Peter Wilby - warning CSA

"Making" has a very wide technical definition in the context of this law, and can include copying images as I understand it.

A very chilling article when we now know what we know.

It's worth a compare and contrast with this one from Peter Tatchell, as both seem to have a remarkably similar style:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/libertycentral/2009/sep/24/sex-under-16-underage

Both articles have a clear takeaway in amongst the "reasonable", where Tatchell's is to lower the age of consent and Wilby's is that child abuse isn't happening as much as you think.

100% agree the articles should remain - with additional information about his conviction (put up front so readers read that before reading his opinion/articles).

Why do they say he’s been convicted of MAKING child sex abuse images? I don’t understand that wording. It suggests he took the photos but clearly that would be even more serious than having/viewing the images. Or is ‘making’ a legal term that covers extracting photos from a criminal investigation file and putting them in a personal computer file? I’m shocked he’s only registered as a sex offender for 5 years… why only 5?!

So I think it's not unreasonable in itself to say we need to be cautious in how we treat accusations of sexual abuse.

Maybe, but this is also the arguement used against women who try to report rape. Because of a very, very tiny number of women who have made false allegations, the police and CPS start from the position that women are lying.

And from memory, the Carl Beach accussations got as far as they did because of a failure of policing.

" ... A report of the inquiry's findings found that detectives and officers within the operation's taskforce had committed several errors during the course of their work, and made calls for more effective checks on allegations and accountability by police.

Following the reporting of the inquiry's findings, the Metropolitan Police were forced to make apologies to those who had been accused and to compensate them financially. ... "

Note that Carl Beech got 18 months for similar images, (tacked on top of 15 years for the false reporting. )

Iwanttoretire - the story has been covered by all the main papers, but unfortunately the verdict was announced the same day as the Letby verdict so it got buried in all that coverage.

Perhaps I'm naive, but I'd like to think that Wilby's colleagues weren't aware of his crimes. Downloading child sex abuse images is the sort of thing it's easy to keep secret (I don't know how it came to light in Wilby's case) so if he wasn't abusing children himself they might not have known.

And I think Wilby's views, although unpleasant, are not that far from the mainstream. Don't forget that quite recently a man, Carl Beech, was found to have spun an elaborate story in which he falsely accused several prominent men in public life of being part of a paedophile ring. So I think it's not unreasonable in itself to say we need to be cautious in how we treat accusations of sexual abuse. It's just that when you know the context of Wilby's crimes you see his use of that argument in a whole different light.

I saw this Observer / Guardian article and realised for whatever reason I hadn't seen about Wilby's conviction. I do hope that is justs me being unobservant and not the media covering up for one of its own.

I suspect that as with many other men who are lauded by the media, and are revealed after death to have been sexual predators or worse, that many journalists would have been aware.

Or if they weren't aware must have thought his opinions on, if not over the border line. No surprise that the Guardian would have thought it okay to print Wilby's opinion that people were just being hysterical and exaggerating the risks to children. So cutting edge.

And of course its not just the media cronies. Only this week did we find out that the Labour Party was trying to supress members talking about a convicted user of child pornography allowed to stand as a councillor, and the local mayor lying about knowing this.

Apart from the awfulness of the actual crimes it means we can have no faith that either the media or politicians actually care about children being abused. They just use it as an issue when trying to score points. Otherwise they just turn away and shrug if off as thought child abuse was no more worrying than someone illegally parking.

If anyone close to me, especially living in my house, were to be charged with possession of images of child sexual abuse, I would want cast iron proof that the police had made a mistake, long before the trial. But yes, point take about how manipulative PW likely was.

Bah, MN has wrecked the link again, copy this:

htt ps://web.archive.org/web/20230000000000*/htt ps://ww w.theguardian.com/profile/peterwilby

paste it in a document, remove the 3 spaces I've inserted, copy the deleted-spaces link, and post it in a browser.

That's really good to know. I would hate for them to be lost.

In fact, over time, quite a lot of Wilby's articles have been archived at https://web.archive.org/, see <a class="break-all" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20230000000000*/www.theguardian.com/profile/peterwilby" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://web.archive.org/web/20230000000000*/www.theguardian.com/profile/peterwilby.

Archiving webpages is simple:

Go to an archiving website such as https://archive.org/ (for this website you click on Web which pulls down the relevant section) or https://archive.ph/, find the box where you can paste a webpage link that you want archived, press a button to save, archive, or whatever the webpage. You'll then be presented with a link at which the archived webpage is available.

The benefit of this approach is that you have a validated online archived copy of the webpage and it's much less susceptible to a challenge, eg "that's not real, it's Photoshopped".

I imagine she thought he wasn’t guilty.

Until he’s convicted, he’s rightly presumed innocent.
She wouldn’t see the evidence until the trial, all she’ll have had is his assurances.
Paedophiles are cunning and manipulative. He duped a lot of people. Why single out his wife for believing him?

Sorry “similar to” not “William to”. Auto cucumber.

Thanks, nauticant and IcakethereforeIam.

Good point, LoobiJee, about the revealing wording.

Well that is a most revealing final sentence.

“Precisely because child abuse has become the most odious of crimes, allegations should be made only after the most rigorous testing of evidence.”

Note the wording: “has become” not “is”.

In other words, he doesn’t himself consider that it is the most odious; rather he observes that it is treated as/ described as the most odious.

Are there any other cached versions of his articles? The piece published under The Observer’s banner say that he argued for “nuance”. That struck me as William to the sleight of hand that Tatchell uses. It would be enlightening to compare and contrast Wilby’s and Tatchell’s writings.

That article by Dean Nelson is so sad. As a young journalist, he must have had very little influence. It is a reminder of the scale of the numbers of people affected. I completely agree that Wilby's articles need to remain with an addendum explaining the author's conviction. He used to write regularly for the New Statesman and even edited it at one point. I wonder what they will do. I always wondered why they allowed him to continue to write for the magazine when it nearly went broke under his editorship.

I feel like people like Wilby who denigrated campaigners like Bea Campbell were incredibly effective in creating a 'nothing to see here' culture.

I have been trying to find the picture showing the faces of white men in organisations that were influential in various laws/policies that have then gone on to be convicted of crimes like this. I think I saw it on here with a contrasting list of women who are trying to maintain women’s and children’s rights.

Can anyone repost it for me please? I was trying to explain to a Guardian reader of 50 years why they need to read more than the Guardian to get a balanced viewpoint. I mentioned the wi spa reporting being completely biased and not updated to show their reporting was such. And Suzanne Moore and Hadley. I think they are realising that the days of them championing women’s rights are over.

Archiving is pretty straightforward RoyalCorgi.

htt ps://web.archive.org/web/20230902133520/ webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?cd=8&ct=clnk&gl=uk&hl=en&q=cache%3Ai2eq5-WpQDAJ%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fwww. theguardian.com%2Fcommentisfree%2F2012%2Fnov%2F11%2Fmedia-hysteria-child-abuse-savile

MN breaks some links to archives so this one has had 3 spaces inserted to keep the URL intact. You can copy it and remove the 3 spaces to get the working URL.

So, asks GUY ADAMS, why haven't either of those bastions of Left-wing sanctimony taken down his columns?

I don't think the articles should be taken down. I think they should be amended to lead with a paragraph stating in no uncertain terms his crimes and his use of a platform to promote a pro-paedophilia agenda.

Making the articles disappear in a 1984 style serves The Guardian at a detriment to the public.

Edit: Cross-posted with RoyalCorgi. (OMG! I can edit!)

Thanks for these links. How utterly sordid and depressing. I note he was accompanied to court by his wife. Why? His actions are entirely his own fault and she may well have known nothing about his proclivities, but once he was arrested, how could she bear to be in the same house with him? He has two adult children, so may be a grandfather. This makes him potentially a risk to their grandchildren. The lives of those closest to him have been turned upside down. What a piece of scum he is.

I'm disappointed the Guardian has removed some of Wilby's articles - I think they should have been left to stand so we could see exactly what he was up to. One of them was shared on social media shortly after his conviction, and it was chilling to read. If anyone wants to read it now there is still a cached version available, but I imagine it won't be there for much longer. I don't know how to archive these things but perhaps someone else does?

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:i2eq5-WpQDAJ:www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/nov/11/media-hysteria-child-abuse-savile&cd=8&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk