14 Million Random Acts Of Unkindness

Over at The Manifesto Club, Josie Appleton continues to diligently discuss issues of liberty which obviously don't concern our idiot politicians. With reference to two recent cases where adults were castigated for helping children, she concludes.

These are simple acts of human kindness. That they are punished as unprofessional or risky shows how everyday and normal caring has become contaminated.

Effectively, decent adults are abandoning children because it is too risky to help them.

These proceedures encourage child negligence. In the name of child safety!

Quite. As this high profile case tragically proves.

Neglect ruling in girl pond death

Two-year-old Abigail Rae disappeared from the Ready Teddy Go nursery in Lower Brailes, near Shipston-on-Stour.

She was found an hour later when her mother Victoria pulled her from the weed-covered pond.

During the three-day hearing at Stratford-upon-Avon Town Hall, the court heard how a bricklayer had passed a toddler, believed to be Abigail, walking alone near the nursery.

But he did not stop to help in case he was suspected of abducting her.

OK, that's admittedly an extreme example. However, I'll bet that a vast majority of people with a heart who read this blog have been in a position - at some point - where a child could have benefitted from some help, but where you either thought twice about it, or just walked on by. As Josie highlights, the potential consequences nowadays are just too dangerous.

Multiply that over a population and it's clear that millions upon millions of acts of kindness are prevented by an over-reactive climate of mistrust and suspicion, to the detriment of society as a whole.

And for what? Even the hyper-sensitive NSPCC are unequivocal that 'stranger danger', as opposed to abuse from family, friends or those of their own age, barely registers.

Violence: a family affair

The survey results have identified the extent to which violence towards children is primarily a family affair. The only arena outside the family where it occurs with any frequency is between age peers at school or in other settings where the young congregate. Violence by unrelated adults, including professionals, is rare.

In fact, well before Labour's knee jerked to introduce the concept of guilty until proven innocent by the Criminal Records Bureau - and before post-Huntley moral panic had embedded itself - there were signs that society was curing itself without government interference

A Glasgow researcher, Stuart Waiton, has produced compelling evidence that counters the fear that children are at greater risk than in previous times. According to Waiton, between 1988 and 1999 the number of children murdered between the ages of [5] and 16 decreased in England and Wales from 4 per million to 3 per million. The total murdered under the age of 5 dropped from 12 per million to 9 per million. Cases of abduction in which the offender was found guilty dropped from 26 to 8 over the same period.

Of course, the 'if just one child' mantra drives politicians on, despite the fact that CRB checks continue to fail in preventing the most egregious abuses.

Apart from the high profile cases we see screamed from the media, there is no evidence that paedophilia or abductions are any more prevalent than they were twenty, thirty, forty, or even a hundred years ago. The perceived threat, however, is so great that no politician has the guts to come out and say otherwise.

So we carry on with this societally damaging regime which some analysts have estimated could result in up to 14 million people being CRB checked in the future. Each of which is another small brick in building a society which is fearful of any interaction with kids; which diminishes the social well-being of the country; turns us all into uncaring introverts; encourages enmity and suspicion; and arguably detracts from the overall safety of the majority of children.

We've heard big noises from the coalition about how regulations are going to be scrapped or toned down, but little on the CRB car crash. Quite simply, I don't think they have the balls to even try.

They want to promote a 'Big Society', but how can one even begin to do that when almost all voluntary projects are bound to have some involvement with, or be on behalf of, children? The buzz derived from spontaneously volunteering is dimmed somewhat by being delayed by the CRB, and any feel-good factor disappears once viewed as a criminal and being forced to undergo the rigmarole of being checked to see if you're suitable, being charged a £60+ fee, then waiting up to three months before getting clearance.

We all want kids to be safe, and a society which facilitates that. Sadly, the hysterical situation we currently have is horribly counter-productive without actually doing much to mitigate one of life's incontrovertible truths.

Shit happens.