Rolf Harris

https://secure.38degrees.org.uk/page/m/74c047c1/2d420d21/498a6c0d/4659d7c7/3431358704/VEsE/

This may be an appropriate place to post this. It's about Gove's plans to outsource child protection.

There may be a perfectly reasonable explanation for him going home alone when. I believe his wife is very frail and has some major health issues. We don't know if she is being cared for somewhere. Presumably his daughter has her own home and maybe he just wants some space after the intense scrutiny he is undergoing each day. Maybe this will come out when the defence starts its case.

I was impressed by the more probing questions that gleaned explanations about the way the family present themselves to the media. Knowing that they put their best foot forward on the way into court, but he goes home alone, speaks volumes.

I feel the prosecuting counsel's cross examination of RH yesterday was good. He was unable to avoid acknowledging his admiring comments about his daughters 13 year old best friends body could be interpreted as him finding the girl sexually attractive.

I've just posted on the thread about what we learned from our father's. I was one of the lucky ones, my father never behaved towards me, or my sisters, or any of our friends in an inappropriate manner. Even if RH is telling the truth, and a sexual relationship with his daughter's friend began when she was 18, his behaviour is totally unacceptable.

Charleygirl As a teenager I worked with a perfectly respectable man who begged me to allow him to kiss my feet!...I said, no thank you.

An ex male colleague of mine used to stand, in my opinion, too close to me, not giving me personal space when speaking to me. I would move backwards and he would step forwards. I found this creepy.

problematic in the workplace the touching thing. One persons friendly is another persons creepy and someone else's harassment. In my first teaching job, in a boy's school, the head was very arm round the shoulder-y - to everyone on the staff, nobody liked it but nobody liked him either. Not sure how much of the dislike was the touching thing.
Often "creepy" or unwelcome when there is touching by someone with more power?

A slight side line to this, there is a guy I have now met several times on different holidays. He is very open and funny, and usually gives "old friends" a hug when we meet on arrival or are going home.
It really is just that, a friendly bear hug style and the body language there seems clearly to be that. The sort that goes on with my old work colleagues when we meet up.

I and most others have never encountered that as anything other than innocently friendly on his part, but another woman used the expression "He's all over women like a rash."

There is a real difference of interpretation here depending on how someone reacts. I do not find X as intimidating at all, just a warm and friendly person, a lot of this is probably in the subtleties of the body language used.

(I have met someone else in a very similar setting where a hand on the shoulder felt very different and I really wanted to move away.)

I suspect that we all vary in our ability to interpret these clues of body language, some will be better than others about getting a sense of "menace" particularly with the "usual perpetrators" (who are adults generally known to a children's family.)
It is probably something that younger or particularly vulnerable children find very difficult to assess.

It might be that some erudite person out there might be able to suggest some research on this "interpretation" business. That is (gut feelings about dodgy geezers) stuff.

Extract from a recent discussion in a Scottish conference about protecting and nurturing children:

'At a recent health committee meeting, leading child protection expert Alyson Leslie of Dundee University said that she felt society had gone "completely ­bonkers in the culture and ethos that have grown up around child protection". It seems to Leslie ridiculous that people could not "hug or reach out to a child, particularly when the child is in distress". For her it is imperative that we change the message.

Yet it's hard to see how to shift the culture. After all, for the most part it's not necessarily about legislation or actual bans but about countering a general pervading fear, a paranoia that reigns everywhere from the play park to the nursery, which makes men, in particular, police their language when talking about children and the warmth, affection and responsibility they feel towards them. One man I talked to on this subject (who isn't a father) uttered the words "show kids love", then retracted them as if they were somehow inappropriate.

One thing we can do, says Leslie, is change our language, stop talking about child protection and instead talk about child nurturing. "The more we talk about child protection," she adds, "the more we create the sense that we have to take children and put them some place safe, away from everyone." As she notes: "Child protection is not about restricting nurturing affectionate contact but encouraging it - with safeguards." '

We can agree to disagree. Cuddles are given and received freely amongst the people who are trusted and do not overstep boundaries in the world the children in my family know. They aren't left with anyone who is unknown to them, and the chances of them being abused are low. No child is immune, but we can minimise risks and keep them safe enough. If people do what they can to protect children, listen to them and believe what they say if they express fear or confusion, but allow them some freedom to learn and take small risks, children can learn about staying safe and become sufficiently resilient to cope with life's knocks. It's sad to hear of children being deprived of hugs and spontaneous affection, for fear of it being misinterpreted.

When, I can't agree that a cuddle or a tickle will not be judged as abuse , I only wish it were so ,many men are feared to give physical comfort to a child , just as teachers are feared to put a plaster on a cut knee

I think we are naive if we believe we can judge a TV personality's real personality just from the way they present themselves in public. Many people have one persona in work and another in private (or several).
Also there is a mass of scientific evidence that demonstrates that people perceive what they expect to see.
And that people will generally seek to eliminate "cognitive dissonance" - when various bits of information don't "add up" they will tend to settle on one simplified version of what they have seen.

No caring adult should feel they cannot hug a child, or give them a comforting arm round the shoulder. It never has, and never will, constitute abuse. Children need affection from responsible, protective adults.

Practised abusers do often have many victims, Anniebach. They don't all want to complain for a variety of reasons, not least because they are left feeling ashamed or think they won't be believed. What a huge burden for a child to carry, on top of what's been done to them.

Yes, I agree with you about the North Wales children's homes abuse. Many children from Wales and the North West went into those homes and having suffered abuse have still not been able to put it to rest. I feel so sad about all the many other children who, now adults, are wondering whether it is worthwhile them complaining, too. To be faced with media doubt and public speculation that they are jumping on the bandwagon to get compensation is enough to put anyone off complaining.

When, I thought a practiced abuser would have had many victims . What is troubling about much of these cases is we do not know and will never know the truth but it's sad that decent men are more and more afraid to even touch a child on the shoulder , tickling is now abuse, a hug is too.

We have these cases from the sixties, seventies and eighties, yet the vile abuse in the North Wales Children Home is still not being properly investigated

Yes, we've always steered clear of obvious gropers. It's the sophisticated, practised, planned indecent assaults that are disguised as cuddles which have harmed children. No child expects a finger to be pushed into their genitals during an outwardly friendly pat on the back or cuddle. That's what sex offenders trade on. It's done and everyone around them is behaving normally as though nothing untoward has happened - how does a child interpret that? It's not an accident and the sex offender will have been fantasising sexually about that moment of opportunity. This comes direct from convicted sex offenders who have taken some responsibility and described how they have operated.

I think people in the seventies were as aware of groping children as we are now, this is not something which has only recently come to the notice of the public

Exactly, anno. Sexual predators who have spent years building their image as trusted pillars of the community, or prominent people who are known for spending their lives entertaining and being amongst children, can get away with 'accidental' touching, hugging and squeezing and generally getting their hands on children in full sight of the public, whilst secretly indecently assaulting them. The child will be confused and unsure what has happened and the carers will struggle to believe that any harm has been done or intended.

Whilst not referring to any particular case, I think it is quite amazing how people can not notice anything 'in plain sight', usually because it never occurred to them that anyone would do such a thing. Especially trusted family friends.

Let us hope we are all more aware these days.

I think that is referred to as 'hiding in plain sight' or words to that effect.

Neither do I, Anniebach

I don't considered a stage in a hall full of people to be a secret place whenim

When talking to sex offenders in treatment about the lies they tell themselves, they do eventually have to stop kidding themselves that they weren't causing harm. Otherwise, why was it done in secret? Why use threats and bribes to keep their silence? I hope Stuart Hall and others are participating in sex offender treatment in prison, but suspect that Hall's decision to plead guilty to an indecent assault this last week is a strategy to get a favourable report to avoid a consecutive further sentence.

Anniebach paedophiles do not think they are abusing..they kid themselves it is loving and consensual.

I haven't heard of one letter where an accused has said they abused a child