NSPCC again

16 year olds are children.
Children do have sex and while legally they cannot consent, the police aren't going to do anything about two underage kids who both say they wanted it - "It is an offence for anyone to have any sexual activity with a person under the age of 16. However, Home Office guidance is clear that there is no intention to prosecute teenagers under the age of 16 where both mutually agree and where they are of a similar age."

Depends what they put up next, I guess!

*Children under age of 16

That's not the point, 16 year olds are not what most people understand by "child".

If they were talking about 16+ year olds then they need to make that abundantly clear, which they did not. The vast, vast, vast majority of who is understood to be "children" cannot consent to sex.

And generally don't have their parents explaining consent to them for the first time. Consent needs to be taught in a way that doesn't sexualise children.

YY, Honeysuckle

Hopefully they'll make it clear in any future iterations of this message.

Can someone talk me through what was wrong with the original proof in simple terms? I read it as talking to a child about their future sex life when they were old enough to have one. Is the problem that it wasn't stated clearly that children can't consent to anything sexual?

Proof? Don't know where that came from. Tweet.

I wouldnt of thought that was about children specifically having the ability to consent to sex.

Theres much wider discussion early on about consent before children are of age, i would talk about safe sex etc before i would be expecting them to have sex
Equally having discussions about consent and that they can say no is important, and equally they must respect someones no especially for teens. Much sexual exploring is done under age and is sometimes under pressure so i would be talking to kids around 12 ish and up about consent

That's not the point, 16 year olds are not what most people understand by "child".

Doesn't change that they are. Besides, if your 14 year old was gonna have sex with his 14 year old girlfriend, wouldn't you want to make sure he at least got consent (not legal consent but willingness and enthusiasm regardless) rather than rape her (not stay rape, but rape without willingness/enthusiasm from his partner). Because... Even the Home Office say they are not looking to prosecute situations like that, and they are underage children, so advice around consent is useful for these children.

Kids kiss and touch before moving onto sex usually. I remember having my first "snog" in the school library when I was about 10. What if the boy who kissed me hadn't known about consent and kissed me when I want into it? That's assault...

Wasn't into it*

If they were talking about 16+ year olds then they need to make that abundantly clear, which they did not. The vast, vast, vast majority of who is understood to be "children" cannot consent to sex.

Agreed. As the tweet reads - it states that my role as parent is to ensure my 10 yr old knows what to do to consent to sex. Otherwise known in law as RAPE.

One off horrendous tweet might be forgivable (just) but this is in a long line of utter F### ups.

So many safeguarding red flags around this charity, including:

Rubber wankman
Epstein Link
This Tweet
Other Tweet saying children can use whatever toilet they like (they replied to a TRA when asked)
Munro Bergdorf

They've been captured. When will they be investigated?

Concerns were raised ages ago now when Lisa (sorry can't recall surname) a safeguarding expert and former social worker, who was banned from Twitter (and possibly MN?) wrote to the NSPCC about safeguarding concerns.

Aren't they under investigation from a year ago? Re: rubber-wank-piss-fetish-at-work-when-you-work-with-kids-man?

https://www.rollonfriday.com/news-content/exclusive-barrister-forces-charity-commission-probe-nspcc-over-workplace-porn-shoot

Or am I kink-shaming?

16 year olds are not children. There is a range of ages where a person becomes entitled to carry out certain activities.

A 16 year old can leave home and get married without parental permission.

This charity also has statutory powers...

Christ.. that coming from NSPCC looks very bad indeed.

As PP said Twitter is definitely not the medium for nuanced conversations directed at parents like this.

but in any case, for those wanting to give NSPCC the benefit of the doubt, the only possible acceptable phrase here would be ‘your teenager’. Even then that would be inappropriate, because that would cover 13 year olds who should not be having sex even with ‘consent’ and with a partner of same age, because they are too young. So actually there isn’t any wording that works with what NSPCC have written there.

‘Child’ is totally wrong. Children under age of 13 can’t legally consent to sex, sexual activity with 12 year olds or under-12s is statutory rape. The wording of ‘your child’ that the NSPCC have used is massively inappropriate within a very sketchy premise.

I don't see bad intent with this? Isn't there a big push on this board for consent to be taught from an early age?

Like a pp I would take this to mean talking about it with a child about their future sex life.

And FWIW the global standard by various orgs for age of consent is 18. UK is out of step on this (not saying I think we should change it, just for info).

I mistyped my first post here yesterday. My second one was a correction, not a suggestion that proof was lacking.

It's harsh to blame the NSPCC for accepting money raised by a friend of Epstein. I am no apologist for them but the woman organised an annual event. The funds would mostly have come from attendees.

Consent should be taught from an early age but maybe “physical contact” would have been a better phrase- ie even small children should be aware not everyone else wants a hug or a kiss (as younger kids may do) then expanding that out to a sexual context as they get older.

It’s a good idea to teach children about boundaries, but there’s better ways of phrasing the tweet, maybe?

But also I have no idea of the context of this tweet- maybe earlier tweets had mentioned this and this particular one refers to older kids?