Hypocrisy, or a dramatic epiphany from the NSPCC? You decide.
Plans to vet parents who take part in activities involving regular contact with children have been criticised by children's charity, the NSPCC.
Children's services director Wes Cuell told the Sunday Telegraph the move could stop people doing things that were "perfectly safe and normal".
Like some might say home education was safe and normal, perhaps.
Vijay Patel, policy adviser for the NSPCC children's charity, also sees the need for a review. "Some people use home education to hide. Look at the Victoria Climbié case. No one asked where she was at school."
So to clarify things. Parents teaching their own kids at home is suspect and all such arrangements should be treated as potential child abuse opportunities until proven otherwise. However, volunteers taking other people's kids to events is 'perfectly safe and normal'.
Great. Clear as mud.
It's good that the NSPCC have come out with condemnation of the government's latest daft plan, though. I mean, how on earth did our MPs become so paranoid? Who has been bending their ear with inaccurate and alarmist information?
How the NSPCC faked child abuse stories to generate cash
The Advertising Standards Authority slammed the NSPCC for its actions.
In a damning summary, it upheld the claims of three recipients who complained the letter looked like a genuine example taken from a case of a child who had been abused, which could cause distress to young children who might have picked them up.
Say, what?
In May, the NSPCC ran a newspaper ad campaign to coincide with the Baby Peter case telling all and sundry that ...The latest research reports that 1 in 6 children are sexually abused before they reach the age of 16.
Seems a tad alarmist, I'd say. That's because it is.
It's clear that the 1 in 6 figure is astonishingly over-stated as regards the dangers that parents fear from paedophilia. Saying that 1 in 6 kids are being 'sexually abused' is a sound-bite to strike the fear of Ian Huntley into any parent, and I venture to suggest that the NSPCC fully intended their figures to be taken that way.
Do you reckon the NSPCC might have conveyed this hysterical stuff to MPs at some point? Loudly? If so, it would explain a lot.
