Safeguarding issues in the Girl Guiding movement

[EishetChayil]

Parents of daughters in the Girl Guides - what do you think about the new lead commissioner for the Southwell division?

"Monica Sulley" also goes by the name of "Monica Tetley", and used this name to sign Aimee Challenor's open letters (a quick Google will shed some light on why this might be a safeguarding issue). This is just the latest in a series of WTF moves from GG.

My DD isn't old enough for Guides yet, but if she was, I would be thinking twice about sending her if this is deemed suitable as leadership. Perhaps this makes me a huge transphobic TERF witch bigot, but there we go.

But their sex life should have no bearing ok their suitability to lead , surely?

A penchant for barely legal or violent porn? A 'non-acting minor attracted person' (new name for paedophile)? Adult babies? What about Aimed Chanellor's dad? Once out of prison in 22 years time should he be able to lead? After-all it was his 'sex life' that he was imprisoned for.

I feel so sorry for all the women who were hounded out of the guides for drawing attention to the risks of dabbling with sexual politics and removing the single sex aspect. They warned that blurring boundaries, prioritising the demands from Stonewall and involving some very unsuitable people in policy development would result in these issues.
And here we are.

I don't think what an adult dies in their personal life has anything to do with their suitability for being a GG leader tbh

Indeed.

The problem is this is drip, drip, dripping into RL too though isn’t it? Which is the goal isn’t it, if we are all going to be honest and stop being scared of being labelled paranoid or conspiracy theorists.

@lking679

I was an assistant leader and although we took care never to be in a situation 1:1 with a girl there are certainly opportunities that I could have been if I had wanted.

I hate the conclusion that trans people are in any way to be concerned about sexually however in an environment full of young girls it is very much something that should be on everyone's mind.
Would I send my daughter on a residential with a leader that was biologically male and had a rather explicit and sexual social media? No.
That's not so much a worry on trans women as it is a worry on the sheer number of sexual crimes committed by biological men.

There’s no reason you should feel trans people are people you should be concerned about posing a sexual risk towards children. Transmen and female non binary people have the same rates of sexual violence as women, which means they pose a very very low risk.

Transwomen retain the same rates of sexual violence to all other males.

You’re not concerned about trans people, you are concerned about those born male.

When it comes to safeguarding this is an entire valid risk assessment to make, to hold onto your concerns about anyone born male.

Most are no risk, but there’s no way to tell by looking which male is definitely safe and which aren’t. So a blanket policy of no males is the only way to ensure girls are safe.

In addition, if anyone was going to indicate they posed a higher risk of violating girls boundaries, a private sexual photo posted to public social media would be an obvious red flag.

Of course you personal life can make someone totally inappropriate to be a GG leader regardless of it being public. What do you think the PVG/disclosure checking is for??!!!!

But their sex life should have no bearing ok their suitability to lead , surely?

Not exactly personal if plastered all over social media.

And no awareness that it's an issue.

👆🏽 that's a key low level concern safeguarding issue.

In my ‘pre children’ life, I have worked in a variety of roles that involve safeguarding. One was with adults with mh problems.

One member of staff used to leave work, go to the local pub and mouth off to the bar tender about the ‘disablist slur’s he put up with all day.

We often supported service users to access this pub, so the bar owner told several of us what he said repeatedly and we fed back to management during supervision.

This member of staff was sacked for his disablist attitude. Rightly so. It wasn’t some one off mistake that he made when wasted (not that personally I would have shut up about it if it was) but evidence of his under lying attitude to the vulnerable service users we worked with. Which was incompatible with the job he was employed to do.

The leader in the pictures is demonstrating publicly their underlying unsuitability for leading girls. Both through their sexualised image of what it means to be a woman and by their lack of appropriate boundaries.

I don’t believe for a second whoever employed this person did not run a social media check. So it shows up the institutional unsuitability for guiding girls.

Which really is tragic. The true meaning of the term.

Nothing surprises me with GG. We chose it for our DD as she prefers the company of other girls, and we were told by them that they do everything Scouts do. What a load of bull. The Guides had to sit around in circles discussing how to be nice, whilst the younger leaders stood around making passive aggressive and bitchy comments. Girls are honestly better off going to Scouts, as a male dominated group they take the safeguarding of their girl Scouts very seriously. Ironically Scouting is safer for girls than Guiding.

I hate the conclusion that trans people are in any way to be concerned about sexually however in an environment full of young girls it is very much something that should be on everyone's mind.

It's not about trans people. It is about males.

Hiding in plain sight. We’ve seen this before. When someone tells us who they are we should take note and act.

[quote 0blio]Another picture of "Monica" in this article

www.google.com/amp/s/4w.pub/trans-identified-male-now-a-senior-leader-at-girl-guides-uk/amp/[/quote]
I think the most disturbing part of that article is:

Sulley's appointment came on the heels of a female Girlguiding leader being expelled from the organization on the basis of her beliefs that girls should not be forced to shower or share tents with males who identify as women. Helen Watts had been a supporting member of the Guides for over 15 years prior to being sacked due to her views.

GG have a digital safeguarding policy: www.girlguiding.org.uk/making-guiding-happen/policies/digital-safeguarding-policy/

Based on the following extracts, it would seem sharing sexualised material on social media breaks their own digital safeguarding policy.

Make every effort to ensure that girls and young members understand why and how they must use social media responsibly and safely using the relevant privacy settings.

The sharing of illegal and inappropriate imagery online (sometimes known as sexting) can fall into two categories: illegal and inappropriate.

‘Illegal’ is child sexual abuse imagery and imagery that incites violence, hate or terrorism.

‘Inappropriate’ in this context could mean the sharing of pornography, violent content, racist content and homophobic, biphobic or transphobic content.

The policy states:
Any breach of this policy by volunteers will be managed under the managing concerns about adult volunteers policy.

Any breach of this policy by staff will be managed under the staff disciplinary procedure. Staff can find this procedure on the staff intranet.

If GG were to find themselves with any adult sharing sexualised material and breaking their own safeguarding policies, one would hope GG respond in a way that safeguards children. Anything else would leave parents and the wider community questioning whether GG prioritised the safety of children or the feelings of adults, and questioning why an organisation was unwilling to hold their volunteers and staff to appropriate safeguarding standards.

How have we reached a place where we're having to justify why this isn't OK. Of course it's not OK and we all know it. But in 2021 in the UK saying that you know its not OK and that you don't want your daughter anywhere near this person risks making you a bigot. Hence, my daughter will never go anywhere near the Girl Guides because they clearly put not-being-called-bigots above girl's safety.

In Army cadets we have male and female leaders..

But men can't go near female blocks and vice versa. Even married couples have to sleep in their own blocks and not together.

There are different shower/toilet facilities for:
Men
Women
Girls
Boys

We haven't yet crossed the trans identified bridge but I think they would be put in their own room in their respective sex, so trans identified males in women block and trans identified women in male block.

We all need to put pressure on this and complain to GG.

trans identified males in women block and trans identified women in male block.

So in the opposite sex's block?

Also we aren't allowed to call men trans identified males. Not on FWR.

This is a pickle (and that's saying it lightly) of their own making. Let's not kid ourselves, if this was a female plastering dominatrix/gun/boobs all over the internet she'd be flying out of the door by now, with lots of public apologies from GG about learning lessons and doing better.

This, they'll sweep under the carpet. The person in question will get a slapped wrist and anyone questioning the decision will be told it's been dealt with and to let it go. Otherwise they're transphobic. Because if that person does get fired, they could very well scream transphobia, take GG to court and the whole thing gets blown up way bigger than within the realm of social media.

I've very little sympathy, they were warned and instead of employing single sex exemptions and listening to those women, they sacked them. Any sympathy I do have is for the girls.

@ANameChangeAgain

Nothing surprises me with GG. We chose it for our DD as she prefers the company of other girls, and we were told by them that they do everything Scouts do. What a load of bull. The Guides had to sit around in circles discussing how to be nice, whilst the younger leaders stood around making passive aggressive and bitchy comments. Girls are honestly better off going to Scouts, as a male dominated group they take the safeguarding of their girl Scouts very seriously. Ironically Scouting is safer for girls than Guiding.

This with bells on.

My DD loves rainbows and brownies, but guides was atrocious, she hated it and the leaders were horrible and bitchy to the girls. One made fun of DD's hair ( she is ginger and proud of it normally).

She moved to Scouts and loves it. She wants to go on and be a young leader. In that time she has built fires, done woodwork and got to try loads of activities, even with Covid.

The young leaders that is.

If someone wants to be a dominatrix, then that's nothing to do with being a GG leader.
Obviously, they should be keeping that side of the private and away from GG... But their sex life should have no bearing ok their suitability to lead , surely?

What part of Instagram is private?