Child database: danger of malicious reporting
Child protection register raises fears that individuals could be unfairly slandered
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Independent Minds
Members of the public are to be given the power to report anyone they suspect of posing a danger to children, under a new Government scheme.
People who suspect an individual of being unsuitable to work or volunteer with children will be able to refer them to the Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA) through a form on its website. After receiving an allegation from a member of the public, the ISA will examine the available evidence and contact the person concerned to allow them to mount a defence.
Depending on the seriousness of the allegations, they could be asked to make a written statement, be interviewed over the phone or talk face-to-face to an ISA representative.
The ISA is responsible for managing the Vetting and Barring Scheme (VBS), which launches in October and is intended to protect children from paedophiles. By November next year, it will be mandatory for everyone who works with children to be registered. Within five years it will hold the details of an estimated 11.3 million people.
A Home Office spokesman said that as the scheme had not yet been launched, it was difficult to say exactly how the interview process would operate, but that each allegation would be dealt with on a case-by-case basis.
He added that if the safeguarding authority decided the allegations were unfounded, the accused person's information would be discarded.
Anna Fairclough of the human rights group Liberty said that any accusations made by individuals rather than official bodies should be "treated with circumspection" by the ISA. "In principle there's probably nothing wrong with the ISA gathering information from all sorts of sources," she said, "but obviously if an allegation is made by a member of the public, the chances of it being malicious is perhaps higher."
She thought it "unlikely" that the ISA would discard the details of the wrongly accused, but that there was no problem with this as long as the information was not passed on.
Public anger over the Vetting and Barring Scheme has mounted since The Independent disclosed on Thursday that a group of respected British children's authors and illustrators intended to stop visiting schools in protest. Philip Pullman, Anne Fine, Anthony Horowitz, Michael Morpurgo and Quentin Blake all said they would refuse to have their names on the database, which carries a £64 registration fee.
However, the chief executive of children's charity Barnardo's, Martin Narey, defended the scheme.
"Before I joined Barnardo's I ran the prison service, so I know a little bit about sex offenders and the unique way they plan their crimes and groom children," he said. "What they might do while under supervision in a school is not the point – their appearance in the school gives them legitimacy, and the next time they might see a child on their own it's in the park or outside the school gates, by which time they're a trusted adult."
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Comments
This database is a great idea.
We should extend it so that all parents must be vetted too. Most abuse occurs in the home so if anyone wants to be a parent they must be registered. Relatives must also be checked.
Also we should keep track of anybody committed of any crime. We do not want criminals near our children or our neighborhoods, We don't want drunks running over the children. We don't want thieves teaching them to steal. We do not want assaulters or murderers teaching them to assault and murder. We do not want cannabis users showing them how to ingest Class B drugs.
Also, police records should be consulted to see if a person was suspected of criminal behaviour. All of these people should also be denied the option of working or living near children. We can set up special areas for these people to live in. Perhaps they should wear a large insignia to warn people off as well?
If they cannot pass the test, people should be banned from working near or living near children.
It is the only way.
We are only doing what we have to.
We are heroes.
+
It should win a few votes at the next election with Soham references to appeal to the tabloid readers.
The trouble is it doesn't go far enough. What about all the abusive and potentially abusive parents who attend school functions? I quote from the article:
"their appearance in the school gives them legitimacy, and the next time they might see a child on their own it's in the park or outside the school gates, by which time they're a trusted adult."
Oh dear! The real danger will come from the adults who have not committed an offence YET and what better cover than appearing as a parent or even a charity worker.
It seems that the only way to protect children is to disallow contact with ALL adults because of the potential risk - after all , we don't want them to grow up too fast do we?
Whilst a word in the right place can maybe warn a school or the police of someone who is seen to lurk around the gates, this is going to go right back to the bad old days of rampaging social workers wrecking people's lives on little or no evidence.
I say bad old days, what am I thinking... they still are doing that, a malicious phone call by an "anonymous well wisher" can wreck a family within a week.
No doubt the ISA will communicate the "concerns" to social services which have a long, long track record of fitting the crime to the accusation regardless of actual fact, I believe we should have a token means to ensure that people coming into contact with our children are indeed safe but this is not good.
VBS. This paranoid garbage is as big a threat to children as the abuser. They will grow up terrified and persuaded against human interaction. Everyone is a peadophile unless they can prove otherwise. Everyone is a criminal unless thet can demonstate support for this state. Is this Cambodia in the 1970's? or France in the 1790's?
Would you like to volunteer for a test? You give me your name and address and I'll drop a hint to the authorities that I suspect you of being a danger to children, a not altogether fanciful thought in view of the world you seem to want them to inherit. You can then be interrogated and provide a written statement to prove your innocence. When you next come to be CRB/ISA checked, there's a good chance that it will include the information that you were investigated as a result of my information but cleared. I'd lay money on the probability that a number of potential employer would find that sufficient to be deterred from employing you.
Want to give it a go? If not, why do you wish to lay the rest of us open to malicious allegations?
That the ISA expects to have over 11m people on the VBS database within five years exposes the intrusive stupidity of this scattered and all embracing policy. Those who truly represent a risk to the vulnerable conceal their intent and the greater risk will come from those with no conviction.
The enhanced CRB checks not only encourage an inherent mistrust (as distinct from prudence)of others in our children and grandchildren. The procedure will also encourage a false sense of security. The idea that the systems the government has introduced will protect you, your children, other vulnerable people, from the risk of abuse is a fantasy.
The policy is socially counterproductive. If pursued to its logical conclusion, there will be few left to educate or inform our children. And no-one in their right mind will expose themselves to the risk of visiting schools, volunteering for community initiatives, helping an injured or distressed child for fear of accusation, interview, opprobrium..
For a while she stayed with relatives in North Wales as a child. She attented a school that was also attended by kids from a nearby 'kids home'. On occassions at this school she was forceably put inside a dark room in the school. She expereinced horrific abuse to the point where there is memory blackout. When at her family (step father) home in Portsmouth she was subject to appaling 'ritual' child abuse. This involved being forcable put inside a pentagram and sexually abused. This actually happening please have some respect for this awareness folks. Bowls of shit were placed around the room (horrifically the poor childs bedroom). She was spat at. Thats just the stuff she told me. The people doing this abuse were (genuinely) british state/authorities people. There seemed to be a connection with the abuse up in north wales, which was also 'authorities' connected...and thus the total inability of the state to be able to break this sick and evil child abuse ring. It was the state..at least on one leveL. That was and is the reality. And these perverted power abusing scum seek to label people that smoke cannabis now and again, for example, as 'a danger to kids'!
I've just been over to the continent. Hardly any CCTV anywhere, no car registartion number tracking, no CCTV on roads at all. No CCTV in towns, other than the odd private system. Coming back into Dover with those ranks of CCTV cameras noting every journey in and out the the UK and around the country...and the ranks of hard faced customs people. Nothing like that going into France. First these war criminal perverts start an illegal war of aggression, (the bigist offence in the book, and these scum have the cheek to talk about a 'respect agenda'), and then they implement a police state to suppossedly prevent the reaction that this sort of criminality causes.
Yes indeed british, just how far are you going to let this go? Remember Hilter was elected. When are you going to get up and do something about this situation? When are you, the ordinary folks, going to start taking appropriate direct action against this regime, and the manifestations of the police state?
I can tell you something british, there is no way the Irish, the French, would allow the state to grab as much power as you have done. You're pathetic. Worthless and weak.
There are potentially more than 11 million workers both employed and volunteers who are affected, including teachers care home workers, caretakers, reading helpers, foreign exchange student hosts (no requirement for hosts of UK children abroad obviously), WRVS volunteers, patient transport volunteers. The scheme is well intentioned, but is flawed in that it MAY engender a climate of suspicion that could harm and kill off activities for children and vulnerable adults.
Tosheck it out visi:t http://www.isa-gov.org.uk/Default.a
This is a stupid and overly bureacratic system that will not achieve a damned thing except reduce the pool of available teaching talent. However it will widen the guld between adults and kids. Imagine telling young kids that you can't trust ANYBODY! What a scary world these idiots are creating for our children.
Has anybody told the children who, on their 18th birthdays, become adults (as far as the CRB is concerned anyway), that they have to stay away from younger children if they have not been checked??
To continue the madness - in a mixed age cricket match the only individuals requiring enhanced CRB disclosures are the umpires, who stay on the pitch throughout the innings!! and the scorers, who tend to come in pairs, stay in a box writing, and only venture, possibly, to the pavilion when lunch or tea are served.
In a grammar school local to me, after very many years of cricket matches, with teas, they have stopped serving tea in the pavilion because visitors could be deemed to be close to the changing rooms!! From my own personal experience visitors at a school cricket match tend mostly to be parents and at tea time they are only interested in what's in the sandwiches. To suggest a possible other interest is perverted.
I will be hosting a german exchange student next spring in my home. I have not yet been asked to be ISA registered, though the ISA say that this will be compulsory if providing care. If the school has to pay for it, which budget should it come out of, and if we parents have to pay for it the exchange will not happen. Until we all stand up and refuse to go along with this madness it will continue.