Sunday - July 19, 2009

Paedophile. You might be suspect, maybe not. Prove you aren’t. Or pay $100 and pass Go. Dumb stuff.

So then, you’re a writer perhaps of childrens books. Or maybe a journalist or a rocket scientist and you volunteer to speak to children in assembly in school.
Sometimes it could be one of those talks where adults tell kids about their job and what they do etc.

Well, now in the interest of child safety people who talk to the kiddies from a stage where there are teachers and maybe parents, ppl who answer the question the children may have, now need to be vetted BEFORE they are allowed to talk to the kids.  From a stage even. Got to make sure there is nothing smacking of child abuse in their background.  So far I suppose it’s ok. ?? Seems reasonable enough to check on people. Maybe.  But the vetting folks do ask a lot of questions
AND ... here’s a fly in ointment.

The person being vetted must pay about $100 for the vetting. In Brit money it’s something like £64.00.
I’m telling you about this as background to my first post for today. 

Potatoes and paedophiles: Why are we so afraid?

By Suzanne Moore
19th July 2009

The other day I went to a school to talk to a group of delightful 11-year-olds about journalism. They rustled their packed lunches while I talked about my working life. Most of them had not considered journalism as a career. Their headmistress asked, as I was leaving, if they now would, and a sea of arms shot up, so it was well worth the trek.

It was part of a project called ‘lunch and learn’ where kids – who have often never seen the adults in their lives working – get to hear about all kinds of jobs.

It’s undoubtedly a laudable scheme, though I was rather disturbed by the children’s interest in whether I had met Piers Morgan or not. But you can’t have everything. At no point was I alone with any of kids. But anyway, I have already been checked by the Criminal Records Bureau in order to take my own child on a school trip.

I have mentioned the ludicrousness of this procedure before, so I was very glad to see Philip Pullman refusing to be vetted in this way.

It’s very easy to write him off as some prima donna who thinks writers are superior beings, but Pullman was a teacher himself and has been outspoken about civil liberties in the past.

What he is objecting to is the fundamental notion that we are guilty until proven innocent that now governs all official thinking – thus all adults are potentially predatory paedophiles. He sums up the mood of much Government legislation and the new Independent Safeguarding Authority checks when he says ‘the basic mode is not of trust but of suspicion’.

He is backed up in his campaign by Anne Fine, Anthony Horowitz, Michael Morpurgo and Quentin Blake. Most schools would be delighted to have any of these children’s authors visit and many successful writers do this for free. Do they need to be made to feel like criminals for their goodwill?

The children’s laureate Anthony Browne has said writers should not be treated as special, and I agree. The problem here, though, is this blanket policy of what Fine calls ‘governmental idiocy’.

Most of us can understand why teachers and those in regular contact with children need to be checked. After the Huntley murders something had to be done. Actually all the warning signs with Huntley were there: several women had been to the police with rape allegations, but the police did not follow them up or put them together.

The Independent Safeguarding Authority, which has so far cost more than £16million, is not the way to stop the likes of Huntley. Its inflexibility is costly. Its price is a culture of fear.

Why do people who are never going to be alone with a child need this? Why do parents? Why live in continual denial about where the worst and most regular abuse happens? In the home, not in public places. Do we need more Baby Ps to remind us of this dreadful fact?

DAILY MAIL FOR THE REST

Posted by peiper     on 07/19/2009 at 10:05 AM   
Filed Under: • Daily Life • UK •  
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