That someone is using a made up law to stop me taking a photo of my child

[Spero]

My daughter is in her first ever drama festival. She is very proud and nervous. I want to take a photo of her. I am told I cannot due to the 'Child protection Act'. I am a family lawyer. I have never heard of this Act. Nor has Google.

So the objection is not that I may disrupt proceedings with annoying camera but that the mere act of taking an photo of my own child is somehow a child protection issue.

I am angry - not so much that I can't take a photo of my precious first born, but for what this reveals about the sloppy muddleheaded approach we seem to have about what 'child protection' really means.

AIBU to be so cross? Am contemplating stern letter of complaint. Making up legislation really isn't on.

I don't think its going off on a tangent at all limited, I think its precisely the point.

Despite the eagerness of some posters to pigeon hole me as desperate helicopter mother selfishly demanding my rights to snap away at my PFB I hope I have always been reasonably clear that my beef was the failure of the organisers to provide a clear legal basis for their prohibition on my otherwise quite lawful and innocent wish to take a photograph.

Thanks OP. I paused the film after the confrontation. But now I've watched it all, it turns out the the Chair of the Association of Chief Police Officers wrote to all forces nearly five years ago warning them against this. The bloke also gives a summary of everyone's rights.

YANBU show the school that and tell them what they are doing is against the law

czone.eastsussex.gov.uk/schoolmanagement/schoolpolicies/imagespupils/Pages/parents.aspx

Just watched the video. Fucking chilling.

'This road is under my authority'.

Are there REALLY people reading this thread who think this doesn't matter? Really?

And thus we sleepwalk into disaster.

'I'll make your day a living hell' - says the police man. The upholder of our laws. The protector of our safety.

Bloody hell. I will link this on my blog post. Really chilling.

Exactly Spero. The Act exists as you say but the provisions people seem to genuinely seem to believe exist are urban myths. A bit like the way alligators exist, and the New York sewer system exists, but the widely held belief that the former can be found in the latter is completely untrue.

I suspect this proliferation of urban myths around child protection laws has more to do with common cultural anxieties than with sensible or enforceable safeguarding measures.

I have just followed Stevie B on Twitter as he only has 30 followers, but I thought that was a really helpful video.

I am collecting helpful links at the end of my blog post
www.childprotectionresource.org.uk/i-want-to-take-a-photograph-of-my-child-but-i-am-told-i-cannot/

thanks for everyone who has posted some; the East Sussex guidelines especially I think are great.

If anyone has any more, please let me know!

Hard to keep up with this thread.

Limitedperiodonly

I'm in the canary islands where people seem to have quite a relaxed attitude to nudity and semi nudity., theirs and their children's. Lots of naked children taken into the beach shower by adults ( who quite possibly are their parents).

Certainly didn't notice any cameras in sight but there may have been some desperadoes with telescopic lenses on the balconies above near the beach.

I just hope my towel didn't slip when I was changing but as I'm over the age of twelve probably no one is interested anyway.

Unless its for the annual publication of " readers wives caught changing on the beach"!

What I do feel is we need to fight for our freedoms before they have gone for good.

Let common sense prevail. Do we really want to be governed by a series of jobs worths.

I hope not.

Just a couple of years ago I snapped away at my grandson in his nativity play. The stage was stuffed to the gunwales with children and I probably got a fair few of them in the photos but he was the only one I really wanted.

There's a few photos of me as a child going round the internet now (fully clothed i hasten to add )and I'm jolly pleased because these were class photos that I didn't have a copy of. Just innocent photos of myself and classmates.

Nice memories.

Gone forever. I hope not. Would be a really sad world we've grow for ourselves in the last fifty years.

As report myself to the mumsnet headquarters Spero . Nah! They know where I am if they want me ;-)

Dowser, may I just say that I find all this talk of 'towel slippage' really inappropriate.

I can appreciate that it is just a joke, a throwaway comment but I find it really chilling that you are prepared to say these things on a thread that CHILDREN may be reading.

You may find it acceptable to 'joke' about chilling and disturbing things like female nudity and 'towel slippage' but I think you will find you are out of step with the prevailing moral tone of this thread.

Y'rs self righteously

Sxxxx

That explains things Dowser.

It's a well-known fact* that people from hot countries have dangerously relaxed attitudes to many issues. Apart from those ones from Saudi Arabia.

It is my firm belief that if more people experienced freezing horizontal rain in July, it would go a long way to curbing their disgusting urges.

*from something I just made up.

I think in that case I had better bow out now Spero.

I wish you well with your campaign and I hope you succeed.

Anyone who knows me in RL would tell you that I take the issue of child sexual abuse very, very seriously I won't go into tmi here but lets just say I'm related to someone that was 99.9per cent probably abused as a child.

That's all I will say on the matter.

I'm the last person who would set out to offend anyone and if my sense of humour has offended anyone then I apologise profusely for it.

DH and I were sure we'd clocked a pervert on a Spanish beach.

He was regularly walking the length of the beach wearing a baseball cap, mirrored sunglasses, Speedos with a bum bag which conveniently obscured the arousal state of his penis and sandals with velcro straps.

Suddenly he shouted and grabbed a man. He was a police officer patrolling the beach for thieves, who are more of a threat in a public place than child abusers. The bum bag had his warrant card, handcuffs and radio.

Of course, he might also have been a pervert when off-duty. You can't be too careful.

Keep 'em peeled, as the late, great Shaw Taylor, who went to the cop canteen in the sky yesterday, used to say.

I AM SORRY DOWSER IT WAS MEANT TO BE A JOKE

Please don't go because my clumsy use of sarcasm has failed.

I am sorry to hear about your experiences. FWIW I don't think child abuse is remotely funny either.

But I don't think children are any safer when we don't stop and think carefully about what actual risks we are trying to protect them from. I actually think it is the reverse - as Tinklypink was saying earlier, policies in place to try to protect children were actually putting her son at risk re changing rooms.

fgs limited, I was about to have a coffee and a biscuit but your delightful way with words has now put me off food, possibly for ever.

You do realise that image is going to stay with me all day don't you? Please please be more responsible with your posting.

(PS that is also a joke. Maybe I should just stop now and do some work)

Ooops!

Well that's a relief then .

I agree with your last sentence entirely. I'm glad you're onto it

;-)

I can see the jury will have little sympathy when I am charged with Failure to Amuse on the Internet (Procrastination Defence DisAllowed) Act 1997.

I apologise unreservedly for all the offence I have caused.

Unless you are a pearl wringer of course in which case I say hahahahahah.

You will be relieved to know that according to my carefully drafted half hour schedule for today I have to go and do other things now.

I had dcs at school when all this no photos lark started. At the time the justification was that unsavoury people will use these photographs and sell them to paedophiles. It was never anything to do with 'one of these children could have a violent father who is wanting to find him'. There was also a vague argument about buddhists and graven images, then consent forms were brought in which added another layer of complication/justification.

I think schools are confused, it is another area where they have to be flexible to everyone at the same time so none of their reasons appear to be justified. Like absence notes / giving medicines / wearing of uniform.

Usually these complex rules have several origins, none of which in isolation really justify the rules but there is often a litigation case somewhere in the background casting its shadow.

Like the bus driver that took me a little further on the bus route but had to switch off all the lights and tell me that if anything happened he wouldn't be liable even though he wanted nothing more than to save me walking along a dark deserted road at night alone.

I think instead of having to justify Spero's perceived injustice, schools should just have a Litigation Policy, ie. we won't let you do anything that we feel might enable you to take us to court. At least that would be honest.

Forget child protection policy, equal opportunities policy, just call it the litigation policy and be done with it, or sueyourassoff policy. You can't do x incase you sue us. Simple, honest, saves emails and teachers' precious time.

I've been following this thread with interest. I completely agree with you, Spero, and think it is frightening that some posters believe that it doesn't matter because 'they did it with good intentions', and are completely ignorant of the importance of precision and accuracy in legal terminology.

On a bit of a tangent, it made me think of a case I read about last week concerning the RSPCA. They had unlawfully seized some dogs from a property which they had a warrant to inspect. When they tried to prosecute the dog owners, the judge threw the case out as the warrant they had did not cover the seizure of the dogs.

From the BBC article: 'The RSPCA applied for a judicial review of that decision at the High Court and argued that even though the "dominant purpose" of the EPA warrant was to investigate noise and smell nuisance, there was still scope for seizing the dogs on welfare grounds.'

'Dismissing the charity's case Lord Justice Beatson, sitting with Mr Justice Blake, said it had been "intent on carrying out a search for purposes for which they had not been authorised... It is incumbent on officers of the state, and those who assist them, to take care that the principle of legality that has protected us well over many centuries is observed".

It is this insidious sidelining of the crucial importance of legality in the pursuit of moral righteousness that is very worrying in our society. And the result of the RSPCA appeal shows how dangerous it is - they lost the case and were unable to bring those who were, by all accounts, mistreating the dogs, to justice. Had they been more scrupulous, they could have prosecuted.

www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-essex-31867482

I totally understand the worry about identifying Looked After Children and those who have been adopted, (I have an adopted niece) but you can't put the genie back in the bottle. Social networking exists and photographs will be put up there. It's about sorting out strategies for dealing with this when it happens.

My niece was found by her birth family, BTW, because BM had another child with the same abusive BF so a social services report had to be done and a copy given to the BM. On it there were details of the siblings who had been taken into care and adopted. Instead of putting "Jane birthname" as one of the siblings adopted, some numpty at social services had put "Jane adoptedname". We are still dealing with the fallout from that, but it was going to happen sooner or later as (teenage) dn was expressing more and more curiosity about the birth family even before they contacted her.

Not to derail the thread - but to point out that making up laws to prevent photographs being taken is not going to protect LAC or adopted children.

loiner, I think the local authority has to report itself to the Information Commissioner for a data breach. Something to bear in mind.

It is this insidious sidelining of the crucial importance of legality in the pursuit of moral righteousness that is very worrying in our society. And the result of the RSPCA appeal shows how dangerous it is - they lost the case and were unable to bring those who were, by all accounts, mistreating the dogs, to justice. Had they been more scrupulous, they could have prosecuted.

I completely disagree and think that the law has become so invasive that people can't get on with their lives to do what's right and that is going against the principles behind the meaning and purpose of justice itself. It is hampering progress particularly of those working with children but in all areas.

There are many laws that apply to Spero's case, Child Protection, Freedom of Information, Copyright, all manner of laws that a school then has to issue a decree about in order to explain themselves to parents like Spero.

There is no sidelining of legality here, just better things to do than to explain minutiae to parents. Good that they are following the law, but they shouldn't need to explain or justify to anyone which law they are using, that's a waste of their time. It's surely better to refer parents to the school handbook or the school policies and if the secretary or whoever issued the explanation made an error, so be it. Get over it. The law is being upheld, what more do people want?

Roses - would this be a good time to point out that Freedom of Information Act doesnâ??t touch on this situation?
The school or whatever it is doesnâ??t have to quote chapter and verse but it doesn't need to get all fake legalistic when asking parents not to take photos. Our school says take photos but please don't put them on social media.

hancat excellent use of a case.

The RSPCA's increasing role as a major prosecuting agency is interesting. Obviously in civil law, if one legal person were to become a vexatious litigant, they would be barred from bringing spurious future actions.

But surely if an agency has taken over the role of prosecution from the CPA in a particular area (animal welfare), that should be as a result of enabling legislation, not self appointment?

just call it the litigation policy and be done with it, or sueyourassoff policy. You can't do x incase you sue us. Simple, honest, saves emails and teachers' precious time.

I don't agree it saves time. It's also confusing.

It's like the stories that say I can be sued if the postman slips up on my icy garden path and people piling in with: 'you're safe if you don't clear it' or 'you have to put salt down.'

I don't know where the truth lies and I'm sure they don't either. Meanwhile, I'll continue to shovel up snow because I don't want to go arse over tit.

RosesAreMyFavourite I appreciate your point of view, but the Waffle and Fudge With Regard to Legal Basis Act hasn't yet received Royal Assent. I would honestly suggest you read the judgment in Hancat's post.

Spero how can you forget that in this thread, both you and I were accused of writing in a similar style. I mean, how very dare two or more people be qualified in a field and write legibly?! Just wait a little longer, and I am sure that someone will accuse you of offences under the Attention to Detail and Threshing Out of Mis-Statements Act 1948.

On other threads, I've been threatened with some kind of vague suggestion of inappropriate conduct, for being a lawyer who has expressed an opinion on a matter involving the law. Not sure how that one works, but anyway. It was one of the Scottish independence threads, and I've been accused of all sorts on those and had all sorts of insults and abuse thrown at me, because obviously anyone who doesn't agree with it is in the eyes of some an enemy of the State.

But Roses, is it not the point that (in most instances) it is not the law that has become more invasive, but that those who consider themselves 'agents' of the law are using more invasive measures to implement their interpretation of the law, which is precisely the problem.