Yesterday, it was confirmed that Adam Johnson was to remain the poster child for those such as the NSPCC that wish us to believe that the gravest danger likely to to befall a child was coming into contact with a ‘celebrity’.
His sentence of six years, and enforced ‘treatment’ for ‘hypersexual disorder’ or being an extremely fit and agile young man with a high testosterone level – and ‘fame’ that other disgusting attribute of the ‘paedophile’ was upheld by a single judge in the appeal court.
The belief that Adam Johnson and his celebrity cohorts, such unlikely figures as Lord Bramall and Cliff Richard, are what a ‘paedophile’ looks like, has served the NSPCC well – their coffers are filling up nicely as they plead to be allowed to rid the world of such evil figures. The figures for the successful prosecution of a grown man for child abuse are rising rapidly, they tell us.
Simon Bailey, the Chief Constable of Norfolk, who is in overall control of this area of police activity, has calculated that in 2015, a cool billion pounds was spent investigating these crimes.
The NSPCC is not the only charitable organisation concerned with child protection, much though they might wish it were so. There is a far larger, older established, and more successful, when it comes to fundraising, charitable organisation – Barnardos. It does make you wonder why the Liverpool businessman who set up the NSPCC in 1880 didn’t apply his talents to fundraising for the already existent Barnardos…they have been in hot competition ever since.
Was it any coincidence that the recent round of fundraising and profile raising by the NSPCC invoking the departed Jimmy Savile as Britain’s No 1 paedophile was set in a Barnardos establishment – Duncroft – in Surrey?
We have heard remarkably little from Barnardos since the endless media onslaught telling us that men, especially VIP men, and particularly VIP politicians. are the cause of a rising tide of child abuse. Heard little maybe, but Barnardos have not been idle.
Yesterday, overshadowed by the equally rising tide of celebrity resignations, they released the results of six months hard work. Six months of studying the actual prosecutions for child abuse that cost us one billion pounds, along with Simon Bailey and a clutch of cross bench politicians – not including the likes of Simon Danczuk or Tom Watson, but calmer heads like George Howarth, and Peter Dowd.
They discovered the quite stunning report conducted by Lorraine Radford – on behalf of the NSPCC, if you please – which may make your jaw drop a little. Radford had identified the profile of 65% of the ‘paedophiles’ responsible for this epidemic of child abuse.
Some UK studies (including the biggest conducted into victimisation in this country so far) have suggested that the proportion may be significantly higher with one study estimating that up to 65 per cent of sexual abuse experienced by children under 18 is perpetrated by someone under the age of 18.
Would you like a moment to let that sink in?
65% of child sexual abuse was perpetrated by other children.
That does not minimise the seriousness of child abuse at all, nor does it reduce the harm that may be caused by it – but it does bring into question why the highly politicised NSPCC has been so keen to throw its weight behind a campaign emphasising the dangers posed to children by men, and particularly celebrity men, when your little child was actually in more danger playing with her chums than being allowed out into the park where ‘strange men’ might grab her.
Nor is it the case that we are necessarily speaking of brothers and sisters playing ‘Doctors and Nurses’:
The Office of the Children’s Commissioner’s report into child sexual abuse in the family environment found that 25 per cent of all cases of child abuse in the family environment involved a perpetrator under the age of 18.
Society has traditionally treated sexual abuse as taboo, and sexual abuse committed by children as doubly taboo, leading to under-recording and underestimation of prevalence.
Related to this, many children and young people who have experienced sexual abuse do not come forward. One study found that 82.7 per cent of children aged 11-17 who experienced sexual abuse by a peer did not tell anyone else about it.
So under-reporting for sure – but not as a result of being afraid of not being believed because [insert name of VIP celebrity] was so powerful!
Figures released today by the NHS [£paywall] claim that 2,700 adolescents and children are being treated for ‘gender reassignment’ and that the pressure for treatment is so great that a private clinic has started up in London treating children as young as 12. Can we doubt that children can be highly sexualised when they have thought the matter through sufficiently rationally to be taken seriously when they announce they wish to change sex?
Theresa May, our ‘almost Prime Minister’ (or was, as I started writing this?) was responsible for setting up the Goddard inquiry – after she had met several of the more vocal of the ‘survivors groups’, she said she now realised that ‘abuse is woven, covertly, into the fabric of our society’. The Goddard Inquiry is looking into abuse said to be perpetuated by the very group of people pushed forward by the NSPCC as being responsible for this ‘rising tide of abuse’.
It does not, will not, look at abuse within a familial setting, nor abuse carried out by other children.
Which means it is ignoring the bulk of that abuse. Meanwhile, adult males are terrified of having anything to do with children.
Why?