Ernie Lazenby wrote:
I believe that even the slightest suspicion of someone in charge of children behaving inapproriately must be brought to the attention of those in charge.Better to cry wolf than see a child suffer.
Ernie Lazenby wrote: 4. The proceedure being adopted by schools, read the number of articles, is that when a credible complaint is made the teacher is suspended pending further enquiries. Therefore Sean its not my proceedure its standard practice now.
Ernie, you contradict yourself here. Firstly you said that action should be taken when there is the slightest suspicion of inappropriate behaviour. Later you say that there must be a credible complaint. Most people, myself included, would have no problem with action being taken wrt to a credible complaint (I appreciate the subjectiveness of credible) but acting on mere suspicion alone is the definition of a vigilante. I'm no expect on police procedures, nor do I claim to be, and I'm certainly not the anti-police lobby but I do have friends who are current serving police officers tell me that they wouldn't arrest someone unless they had good grounds to suspect that someone had committed an arrestable offence. They wouldnt act on the slightest suspicion. As one of them said "If we did that, where would we put everyone we arrested?!"
Ernie Lazenby wrote:Therefore using the Cleveland child abuse example is not credible when trying to offer reasons why caution should be excerised. The circumstances are completely different to the cases we have discussed in this thread. Sean uses it to support an argument and its completely wrong.
The Cleveland child sex abuse scandal is a perfect example of why caution should be exercised. You talk of having no time for the rights of abusers (something many would agree with you on) but I am not talking about their rights. I am talking about
the rights of innocent parents wrongly labelled as paedophiles and
the rights innocent children psychologically scarred for life as a result of the hysteria created by acting on the complaint of a doctor who was testing a flawed theory.
Had caution been exercised this whole sorry tale may well have been avoided. More damage was caused by these inappropriate actions than prevented.
PS - I'm not a commie. I do have professional child protection training though.