These are simple acts of human kindness. That they are punished as unprofessional or risky shows how everyday and normal caring has become contaminated.Quite. As this high profile case tragically proves.
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!
Neglect ruling in girl pond deathOK, 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.
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.
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 affairIn 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
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.
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.
15 comments:
Excellent post DP. Could you imagine what sort of scenario there would be today should city kids get placed randomly with adults in the countryside as evacuees during war as they did in WW2?
I think the state would be happy to let them take their chances with their parents and get bombed... and think of the paperwork and quangos involved ...?
As a single middle aged man, with no kids of my own, I'm afraid that in a similar situation to the Abigail Rae case, I would walk by on the other side too, like the brickie did.
Sadly the consequences for an individual who is merely erroneously suspected of some sort of child abuse are too large, even if the chances of it happening are very small. A sort of reverse National Lottery if you like. One twitching net curtain seeing you find a wandering child and taking them off to find their parents, one phone call to the police later and a world of hurt descends on your head.
What a twisted world we have created, or rather allowed 'them' to create.
funnily enough I've just been catching up on the Hollie Greig case.
Personally mate - as I've said to you before, it's even worse than that for me.
I feel distinctly uncomfortable with playing with, or even picking up my young nephews and cousins so I very rarely do it. It makes me very sad when I think about how my older cousins and uncles used to lark about with me when I was their age.
As Katabasis says it's worse than you know, I'm a father, separated, had to fight for contact. My child is injured multiple times by his mother - childrens services check.. me, but not her (she gets extra benefits), The school refuses to let me collect him, why? because his mother demands it. On being asked why, the school says men not in the primary residence are a risk.
The assumption, by schools, police, the judiciary, in fact everyone follows the feminist view that 'all men are rapists and pedophiles'. And you wonder why men avoid contact with children, in the current climate, and with 'guilt by accusation' it's the only safe option.
Pat: Different times, of course, but if the same happened now I think our lily-livered government and public would surrender before suffering any of the hardships we did back then, so it wouldn't be an issue.
Jim: Twisted is a good choice of word. The people pushing this are little better than the paedophiles they claim to be against. Their policies are arguably harming kids more if you take an overall view.
Katabasis: Understand that fully. We have yet to see, of course, how kids will turn out since innocent interaction with adults has been effectively banned.
Able: You have my utmost synpathy. I have a friend who is in the same situation. As with my comment to Katabasis, the only possible outcome is that the kids are going to be adversely affected as a result.
As if it's not bad enough that they have to live longer in this life of restricted freedoms than us, they're also being handicapped in childhood by the misguided righteousness of sick minds.
A couple of years ago I was approached by a woman I didn't know in the village shop. "You are just what I am looking for" she said. Not being used to this sort of chat up line I asked why? It seemed she needed someone to be Father Chrismas for the school. I refused. "Your the sixth man I've asked and no one will do it"
I told her I didn't like children and left.
The truth was that I was more worried about what conclusions would be drawn if I had said yes, and I would guess the other five thought along the same lines.
Even "oop north" where people are a bit more relaxed about this, I have been made to feel uncomfortable by some people's reactions when interacting with my grandson in public places.
Usually it is the younger mothers, ones who have probably been brought up under the last government, I wonder if that has affected their attitudes?
???
A toddler on it's own is *always* an emergency because it's life threatening for them.
How hard is it to stop the child, call the cops either with your own mobile, that of another passer-by, or if totally stuck, just ring the nearest doorbell?
Failing all that, grab the kid and start yelling 'Help' and 'I found a lone toddler' should see you fairly safe, if you want to be supersafe, turn on the recording facility of your mobile or walkman.
And if they then try to accuse you, you just going to have to pick the fight and try to win it to free us all from this tyranny of cowardice -- in fact, the reason why we are where we're at is that we all are cowed cowards who have already accepted that we're hopeless losers who will never amount too much and who give up on confrontation before it even happens, even if the price is to abandon a toddler to commit suicide, because we're too afraid and selfish to argue with evil idiots -- we have no personal honor and principles to uphold anymore it seems.
Here in Greece there's none of that paedophobia crap, thank heavens. I found the default attitude of "all men are suspect" in UK terribly depressing.
If I'm sitting at a cafe, or in a shop here, I often interact with young kids who are also there. I like kids. (As long as they're not screaming. :) ) Their mums / dads don't give it a thought, except maybe to smile at me. Which of course is how it should be, and how it was in UK 30 years ago.
It's the fucking MSM in UK again, led by the tabloids, who are to blame for an awful lot of what is wrong with the UK today.
I'm glad I'm out of it.
Oh please! Hexe Froschbein m/f?
If you are male, go into a store, or on the street, and just talk to a child - watch how almost every woman there then views you (assuming the police aren't called). If a woman, then watch critically how your fellows treat a woman talking to a child as opposed to a man. The simple fact is that 'all' men are viewed as potential threats to children (we are all potential/probable rapists and pedophiles according to the feminists) and all it takes is a suspicion (let alone guilt by accusation) and your life will be utterly destroyed.
Yes, I've been in situations similar to that seen here, a small child wandering apparently alone. In a car park, I sized the situation and then, without approaching the child, found the nearest woman (as no man would dare in this political climate) to go to the child. Another episode, a child at work (I'm a nurse, uniformed) I did approach the child but loudly, and only after calling for a colleague.
"Grab the child", seriously, so the mother runs up to see her distraught child in the hands of a strange man? You'd be in prison before you can blink (if not beaten to a pulp by those horrible men egged on by the mother).
The cause here is the blinkered, hypocritical (and yes feminist) view that all men are a danger. All the facts (as opposed to hyperbole) show that children are much safer today, yet the perception is the polar opposite.
So yes, if I found a toddler wandering alone in the middle of nowhere I would do something, but if as here I saw a toddler outside a nursery - I have no idea what I would do (and feel some sympathy for the man who will be torturing himself with 'what if' for the rest of his life).
As for you, you go grab the child, if a man, see you in prison, if a woman you go feel smug and superior about how only women can protect children.
Hexe: I do understand your point, but Able has explained very well why that is increasingly not an option anymore. I admit that I've done the same as him once a couple of years ago ... asked the nearest woman to help, explaining why. She rolled her eyes, sighed a smile, and nodded in an understanding manner.
It shouldn't be like that, but unfortunately it is. We're hamstrung by sick-minded people - and they are sick - who see perversion in even the most innocent of interactions.
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