Welcome to another week.
The Goddard Inquiry recently announced that convicted paedophile Bishop Peter Ball has been granted Core Participant Status within the Inquiry, which would allow him to apply to ask questions of the victims involved at future public hearings.
Ball is also going to get tax payer funded representation for the Inquiry hearings he will be called to attend. Under the Inquiries Act 2005, the Inquiry panel has the power to award the cost of legal support to a variety of witnesses, including survivors of abuse.
Survivors are understandably worried that convicted sex offenders are not only being granted Core Participant Status at the inquiry, but also being given legal representation for the public hearings the Inquiry will be holding. Lawyers are concerned that this might set a dangerous precedent which could see an influx of convicted paedophiles claiming priority status and representation in order to try to defend their reputations, despite having already been found guilty in a court of law.
This latest development has caused a bit of confusion.
Some are questioning why the Inquiry is seeking to determine information about an individual’s conduct when the remit of the Inquiry has long been understood to be a process which focuses solely on institutional failings. But the Inquiry’s Executive Summary tells us something different. Paragraph 13, which relates to the Public Hearings Project says:
13. A hearing may relate to a particular individual who appears to have been enabled to sexually abuse children in institutional settings. Or it may relate to an institution that appears to have demonstrated repeated failings over a number of years.
The paragraph goes on to explain that evidence is likely to be taken from both representatives of institutions under investigation and victims and survivors of sexual abuse.
Bishop Ball may well be being called to the Inquiry so that the panel can try to understand better how he was able to commit sexual offences against children within a Church setting, enabling them to gain insight into how the Church failed in its safeguarding duties.
If the Inquiry is seeking to extract factual information about Ball’s offending which has already been highlighted by the Criminal Court, in order to determine his guilt or innocence independently of the court that convicted him, then the Inquiry’s activities could be called into question.
Whilst the issues above are important, the topic of our question this week relates to just one of the four powers granted to all those who receive Core Participant Status: the power to apply to the Inquiry Panel to ask questions of witnesses.
The Inquiry divides participants into two broad groups: Core Participants and Witnesses.
Core Participants can:
- Be provided with electronic disclosure of evidence, subject to any restrictions
made under section 19 of the Inquiries Act 2005 and subject to a formal promise
to keep the evidence confidential until it is used in any public hearing - Be able to make opening and closing statements at any hearing;
- Be able to suggest lines of questioning to be pursued by Counsel to the Inquiry;
- Be able to apply to the Inquiry Panel to ask questions of witnesses during a
hearing.
Witnesses are not entitled to any of the above privileges, but both witnesses and Core Participants can be asked to provide evidence, and apply to the Inquiry for their legal costs to be covered.
Having allowed Bishop Ball to have Core Participant Status, he could now ask survivors and victims of abuse questions during a hearing (and also read any statements made by individuals who were abused by him as a child). This could be terribly traumatic for individuals who have experienced abuse, though it is not clear whether the Inquiry has set any policies in place in relation to this happening.
The Inquiry Panel has the final say as to whether or not questions can be asked, but as news of convicted paedophiles possibly coming forward to attend hearings as Core Participants spreads, survivors and victims of abuse have become anxious as to how this might work in practice, and, crucially, may deter them from coming forward if they fear being questioned by their abuser.
Our question this week then, is this: Should convicted paedophiles be allowed to apply for Core Participant status given the very traumatic experiences involved for victims and survivors, or should they just be called as witnesses?
Researching Reform 
I suppose anyone accused and representing themselves should be allowed to face their accusers and question them (Magna Carta) and even the doomed Anne Boleyn was allowed to do this (if I remember right);
It is a shame when those who criticise a court process are at once accused of “protecting child abusers and paedophiles!” All we say is that judges should keep the law………
In the case of Marie Black convicted of abusing her children and jailed.for example;
the judge refused to allow her to call Professor Conway a enowned expert on false memory syndrome(contrary to article 6),told the jury that child abuse had taken place and it was for the jury to decide who had done it,(when their was no medical evidence to show that any had taken place so it was a question for the jury not the judge,and lastly he made no reference to the jury that police evidence had established that 268 alterations had been made by a social worker to court documents to avoid incriminating the carers!
Add to this the fact that her Counsel told her not to give evidence to deny the accusations and never even questioned her accusers and the trial becomes a farce !
No please do not accuse me of rerunning the trial and trying to prove Marie innocent.
I merely state that in my opinion the trial itself was conducted illegally and unfairly and if it were to be retried again but fairly and according to law with the same verdict at the end you would not hear one squeak of protest from me !
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Again I say Lady Macur dismissed 700 abused victims from the care system and by doing so in a roundabout way said the Abused victims all told lies governments are stopping the children abused in every which way AND NOW GOVERNMENTS WANTS TO CHAREGE THE POOR VICTIMS TO BRING THEIR CASE TO COURT , and kids will continue to be screaming to be heard, and now we have the paedos to question the victims what a rotten country this so called Great Britain is and I say again NO KID IS SAFE , reads the link below,
http://www.irishmirror.ie › News › Irish News › RTE
22 Jul 2016 – Lawyers for the Department of Education warned survivors of abuse that … She told RTE News today she believed the State was doing “the …id they were all liAres, then on the 22nd of July another law came into force
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Reblogged this on World4Justice : NOW! Lobby Forum..
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What is the purpose of the inquiry?
1. for 155 paid staff to get the kind of insights that we as ‘passionate volunteers’, ‘public interest advocates’ and whistleblowers have acquired over years?
2. to preserve the reputation of abusers?
3. to provide some acknowledgement / validation / healing for victims? In that case let them meet their abusers – together with ‘third party therapist’!
Punishing abusers seems to be beyond the remit anyway.
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Hopefully not the kind of insight that leads one to laud information derogatory to Jews (at best) provided by Neo Nazis and people who have Hitler birthday parties Sabine? I think they can do without your kind of insight. That’s the information you publish on your blogs.
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Why are you minimizing child sexual abuse by referring to abusers as paedophiles? Paedophilia has nothing to do with child sexual abuse, save as a risk factor, and pedophilia is a condition that someone has no choice over having or not having. Sexual abuse, on the other hand, is a choice. Please correct your terminology, or visit Interpol’s Terminology Guidelines: http://www.interpol.int/News-and-media/News/2016/N2016-080 See page 86.
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TNF-13
when kids are sexually abused it makes no difference to call the abuser a paedophile or sex abuser it is the way the English wording is written in a way such as MAY OR CAN there really are no words when men or women abuse a child leaving them in fear for all of their life’s at the same time ripping open the kids internal bodies with the abusers penises, sexual abuse to children has been for untold years and will continue so paedophiles or sexually abusing kids is the same, perhaps you should ask your self are all crimes a condition, and perhaps people should know it is the governments who make the conditions for the Nation to live by, time Government made a law to protect all children and for all paedophiles and sex abusers to be hung not what is happening now that they die or disappear, as was on the news last night Janner’s son defending his father just like Lady Macur told 700 abused victim NO CASE, and I suppose the Goddard enquiry will go no where.
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It does make a difference, however, because what you call them can minimize the abuse by conflating their action, which is a decision, with a condition, which is not. Conflating the two implies that an abuser’s decision to abuse was just the result of a mental illness. I am very sure that those with the condition care, and that victims wish to break away from the idea that the abuse was not the abuser’s fault. Do you think that child sexual abuse images should still be referred to as child pornography, despite the fact that children cannot consent, are not paid, and are not acting? Of course not. They are called indecent images for a reason.
Frankly, your comment here is deeply disturbing to me. You readily dismiss an Interpol report by a vast number of CSA/CSE prevention agencies which says, and I quote,
“The terms “paedophile” and “paedophilia” continue to be overused and misunderstood, often seen as a label for a person convicted of child sexual exploitation or sexual abuse rather than as a term for a clinical condition.”
I have a blog post detailing other terms, and why they matter to the primary prevention of child sexual abuse: https://preventsexoffense.blogspot.com/2016/06/why-terminology-matters.html
I have also discussed the difference between pedophiles vs. sex abusers many times:
https://preventsexoffense.blogspot.com/2016/06/religious-people-and-hate-speech.html
https://preventsexoffense.blogspot.com/2015/12/why-words-matter-pedophile.html
https://preventsexoffense.blogspot.com/2015/04/pedophile-priest-and-convicted-of.html
https://preventsexoffense.blogspot.com/2015/08/faq-frequently-asked-questions-myths.html
Wikipedia even recognizes the difference, both on their page about pedophilia, and on their page about child sexual abuse:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedophilia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_sexual_abuse
“In popular usage, the word pedophilia is often applied to any sexual interest in children or the act of child sexual abuse.[5][6] This use conflates the sexual attraction to prepubescent children with the act of child sexual abuse, and fails to distinguish between attraction to prepubescent and pubescent or post-pubescent minors.[7][8] Researchers recommend that these imprecise uses be avoided because although people who commit child sexual abuse sometimes exhibit the disorder,[6][9] child sexual abuse offenders are not pedophiles unless they have a primary or exclusive sexual interest in prepubescent children,[7][10][11] and the literature indicates the existence of pedophiles who do not molest children.[5][12][13]”
and
“The word pedophile is commonly applied indiscriminately to anyone who sexually abuses a child,[17] but child sexual offenders are not pedophiles unless they have a strong sexual interest in prepubescent children.[18][19]”
First is from the pedophilia page, second is from the sexual abuse page.
The words you use to describe abusers matters. The dehumanization and conflation of abusers with actual pedophiles matters, because if we cannot see that abusers were humans making human choices with human motivations, we cannot see that the person giving gifts to a child may be grooming them for abuse. If we cannot see that only about a third of abusers are pedophilic, then we dismiss the motivations that cause abuse. If we do either of those things, abuse cannot be prevented before it happens.
But by all means, if you think experts, numerous prevention organizations, and researchers are wrong, then continue using the wrong terminology.
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But by all means, if you think experts, numerous prevention organizations, and researchers are wrong, then continue using the wrong terminology.
Children are a multibillion pound industry with creating millions of jobs this to include researchers and what to they know, for more then 40 years I have said the truth is with the Nation and how true my words are, no one can sit in an office or attend meetings as many researchers do and yes all for money then write a report, I have organised hostels worked in the psychiatric ward fed the homeless filmed and spoken to the homeless on the streets and here lies the truth of kids from the care system all abused, so I do not use the wrong terminology I am the odd person who knows truth and no I did not go to collage or university to learn from a book get a job as a researcher to write up my own thoughts then to be paid untold pounds, research starts and is with the victims, you and the rest of the world try speaking to adults who have been abused sexually from the age of 3 or even younger perhaps a few tears may then flow unless they are the paedophiles or sex abusers. Poor little kids in care none of them have a hope in hell and their only crime was to be born to be abused,
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None of that is relevant to or dismisses what I said. Perhaps you could address the facts I cited? My original comment was directed at the author. Are you the author? You want a victim-centric approach. Fine. But what if there were no victims in the first place, because a potential abuser got help before the abuse happened? That is what primary prevention is about. Part of primary prevention is using the proper terminology, which you are adamantly refusing to do. Part of primary prevention is recognizing the facts about abuse and about abusers: That 90% of abusers are known and trusted, that most who abuse do not repeat themselves, and that most abuse happens in a residence. Part of primary prevention is not perpetrating the myths that allow abuse to continue in secrecy.
You say you know the truth about abuse, yet your statements give the impression that most children are abused in institutions (the facts indicate they are more often abused in residences), that abusers have sexual attraction to children (most do not), and that sexual abuse is the same thing as sex trafficking (the motivations and results are very different). So yes, I question your credentials and what you know if you are perpetuating myths about abuse that do not hold up to facts and reality.
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3729038/There-paedophiles-t-jail-warns-police-chief-calls-softer-approach-lower-levels-crime.html
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Yes, I am well aware that the Daily Mail does not know what words mean either. The media is not a refutation for the information I have provided.
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Remarkable that any abuser should have core participant status . What an irresponsible idea to elongate the brutality already meted on the victims, especially referencing this case and those abused by Bishop Peter Ball !!!
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Serious case reviews already invite people convicted of child abuse. Parents do contribute in some cases. Even those who have killed their children are invited.
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If accusations are made against an individual it’s only right that the evidence is tested via cross examination. If witnesses make allegations its fundamental that their evidence is scrutinised.
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George Pell subject of Victoria Police investigation into multiple allegations of sexual abuse
July 27, 2016, MSN/ABC News
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/george-pell-subject-of-victoria-police…
Police are investigating multiple child abuse allegations levelled directly against Australia’s most senior Catholic cleric Cardinal George Pell, the ABC’s 7.30 program has revealed. Victoria Police’s Taskforce SANO, which investigates complaints coming out of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, has been examining the allegations by complainants from Ballarat, Torquay and Melbourne for more than a year. They include allegations about incidents which allegedly happened during Cardinal Pell’s time as Archbishop of Melbourne in the 1990s. A further complaint about George Pell … relates to the period in the 1990s when George Pell was setting up the Melbourne Response – the Australian Catholic Church’s first attempt to seriously address child abuse. It involves two teenage choirboys who asked their parents to leave the choir soon after the alleged abuse had occurred. One of the boys died in tragic circumstances two years ago and the other is working with Taskforce SANO detectives. 7.30 has met that young man and the family of his former friend who died. The royal commission advises that these sorts of allegations are outside its terms of reference, because it only investigates institutional responses to child abuse, and it refers any new complaints of clergy abuse to police. The alleged behaviour raises serious questions about whether George Pell was ever an appropriate person to drive the Church’s response to child sexual abuse.
Note: Watch an excellent segment by Australia’s “60-Minutes” team “Spies, Lords and Predators” on a pedophile ring in the UK which leads directly to the highest levels of government. A second suppressed documentary, “Conspiracy of Silence,” goes even deeper into this topic in the US. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing sexual abuse scandal news articles from reliable major media sources.
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Natasha, I note your Janner article on your Twitter feed where his daughter commented that the child abuse inquiry into Lord Janner was grotesque and kafesque! Personally I find it grotesque that investigations into the abuse allegations were not carried out when they first came to light! The police whistleblower “John” stated Janners involvement had been shut down twice, to his knowledge, such was Janners lofty untouchable position!
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