Men are being advised not to approach lost children in the street because of fears they could be branded as child abusers. The warning comes as more towns and cities in Wales are signing up to schemes which give guidelines on dealing with a lost child - something that was second nature a generation ago. But today many adults, especially men, are reluctant to take a lost child to a person in authority in case their action is misconstrued as attempted child abduction.
And last night Eira Huws, a community safety officer who is helping set up advice schemes in North Wales, said it is best if women approach lost children and not men.She said, "We would advise that women should go to the child. "Unfortunately, we live in a time when people do have this fear of dealing with children. There would be less suspicion if women did it."
Her comments come as the NSPCC's Safe Child Scheme is rolled out further across Wales. It already operates in Swansea, Cardiff and Merthyr Tydfil and today Caernarfon and Bangor will become the latest to take part.Simon Jones, NSPCC Cymru/Wales policy adviser said that the policy applied broadly to all members of the public.
But last night it was claimed that the need for such guidelines was a sad indictment of the fear that many adults live with when approaching a child. Mark Isherwood AM, Welsh Conservative spokesman on children, said, "The society we live in has developed perhaps a great sensitivity to issues around paedophilia and child exploitation and abuse. It places men in particular, but all adults, in a difficult situation. It's a tragic reflection of the society we're in. There have been high-profile cases of child abuse and murder and everybody now is very conscious of that and suspicious of people who appear to be acting oddly. "It's only a tiny, tiny minority of people who are a threat to children. It's a tragedy that the vast majority of decent, caring adults are seen in that light." North Wales AM Mr Isherwood, who has six children and one grandchild, said any advice for dealing with lost children must be carefully phrased."We shouldn't encourage anybody to put themselves in a situation where they might be falsely accused of something, but we shouldn't encourage people to look the other way. "If a fellow human being, particularly a child, is at risk, you should intervene."
And David Hughes, chairman of the men's charity Mankind Initiative, said the comments about men being perceived as less trustworthy was especially sad. He said society's greater mistrust of men over women could at times put children in even more danger."I think the police are too ready to suspect men," he said, citing a case where bricklayer Clive Peachey from Cornwall drove past a toddler on her own for fear of being accused of abduction. An inquest in March heard how she later fell into a duck pond and died."That little girl would be alive now but for society's attitude and the attitude of the police," said Mr Hughes, a retired headmaster who lives in Newport."That's why that bricklayer didn't stop. He could have picked her up and put her in his van to take her to the police station."But if he had been found with her in his van he would have been a suspected abductor.It's totally unjustified. There have been many instances where men have given their lives trying to rescue other people's children from the sea or a fire or other danger. They see a child in difficulty and perhaps they can't swim very well themselves, but they jump into the river and have a go."
And Maria Battle, deputy children's commissioner for Wales, said, "The pendulum has swung too far the other way. It's sad if you were to leave a child in distress and in danger because you were inhibited through accusations. "We all have a moral duty to protect children."
An NSPCC spokesman said that as a charity it did not condone any bias against men as being more likely to abuse children.He said, "The NSPCC's advertising isn't an attack on men or fathers. Our fundraising and previous advertising have equally shown both men and women as abusers."
CAFCASS - Annual Report
Posted by News Editor
Wednesday, July 26, 2006
CAFCASS has published its annual report for the year 2005-06 which revealed that it acted for just over 61,000 children in that time. It also revealed that the overall number of court applications requiring their involvement reduced but there was a 4.7% increase in public law children work.
The Report, called 'A Voice for Children', was also upbeat on their performance in relation to their key performance indicators including:
- By March 2007, 70% of allocations during the month for Section 31 (care and supervision) cases should be within two days from receipt of request. They achieved 49.9% described as 'partially achieved'.
- The number of private law reports unallocated less than 10 weeks before court filing date should be no more than of 4% of the workload. 3% was achieved.
- At least 98% of all public allocations each month for all case types should be within 28 days of receipt of request. Again this was 'partially achieved' with 91%.
Announcing the report, Chief Executive Anthony Douglas stated that
We balanced our budget and delivered efficiency savings while the cases we worked on became more complex and the number of public law (care) cases increased. The demands on CAFCASS are changing. We are modernising our practice to develop early intervention and conflict resolution services to deliver better outcomes for the children and families we work with at a critical stage in their lives.'
A former Hull city council leader and police authority chairman was recently [17th July 2006] cleared of a series of child abuse charges.
A jury at Leeds Crown Court found Colin Inglis not guilty of five allegations of indecent assault against a teenage boy at Hull Children's Home more than 20 years ago.
Inglis, the former leader of Hull City Council and chairman of Humberside Police Authority, was cleared of a sixth charge involving the same complainant - who is now 37 years old - on Friday.
Today, the jury of six men and six women returned majority verdicts on each of the five counts.
The jury returned its majority verdict after they heard the complainant describe how Inglis, of Wellington Street West, Hull, allegedly performed sex acts on him when he was a resident at Spring Cottage Children's Home in Hull where Inglis worked as a social worker.
The court was told that Inglis' relationship with the boy had been examined in a previous police investigation into Spring Cottage in 1997, which did not lead to any charges.
But the jury was not told that the complainant was among a number of people who made allegations against Inglis at the time.
The 49-year-old has always strenuously denied all the allegations and was cleared by the jury today.
More (1) (2) (3)
A report on This is Wiltshire says that police wasted more than 120 hours' work when a team of 14 officers was set up to find a rapist who never existed.
A 17-year-old girl, who claimed to have been attacked in Faringdon Road Park late on Monday night, confessed yesterday to having made the story up. She could now be taken to court for wasting police time, just as a 20-year-old Liden woman was in May.
Det Insp Mark Garrett, who was leading the investigation, has moved to reassure the public that there is no sex attacker on the loose.
People in the park yesterday said they were horrified at the actions of the girl. A team of seven detectives and seven uniformed officers was assembled to catch the man who allegedly carried out the attack. But officers noted a number of inconsistencies in her story and yesterday she withdrew her allegation.
Det Insp Garrett said: "There is no sex attacker for this alleged incident as the man never existed so I want to put the local community's fears at rest. "I identified a number of inconsistencies throughout the investigation which did concern me but I continue to investigate with an open mind until she withdrew her allegation. "It is very frustrating when crimes are falsely reported to the police.
"A great deal of time and resources are put into investigating serious crimes such as this alleged rape, which also, understandably, generates fear within the community."
Det Insp Garrett also said genuine victims of sexual assaults should not hesitate to come forward.
"I would like to reassure genuine rape victims that they will receive complete victim care and encourage them to contact the police," he said.
"False reporting is a serious matter and each case is considered for wasting police time."
Dr Michael Berry, a chartered clinical forensic psychologist who practises in Manchester, said there were a number of possible explanations for the girl's behaviour, including attention seeking, regretting consensual sex with someone or suffering post traumatic stress disorder from a past rape. "Those are the most common reasons," he said. "It does tend to be younger women in the sense that you are unlikely to have a 50 plus woman making a false allegation of rape....."
Court Action
[Other] women who have made up stories about being raped in Swindon in the past have been dealt with by the courts.
In January 2005 Kimberley Passmore was jailed for a year and in May this year Limara Crewe was ordered to do a 150 hours of community service.
Passmore, then 20, of Beatrice Street, Gorse Hill, told police she had been dragged into a field and brutally raped by a stranger. An innocent man was questioned for 30 hours because of her claims. Passmore later admitted concocting the whole story because she felt ashamed about having sex with a workmate behind her boyfriend's back.
Limara Crewe, also 20, of Conan Doyle Walk, Liden, sparked a five-day hunt after claiming three men of Eastern European appearance had attacked her. Crewe, who was given a 12-month community order, admitted that she had made the story up. The prosecution said she was ashamed about having sex with a man she met on a night out with friends.
Full Story
The BBC have reported that a North Wales man who was falsely accused of child abuse should receive £89,000 plus legal costs. In what was described as a 'sorry saga' of events Wrexham social services were severely criticized for 'repeated, prolonged and serious maladministration' that caused serious injustice to the complaints " by Public Services Ombudsman Adam Peat.
Police took no action over the girl's complaints, but the man had a breakdown after his other children were made "at risk".
The council is considering its response but said steps had already been taken by relevant agencies.
The report said the girl was seriously ill in hospital with a psychiatric disorder when she made her first allegation, in 1997 when she was aged 13, that she had been abused by her father.
She made similar allegations in 1998, 1999 and 2000, but in each case never gave her consent for social services to investigate. The department took no action and the father was not informed.
In 2001, the girl complained that her father had raped her. The police were involved, but took no action after the girl withdrew her complaint.
But the father's two other children were placed on the child protection register. The man then suffered a severe nervous breakdown and left his job, where he had been working with children.
'Extreme distress'
An independent social worker later said there was no evidence that the children had ever been at risk from their parents.
Mr Peat found that, had the council investigated the initial allegation promptly and effectively in 1997, the allegation would not have been substantiated and the subsequent course of events would have been very different.
He said he found the council's "repeated, prolonged and serious maladministration" was "a major causal factor" in the man's breakdown and loss of livelihood.
He recommended the council pay the man's legal costs, plus £84,000 for loss of income, and pay the man and his wife £5,000 each "in recognition of the extreme distress which the council's maladministration has caused the family".
Mr Peat also said that, in the interests of child safety, the council's social services department should recognise that investigations into possible child abuse may need to be undertaken without the consent of the child concerned.
Mr Peat said: "It is evident that major lessons for future practice needed to be learnt from this sorry saga".
Terry Garner, Wrexham's strategic director for children and young people, said: "It is important to point out that the local authority has a duty to safeguard and protect children who may be at risk of harm whilst at the same time considering the rights and responsibilities of parents.
"It takes these statutory responsibilities very seriously.
"This was a complex case which began nearly 10 years ago and a number of actions had already been carried out to address any lessons learned."
BBC Report
Summary of Ombudsman's Report
Full Report of Ombudsman
BRITAIN’S most senior policeman is proposing that electronic chips should be surgically implanted into convicted paedophiles and dangerous sex offenders so they can be more easily tracked.
Ken Jones, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo), said the implants would be tracked by satellite, enabling authorities to set up “zones” from which sex offenders would be barred. These could include schools, playgrounds and former victims’ homes. Any attempt by the offender to enter the zones would trigger alarms in a monitoring centre, enabling police to act. (more)
For an excellent criticism of this idea see article in the Register (here)
An article by Ciaran McGuigan in Northern Ireland's Sunday Life is critical of remarks made by the Children's Commissioner concerning controversial remarks made during the bitter Laurelhill Community College dispute. The article says:
Children's champion rapped over remarks
By Ciaran McGuigan 16 July 2006
The Children's Commissioner has been warned about public statements his office issues following an Ombudsman probe into controversial remarks made during the bitter Laurelhill Community College dispute.
The remarks made at the time by former Children's Commissioner, the late Nigel Williams, related to allegations of assault made against the teacher at the heart of the row, David Bell.
Following a complaint by Mr Bell, who was falsely accused of indecent assault by a female pupil, Northern Ireland Ombudsman Tom Frawley has asked the interim Commissioner, Barney McNeany, to remove the controversial remarks from the Northern Ireland Commissioner for Children and Young People's website.
He said the remarks "were expressed in such a way that a reader could reasonably have inferred that a much more serious incident in terms of physical assault had transpired at Laurelhill College than that explained to the court".
He added: "I have asked (the interim Commissioner) to note my comments in relation to the standards which I expect to see reflected in public statements issued by Bodies within my jurisdiction, and to bring these to the attention of all staff in the NICCYP, to ensure that he and his staff avoid a recurrence of the imbalance which I am satisfied occurred in this instance."
Sunday Life tried to contact the Children's Commissioner last week, but the NICCYP offices were closed for public holidays.
However, the statements were still present on its website.
Said Mr Bell: "I'm still not happy, the offending press release is still there.
"I wanted it's removal and an apology from the office and have got neither.
"It's very much the function of the children's commissioner to represent the interests of children, that's the basis of the office.
"However, a balance has to be maintained in situations when there may be a conflict between a child and an adult and there has to be balance and no automatic assumption that what the child says is true."
More than 50 staff went out on strike from Laurelhill Community College in October 2004 when a pupil who had made allegations against Mr Bell returned to the school.
Former Children's Commissioner Nigel Williams died in March this year following a long illness.
The Children's Commissioner has been warned about public statements his office issues following an Ombudsman probe into controversial remarks made during the bitter Laurelhill Community College dispute.
The remarks made at the time by former Children's Commissioner, the late Nigel Williams, related to allegations of assault made against the teacher at the heart of the row, David Bell.
The Let Our Voices Emerge website is now back on line after a short break.
In a statement L.O.V.E says our website aims to help all of those involved in any area of childcare, or the media in research, to examine the issue of false allegations of child abuse, the protective measures, and the consequences of the allegations.
The following report appears on IC Coventry Network (here)
A simple reflex action has destroyed the career of a Coventry teacher.
After an unblemished record of 23 years, John Whitehead, aged 50, says he is today on the scrapheap because the city council has banned him from every job with the council. His future is in tatters after an incident at Corley Special School four years ago.
Mr Whitehead instinctively put his foot against the classroom door, to stop a child who was chasing another. The child's finger got caught and was broken. Mr Whitehead was sacked but an industrial tribunal ruled that the dismissal was unfair. Despite that, Coventry City Council refuses to take him back and he says they have banned him from working for them in any job. They also won't give him a reference. Mr Whitehead's wife is also a teacher. They have two children - a 21 year old daughter suffering from multiple sclerosis who is due to start university soon and an older son who is a bio-medical scientist.
Today Mr Whitehead, of Tile Hill, said: "I am disgusted. The General Teaching Council has cleared me and the police cleared me. But this has ruined my career." The organisation Falsely Accused Carers and Teachers is taking up his case.
The drama happened at the school which caters mainly for children with autism. Mr Whitehead told the tribunal how a boy rushed to a door appearing as though he was going to bully another. The boy yanked at the door and Mr Whitehead put his foot out to stop it opening. It shot back shut, trapping the child's finger. The tribunal decided Mr Whitehead had been unfairly dismissed and criticised the way the governors handled the case. The tribunal said they had not followed procedure and that a panel member fell asleep during one of the disciplinary hearings. They decided, however, that Mr Whitehead did not handle the situation as well as he should and reduced his compensation by half.
The city council refused to comment.
Graeme Paton from TES also carried this story
A teacher has spent four years trying to clear his name after being sacked from a special school. An experienced teacher who was sacked for trapping a pupil's fingers in a door says his career is in ruins after spending four years attempting to clear his name.
John Whitehead was dismissed by Corley special school, Coventry, for gross misconduct even though police decided not to pursue their investigation into claims he deliberately injured the boy.
This week an employment tribunal ruled that the teacher, who had an unblemished 23-year work record, had been unfairly dismissed and said that the school's disciplinary procedures were deeply flawed.
Tribunal members criticised the huge delay in the school's investigation, its refusal to interview all witnesses and claims that the then headteacher put pressure on governors to sack Mr Whitehead.
It was also revealed that the teacher's first disciplinary hearing had to be abandoned after one of the governors fell asleep.
Critics this week said that the case highlighted the need for urgent action to tighten up rules governing schools' investigations of alleged abuse of pupils by teachers.
Mr Whitehead said: "Who is going to want to employ someone who has been out of work for four years with an assault allegation hanging over their head? Even supply agencies won't touch me. This whole thing has completely muddied my name."
The married father-of-two was key stage 4 manager at Corley school, which caters for children with moderate learning difficulties, when the incident happened. At an earlier tribunal hearing, it was revealed that trouble flared between pupils in March 2002.
The tribunal was told Mr Whitehead attempted to stop one teenager pushing into a room to confront a fellow pupil, but as a door closed it trapped the youngster's hand, breaking one finger and bruising others.
The teacher was suspended from his £35,000-a-year post and police were called. Although officers decided there was no case to answer, governors at the school ruled that Mr Whitehead had been reckless and, after an investigation taking more than two years, sacked him in July 2004.
The teacher, who has spent more than £20,000 attempting to clear his name, took the school and Coventry council to a tribunal in May and this week it delivered its verdict, exonerating him.
Its report highlighted a catalogue of errors, principally the "extensive delay" in the school's own investigation. The headteacher, who has since left the school, was criticised for "retaining information relating to an unproven allegation" and putting a statement to governors on Mr Whitehead's disciplinary panel which was "prejudicial".
Governors themselves were also criticised. As well as the sleeping governor the tribunal revealed their approach to hearing litigation was "flawed" and a teacher-governor had wrongly been allowed to sit on the appeal panel.
The tribunal will make a later judgement over costs, although Mr Whitehead said he was likely to be left heavily out of pocket. He has found part-time work as a cook and teaches occasionally at a special school and FE college, but said that his long-term career prospects were in ruins.
Gail Saunders, of the campaign group Falsely Accused Teachers and Carers, said: "As a result of a single unfounded allegation of cruelty towards a pupil, his career and reputation have been destroyed. This case clearly demonstrates how the investigative procedure which follows a complaint against a teacher is often conducted in a manner which fails to offer any protection whatsoever to the teacher against spurious allegations."
Coventry council and the school, which is now under the leadership of a new headteacher, declined to comment this week. However, at the tribunal hearing in Coventry earlier this year, the school defended its decision to dismiss the teacher and its lawyer, Jill Carter, insisted that "some force" was used by Mr Whitehead to cause such injuries to the boy....
There is an excellent article by India Knight on TIMES Online concerning the vicar who was forced to step down as a school governor after he gave a 10 year old pupil a congratulatory kiss on the head in fronmt of other puils and a teacher. The articles entitled Kiss Goodbye to Innocence says;
The insane, PC paranoia about “inappropriate” touching of children has gathered such momentum that last week a 58-year-old vicar called Alan Barrett resigned from the board of governors of William MacGregor primary school in Staffordshire because he’d given a 10-year-old girl a lone peck on the forehead during the course of publicly congratulating her for improving at maths.
Barrett, who is married and has three grown-up children, was threatened with charges of common assault after the incident, following a complaint from the child’s mother. He was also subjected to an informal investigation by his diocese.
The police and the social services eventually concluded that Barrett had no case to answer. The diocese found his behaviour had been “inappropriate in today’s climate” but did not warrant any disciplinary action. Barrett nevertheless resigned as chairman of governors at the school, following advice from his archdeacon.
“I have discussed the issues with my archdeacon and agreed that one cannot be too careful,” said Barrett. “Giving a child a kiss of congratulations is inappropriate in this day and age.”
The child’s mother, meanwhile, declared herself “disappointed” with the decision that Barrett had no case to answer. “I’d like him to be removed from his position,” she said.
I find this whole story incredible — or rather, I would if variants on it weren’t so depressingly commonplace. A friend was watching her daughter’s end-of-term play last week and was surprised to be told, by a contrite-seeming head, that parents weren’t allowed to take photographs of the performance — not because children might be distracted by flashing lights, but because, though it wasn’t spelt out as concisely as this, any paedophiles sitting in the audience might use said photographs for sinister purposes.
I know of schools where distressed young children have to be comforted verbally and at a distance, because giving them a hug might unleash a whole series of complaints and investigations. I know schools that won’t apply sunblock on children whose parents may have forgotten to do so in the morning, because skin-to-skin contact is verboten. Some schools won’t even apply a plaster to a grazed knee, for the same reasons. At nurseries and kindergartens, nappy-changing is a potential minefield, which is why many now insist that children are potty-trained before they can be admitted.
All touching, it appears, has become “inappropriate”. Blanket rules apply, and there is no differentiation between a lovely hug and a grotesque grope. Call me old-fashioned, but I like to imagine that people who choose to teach young children do so because they like them, not because they want to have sex with them.
If you like children, being physically demonstrative is second nature — a pat on the head here, a hug there, taking a sad child onto one’s lap to read him or her a story. Why ban it, or create a moral climate in schools and nurseries that is so morally unhealthy and fearful that teachers are stopped from offering comfort, and children are brought up in the kind of environment where innocent physical contact with adults is somehow seen as dubious from the start? What kind of warped lesson does that teach them?
What is especially unpleasant about all of this is that it is so foully dirty-minded. A sane society does not equate a noble profession such as teaching with paedophilia. We all understand adults have a moral responsibility towards children in their care, and we painstakingly educate our children to be wary of strangers.
I personally think that even this has got completely out of control, and that even very young children are taught to be paranoid about perfectly benign adults waving at them in the park. Because the point, surely, is that the vast majority of people are kind, not predatory. Why reward them for their kindness by making them feel like “inappropriate” freaks?
As a child, I was told never to accept sweeties or lifts from strange men in cars, and to get away from any adult that made me feel uncomfortable. I was told this, if I remember correctly, at least once but no more than three times during my childhood. It was plenty.
Also, what with one thing and another, I went to a dozen or so schools. Some were nicer than others, but I can honestly say there was no question, ever, of any teacher behaving in an inappropriate way. Even at one school, where we had quite a tactile games mistress who liked supervising showers and (unbelievably) had the authority to perform “knicker checks”, ie, to ask for physical proof that we were wearing our regulation school underwear.
Today, she’d probably be disgraced and banned from teaching forever, and we’d all be offered counselling because we were victims of “abuse”. At the time, she merely struck us as peculiar and mildly annoying. Which is all she was.
And if the moral climate had been as it is now during my upbringing, there wouldn’t be a single boys’ public school or Oxbridge college left standing. Can you imagine? Fagging? “Artistic” young masters encouraging people to read Oscar Wilde? Winsome dons with their little coteries of boys? But none of this did anybody any harm. It broadened the mind — at a time when, frankly, a lot of the minds in question needed broadening — and conveyed to us that there are all sorts of people in the world with whom coexistence is possible.
One last point: where children have been victims of abuse, the idea that nobody is allowed to touch them ever again seems to me very odd. Surely it would make more sense to teach such children there is such a thing as “good” and safe touching as well as “bad” touching — instead of banning touching altogether?
Are these poor children never to be given a comforting hug again? Do we really want them to believe that all adults are toxic and filled with evil intentions? Apparently so. Worse, we want all children to believe that adults are intrinsically harmful. Who’d be a teacher, in these dementedly puritanical and paranoid times?
also see Times article, Sunday Telegraph (1) (2)