in the long list of cases that should never have been brought to court - let alone sent by police to the CPS. Look at Simon Warr. Look at David Bryant. Look at Geoff Long. Look at Mark Pearson. Dozens and dozens of wasted budgets, court time, police and CPS work. The excuse? They must be believed. But they weren't believed in Cliff's case or Gambo's case or all the others rejected for close examination. Was Danny Day more believable than Cliff's roller skater loony? Or was Cliff represented by better paid lawyers with a spotlight on police behaviour which would have stopped any prosecution in its tracks where Dave Bryant was just an impoverished retired fireman (who fortunately had a determined wife)? Very soon media (Mail) will ask whether our system is fit for purpose and, indeed, whether some public officials have committed malfeasance in public office.

The list of regressively “progressive” reforms supplied by Barrister Blogger Matthew Scott in his recent article about Kato Harris is illuminating, if very disturbingly so for anyone who believes in due process and the rule of law. I posted about it here:

www.kingofhits.co.uk/component/option,co...,2/id,160793/#160793

Successive governments, it seems, have willingly caved in to the (totally unappeasable) victims’ advocacy lobby over the last four decades, vandalising the criminal justice system a little bit at a time with every popularity-chasing change. When added together, these reforms – all of which have been designed to “rebalance the justice system in favour of the victim” and “place the victim at the heart of the justice system” in Blairite parlance - constitute a major assault on justice.

Lawmakers appear to have ignored a crucial fact each time they crafted and approved these reforms: the parties to a trial are not “victims” versus the accused, but the full and limitless might of the State versus a defendant armed only with his or her defence counsel. Collectively, these reforms have made the possibility of obtaining just outcomes increasingly improbable. All will have been welcomed by politically correct victimologists, who almost certainly lobbied for them in the first place.

If the media are waking up to this surreptitious coup d’état by the right-on PC enemies of liberty and justice, it seems to me to be rather too late, unless they also begin campaigning vigorously to have each of these deplorable biases repealed.

Mr Harris' fate is as tragic as it is wicked. It seems to me that the viciously virtuous vanguardists of PC victimology have succeeded in weaponising children. All children need do when confronted with a correcting adult who sees they are wandering into nasty or stupid behaviour is cry "He abused me!"

Any adult male considering working with weaponised children would be well advised to give up now. Those actually working with weaponised children would be well advised to get out now.

What a terrible situation. Progress, PC-feminist style.

Only last year, Christopher McGovern, Chairman of the Campaign for Real Education said when asked to comment on the statistic of nearly one million primary school children in England not having a male teacher: "Too many men are being put off teaching by a perception that it is over-feminised and that, at a time of child-abuse frenzy and hysteria, any male wishing to work with young children must have suspect motives.”

Not just a perception Mr McGovern. The experience of Kato Harris vividly demonstrates that it would be safer for a man to take up a job in bomb disposal than to work as a male teacher in a school classroom in the UK.

And it's not just teaching (we've been linked to the excellent FACT for 12 years) - how about Foster Parents, carers, vicars, priests, doctors... avoid children at all costs. There is bound to be a loony amongst them even if it takes 40 years to emerge and make false allegations which cops are instructed to believe and jurors are instructed to find you guilty. Let the little bastards rot in misery; that's what society has decided (disgusting but there it is).

Peter wrote:
Only last year, Christopher McGovern, Chairman of the Campaign for Real Education said when asked to comment on the statistic of nearly one million primary school children in England not having a male teacher: "Too many men are being put off teaching by a perception that it is over-feminised and that, at a time of child-abuse frenzy and hysteria, any male wishing to work with young children must have suspect motives.

Not just a perception Mr McGovern. The experience of Kato Harris vividly demonstrates that it would be safer for a man to take up a job in bomb disposal than to work as a male teacher in a school classroom in the UK.
A suspicion demonstrated recently by a poster on this site:

"(Why would someone who was the heir to a multi-million pound family business - founded by his father - want to leave and become a teacher??? Opportunity !)"
www.kingofhits.co.uk/component/option,co...imitstart,20/#159488

Yes that is the problem; those who simply see the extremes and the simplistic. It is beyond their imagination that anybody could want to be decent, be kind, contribute to a better world. One wonders why those people don't find the acid and bile in their blood causing physical problems sooner than they do. One would think strokes would strike far faster and earlier.

JK2006 wrote:
And it's not just teaching (we've been linked to the excellent FACT for 12 years) - how about Foster Parents, carers, vicars, priests, doctors... avoid children at all costs. There is bound to be a loony amongst them even if it takes 40 years to emerge and make false allegations which cops are instructed to believe and jurors are instructed to find you guilty. Let the little bastards rot in misery; that's what society has decided (disgusting but there it is).

It could also happen in the smallest of encounters such as the one I found myself in (described in a recent post on this forum) when a young child accused me of hitting him with my bike in an isolated location. This showed to me how easy it is to be falsely accused by a child, that everyone really is only one step away from a false accusation. I still imagine a scenario of what I would have done had the mother been someone who believed her son's every word, thought that I might have harmed him in some way or spotting an opportunity, reported the matter to the police secure in the knowledge that she would have received their unstinting support. Under the current guidelines, they would have believed her son's accusation and would have dismissed of my own account as a lie. If the authorities are going to persist with the policy of believing accusers, then those who they accuse should also have every right to be believed.

True - and then there is the False Memory Syndrome where people are persuaded (often by themselves) that something happened which didn't. Example - if someone was once abused, much better to think the abuse was committed by Elvis Presley than by a street sweeper.

Article by Sir Anthony Seldon from the Telegraph - behind a paywall so I have copied & pasted content.
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/04/18/deat...-male-teachers-risk/


Kato Harris was a teacher with a flourishing career apparently ahead of him in a school in Ascot, Berkshire. Then, in December 2014, a pupil he had never taught nor could recall ever talking to accused him of rape. He suffered a 17-month ordeal, when he endured public shame, went through the courts, and saw his career unravel. He was cleared by the jury after just 15 minutes.

Mr Harris is now unemployed, living in a bedsit and is unsurprisingly bitter about the whole experience and lack of support he believes he received. Tragically, he now says: “If I knew then what I know now, I would never have become a teacher. I would never work with children again.” Teaching, he warns other men, is too great a reputational risk.

As a head teacher for 20 years, I spent my time encouraging people to teach in schools, believing it to be the finest profession one can possibly pursue. So Mr Harris’s remarks are incredibly distressing. But are we in danger here of losing perspective?

There are risks for teachers now, one cannot deny. In this feverish atmosphere, stoked by social media, it can be assumed that any teacher accused of a crime is probably guilty. Even if cleared, there will be a stigma forever attached to the accused’s name. The impression that all teachers, particularly in boarding schools, are potential paedophiles, has been encouraged by lurid stories in the press, and by a host of books, most recently Alex Renton’s account of boarding life, published this month.

Let me be very clear. I can think of no worse crime than paedophilia. For a teacher in power to betray the trust of young people is profoundly evil. Abuse can create lifelong damage among those who have been sexually and physically affected. The behaviour of some schools in the past, as well as churches, in protecting the guilty is sickening. Had they been candid from the outset, much abuse would have been avoided, and hundreds of lives would have been unsullied.

But the great majority of teachers (and clergy) are obviously innocent and the honour of their profession needs to be defended. It would be the height of insanity if the Harris case became widely cited as a reason for men to avoid teaching. The country is crying out for young men and women to enter the profession. Teachers change lives, they challenge, inspire, correct and stretch young minds, introducing them to the very best that has been taught and learnt and written about in civilisations across the centuries.

I worry that if the impression catches on that every young teacher will become prey to false accusations, the idea will grow that teaching is a dangerous profession. It will be the poorest children in the schools that can’t find quality teachers who are likely to suffer the most if this trope finds widespread credibility.

Calm and level heads are needed if the sad story of Kato Harris is to be used as a force for good rather than to spread panic. We need this to be a wake‑up call.

Above all, it should remind us trust is the value that most needs to be fortified in schools, because that is exactly what is at risk of being lost in the modern era. Trust between the teacher and the student can be precarious. It needs to be strengthened.

I suspect that one reason schools in general might have become prone to accusations that are sometimes proven to be vexacious is because the focus for too many years has been on examination results as the only legitimator of the value of a school. While all good heads and teachers I know have forever been saying that teaching is a moral activity, and that good character, as well as wellbeing, need to be an integral part of school life, too many government ministers have erroneously seen this kind of talk as an excuse for second-rate standards.

What the politicians have done is to hollow out schools of their moral quality – and the ethical desert that we see all too often in education is the result. As stable family life declines and good religious institutions lose influence, for many young people it is the school that is the key source of stability and morality in their lives. It is a morality that we have lost at our peril.

Sir Anthony Seldon, the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Buckingham, was master of Wellington College and head of Brighton College

And how about trust between adults and children? Parents, relatives, doctors, scouting leaders, priests, fosters, social workers, friends? It really is the secret weapon of mass destruction, removing love from children.