Father Christmas. “The problem is that everyone loves Santa, especially children, so they are reluctant to believe these allegations, “ he told the Daily Excess. “But we need to be protected from him – let’s not forget that he has access to our homes. Indeed, people encourage him to enter their houses, putting up signs imploring him to stop there and offering inducements like mince pies and hard liqour.” Rattle believes that Santa’s plying of young people with presents is classic grooming behaviour. “His posing as a kindly old man and inviting children to draw up lists of presents they want from him is, in all honesty, no different from those nonces who pose as children online in order to try and proposition kiddies,” he declares. “Really, he has to be stopped. Why the police can’t just arrest him at a shopping mall while he’s getting children to sit on his knee, I don’t know. Failing that, can’t the immigration people just arrest and deport him as he’s not British. Not even European – as I understand it, he comes from the bloody North Pole! If all else fails, surely the RSPCA prosecute him for animal cruelty – I mean, just look at the way he abuses those poor reindeer, forcing them to pull his sleigh all around the world!”

Father Christmas, however, still has some supporters, with Sunday Bystander columnist Ralph Thump criticising Rattle for comparing the old man of Yuletide to internet peadophiles. “There is absolutely no evidence that he has targeted children,” he points out. “Let’s not forget that all of his alleged victims have been young men, not children. Let’s face it, if he was at all interested in little people, then none of his elves would be safe, would they? Yet we’ve heard no allegations of sexual misconduct from them, have we? Moreover, bearing mind that these incidents supposedly occurred during the run up to the festive season, it is entirely feasible that they were simply alcohol fuelled shenanigans that went a bit too far. If it wasn’t Father Christmas involved, nobody would have bothered reporting them, I’m sure.” Others profess to be mystified by the whole affair. “Look, he doesn’t exist! There is no bloody Santa Claus, so he can’t be sexually assaulting people,” declares a bemused Rick Rumble, Chief Crime Correspondent for top tabloid The Shite. “I’m not saying that these supposed victims are lying, but it is just some random pervert in a Santa suit who has felt them up!” Rumble argues that, rather than attempting to arrest Father Christmas, the authorities should, instead, be looking into ensuring that shopping mall and department store Santas should be properly licensed. “At the very least, local councils should be cross checking them against the sex offenders register,” he says. “I don’t think it unreasonable that anyone donning the red suit should hold some kind of Santa licence.”

Rumble’s colleague, showbiz editor Kevin Clang, believes that most of the alleged Santa sex assaults have been perpetrated by one man. “Several sources have told me that, as part of a scheme to rehabilitate notorious Hollywood alleged sex pest Kevin Spacey, they’ve had him playinf Santa at various venues in London. Incognito, of course,” he reports. “It sort of makes sense – what better way to improve his public standing than to get him to play Santa – everybody loves that kindly, white bearded, gift-giving old geezer, don’t they? Sadly, it seems that he just couldn’t resist the opportunities it afforded him to reoffend. Allegedly.” According to Clang, the Santa gigs were arranged for Spacey by former colleagues at the Old Vic. “There are still people there who remember his time as Artistic Director fondly,” he claims. “Only the other day, after that incident there when an audience member was punched in the face for asking a fellow audience member to stop talking on their mobile during the performance, one of them mentioned that that would never have happened when Spacey was there. He reckoned that, after a similar incident during Spacey’s tenure, the actor had bent the miscreant over the stalls, pulled down his pants and buggered him senseless. Apparently there were no other incidents of that kind at the Old Vic until after Spacey had gone.”

But radical feminist Susie Quantocks, author of The Female Bastard, believes that the alleged sexual assaults committed by Santa Claus are simply another demonstration of the repressive nature of the patriarchal society we live in. “Just look at his name: Father Christmas. A Father who gives gifts and brings joy, As if only a man do these things. A Father who we are meant to worship every year, leaving him offerings in the hope that he will visit our houses and grace us with his gifts,” she told BBC Radio Four’s Today programme. “It doesn’t matter that he only seems to sexually abuse other men – it is still an expression of male hegemony!” Quantocks believes that it is time Father Christmas was replaced a female equivalent. “Believe me, a Mother Christmas would never go around groping people, male or female,” she opined. “Plus it would provide oppressed young girls with a positive role model: just imagine a woman controlling Christmas and ensuring that everyone gets what they want, without exploiting elves or reindeer and without buggering anyone. It would go a long way to smashing the oppressive patriarchy!”