In a gruesome country called “the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland” reigns a horrible panic about children and sex. Anyone can come forward and accuse a dead person of the most bizarre form of sexual abuse, then he or she will automatically be believed and granted the “victim status,” an easy and quick way to gain public recognition. The discredited theories of “recovered memories,” which led to thousands of broken lives and shattered families in the USA, still enjoy public support in the “UK,” and are used to accuse ever more people of sexual abuse. Journals and the Internet have been filled with conspiracy theories about Lords, Members of Parliament, even ministers, involved in “paedophile conspiracies” to rape children in various ways, in particular by inserting tools into their anuses. This land has a distinctive institution, the gutter press, generally printed in “tabloid” format, whose so-called “journalists” can make a career by spreading the wildest nonsense.

The authorities have followed the panic. Anyone who wants to do any activity involving children, for instance accompanying pupils on a school outing, must request a “vetting” from the Criminal Records Bureau (CRB), in order to “justify” that he or she is not a “sexual predator.” The book Licensed to Hug: How child protection policies are poisoning the relationship between the generations and damaging the voluntary sector by Frank Furedi and Jennie Bristow, published by Civitas (2nd edition, October 2010), criticizes this measure and all other forms of distrust towards adults who want to take care of children. Adults do not dare to do with children what was before considered normal, such as hugging or consoling a small one, they are even discouraged from getting involved. A climate of suspicion develops, and even a man taking care of his own children, for instance helping them to undress at the swimming pool, will be looked at as a kind of freak monster.

Frank Furedi is a sociologist known for his defence of the rights of families and the prerogatives of parents. Civitas, The Institute for the Study of Civil Society, is a conservative think-thank based in London, and this shows that pro-family conservatives can sometimes become afraid of the extreme forms taken by the sex panic and paranoia.

Civitas had announced the 1st edition (June 2008) in a press release on Internet. Initially it contained comments by the public, but the latter were removed a few years afterwards; fortunately, I had saved them. Here are two short examples illustrating the effects of the panic on family life:

Lynne:

It’s a sad world we live in now. And it’s not just voluntary workers, teachers etc that this affects.
I have a teenage daughter. I work full time but my husband is often home from work by the time she is in from school. However, I have had to say she cannot have any school friends round if I’m not there myself, as my husband fears being in the house alone with other people’s teenage girls in case one of them makes up a story about him. No decent man can take that chance nowadays, despite the fact that, yes, he has CRB clearance!
Children know too much about things we had never even heard of at their age, like rape, sexual assault, paedophilia, etc, and know so much about the law and their ‘rights’, and see this sort of thing going on in soaps on TV, that this possibility could easily become a reality which is really quite scary.

Posted by Lynne | June 26, 2008 12:49 PM

markus:

I’ve stopped taking my nephews on days out, because of the amount of times people have called the police when they see us, one person even had the gall to say “it was because the boys are half cast and you’re English”.

Posted by markus | July 5, 2008 4:09 PM

The following testimony by someone calling himself “Paul,” a scout leader who was ostracized for being “too friendly with the boys,” reveals the absurdity of the panic: people will denounce fathers who have fun tickling their sons, but they do not spend time taking care of their own children, sometimes they don’t even show any affection to them; then later they pretend to be “surprised” when their kids suffer depression or crisis. I reproduce it here, unedited, except for changing the double line feeds of paragraphs into single ones.

Paul:

I came across this article and it confirmed everything that I have been feeling since my experiences with Scouts Canada.
How many Scout leaders are there, in today’s modern society, where the leader is not a parent of one of the scouts in the group?
How many scout trooped have folded; not because of the lack of children but because of the lack of male role models signing up as leaders.
How many coaches of “non-professional” sports do not have a child of their own on the team?
Is there a male teachers shortage?
How come there is such a shortage of school bus drivers?
How come young men are not signing up to fulfill their “Divine Calling” and becoming priests and ministers?
YES!
MOST DEFINATELY CHILDREN NEED TO BE PROTECTED!
Unfortunately, society has gone to the extreme and become paranoid that there is a child molester around every corner.
Even with all the new security and background check, people still question a guy’s motives for wanting to work with children.
Society now thinks that men should be doing MAN’S Work like; construction, or one of the trades, or factory, or where a suit and work in big business.
Society has taken this position of a total hands off approach when it comes to children.
A mother can not slap a child to stop misbehavior. If the mother even jerks the child strongly, some one with no life of their own, will call the police and report child abuse.
Even the fathers (that are still around) are looked at with suspicion if they hug their own son in public.
Heaven forbid if they are caught wrestling around with their son and they lift of the boys shirt to blow on their belly.
That can be interpreted as a form of sexual abuse.
Same thing if the father pins the boy down and tickles them.
The boy is not screaming for him to stop because he is not enjoying the tickling. It is simply a great father and son time together.
Yet people with nothing better to do, would phone Children’s Aid and make that family’s life hell.
Heaven forbid if it was an uncle or family friend doing that to a boy.
Most definitely a Scout leader would be investigated if he tried to have fun like that with his troop.
Parents will not let their boys go to the local Y.M.C.A. for fear of a child molester hiding in every change rooms.
How did children survive growing up in the 1950’s, 60’s, 70’s and 80’s?
There is ZERO evidence that there are 100’s more child molesters in the 1990’s until today in 2008.
What has increased is the number of False Accusations from people with nothing better to do that to make a family’s life hell.
I’m almost 100% sure that those numbers have increased 100 times more from the 1990’s
The child does not tell the person that “Daddy” is abusing him or her.
There are no marks on the child.
People just see something, like the father and son examples I gave earlier, and call the police of Children’s Aid.
It’s too bad the Media does not report on False Accusations as much as the do on actual child molesting.
It’s too bad Children’s Aid does not have to stand accountable. C.A. Workers and ‘friends of the family’ love having their 5 minutes of fame and their face on TV when they are right.
Reporters love going around and interviewing those people.
I can already hear the LAME EXCUSES if we made people just as accountable when they are wrong.
“Oh we can’t do that because people would not come forward and report child abuse for fear of being wrong.”
You mean that a person that sees a father give his son a strong close fist punch in the mouth and causes the boys lip to bleed would not call the authorities?
If someone saw deep bruises on a child would not call police for fear of being wrong?
Newsflash!!! THEY ARE CALLING NOW!
They will continue to call under those circumstances.
What will stop is the trashing of a family’s life because of false accusations.
Once someone is falsely accused, that suspicion remains with the person for the rest of their lives.
How many teachers had to relocate in order to try and put the suspicion behind them?
To bad the person with too much time on their hands, did not have to relocate because they were publicly humiliated for falsely accusing someone.
The entire family would have been publicly humiliated.
The wife would have people saying behind her back things like “She should have know…”
The daughter would have gossip about her like; “I wonder if the father abused her too.”
The son, who is the supposed victim, would be interviewed and traumatized because he knows that “DADDY DID NOTHING WRONG TO HIM.”
Their friends would look at them and treat them differently because the suspicion is still there.
JUST MAYBE the suspicion would be a great deal less if it were publicly announced that the person that made the false accusation was nothing but a neighborhood gossip.
Maybe if the truth was told that the neighbor heard the boys screaming with LAUGHTER in the back yard because his father was spending time with him and tickling him silly.
How the neighbor would report it would be that they heard a boy screaming and saw the father pinning the boy to the ground.
That HALF TRUTH is enough for the authorities to start and investigation.
The FULL TRUTH is never told once the charges are dropped.
I’m talking from personal experiences.
Years ago, some anonymous parent thought I was “Too friendly with the boys” when I was a scout leader.
That was the exact way it was said to the District Commissioner.
He did a week long investigation to get to the truth.
He gave back and told me that he could not even find the parent that made the accusation about me.
I was allowed to go back to the scout troop but the damage was done to my reputation. The other leaders looked at me differently.
The boys never looked at me differently. In fact, while on a district campout, a few boys wanted me to go and play with them during free time.
The head leader said that it would be best if I stayed at the camp with the other leaders.
Tell me my reputation was not ruined because of some busy body parent and their false accusation.
Too bad that parent was not outed and made to feel like the liar like they were.
I felt uncomfortable wrestling around with the boys like I use to.
They would come up to me to playfully provoke me like that had done in the past.
They did not understand why the other leaders were all of a sudden rebuking them.
They did not understand why I was more distant toward them.
The boys lost out on having fun with the same leader they liked and trusted.
I lost out on having fun with them.
All because some parent had nothing better to do than to spread a rumor about me.
They did not even have the guts to come forward and repeat their accusation to the District Commissioner.
I strongly believe that the parent was jealous of me when they saw how much their son was enjoying the time with me.
They were jealous because I was showing their child more attention during one scout meeting than they did with their child all week.
Since they were incapable of having fun with their son, they felt their son should not have that much fun with me.
My situation is not an isolated incident.
Look around at the distance children and parents have with each other. You rarely see a parent show any form of affection to their child.
You do see parents yelling at their child.
You see discipline.
You see children fear their parents.
You see teenagers roaming the streets.
You always hear teenagers trashing their parents. That trash talk is so much different that in past generations.
If you take the time to actually talk with the teenager, they would gladly share their true feelings about their parents.
Most times it takes the form of them saying that their parents DON’T CARE!!
Their parents don’t care how late they stay out.
They don’t care who they hang out with.
They never showed any type of affection growing up.
The teenagers look at you like you were from another planet if you ask them if their parents ever said they loved them.
Society wonders why the youth of today are “out of control.”
You have to wonder? WHY?
Society has set it up where there are no role models for the youth of today.
They set it up where there is such a fear that a man’s actions will be misinterpreted so the male role model does not sign up to be a mentor.
If they do sign up there is a HUGE list of DON’Ts that they have to follow.
Don’t wrestle with the boy.
Don’t tickle him.
Don’t grab him and throw him around in the pool.
AND whatever you do… DO NOT EVER HUG a boy.
The Don’t List has been simplified over the years.
It’s not simply “DON’T TOUCH A CHILD!”
Do you really have to wonder why teen suicide is up?
Do you really have no idea why children are so distant toward their parents?
Do you really wonder why teen pregnancies are up?
Children and teens have grown up with zero or little physical affection and love so they get it where ever they can find it.
Do you thing a child would go off with a total stranger if they were getting love and affection at home?
The opposite would be happening!!
Children would be running home after school because they knew they would get a warm hug from their mom and that Daddy would spend time playing with them in the back yard.
Now, children are told to “go watch TV”
Parents even put TV’s in the child’s room so they would not have to watch TV together with their child.
Parents get the child their own computer so they would not have to surf the Internet together with their child.
It’s such a joke to heard parents say “I Never Knew….”
I will be so bold as to sat directly to the parent. YOU NEVER WANTED TO KNOW!!!
Parents are so grief stricken when a child a child commits suicide.
They come up with all the traditional things like “I should of…” I could of…
TO LITTLE TO LATE!!
I have ZERO sympathy for parents AFTER THE FACT!
If they said that they did everything possible and they showed the child all the love an affection they could then YES I would have sympathy.
Is it really possible to give too much genuine love and affection to a child?
When role models or mentors try to should affection to a child that needs it, they are falsely accused and labeled a molester.
When a scout leader wrestles with the scouts, people say he is being “too friendly.”
Maybe the parents should start being “too friendly” with their own children like the scout leader is.
Prove me wrong!!!

Posted by Paul | July 14, 2008 7:30 PM

This is a revised version of a post previously published on Agapeta, 2015/07/22.