I discussed with @eco-alex some time ago the issue of child abuse and paedophilia and my feelings and my personal experiences - he encouraged me to write about this and post on steemit, and that there was a community here that had an interest, which I have to say surprised me. Unfortunately I am not able to offer my personal experiences, but I want to offer my opinion none the less, and that's really all it is - I offer no statistics, and I'm not going to go into any individual cases... just my opinion based on my own experiences and understanding.
For anyone waking up to this issue for the first time, you can find many individual cases online written by victims, both parents and children alike who have suffered under the present and past western child protection system of organisations. Links that are relevant to my opinions for you to investigate yourself are embedded in the content. Please click on the hyper link words for reference pages I have linked to help reduce the size of this blog. Each link is a can of worms that I am unable to empty out here, and so I would encourage you to join the dots. I must apologise before hand, that this may seem a little abstract, as my personal viewpoint and experience of this subject is a little off the beaten track.
The universal product code
So I won't start from the beginning, but rather, draw your attention to the bones of my present concern, which is the monetisation of children under various authorities, businesses and individuals with the co-operation of our policy makers. I also want to talk about the children, as to me, it seems they are all too often left out of the picture in these discussions. I will do this in closing.
Something we should all be aware of that is becoming ever more prevalent and obvious in our society, is the idea of services. Facebook present themselves as a service to the public, google and youtube refer to themselves as services to the public, and these references therefore suggest that they are public services, which of course they are not, they are private companies. What we need to understand about the way these private companies work, is that they are promoted as free services, which firstly takes them out of the realm of public scrutiny from a colour of law point of view, although they remain bound by the laws of any country or domain in which they reside. Being a free service also enables them to write off pretty well all the usual responsibilities as far as consumer rights and consumer oversight is concerned, but again, legal scrutiny would show these companies to be fully subservient to the laws governing their country or domain. The thing we need to understand about free services, is that if you are using a 'free service' provided by a private business or organisation - for that to function as designed, we must become the UPC, the universal product code - as well as the consumer, we are the product. I mention this to make clear how our world is being redesigned from a commercial perspective, and how we fit into that picture.
Good Faith
Unfortunately, most people believe that a child protection service is just that, a service, and as such has no financial incentive or product, which is understandable given the descriptive name of such organisations, like for example the CPS in the US, Child Protective Services. But of course the CPS in the US is all but privatised, and certainly all of those third party services feeding into and off the CPS are private companies. Language is everything when we discuss these matters, and the careful placement of high level descriptors is something we must all understand and learn to recognise. For example add the word protection to any phrase and you have loaded that phrase with a preconception, include the word service, and we have further loaded the phrase with more preconceptions and so on. I would like to expand on this, but perhaps that's for another blog, it would be too much of a distraction here.
The directive
It was bought to public attention in 2016, that the Directors of children’s services would welcome the freedom to scrap IRO's 'independent reviewing officers' from the equation. This is a step further towards complete privatisation of the child protection industry, whereby the child protection system is run for and benefits directly this industry, the oversight of which will also be privately run and will also benefit directly from this same coterie. The notion of such symbiosis in such an important area of our society, is really quite beyond any reason or logic, but there you have it. Once again, let me remind you of the language here, and with respect to the premeditation of this privatisation, a controversial work described as an 'independent report', and referred to generally as The fostering stock take - the working title of which is 'Foster Care in England - A Review for the Department for Education by Sir Martin Narey and Mark Owers'. This work is essentially presented as a financial and care overview of child care services in England, and is the report that bought the aforementioned dispensation of IRO's into the conversation.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes
Who watches the watchers
So who are the authors of this work of such persuasion. Lets first take a look at Sir Martin James Narey. I had to plagiarise the wiki here a little in order that I don't misrepresent Narey's publicly stated position. Martin Narey, full title, Sir Martin James Narey DL - DL standing for Deputy Lieutenant. "Deputy Lieutenants are nominated by the Lord Lieutenant, to assist with any duties as may be required: see the Lieutenancies Act 1997; Deputy Lieutenants receive their commission of appointment via the appropriate HM Government Minister by command of The Queen".
Nary is an adviser to the British Government, and a former civil servant and charity executive. He served as Director General of the Prison Service of England and Wales between 1998 and 2003, and Chief Executive of the National Offender Management Service from 2004 to 2005. He was Chief Executive Officer of the charity Barnardo's from 2005 to 2011. In 2013 he was appointed as a special adviser to the education secretary Michael Gove. Narey joined Her Majesty's Prison Service in 1982 and began prison governor training. He was the Director General of the Prison Service of England and Wales between 1998 and 2003 before becoming the first Chief Executive of the National Offender Management Service (NOMS). In 2005, he left the Civil Service to become Chief Executive Officer of Barnardo's before stepping down in January 2011. As Director General of Prisons he has been credited with "invoking moral principles rather than security concerns when articulating the Service's priorities".
He is a Visiting Professor in Applied Social Sciences at Durham University, and a Visiting Professor at Sheffield Hallam University. He is Chair of The Portman Group Complaints Panel and a Board Member of the Advertising Standards Authority. From 2001–13 he was the Government's Adviser on Adoption and his advice, based on an independent report commissioned by The Times, led to adoption becoming one of the UK Government's domestic priorities. He summarised the reforms for the Guardian in July 2012. In February 2013 it was announced that he was taking on a wider role, advising Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Education on children's social care.
I have to say I'm a little disappointed with Martin Narey's credentials as he hasn't taken a degree course in domestic plumbing or midwifery - but to his credit he does cover just about every other base. (I jest)
So that's Martin Narey. Lets take a look at our second author Mark Owers.
In his own words, Mark describes his position as Director of Owers Advisory Ltd. Owers Advisory Ltd describes itself as 'Leading System Transformation'. Civic & Social Organisation. Previously - Consortium of Voluntary Adoption Agencies (CVAA) UK, Core Assets Children's Services, NSPCC.
Mark advises DFE - Department for Education, on children in care. He is Adviser to the Adoption and Special Guardianship Leadership Board. Advises and supports leaders of Regional Adoption Agencies to provide collective leadership of the adoption system. Mark was appointed along with Martin Narey by the Secretary of State for Education to conduct a Review of Fostering in England. Mark is also Learning Coordinator on the Aspirant Directors Programme, a collaboration between the Staff College and NHS Horizons, a national leadership programme for senior leaders who aspire to a director-level role in the provision of children’s services in England. He is chair person of Portsmouth’s Multi-Agency Safeguarding Academy, which delivers and commissions a range of learning opportunities to enable continuous professional development for early help professionals, social workers, foster carers and specialist professionals working with vulnerable children. Mark is also working with the World Bank, the Serbian Prime Minister and the centre of Government with policy implementation and performance management. Once again another impressive CV,
So my point with regards this particular report, as if it hasn't become clear - is the use of the word 'independent' as in independent report. This report that champions a completion of the privatisation of child care is anything but independent. Both these authors have intimate past and present affiliations and relationships with both government and private interests, so tightly entwined in fact that one could not exist without the other. Narey himself is deputised directly by the government, and advises for his own commercial interests. Owers has past and present commercial interests that will also directly benefit from implementation of such a policy. I used the word coterie earlier - which it is, It's a closed shop, exclusive of any public oversight or government intervention.
Exemplary conduct
So the above is really just an example of where we might need to pay attention, but it's just that, one example of 2 people in a position of influence, with a larger agenda. It seems almost beyond hope to even consider the scale of the problem, it is truly endemic in our society the world over, it is a part of the very fabric that we recognise as society
Did I hear you ask why
Its all about perception, deception, smoke and mirrors. No one can hide reality, but it can be misrepresented. We perceive paedophilia as somehow relating to unsightly middle aged male monsters from some run down side of town, living in squalor on the poverty line, or some creepy guy who lives alone somewhere between suburbia and the city in a cheep bedsit. But this is a perception, not a reality, or should I say its only one side of that reality. We have abusers that are male, female, young old middle aged, teenagers, even other children both male and female. This is also a classless activity, and it is important to understand that those young people who are in public schools and colleges, who are destined to be our statesmen and women, who live away from home to study, ageing anywhere from 14 years upwards, are exposed to high levels of paedophilia and sexual abuse by their carers educators and peers. They come to the wider world with an experience not dissimilar to any abused child or young adult, except rather than becoming just another of societies misfits, they make policy, run governments, make law, control order. But they are no less damaged, and no less predatory, but are far better equipped to satisfy their desires.
Who are the children
I said I would say a little about the children, which sounds like a ridiculous thing to say, but it isn't. I haven't discussed the children at all, I have only talked about the 'business' of the children, and that is how we usually discuss this subject, and that is a part of our perception. So who are the children - they are your children, they are someone else's children, they are children you are yet to have. They are children from all over the world, children born without names, taken from hospitals, unregistered, unknown, not missed, never existed. They are children from good families, children from bad families, children from both rich and poor families, they are everyone's children. They are invisible children, its child B or child C, no photo, no name, no parents no friend. They are gifts to businessmen or women, to do with as they wish - they are gifts to politicians and ambassadors or clients. They are a part of international commerce, a part of your iPhone a part of your car, your TV, your clothes, your food. The money in your pocket is no less impregnated with heroin and cocaine than the blood of children. They are disposable children done to death, but all the time invisible, never in the conversation. The senate had a perfect opportunity to quiz Zuckerberg on the state of child grooming on Facebook recently, but instead they all had a cosy few hours together. They discussed data security and information sharing and like button functionality. They were all so chilled that they may as well have cracked open a few beers, kicked back and watched the football. Zuckerberg performed his task to perfection, cool, calm and very well read. The questions rolled off the representatives tongues like syrup off a hot pancake. It was a very tidy very well choreographed dance. The headlines of course tried to suggest that Facebook was in some way grilled and held accountable for something or the other.
OK, have I rambled on enough here ... probably.
It can be stopped at any time. It requires that society as a whole demands accountability for that to happen, it requires that society sees and understands that there is a problem. Social media must be held accountable, business and commerce generally and governments need to be held accountable, main stream media needs to be held accountable. You will and must even at the risk of alienation and indifference put it in peoples faces, put it in their heads. You must hold yourself accountable - don't mince words, remove all the descriptors from your blogs and your conversation, don't do the advertising speak thing - just tell the truth of it as it really is, not dressed as some pseudo Victorian idea of the dregs of society requiring stiffer government and laws, or social justice trying to understand the perpetrators and afford them any more rights than the children and families they destroy, but simply to hold them and the intricate system they have created accountable. Don't allow the insane to run the asylum - lets not let private entities dictate that society is run by more private entities, and lets not be fooled by the abuse and distortion of our languages.
The next generation of engineers have now entered the fray. Already we hear murmurs on social media, of how paedophilia should perhaps be considered a sexual preference rather than a mental disorder, and that's for real I promise you. Saturday night live has a comedy skit staring Dwayne Johnson (the rock), where he invents a robot that can molest twice as many children in half the time - and you know you cant make stuff like that up - watch it for yourself. SNL thinks child abuse makes for good humour !
Of course the comments reflect a trend where many are defending SNL and suggesting people shouldn't be offended, 'it's only humour'.
You are a child, you are alone, you have been put into a room that you do not know, in a place you have never been - you are joined by a person that you have never met, and all you want is for someone you know, to come and take you to a place that you know, where you won't be afraid - but no one comes.
What is this thing that has become.
Ty @familyprotection thanks for the support :)
You put so much effort into your posts! So very glad to have discovered your blog! Big thank yous!
Ty @trumanity, and ty for visiting.
nice one shelbi.. you are very special man with great insight and wisdom.. im happy you are writing on this topic.. KEep going!
Ty @eco-alex very kind :)
This is so extremely sad, I really feel like crying.
Thank you for writing, for getting the message out there!
Ty @hope777 ...
This post was upvoted and resteemed by #thethreehugs. Thank you for your support of @familyprotection.
You will find my active post here: #thethreehugs
Ty @thethreehugs :)
You are most welcome.