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AIBU?

To wonder why no one seems bothered by links to labour MPs + paedophile rights organisation?

954 replies

starlady · 20/02/2014 22:54

The Mail has published new claims about Harriet Harman, Jack Dromey and Patricia Hewitt supporting The paedophile information exchange. Thought it was a rehash of an old story, but I've looked at the evidence published, and it looks as if harriet etc do have some explaining to do. I won't link to the Mail, but the Guardian gives a more nuanced point of view here

www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2014/feb/20/dailymail-harrietharman
What I'm finding puzzling is twitter is not bothered! And I haven't seen anything on mumsnet. Isn't anyone bothered? No wonder jimmy Saville et al got away with their actions. I am a labour voter myself, so I'm not trying to be partisan and stir up trouble, but the silence on this disturbs me.

OP posts:
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TheFabulousIdiot · 07/03/2014 21:43

Well the thing is, it happened when I was about 8 and I am in my 40s now. It's only in recent years that I have thought about it, and recent months that I have talked about it. I found out a cop,e of years ago that he'd been prosecuted for similar crimes against children but acquitted. He died in 2013.

However I recently realised he was involved with the civil rights thingy and now I just feel angry that the other women were not believed, though he was actually in court on two separate occasions and the crown prosecution service did their best.

I contacted the police a couple of months ago (before all the pie stuff got in the press) and they advised calling 101. So far imhaven't had the courage but am thinking I should do it soon because if his name is seriously connected to this I am going to be judged as someone who has just come forward for fame or money or something (by people who don't believe victims). It's just annoying really.

I am fine, it was a long time ago, but I have been obsessing about it rather a lot the last couple of weeks as it makes me so bloody angry.

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falaaalaaa · 08/03/2014 02:09

From all that I've read and seen on the TV, what you are feeling is pretty much universal among women and men who were abused as children. There are many others who are feeling as you do as a result of the PIE coverage. Various support groups for Adults Abused as Children have been named in the coverage - I don't know if they might help as a first resort.

I really don't think that in the current climate you would be judged at all - I think that at last victims are being believed and getting the hearing and support they should have had years ago, when they were children.

Thanks

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TheFabulousIdiot · 08/03/2014 09:30

Ne thing this has really brought home to me is that I know understand how much anguish and thought goes into reporting historic crimes because victims really do think they won't be believed or that the will be asked 'why didn't't you report it at the time?'

I have been reading through some of the reports from when this man was prosecuted and all the victims said during the trial that they didn't say anhinga at the age of six because they thought no one would believe them. In fact there was one person who's parents dodn't believe them until someone else testified against him years later.


Also, I have read a lot recently. About how historic cases are hard to prove and many people on jurys just find it hard to believe victims if they come over as together and unscarred by the abuse, even though it's often true that victims are able to talk quite unemotionally and rationally about the abuse that. Happened so long ago.

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falaaalaaa · 08/03/2014 10:09

The truth is that victims weren't believed at the time, and were punished for making outlandish and appalling "claims" against decent upright pillars of the community. Angry Parents didn't believe their children, or believed it was their children who had caused it to happen. Angry And were ashamed of their children. Could I ask what you've found to read, FabulousIdiot?

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claig · 09/03/2014 08:01

Mail Online article, not sure if it is in the Mail on Sunday or not

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TheHoneyBadger · 09/03/2014 09:41

thanks claig - just popped on to see if you were reporting on the sunday tabloids Grin saves me having to delve through things that make me want to poke my eyes out.

will have a read of that article.

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TheHoneyBadger · 09/03/2014 09:44

ok so this is the important stuff coming out and i think those hewlet-high court judge links might fit with what i was saying about possibility that HH couldn't speak without naming names that hadn't been revealed yet and pointing the finger more squarely at the instigators within the group. i am guessing hewlett was pressured to apologise and instead of asking 'why' has she apologised and is it the tip of ocean the focus became, why hasn't HH apologised too.

i think the two of them had very different roles.

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TheHoneyBadger · 09/03/2014 09:52

i would like to see all of his judgments on child rape cases looked at.

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claig · 09/03/2014 09:58

Yes, I think some people probably hoped that the Hewitt apology would be the end of it.

How far and how high does this all go?

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TheHoneyBadger · 09/03/2014 10:04

all the way to the top i should think claig hence the reticence and the distraction techniques.

off to look at those links CFS, though reluctantly tbh as i already feel gutted for anyone who this man presided over.

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TheHoneyBadger · 09/03/2014 10:09

honestly i suspect child sexual abuse is probably one of the big 'ins' of the establishment and power positions: their shared currency and what ties them together and allows them to trust each other (as in if one for all and if one falls we all go down kind of protection).

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claig · 09/03/2014 10:31

I think you are probably right, TheHoneyBadger. It seems unbelievable, but how else can it be explained?

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TheHoneyBadger · 09/03/2014 11:07

honestly if you linked every court case involving child sexual abuse over the last ten years (for example) with the sentences given and judge's statements i think it would be impossible NOT to believe paedophilia and raping 'older' children is seen as acceptable, understandable or justifiable to a large section of the judiciary.

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TheHoneyBadger · 09/03/2014 11:11

here's a collection of some.

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CFSKate · 09/03/2014 11:12

The Mail article also points out cases where Fulford upheld or increased sentences.

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TheHoneyBadger · 09/03/2014 11:20

take this guy here - short of tattooing it on his forehead how much more obvious could it be and how on earth could he have been able to continue, unchecked like this for so long, saying things like this repeatedly unless the establishment were ok with it? like how else do you explain the fact that he wasn't thrown out???

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Wannabestepfordwife · 09/03/2014 12:33

That was a shocking read honey thank god he didn't preside over the sexual grooming ring case!

I really do think there needs to be an investigation into links between the establishment and child abuse. I know politicians like to have one over on each other but keeping quiet over sexual abuse is as bad as the abuse to me it really is selling your soul.

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Wannabestepfordwife · 09/03/2014 12:37

I know their not very popular on here but I have a lot of respect for the dm journalists investigating. It must be intimidating to uncover what the establishment wants to hide

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TheSteveMilliband · 09/03/2014 13:35

What a non story Harriet harmans involvement is. And how worrying is it that weeks of publicity linking her in public consciousness with paediphilia, whilst senior member of Tories being charged wih child abuse passes almost unnoticed.
Daily mail headline re judge is I think worrying, again suggesting he is or at least is protecting paediphilia, when closer reading reveals much less. The court of the daily mail / twitter or indeed any other newspaper can be a dangerous thing I think. I do wholeheartedly support prosecutions and don't think CPs are overreacting to savile btw

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AllMimsyWereTheBorogroves · 09/03/2014 13:39

I don't have any respect for them, Wannabe. I've looked through today's article and I hope it's actionable. I am not a lawyer nor do I move in legal circles, but having just looked up Adrian Fulford, I think the Mail has put out a great deal of innuendo and very little substance against him. He qualified as a barrister in 1978 and made the incredibly brave decision to be openly gay from the first. He was the first openly gay man to be appointed as a High Court Judge in England. In the late 70s and early 80s he was working hard to get the police and the judicial system to stop wasting time on petty prosecutions of gay men, use of agents provocateurs and so on. He was also, from the sound of it, campaigning for the reduction of the age of consent for gay men - it was 21, which was absurd. This article is very interesting - it's his reflections on that time.

I would imagine he got caught up with PIE in the same way as a lot of others did at the NCCL. They were keen to have an open debate about the age of consent and they were also trying to defend free speech, even about abhorrent topics. There is, to my mind, not a scintilla of evidence in the Mail article to support the idea that Adrian Fulford was himself a paedophile or supported the idea that paedophilia should be decriminalised or has ever given unduly lenient sentences to paedophiles.

Even the Mail has to concede that in many of the cases where he and his Appeal Court colleagues have changed sentences they've just as often been increased as decreased, and the decreases they cite are not 'life imprisonment to community service', they're more like 'six years prison sentence reduced to five years'. Worth noting too that Appeal Court Judges don't sit alone. There are always three Judges.

The Mail seems to me to be hoping that the knuckle-dragging tendency amongst its readers will continue to confuse being gay with being attracted to little boys. This is grossly offensive.

And by the way, Judge Hall mentioned above has retired. He appears to have had a long history of giving lenient sentences for all sorts of offences, not just paedophilia.

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TheSteveMilliband · 09/03/2014 13:46

Great post allmimsy

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TheHoneyBadger · 09/03/2014 20:27

yes he has retired. did you read his comments about young children being provocative et al? it's not just the sentences that cause concern with some of these judges but the actual words that come out of their mouths.

if you can say such things as accusing 9yo girls of being sexually provocative when you are in front of the press then where is your head at? it's like the mother swearing at and slapping her child in tescos - the fact they don't even know not to behave like that in public gives massive cause for control and you wonder christ if that's what they're ok with doing out and about for the world to see what on earth are they like behind closed doors?

yes, he retired. do you not think he should have been sacked long before? would you accept a teacher or a social worker seeing children as sexually provocative and the agent in a sexual encounter with a middle aged man? far more alarming in the case of a judge surely?

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