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Posted by News Editor
Friday, August 31, 2007
There is an interesting articel in The Scotsman [25th Sept 2006) by Tiffany Jenkins in which she suggests the need for current child protection procedures to be re-written.
Increasing numbers of us are concerned that children are treated as an endangered species and no longer allowed to roam free. Many worry that kids are so wrapped up in cotton wool, they miss their childhood. But few commentators have gone far enough to suggest any solutions, probably because many of today's restrictions are presented as necessary for the safety of children.
As school and the parliamentary term get into full swing, one thing we could do is scrap the host of policies and codes around child protection. I don't just mean the overreaction by child protection officers to the gesture of a slap by Cherie Blair. Let's scrap them all and start again.
Child protection policies are harming children. Apart from the burden caused by the bureaucracy, these codes are propagating mistrust and corroding the relationship between adults and young people. Take Disclosure Scotland. The service was launched at the end of April
2002 and developed under the guidance of the Scottish Executive. It is an open secret that it is preventing people from taking care of children. Many are afraid to say this in public, as anyone who criticises the mantra of "better safe than sorry" is treated as an abuser.
The service checks every single person who will be working with kids. It reportedly vetted 540,000 people last year. Is this really a useful exercise of time and money?
The policy isn't unique, unfortunately. There is an expansion of this kind of criminal-records vetting across the country, for all adults who have any contact with children; including parents volunteering on a school trip to piano teachers, and it is corrosive. It sends the message
that taking care of children is a procedure for which you require official clearance, rather than a normal part of being a grown-up.
Many schools operate a policy of no "touch" and try to avoid placing one finger on any child. Forget the comforting hugs or the helping hand. There are now guidelines against teachers putting plasters on children's
knees and applying suncream; parents are advised against, or forbidden from, videoing their kids at the play and at the gym; if they can get approval to attend.
Research by Heather Piper, at Manchester Metropolitan University, has shown that many adults working with children already carry with them a "burden of abuse - a crippling sense of fear regarding how we touch children who have injured themselves or want comforting". These are caring professionals who have been treated with such suspicion they find it hard to do their job. Competent people end up watching each other and themselves for signs of dubious behaviour, truly losing touch with what
is sensible.
Ms Piper found that this hampered their ability to help and care for children. Relating to the breakdown of trust between adults, she says that "we have learned how not to trust ourselves, and to call that safety".
As a result of these codes, kids are abandoned when they need assistance. At one school, staff go to the nurse if a child needs to be touched, say if a pupil has a sore arm, rather than deal with it themselves. Stories such as this are increasingly common. Many teachers, carers, nurses and helpers realise that they are poisoning their
relationship with children, but feel unable to stop the process.
These policies treat every adult as a potential paedophile and fracture any bond they may develop. A society that does this cannot bring up the next generation properly. We are teaching children that they cannot rely on those who should be looking after them and that they cannot ask for help. Nor does this climate of generalised paranoia help identify the handful of sick individuals who do great harm. In trying to challenge the mania for vetting and protection, critics have said that it's the home we should worry about, rather than the school or the playground. But this shifts the risk instead of
challenging it, and feeds the climate of fear. It is statistically true that child abuse is more likely to occur in the home, but this does not mean that it is common; it is not.
We need a more confident approach to relations between all adults and children. It is time for us to show ourselves, and each other, some respect. The extreme vetting must end and the codes should be torn up. Professionals have to start judging for themselves how to relate to kids; adults need to develop more self-belief in their and their
colleagues' judgments, and we need to trust them. This really would be in the interests of children.
A nursery owner with more than 40 years of experience has spoken of her relief after she was cleared of assaulting a toddler at the end of a 14-month ordeal.
Olive Rack, 56, was falsely accused by council officials of 'losing her temper' and dragging the two-year-old girl across the room after the child hit a 3-month-old baby on the head with a toy brick.
The nursery owner said she simply followed the example of television's Supernanny when she disciplined the toddler on a 'naughty chair'.
But despite the fact she was backed by the toddler's parents, and without a previous blemish to her record, Mrs Rack was charged with common assault.
She was finally cleared yesterday after magistrates heard the married mother-of-three used no physical force or violence.
Outside court, Mrs Rack, who has run her Tresco Day Nursery in Kettering, Northamptonshire, for 19 years, said she was 'pleased to finally be vindicated'.
Mrs Rack added: 'I'm obviously very, very pleased with the result. But now I just want to get back to my home - and back to my work.'
Mrs Rack was supported at court by the toddler's mother, who told the magistrates the incident had been 'blown out of all proportion' (
more)
Teachers and education experts in New Zealand are welcoming new guidelines which allow them to have physical contact with children when providing emotional support and encouraging learning.
The New Zealand Educational Institute (NZEI) has published new guidelines for physical contact between teachers and children that relax the previous code of practice, which advocated no contact.
The code was drawn up in 1998 when public anxiety about child sex abuse was high in the wake of cases like that of Peter Ellis, who was accused of sexually abusing children at the Christchurch Civic Childcare Centre. Ellis is still battling to clear his name, arguing he was wrongfully convicted.
New guidelines tell teachers and early childhood educators that interactions "are important for building caring, inclusive and cohesive learning communities", and warn that staff who withdraw from physical contact could be negative role models.
Staff have been given the go-ahead to hug children to provide emotional support and to pat them on the back to congratulate them.
Physical contact to help after an accident, when the child goes to the toilet or to lift or move a child is also now deemed appropriate.
Barry Brooker, the director of the school of primary teacher education at the Christchurch College of Education, hoped the change would encourage more people into teaching.
"I hope one of the positive things that will come out of this will be that more people – particularly male – will come to teaching," he said.
"Although it is not quite such an issue now, there is still an anxiety there about abuse and I think these guidelines, which seem to be based on common sense, could play a positive role in reducing that."
Cary Mohlmann, from AngelCare preschool in Christchurch, said teachers knew what was appropriate.
"You get a lot of it in training both at college and when you start the job, so you know what's right and wrong," she said. "There are safeguards here at the centre, so I feel OK having contact with the children. It is good the guidelines allow physical contact. The children really benefit from it, especially here at the pre-school where it is almost an extension of their home."
The guidelines have also been welcomed by groups representing parents.
"We are really pleased they (NZEI) have looked into this issue and welcome the new guidelines," Margaret Mooney, deputy president of the Parent Teacher Association, said. "Parents know teachers have common sense and I think they will welcome this move."
Source and acknowledgement
One of the people arrested and charged with child abuse on the Isle of Lewis [Scotland] three years ago yesterday broke down in tears as he was told that a key witness has admitted that her claims were lies
(full story in Glasgow Herald)
Our attention has been drawn to the following article by Kevin Schofiled which first appeared in The Scotsman on 30th August 2006
A deputy headteacher who was charged with assaulting an unruly pupil, when he lifted him up after a fall, yesterday walked free - reigniting a legal debate on whether overzealous child-protection is making teachers' jobs impossible.
Simon Simpson was alleged to have injured the 11-year-old boy by dragging him across a dining-hall floor at a primary school in the east end of Glasgow.
Mr Simpson - who was suspended from his £40,000-a-year post - had denied assault, claiming he was trying to get the "aggressive" boy out of the canteen.
He was found not guilty at the city's sheriff court after the judge, Sheriff Charles McFarlane, QC, accepted the evidence of the 42-year-old and his colleagues, who backed up his version of events.
It is the latest in a long line of high- profile cases in which teachers accused of assaulting pupils have walked free from court after the evidence of their alleged victims was rejected. Mr Simpson's lawyer, Andrew Gibb, said it raised fresh questions about whether child-protection in Scotland had gone too far.
He said: "Steps need to be taken with regards to the role of teachers in schools and what they can and cannot do. Teachers have to touch children at times. Child protection has gone haywire."
The court heard that Mr Simpson's alleged victim had previously been suspended six times from the school - including once for an attack on the deputy headteacher.
The trial was told that on 22 November last year, the boy had assaulted a young asylum-seeker in the playground.
Before dealing with the incident, Mr Simpson ordered the boy to sit with him in the dining hall during lunch, but the boy became "agitated and aggressive".
He got up to leave, but the teacher blocked his path and put his hand on his shoulder to try to calm him. The pupil threw a punch at Mr Simpson and managed to get away, but walked back towards him and fell down.
Seconds later the boy claimed Mr Simpson had grabbed his arm and dragged him across the floor in front of teachers and pupils. He later said he was left with red marks on his back as a result.
Mr Simpson, of Scotstoun, Glasgow, denied any assault. He told the court: "I wanted to take him into a clear space away from other pupils. I did not drag him."
Mr Simpson was charged by police in January and later suspended. A string of his colleagues backed up his evidence during the trial.
Giving his verdict, Sheriff McFarlane said: "In the particular circumstances, what took place between you and the boy did not constitute in law an assault."
Mr Simpson, who has since returned to his post, said "This has been a difficult time for me, but I have had a lot of support from family, colleagues and the council."
Ronnie Smith, the general-secretary of Scotland's largest teaching union, the EIS, called on MSPs to clarify how the law applied to teachers and said pupils had become "untouchables".
He said: "As the law stands, the only safe approach is for teachers to avoid even touching a pupil. That can't be in anyone's best interests, least of all the children's."
He added: "Teachers' careers, family life and professional standing are being blighted by the authorities running scared whenever a complaint, however trivial, is raised. This is undermining good order in our schools."
Article and comments here
Lewis woman retracts her story - Police officer's warnings ignored
Acording to report in the Observer reproduced on Guardian Unlimited a key witness in one of Scotland's most notorious child abuse cases has admitted lying to the police, The Observer can reveal. Angela Stretton, whose evidence was vital in bringing a case of satanic sex abuse against eight people on the island of Lewis, has written to police confessing that some of the allegations she made were false.
This newspaper has also discovered that a senior police officer expressed concerns about Stretton's reliability at the time, but was ignored.
Stretton, 39, who has learning difficulties, said that after repeated questioning she told police and social workers she witnessed her mother, brother and several other islanders abusing children.
'I had lots of meetings with police and social workers. They kept questioning me about diff erent people. It was a diff erent person every day. They had a list of names, including my mum and brother. They said things about taking photos and killing animals and drinking their blood,' she said.
'At first I said no, they wouldn't do that. But they kept on and on at me. They said I had to tell the truth for the children. I felt really under pressure, so I suppose I told them what they wanted to hear. I just agreed with what was being said.
'Plus at that time I wanted to get my own back on my mum. I know this is wrong. I just want to try and put things right. I want to say sorry to them and clear their names.'
The developments have raised critical questions about the handling of the investigation and whether lessons have been learnt by the police and social workers following false allegations of ritual child abuse in the Orkney, Rochdale and Cleveland scandals. In all of these cases, the authorities were criticised for their interview techniques.
In Lewis, eight people, including a 75- year-old grandmother, appeared in court accused of raping and otherwise sexually abusing children in black magic rituals. The court was told of wife-swapping orgies and the sacrifices of cats and chickens whose blood was drunk.
The case made international news. Yet it was quietly dropped nine months later with no explanation, leaving those falsely accused feeling that their lives had been destroyed. Three years on, they say they are still fighting to clear their names (more)
Kathy's Story - update
Posted by News Editor
Monday, September 25, 2006
According to a report in The Times a woman who wrote a controversial bestseller about a violent father and sexual abuse by Irish priests says that she will answer her detractors in a new book that will reveal further shocking details.
Kathy O’Beirne’s Don’t Ever Tell has sold more than 300,000 copies but her claims that she was raped and tortured in Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries for “fallen women” have been dismissed as fabrications by the religious orders that ran them, by a woman who claims that they knew each other while living at a hostel, and by seven of her brothers and sisters.
O’Beirne told The Times that she had documentary evidence proving her story but when asked to present it she refused. She said that her new book, The Aftermath: Who Am I, would vindicate her. “I have ten abusers in all. There’s files on all of them,” she said. (more)
A grandfather, who was raped in a vigilante attack in Resolven [South Wales] after being wrongly branded a paedophile, has been told that if he wants to take the person who started the malicious rumours to court, he will have to do it himself because it amounts to a civil matter.
Detectives believe the lies spread about Geoff Cole led to the attack last year. He has even given up his right to anonymity in a bid to help catch the rapists and clear his name.
In BBC Wales' Week In Week Out programme Mr Cole and his wife Jill described how their lives have been devastated by the ordeal.
Still traumatised by the rape, the couple moved out of their home in the village overlooking the lane where it happened.
Now living in rented accommodation, they're so desperate to sell their property they've dropped the asking price by £20,000.
"I feel absolutely sick. I shouldn't have to live like this at all. I'm a completely innocent man," says Geoff Cole.
His wife Jill adds, "For us to get justice, we have to take this person to court ourselves, is that justice? I don't think so."
See Crimewatch Report here
A report in The Times by Fran Yeoman how a stalker who harassed a psychiatrist before making allegations that led to him being charged with rape terrorised another couple before she targeted him.
Police officers who investigated Jan Falkowski after Maria Marchese made her claims, and those who investigated her for stalking him, had no knowledge of her campaign of harassment and false allegations against earlier victims.
The case has echoes of the Bichard inquiry after the Soham murders in August 2002, which condemned failures in police intelligence-sharing and called for a national code of practice for police forces on creating, retaining, deleting and sharing records.
Dr Falkowski, a consultant psychiatrist at St Clement’s Hospital, in East London, was under suspicion of rape for 18 months as a result of Marchese’s allegations, before DNA evidence confirmed his innocence and the case was dropped in August last year. He was suspended from work for a year and lost his private practice as a result.
In December 2003, a month before she made the accusations, a prosecution against Marchese, 45, for stalking Dr Falkowski had been dropped by the CPS. Last month, after a second prosecution, she was convicted at Southwark Crown Court of harassment, making threats to kill Dr Falkowski’s former fiancée, Deborah Pemberton, and perverting the course of justice by making her false rape claims.
She bombarded the couple with threatening text messages and phone calls, which forced them ultimately to call off their wedding and destroyed their relationship. Marchese, of Bow, East London, is in prison awaiting sentencing (more)
Kathy's Story Update
Posted by News Editor
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
The following article by David Sharrick was published in The Times.
Author's family say abuse memoir is cruel hoax
Doubt has been cast on the 'childhood hell' in a Catholic institution recalled by an Irish writer | |
It is a harrowing story of a young woman’s life destroyed by nuns and priests, and it has raced to the top of the bestseller list. But now a chorus of voices, including those of the author’s own family, claim that the ordeal described by Kathy O’Beirne simply does not ring true and is nothing more than a cruel hoax.
Kathy’s Story: a Childhood Hell in the Magdalene Laundries has sold more than 350,000 copies in Ireland and Britain, securing a place in the top five bestselling non-fiction titles in Britain, where it sells under the title Don’t Ever Tell.
Published last year, the story of O’Beirne seemed to encap-sulate the anguish of a generation of Irish people whose experiences at the hands of religious orders left them scarred. And it could not have been better timed, with the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland apologising for the conduct of some of its priests and nuns.
But as the sales continued to rise, so too did the questions. In the book she says that she was beaten by her father and sexually abused by two boys from the age of 5 before being sent away to an institution. She claims that at the age of 10 she was repeatedly raped by a priest and whipped by nuns. Later she was forced to take drugs in a mental institution.
“I was consigned to a hell of beatings and abuse,” she wrote. “It was one long scream of suffering which has haunted all of my adult life”
The first organisation to challenge the account was the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity, one of four religious orders which ran the Magdalene laundries — institutions for young women who were seen to be in moral danger.
The sisters said that they invited an independent archivist to study their files after nobody could remember Kathy O’Beirne. No record has turned up of her attendance. She has said, in radio interviews since the book’s publication, that she could not name the institution in which she was abused for legal reasons.
Now her own family is about to dispute her story. Five of her brothers and sisters plan to hold a press conference in Dublin today. O’Beirne’s older brother, Oliver, 52, has told an Irish newspaper: “I read the book and I can’t figure out where she is coming from. My father was a good man. There are nine kids in the family and she is the only one who has any stories of abuse.” Adding that she did not have a good relationship with her family, he said: “I think she needs help.”
The publishers said that they would continue to support the book. Bill Campbell, director of Mainstream Publishing, said in a statement: “We have used every possible effort to establish the truth of Kathy’s memoir. We invited comments and corrections from the Church and we received no substantive response.”
But an Irish charity called Let Our Voices Emerge, established by people who spent time in religious institutions and who are now dedicated to defending their carers, has its doubts. Florence Horsman Hogan told The Times: “By her own admission Kathy has had psychological problems from an early age. Some members of her family have now come forward to state that their father emphatically was not an abuser and that, on the contrary, he worked extremely hard to support all of his children.” She said that the only record of O’Beirne having been in a Catholic institution was when she spent six weeks in St Anne’s Industrial School in Dublin in 1967.
The author has been refusing to speak to newspapers, but in a radio interview last week she insisted that she had proof of everything in the book. |
There is an excellent article in today's Times by Libby Purves commenting on the Cheri Blair incident
Pity the poor little bunnies - We overprotect our children. The 'rabbit ears' boy has not been criticised but treated as a victim
I SUPPOSE WE SHOULD not be surprised that Strathclyde Police sprang to the defence of Miles Gandolfi in Glasgow when he was so brutally assaulted by Cherie Blair. We simply cannot tolerate these violent middle-aged women tapping the arms of 17-year-old fencing champions. The police were obviously right to take it seriously: it is not, after all, as if there were likely to be any other violent incidents in Glasgow on a Saturday. The only mystery is why Mrs Blair has not been suspended from all duties while a ten-month investigation goes on. That is what would have happened if she had been a teacher.
We shall come back to Mrs Blair’s lawless behaviour later. But the whole incident is beautifully in tune with the times. Fretting about children is all the rage. The famous letter against “toxic childhood” dominated last week’s news; now the Archbishop of Canterbury endorses a serious investigation. From every corner rush experts and counter-experts: commercialisation, divorce, technology, exams and nutrition take turns as chief enemy.
Meanwhile, a sneering posse of historical illiterates periodically announces that childhood is a “Victorian invention” and didn’t exist before 1860. Which is nonsense, as anyone who has ever read plays, novels, memoirs and poetry from the last 2,000 years knows. Try Shakespeare, or indeed the Roman playwright Terence, who in the severest of eras BC urged that “children should be led not by severity but by persuasion” . Teenage years have extended childhood, but it was always there. Shrugging it off only suits the interests that endorse neglect and exploitation of the young because it is less trouble than meeting their needs. On the other hand, a neurotically exaggerated regard for children’s rights has served another set of interests — not least lawyers — very well indeed.
Forgive me for sounding sour. Those of us who have been writing about childhood for 20 years feel a bit like the Prodigal Son’s elder brother. We spoke unfashionably against the bedroom TV, the trollopy primary school disco and the sedentary computer kid, and were decried as mumsy Middle Englanders. We spoke up for outdoor play and adventure trips, and were jeered at as overgrown Girl Guides. Now the prodigal society is coming home and we suddenly find ourselves out-pruded by fashionable angstmongers who suddenly agree with stuff that boring old Middle England believed for years.
Truth, and sense, lie somewhere in the middle. For instance, it is slightly silly to ban TV, but very silly not to ration it. It is loony to claim that mobile phones are evil, but equally mad to hand mobiles to four-year-olds or to allow them to be kept on in classrooms. (Are headteachers insane? Or scared of unclear laws?) It is not sensible to condemn the computer, but neither is it wise or kind to be so busy-busy that you leave children for hours with violent and sexually cynical material. It is economically impossible for most families to have a full-time parent; at the same time it is perfectly possible to eat often round a family table, with conversation. It is wrong to let eight-year-olds roam the streets at night, and equally wrong to ferry them everywhere in urban tanks, cramming their day with activities designed, in the repulsive buzz-phrase of educationists, to “add value”.
Every family has to find a way through the society it lives in. Every adult has to have a tender conscience and identify needs of children. Ministers would do well to stop interfering with reasonably functional families and concentrate on their real job: it is not, for instance, impressive to consider that more than half of the children in state care do not get one single GCSE, and are over-represented in prisons.
But let us return to Cherie Blair and her playful slap. The boy was teasing her: with photographers present, he succumbed to temptation and made a “rabbit ears” gesture behind her head. Now, rabbit ears are not terribly rude, unless you are in Sicily. They are merely playful. However, this was a distinguished visitor, and on the whole one would deter one’s teenagers from rabbitifying visitors for a laugh. Yet not a word has been spoken about the lad’s disrespect: he was questioned by the police not as a perpetrator but as a “victim”. The underlying implication, all too familiar to teachers and children, is that if you are under 18 you are safe, however rude you are, and if you are an adult you are under suspicion.
This does matter. The atmosphere created, accidentally, by child protection legislation has often eroded children’s security rather than improved it. It creates a sense that the child world — of its nature anarchic and impulsive — outranks the adult world of responsibility and constraint. Instead of the imposing policemen and revered teachers of the past (who had their faults, admittedly) we have built a sense that childhood is always innocent and adulthood threatening; even a lot of adults opt to be kidults. Yet any real child knows quite well that there is a dark side to its condition, and would like adults to represent safety and reason.
One more classic example of this danger was exposed in a teachers’ union survey about sexual insults heaped on staff by pupils. It is common for teachers to be called “slag”, “pouf”, “minger”, “lezzer”, and to face shouted sexual remarks. Often there are no reprisals, or mild ones. The irony in this misguided tolerance is that the poor deluded brats will soon be out in the UK workplace, an environment that is now so primly disapproving of “harassment” that if they address their workmates the way they do teachers and fellow-pupils, they will find themselves out on the kerb, sacked with no reference, before you can say “gross misconduct”.
It is a perfect image of the way we now operate towards children: a mixture of sentimentality, nervousness, exaggerated formal protectiveness and practical neglect of our main and obvious duty. Which is, quite simply, to help them to grow up.
acknowledgement:
A woman who falsely accused four men of rape has been given six months youth custody after one of the accused filmed her intimate lap dance on his mobile. Police detained the four for 36 hours after Cinzia Sannino, 18, from Llanishen, Cardiff made the rape claim.
But they were freed after the mobile video was produced. Sannino's conduct was called "evil" by a judge at Cardiff Crown Court.
Sannino admitted attempting to pervert the course of justice.
Sentencing her, Judge Roderick Evans KT told Sannino he had "no doubt" she had had voluntary, consensual intercourse with the four.
"Before(hand), you performed a lap dance and allowed them to touch you intimately. (more)
There was a interesting article in the Sunday Times casting doubt on a book written by Kathy O’Beirne, 50, from Dublin, subtitled A Childhood Hell in the Magdalen Laundries, about the physical abuse she says she suffered at the hands of her father and Catholic religious orders, including 14 years of forced labour in a Magdalen laundry. But her family are publicly to denounce the allegations as false, while three women have come forward to describe living with O’Beirne in a girls’ hostel rather than a Magdalen laundry .... however
the family of a woman who has written a bestselling memoir about her childhood of torture and rape will hold a press conference in Dublin on Tuesday to deny many of the claims made in the book.
Although Mainstream Publishers yesterday said it was standing by the autobiography — Kathy’s Story — which has sold 350,000 copies in Ireland and Britain, the author’s family says it should be shelved under fiction....
... but Bill Campbell, managing director of Mainstream, said yesterday that the Scottish publishing house would stand by its story. “We have made every effort and are satisfied that the story is true,” he said. Campbell interviewed Kathy in Dublin and had “other people go over the chronology in great detail” before signing a deal.
Campbell said that they made contact with the Dublin archdiocese inviting comments before publication of the book, but to date Mainstream had “received no substantive response”. Asked whether he has seen documentary proof that Kathy had a child or was in a Magdalen laundry, Campbell refused to answer.
He suggested that recent moves to question Kathy’s Story formed part of a “vendetta” by Florence Horsman Hogan of Let Our Voices Emerge (Love), a group that campaigns for those who have suffered false allegations of abuse.
Horsman Hogan has been campaigning for more than a year to have the book investigated. “Kathy O’Beirne’s family, a religious congregation and the psychiatric services were subjected to horrific allegations of child abuse, yet Mainstream ignored our appeals, and that of her family, to remove this book from sale pending verification,” Horsman Hogan said.
Full Story
According to a report in the Scotsman several people accused in child porn inquiry are to sue the police:-
Police who conducted the UK's biggest ever child-porn investigation are facing legal action from former suspects who say their lives have been ruined.
About 30 people, including a number from Scotland, have put their names to a cl