Girls locked in their bedroom every night.....

jingl re you post of 21.55, I fully appreciate your point, but the conversation came about following an "incident" witnessed by myself and another neighbour.

The friend/teaching assistant was extremely concerned re the breach of the T's & C's and her total focus was on the children. I must say that she made her point totally within the law/guidelines on such matters. It is very difficult for me to give any further explanation, but I will say that J, the teaching assistant, was in my opinion in no way in breach of any regulations.

I see that my first post on this thread has been deleted. Sorry GNHQ to have put you/us in this position, however I stand by what I said, and would like to confirm that I have NOT named anyone in this, although I could have done.

I wouldn't be surprised if I was banned!

Nellie the person concerned is very far from being a "loose cannon", the discussion/conversation is very hard to describe without giving more information, but please be assured that it was not the sort of "gossip at the school gate" conversation.

As my original post was removed (but with a very kind exploratory note by HQ) so I'm sure that you will understand my reticence re any further information.

EXPLANATORY!

The crux of the matter here is that the court clearly consider this man to be a continued danger to the girls, and yet they are allowed to remain in the home with him present.

A representative of a charity involved in paedophile cases (?Lucy Faithful Trust) said that sometimes this sort of behaviour is a feature of young manhood and some "grow out of it" and are therefore considered as safe within the family as they mature. If this were the case here, these "safeguards" would not be needed.

What on earth has been said to these girls about the locking in? They will know this does not happen to their peers. Have they been told that he is a danger to them and why? Or has some story been concocted?

There is nothing good about this situation.

phoenix No, I am sure they won't ban you. They already know you're a daffy old bugger. . (See Gransnet Guide to the Internet thread)

(I'm out of 'ere!)

It was not just reported in the 'redtops' * jingl*.

I have only posted a link from ITV news.

No excuses can be made for this and I can understand why the teaching assistant said what she did.
'Loose cannon' seems an extreme remark about someone who obviously cares about local children.
The information may have been available through 'Sarah's Law' and probably it should have been kept confidential; however, she probably felt it was worth the risk of a reprimand than having a child in her school or neighbourhood in danger from this man.

Too many secrets have caused so many vile things to happen to children over the years.

I do realise that the public could react in a way that is unlawful as a result of such information being in the public domain but is that a risk worth taking? Presumably this family have now moved to another town where, unless someone knows, local parents will be totally oblivious to any potential danger from this man. Presumably social workers consider he is still a danger to children as his stepchildren have to be locked up safely every night. If he is still a problem and cannot target them will he target another child? That is what the SW will have to weigh up.
Good post Mishap re doing the job so long that what is right or wrong could become distorted.
If he is no longer a danger to children then why do these two stepchildren have to be imprisoned every night?

The situation appears to have been mismanaged imo as are so many cases where the truth is swept under the carpet.

For anyone who thinks this is an acceptable sutuation, try to put yourself in that grandmother's or natural father's shoes.

I would find it very hard to not warn people in some way if I knew a paedophile was living locally and I don't think phoeneix's friend was a loose cannon but a caring woman with a conscience [sp] who had been put in a difficult position. I also thank p for giving that side of the story to us because it would be easy to dismiss it as the press sensationalising something yet again. You won't be banned phoenix; if you were [and you won't be] it would be 'one out, all out'! I've known of several paedophiles and the lengths they go to are unbelieveable [eg marrying women with children/opening shops where children are likely to visit]. It's quite terrifying .

Posted this on the wrong thread so I'll post it again.

I think social work has actually become more risk averse over the last ten or so years, particularly since the death of Peter Connelly, which is why I am even more surprised by this situation. What I became aware of about five years ago however was a shift in attitude by the courts towards risks from sex offenders. I believe there was case law that made it more difficult to secure care orders where children were living with a convicted sex offender; the view of the courts being that historical abuse against another child did not necessarily increase the risk of abuse against a child in the present . Most sw's I knew thought this was daft but it obviously affected practice and meant that sw's had to try to work with these situations and to build in protective measures. So it is possible that this apparently crazy plan is a plan enforced by the courts against the social workers' recommendations. It's not always social workers that get things wrong, but of course they can't discuss individual cases due to confidentiality. Just a thought.

Tegan - it's abut the post not about any other actions that may or may not have been carried out. Of course she won't be banned - that's a dustraction from the main point. There were far too many dentifying points in the post that were completely irrelevant - number of houses in the road, tenure of the house, clearly identifiable town they moved to.

What p posted was probably illegal, Tegan. The post had to go. She and gransnet could have been sued.

nightowl - your post about SWs becoming more risk averse is interesting and true. And indeed it does suggest that some other process such as case law might be in operation here.

This "story" has not just been reported in irresponsible newspapers - there was a long discussion on BBC 4 yesterday afternoon.

I do think it is a matter for legitimate public debate - not the specifics but the general principles.

More likely the teaching assistant could have been outed! That was my only worry.

My post 10.32am
Best to look at the thread in site stuff about moderation and deletion. Gransnet had replied.

This situation is difficult. Who knows the full facts? They cannot be published because of the right to privacy.

No social worker can take a child away from the family home without a court order. So it's not social workers who are 'to blame' here, if anyone is to blame.

Foster care is not a panacea - it may have downsides and long-term after-effects. A court will have to balance these against the risk the children are facing now.

Clearly, any mother who prefers to live with a convicted paedophile needs her head testing - but this does not necessarily mean she should be prevented, legally, from doing so. There are many wicked, unthinking and crazy behaviours that are not necessarily illegal.

I can imagine that there have been many strands to this story. We can't know them. What if the paedophile in question only goes for young boys and claims girls have no attraction to him? What if he claims to be a born-again Christian? What if he says he is truly sorry and he will never do anything bad again? What if the mother believes him? On the face of it, all these claims are weak - but the court has to examine them and decide.

Locking girls in their bedroom to protect them is horrendous - but we cannot know if this is the least awful of all the alternatives, because we don't know the full story, or even if what has been reported is true.

It's no good saying 'why can't relatives take these children?' because not everyone is capable of or willing to do this, and it cannot be enforced.

Whatever the situation, it's an awful one, but no one can assume we have all the facts here, and not sufficient to have an opinion on the court decision.

I do not think the fact that these girls are being locked in their bedroom at night has been disputed at all.

Assuming that this is true, I believe it to be wrong in principle, for two reasons:

Firstly it is not a safe action in the event of a fire.
Secondly it implies that the man is still regarded as a risk.

This is a truly ghastly situation, and as I have been reading through this thread the main thing running through my mind has been how can this woman have sex with a man who is attracted to children? The thought of it makes my flesh crawl. How on earth is she going to explain this to her daughters when they get older and start asking questions? When they want to have friends over? We all know how things simmer under the surface in families, someone sometime is going to lose their temper and blurt out the whole situation. I know we dont know the whole facts, but on the face of what we think the situation is, if he loved this woman so much would he truly ask that her daughters live like this?

I feel quite sick and outraged at the thought of these girls being locked in their room overnight because their safety is at risk - not the physical locking of the door but that that is seen as part of an officially-sanctioned solution to enable their mother have this man in the home.

And the bit about him having to climb over her and this would wake her up, being seen as part of the protection package is surely a joke?

I truly hope that we've all been misinformed and it's really not so ludicrous.

We don't know the girls are locked in the room. How can we know anything for sure about this?

Are we never to discuss or question anything in that case?
We just let things happen in society?

All the reporting on the case says the girls are in a locked room with a baby alarm so they can contact their mother if they need to during the night. As Mishap says this does not appear to have bern disputed at all. Why do you think we should doubt this elena?

soontobe, I think it's fine to discuss things. But treating every story in the news as if it was 100 per cent true is naive, especially when there is little acknowledgement that in real life, many events and situations related to child abuse/safeguarding are complex and don't lend themselves to solutions such as 'take them into care' or 'give them to relatives'. I also think it's unhelpful to blame social workers - the social worker(s) is/are only one of several outside bodies involved. To remove children from the family home - even a terrible, neglectful, unhappy, unsafe home - is only ever done after due process.

mishap, as you said in your OP, 'Clearly we do not know all the facts of the case, so should not really comment'.

If the facts are as reported in the paper, then clearly it is terrible - everything about it, including the locking in the bedroom and the alarm and the postings on Facebook etc etc. But legally, at present it may be the only way to respond...for the moment.

Whatever..... the professionals concerned cannot confirm or deny the actual measures taken, so we just don't know what they are.

Sorry, that last post was for nightowl.

All excellent posts Elena.