A quarter of adults to face 'anti-paedophile' tests - Telegraph

Originally Posted by :
The launch of a new Government agency will see 11.3million people vetted for any criminal past before they are approved to have contact with children aged under 16.

But the increase in child protection measures is so great it is "poisoning" relationships between the generations, according to respected sociologist Professor Frank Furedi.

In a report for think tank Civitas, he said the use of criminal records bureau checks to ensure the safety of children and vulnerable adults has created an atmosphere of suspicion.

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As a result ordinary parents - many of whom are volunteers at sports and social clubs - now find themselves regarded "potential child abusers".

The checks were introduced to tighten procedures to protect children after school caretaker Ian Huntley murdered 10 year olds Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells in Soham in 2002.

However, there are growing fears that the measures have now gone too far.

Professor Furedi said most adults now think twice before telling off children who were misbehaving, or helping children in distress for fear of the consequences.

He said that the need for the checks had transformed parents "in the regulatory and public imagination into potential child abusers, barred from any contact with children until the database gives them the green light".

From next year the new Independent Safeguarding Authority will require any adult who come into contact with children or vulnerable adults either through their work or in voluntary groups to be vetted.

But Prof Furedi's report, Licensed to Hug, highlighted examples of when adult-child relationships were distorted by the need for CRB checks already being required by schools and other organisations.

In one example, a woman could not kiss her daughter goodbye on a school trip because she had not been vetted.

In another, a mother was surprised to be told by another parent that she and her husband were "CRB checked" when their children played together.

In a third example, a father was given "filthy looks" by a group of mothers when he took his child swimming on his own in "a scene from a Western when the room goes silent and tumbleweed blows across the foreground".

Prof Furedi details how one woman was made to feel like a "second class mother" because she was barred from a school disco because she did not have a CRB check.

Prof Furedi, a sociology professor from Kent University, said that "adults are no longer trusted or expected to engage with children on their own initiative".

He said: "When parents feel in need of official reassurance that other parents have passed the paedophile test before they even start on the pleasantries, something has gone badly wrong in our communities.

"We should question whether there is anything healthy in a response where communities look at children's own fathers with suspicion, but would balk at helping a lost child find their way home."

Prof Furedi, the author of a book called "Paranoid Parenting", said there was a trend to treat parenthood as a "professional endeavour that demanded increasing regulation and monitoring".

Prof Furedi said that CRB checks did not "provide anything like a cast-iron guarantee that children will be safe with a particular adult".

"All it tells us is that the person has not been convicted of an offence in the past," he said.

He called for a national review to demonstrate the need to "improve and clarify adult authority".

Prof Furedi said: "The adult qualities of spontaneous compassion and commitment are far more effective safeguarding methods than pieces of paper that promote the messages 'Keep Out' and 'Watch Your Back'."

Figures show that volunteering is on the decline with 13 per cent of men saying they would not volunteer because they were worried people would think they were child abusers, according to a survey last year.

The report comes after Children's Commissioner, Sir Al Aynsley Green, said 50,000 girls were waiting to join the Guides because of a shortage of adult volunteers, partly caused by the red tape of the CRB process.

Martin Narey, chief executive of children's charity Barnardo's, said his behaviour had been affected by the suspicions around adult-child relationships.

Writing in The New Statesman, he says: "I am likely to usher my wife forward if a child falls over in the street, lest my picking up the child could be misinterpreted. We need to address that. Adults - particularly men - should not routinely be seen as potential child abusers.

"And we need urgently to expose the nonsense of 'stranger danger' and convince parents that, although the risk of a child of theirs being abused at all is small, that risk comes not from lurking strangers, but from people known by their children - often relatives - who are able to exploit a child's trust."

However, he stressed that not to run any checks on past behaviour that could point to potential abuse would be "scandalously reckless" and he supported plans for the new Independent Safeguarding Authority whose work he said "will restore parental confidence" in adults who volunteer to help groups like the Scouts.

The CRB said yesterday that it will process 3.6million checks this year - up from 3.4million last year - of which 20 per cent were for volunteers.

Vince Gaskell, the bureau's chief executive, said he did not believe that CRB checks were poisoning the relationship between adults and children.

Can't we just lock the kiddy fiddlers up for life so the rest of us don't have to go through all this nanny state BS?
Surely if you are a risk to kids then you SHOULD NOT BE ON THE STREETS.

Ea of dune
[Rep]

It's knowing who the real risks are that is the problem and the fact that a person has no convictions is no proof one way or the other.

I belong to a dance side which is mixed and has a number of teen members. I went into the village hall kitchen to get a drink of water and a 15 year old girl followed me in. I had to leave immediately as adults of a different sex are not allowed to be in the room with a minor at a social club.

We have a child protection policy that is now required and have a school teacher and scout master running it as they are already cleared. I have no criminal record and when I was widowed had to bring up a teenage daughter alone. She is now grown up and would trust me with babysitting for my grandson, but the way things are going I will need to get cleared to do that. I still can't be in the same room as a 15-year old girl on her own even though I have met her parents and if I were so stupid as to do anything she would let the whole world know.

If a child falls down screaming and bleeding to death in the street and I was the only trained first aider present I would be inclined to leave it to die lest I end up having my entire life blighted. I know how to stem bleeding from legs that are partially severed or have serious bleeding, but I would have to press my hand/foot on an artery in the groin. Because of the PC brigade I would have no choice but to let a female or child die. It really isn't worth being branded as a paedophile or pervert for the rest of my life. I know it sounds harsh, but people commit suicide over false paedophile allegations because of the stress caused.

I wouldn't give cardio pulmonary massage or assist in breathing if it were a teenage female victim. Can you imagine if I tore away a blouse and started putting my hands around the breasts to find the sternum and commence CPR? The crime would be magnified by my clearing the airway, adjusting the head position and giving the kiss of life.

I'm sad as I have had substantial first aid training over many years, but I am not prepared to take risks with my reputation. I need the government to agree that men of 50 plus can remove childrens clothes to save lives, but I honestly don't think any New Labour minister would care enough to make that commitment.

Vince Gaskell, who is paid a ludicrous amount to be CEO of the bureau is hardly likely to tell the truth if it would mean his pathetic organisation being wound up and him losing his job.

I used to volunteer to help on infant school trips when I was running a business from home and could give the time. I looked after little girls and boys and was often the only father who was helping. I also kissed my daughter goodbye in public and took her swimming on my own when my wife wanted a lie in at weekends. Nobody thought it odd, but that was 12 years ago.
[Rep]

Meanwhile at Tescos you can buy pole dancing kits and padded bras marketed to seven year olds. As they rightly claim: "every little helps".
[Rep]

Originally Posted by :
It's knowing who the real risks are that is the problem and the fact that a person has no convictions is no proof one way or the other.

It's an unfortunate part of life. But to treat 11 million people as they may be suspects is just ridiculous.

The idea that government can solve all problems by snooping on the vast majority of decent people is a threat to liberty that is not only wrong but completely ineffective. In other words innocent decent people will be interrogated and those with some thing to hide will as they always do slip through the net.
[Rep]

Originally Posted by Ea of Dune:
A quarter of adults to face 'anti-paedophile' tests - Telegraph





Can't we just lock the kiddy fiddlers up for life so the rest of us don't have to go through all this nanny state BS?
Surely if you are a risk to kids then you SHOULD NOT BE ON THE STREETS.

Ea of dune

You sound worried.You got Garry Glitter on speed dial or something?
[Rep]

Originally Posted by Roland:
It's an unfortunate part of life. But to treat 11 million people as they may be suspects is just ridiculous.

The idea that government can solve all problems by snooping on the vast majority of decent people is a threat to liberty that is not only wrong but completely ineffective. In other words innocent decent people will be interrogated and those with some thing to hide will as they always do slip through the net.

Government's job isn't to solve problems or make things better.

It is to create problems and then offer innefective solutions that suits their own agenda
i.e. then bring in laws that restrict freedom for all people irrespective of whether they are innocent or not.
[Rep]

I suggest we start by checking the homos.

They claim to be 10% so there must be 6 million of them.
[Rep]

I was in a superstore the other day and a young girl (6 or 7) was running round crying and asking for her 'mummy'. I knew damn well roughly where her mother was, having passed the family earlier. But no way, anymore, was I even going to approach the child and try and take her to her family.

I searched out a member of staff instead.

We live in a sad world.
[Rep]

Vet all parents at the childs birth. Tag the undesirable parents,
put the iffy ones in camps.
let the State take care of all children, bring them up as good little consumers
and cannon fodder.

Years ago, 1999?, I saw a one year old toddler wandering about at midnight.
I didnt do anything but walked on.
I am rather ashamed I didnt do anything.

If I had called the police I expect they would have taken the child and put it on to one of their "Care Homes" forever.
[Rep]

Originally Posted by HighlandFP:
Vet all parents at the childs birth. Tag the undesirable parents,
put the iffy ones in camps.
let the State take care of all children, bring them up as good little consumers
and cannon fodder.

Years ago, 1999?, I saw a one year old toddler wandering about at midnight.
I didnt do anything but walked on.
I am rather ashamed I didnt do anything.

If I had called the police I expect they would have taken the child and put it on to one of their "Care Homes" forever.

There are said to be large numbers of middle-class people who want children and can't have any.

Take the kids away wfrom the scum and hand them over to the people who want them.

It's a no-brainer.
[Rep]