Mermaids closes chatlines

I would like more detail about this abuse and I'd like to see some evidence. I'm sorry, I appreciate that is very cynical, but Mermaids are an exceptionally dodgy organisation. They employ paedophiles, ffs.

I agree with the MP who called for a criminal investigation.

My DH as a second job works on an online chat helpline for a very boring retail website, selling garden products etc. He gets prank and abusive chat messages!!! There is an established process to respond.

What ever rhe technology, people will abuse it.

Anyway, I assume that Mermaids, as a professional charity, which gets shedload of government money from grants etc, and oodles or corporate support and celeb backers including royalty, will have the systems and processes in place to respond to this professionally.

I agree. What safeguarding and counselling training did the chat line workers have. What guidelines. Training for Samaritans and Childline is pretty rigorous. I wonder if Mermaids was less so.

A > insert demographic here < friendly DBS sounds like the biggest red flag on the planet

I'm another in the 'they closed the chatlines to avoid greater scrutiny' camp. We have seen the nature of the men they appointed to positions of power and trust in the organisation, either without diligent background checks or they knew and didn't care, so god only knows what the situation is with the faceless people who join them to directly interact with children.

Agreed. Is DARVO the best you've got OP?

So... Mermaids closes chat lines owing to abusive phone calls

Well... they would say that wouldn't they? Right now they have other good reasons for closing their chatlines as well, but reasons they prefer not to highlight.

Mermaids doesn't seem overly dedicated to helping people does it, all of a sudden?

I've worked in call centres; in fact my very first call ever was someone who knew where our office was and threatened to come and shoot me in the head at the end of my shift.

We didn't have the option to revoke our services though; interesting that they'd rather not give that help which children were so desperate for, than teach their staff/volunteers to deal with abusive calls directly.

Let's hope the investigation of Mermaids reveals the truth behind this charity's operations. Transparency is needed here. The truth will out.

Let's hope you and they have the integrity not to position Mermaids as the abused. That would be morally bankrupt, no?

Abuse seems to be used freely by many, especially TRAs. In life, It's child abuse that concerns me above all. The abuse of power. Positioning an abuser as the abused. I'm sure we all agree that's wrong, don't we OP?

I found it interesting that JKR was being blamed for lots of angry men calling up to sling abuse at them.

Leaving aside the fact the Rowling is not, in fact, the leader of some kind of [sinister] anti-trans cult; were she indeed TERFdemort directing the Gender Eaters to do her bidding; & should she have commanded an assault on the Mermaids Helpline such that it would close under the weight of abusive calls; why the bloody hell would she have waited until now?! “Yes, I’ll just keep on facilitating irreparable damage to children & adolescents… to give me something to complain about on Twitter?” (Sadly, that would absolutely be accepted as a reason by TRAs. Rowling doesn’t really think Mermaids are harming children & adolescents; she’s Just Being Cruel To/Causing The Genocide Of Trans People. Worryingly, the latter is an accusation repeatedly leveraged at her.)

Mass media coverage of a children’s charity having employed someone with socially unacceptable views on paedophilia is going to bring attention to that charity. Are these people so confused they think JKR writes everything published in the UK? Or even just the news articles she tweets? It’s genuinely quite worrying that people are seemingly so unable to follow the very simple thread of i. journalist tipped off ii. journalist investigates & writes story iii. story is published iv. British people follow tradition of being untoward about paedophiles & their enablers.

Of course, it is a bit silly of me to think Rowling could expect to be separated from the actions of men ringing up to yell at hotline staff/volunteers about paedos & nonces. She is a woman & thus of course responsible for what men do. On the same basis, probably it is her fault the Trustee in question was appointed in the first place. She totally used the Imperius Curse, how else could it have happened?!

I dunno. The TRAs tend to turn on their own so I wouldn’t be surprised If Team Trans are calling up to tell Susie off for letting the side down and not keeping all these journalists sufficiently away from trans business.

Some of them have form for getting very angry at women.

This. They regard the stating of facts regarding statements they've actually made, and things they've actually done, as a 'smear campaign', so I would like to know what form this 'abuse' took.

I would be very surprised if Mermaids record calls. Its not common practise for helplines and I doubt they would be organised enough in any case.

I used to volunteer for a helpline and the sex calls were never ending. The straightforward ones I didn't mind so much as you could just hang up. The ones that upset me were the men who phoned and pretended to be survivors of child sexual abuse. You would talk to them for a while before it became clear they were calling for kicks and you couldn't hang up straight away as you would have to try and redirect the conversation back towards feelings in case they were genuine. Real survivors would talk about the impact on their life but the pervs would describe the 'abuse' in detailed, sexualised terms. It was utterly disgusting.

I'm getting old and rather cynical about the world. Funny how Marg and her ilk are concerned with alleged abuse to adults over the phone to actual abuse of children. Safeguarding of children needs to be robust and watertight. It shouldn't be trans/woman/cat inclusive, it needs to be absolute and done regardless of anyone's feelings.

Given that this group and the people who support them think basic biology facts and someone saying “ well I’m not sure I agree” is literal violence then I doubt it would take much “abuse” for them to shut the phone lines

I've even got them in an office job previously where I answered calls to them public. One even asked me to keep talking a bit longer as he was close. Doesn't surprise me they'd phone charities/helplines

It’s well known that Samaritans, Childline, Women’s Aid etc get prank/weird/abusive phone calls. Good organisations help the volunteers manage them as it’s a very common reason for volunteers giving up

I believe any charity helpline gets regular dubious calls from men. A young female acquaintance of mine worked for an animal charity and they were often the victims of this.

Come on, we all know that the 'reduced hours and closed on Wednesdays' (are Wednesdays a particularly bad days for abusive phone calls or something?) are because they are frantically checking their volunteers to ensure there are no more skeletons in the closet and because some of those volunteers are leaving (perhaps because they have skeletons in their closet!)

How convenient that they can say its because of abusive phone calls and so take the heat off themselves whilst also garnering sympathy. If they are getting a lot of abuse then hopefully the calls will be recorded and can be handed to the correct authorities.

I cannot believe their new job advert and the 'trans friendly DBS' stuff. It does feel a little bit like they are trolling now!

Same here.

Given zealots of this ideology often report women for fighting for women’s rights as hate crime then I am not sure really that I believe them.

A Mumsnetter who used to work for the Samaritans said they got loads of wanking men who would redial and hang up repeatedly until they got a female operator 🤮

FFS. Talk about hiding in plain sight! Why on earth would you need a different DBS from anyone else?!