They started in sex allegations. Instead of being nice to people, "grooming" implied doing it for a reason (and a dirty, filthy sexual one at that).

Check out the word in my Vile Pervert track



Now they have started using it in "terrorist" cases (I use inverted commas because I suspect most are mere fantasists).

Attila Ahmet has been "grooming" young men - not for sex but for murder.

Shortly "grooming" will be used in drug cases, fraud cases, "attempted" cases...

A useful concept.

"You asked him the way to Piccadilly Circus. You were grooming him in the wiles of a pick pocket".

Guilty your honour. Seven years hard labour. Next!

(Just off to blow up my wife in the garden shed).

The word 'grooming' was used to describe how cowboy plumbers conned old ladies in a House Of Horrors programme the other night. So it's now possible to be 'groomed' by a plumber.

Do terrorists carry "Rape kits", with nude pictures of sam fox and themselves in, when they groom people?

No news on the appeal?

Don't believe everything you read in the tabloids Sting.

I groom my horse every other day! Next week he is getting a job as a police horse, trotting into canary wharf and blowing himself up. I call him Trojan.

More importantly of course how many kind, gentle and loving uncles are in fact merely 'grooming' their nieces and nephews? Spent some quality time with my niece the other week. She's 9, bright and bubbly, and I enjoy her company. Spoil her rotten, show her great affection and she returns it. Only very sick individuals could read anything else into it. And I think that that is the point JK was making. And isn't it horribly depressing. What has this country become?

Why would you feel guilty about loving your neice? it's irrelavent. Who has criticised you?

One of the basics of British Law used to be that a crime must involve both 'mens rea' (intent) and 'actus rea' (acting upon the intent). One without the other did not make a crime. The new laws on grooming involve only the 'mens rea' with a chunk of assumption by the authorities. This is not good or safe legal procedure.

Godiver wrote:
Why would you feel guilty about loving your neice? it's irrelavent. Who has criticised you?

It's not irrelevant at all. Nobody has criticised me, but nevertheless we know there are poisoned minds out there who would think the very worst of my relationship with my niece or any child...as I am a pasty faced Englishman. Did you hear about the elderly gentleman beaten up for dishing out sweets to children in his local park? Well it happened! How about the chap who was subjected to horrendous verbal abuse for having gone to the aid of a child who had fallen over in the street? A relative of mine as it happens. How about the story of a paediatrician beaten up by thugs as he left his surgery? ONLY in England!! And why? Perhaps you may like to hazzard a guess!

It's just interesting that you are trying to involve yourself personally in the debate for no real reason. I just wonder what that means?

I would guess that you read the daily mail (presumably the source of these incidents of which you speak) and are in constant fear of the unknown enemy but that would be very presumptuous of me.

Godiver wrote:
It's just interesting that you are trying to involve yourself personally in the debate for no real reason. I just wonder what that means?

I would guess that you read the daily mail (presumably the source of these incidents of which you speak) and are in constant fear of the unknown enemy but that would be very presumptuous of me.

If you are white, middle aged, earn an average income, male and British, you are the lowest form of life. Your average white male Brit is now akin to how black women were treated in the US some 57 years ago. If you are white, male and British you are far more likely to become homeless, unemployed and/or suicidal. You are far more likely to be the victim of crime, far more likely to be viewed with great suspicion, and far more likely to end up serving time for a crime you didn't committ. The handwringers, the bedwetters and the feminists have achieved their goals.

Grooming: this touches on the bizarre cases, currently in vogue in the US where they make TV shows about them, of law enforcement officers enticing ( grooming ?) so-called "offendors" into believing they are talking to a 14 year old etc, then arranging contact and ultimately a bust.

My personal view is that any 45 year old policeman who can seriously pass themselves off as a 13 year old schoolgirl needs serious psychiatric assesment, but that aside-are these officers not grooming others in to attempting to commit a crime ?-although it's difficult to re-concile how someone can be charged with a crime when arranging to meet-what turns out to be a 40 year old bloke. Perhaps the Trade Description's Act should be invoked by those charged.

Meanwhile of course-real crime remains rampant....

It's a difficult area Veritas.

On the one hand there is the argument that someone capable of killing someone (like a terrorist or murderer) or abusing someone (and violating a child's innocence is a terrible crime) should be stopped before they do it.

That justifies the philosophy IN PRINCIPLE of police "grooming".

The trouble is - how many fantasists actually WOULD go on to commit a crime? And I think that's where society has gone dreadfully wrong.

We appear to specialise in blurring the line.

I believe very few who toy with an idea actually go on to do something. And that's why I say we are on the verge of locking up those who read (let alone write) murder novels or enjoy thrillers.

Imagination has always been a marvellous thing. We are in grave danger of turning it into a vice.

And when the media - in order to get "a good story" - combine with the authorities - in order to make it look like they are on top of crime - we are in serious trouble.

Removing civil liberties because of imagined terror is a simple and easy way to destroy humanity.

It still frightens me that people can rant against HUMAN RIGHTS without understanding it is THEIR rights as much as everyone else's that need protecting.

And I genuinely believe KARMA has a way of balancing out the insanity.

Those officials involved in "grooming" people will find themselves quite independently becoming victims of false allegations and in a position where they can do nothing about it.

A few years ago there was a case where British police had worked with a "(news?)paper" to con a few ex-cons by offering them cheap firearms and a fake opportunity to commit a highly profitable crime. A judge ruled that this was entrapment.

Sounds very similar to these grooming cases. I'm increasingly seeing a lack of cosistency in British law and procedure. Where there are no firm rules, the lines become blurred and society becomes a less safe place.

PBS wrote:
A few years ago there was a case where British police had worked with a "(news?)paper" to con a few ex-cons by offering them cheap firearms and a fake opportunity to commit a highly profitable crime. A judge ruled that this was entrapment.

Sounds very similar to these grooming cases. I'm increasingly seeing a lack of cosistency in British law and procedure. Where there are no firm rules, the lines become blurred and society becomes a less safe place.
The TV shows and grooming entrapment are in the US where entrapment is legal.

British law has nothing to do with it.

It happens here too. They tend to be called 'sting' operations. So British law has a lot to do with it.

PBS wrote:
It happens here too. They tend to be called 'sting' operations. So British law has a lot to do with it.
A sting is where somebody has already instigated criminal activity and a very different matter.

Entrapment is not lawful in the UK and in a sting operation great pains are taken to avoid it as it would be, as you previously noted, used as a defence.

I think police routinely blur the lines between entrapment and the actual planning of a crime.

Entrapment is a defence in the USA but this has been continually overlooked where defence, which is becoming the norm in the UK, depends how good your counsel is and whether you can afford the best advice.

That's one of the great disadvantages of being caught up in the law-police and authorities have deep pockets and spend like drunken sailors ( our money) and are never held to account when they make mistakes except for the ocassional token verbal slap on the wrist.

Have you ever heard of a polcieman being charged when they knowingly commit perjury or fit up suspects ?. I haven't-think back to those accused of IRA outrages who were found to be innocent and the victims of fit-ups.

2 crimes happened here-innocents were wrongfully convicted and the real perpetuators allowed to get away scot free. Not one single cop has ever been charged though.

No-one would surely want a real criminal planning a henious crime to go through with the act if they could be prevented-but we are bordering now on what could be fantasy which may never be put into action ,or the actual urging of someone to go through with a crime. Plus recourses are tied up in what looks like "thought" crime.

All so much easier since the so-called " War On Terror".

Oh Zooloo you preach a good official line.

A sting can also be a con. And yes police in this country have been known to pose as children online, just like in the USA.

Also, the police acted unlawfully in the Wimbledon Common case, sending a police woman to flirt with the suspect and lure him into a compromising position. The judge rightly threw that out. They conned Mr Herron into making a false confession up in Sunderland, although they took it too far and he confessed to things beyond which he'd been accused of and which had not happened, so a judge threw that case out too. There are many cases. Unfortunately the police never seem to learn, and they continue to push the boundaries, and sometimes get away with it.

Visit the appeal court, as I have, and you'll see convictions being overturned on a regular basis. The media only report on the high profile cases. I was quite surprised.

Nothing is black and white. There is an 'anything goes' attitude among British police if they think they can get a result. Not my words - the words of a police officer friend. His justification? It's either that or let the b******s get away with it. He thinks the law is too much on the side of the criminal. But the law is really in place to protect the innocent, against wrongful conviction as well as against crime.

It's treated like a game where all that matters is winning, but it's real lives at stake.

'Grooming' is the latest excuse for convicting people who have not commited a crime. They don't even have to prove intention, they just assume it.

There's no sign of things improving.