AIBU to think that the NSPCC should not have tweeted this...

[ChickenonaMug]

The NSPCC tweeted last night "Consent means actively saying yes, using both words and body language. You should explain to your child that they should always check to ensure the other person is happy to have sex or take part in sexual activity of any kind.

AIBU to think that this is an extremely badly worded tweet and the NSPCC really should know better. This tweet seems to demonstrates a really poor understanding of the grooming and sexual abuse of children. Many abusers will aim to convince a child that she or he consented to 'sex' (rape/sexual abuse) and I expect that it is relatively easy for an abuser to groom a child to say the word 'yes'.

I was groomed and sexually abused for many years of my childhood and my abuser always tried to convince me that the abuse was something I had consented to and that I wanted. Nowhere in the NSPCC's tweet about consent do they point out that children cannot consent to sex with an "other person'.

Children who have been sexually abused will often blame themselves or feel as though they will be blamed by others for what they have been subjected to and the shame that they are feeling stops them being able to talk to anyone about it. The attitude behind the tweet by the NSPCC really concerns me and it is not the only thing they have worded badly. Another example is the definition of sexual abuse they teach children in the Speak Out, Stay Safe assemblies which is "when a child is being made, asked or rewarded for doing anything with their body that frightens or worries them - or being made to do this to someone else." (my bolding). learning.nspcc.org.uk/services/speak-out-stay-safe#article-top . Again this wording does not seem to take into account the grooming of children into believing that they have wanted or consented to the sexual abuse nor does the NSPCC seem to recognise that a sexually abused child may absorb this definition and then think that it is she (or he) who is the problem because she did not react with fear like a 'normal' child is supposed to. This will then back up what the abuser is telling her, which is that she wanted or consented to the abuse and will lead her to not disclosing her abuse for fear of being seen as sexually deviant or stupid for not reacting with fear.

Even the title of the NSPCC "Speak Out, Stay Safe campaign is deeply problematic because it places the responsibility on the child to keep themselves safe from abuse.

The NSPCC are also describing kissing and hugging by young children as normal 'sexual behaviours'. I think it is wrong and very unwise to see young children as sexual beings especially as this is an attitude shared with abusers, for example the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE) lobbied to have children seen as sexual beings with sexual rights and the ability to consent from a very young age. IMO the NSPCC need to undertake a serious review of their recent practice.

This tweet by Safe Schools Alliance UK describes what I am trying to say: twitter.com/SafeSchools_UK/status/1285868833891377152

Also rubber man was a celeb booker he would have had no input into content on the NSPCC social channels so that point is moot as well. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Really?

That explains a lot.

Yeah gross to film sex videos at work, but it's not ok to blast or even imply that man is a sex offender or a predator due to his sexual orientation or even fetish unless it involves children.

People didn't do this though did they? No one accused James Makings of being a sexual predator on the grounds of him being gay, in fact him being gay was entirely irrelevant. People were horrified that a man working for the NSPCC, Britain's largest children's charity, had filmed himself wanking in the toilets of his workplace in a rubber suit and then posting it online.

They called into question his safeguarding credentials if he didn't even know that you shouldn't publicly film yourself jacking off in a gimp suit at work. And anyone who doesn't have absolute watertight safeguarding credentials shouldn't be working at the NSPCC and certainly shouldn't be making decisions about who to hire as a celebrity ambassador (as evidenced by his terrible choice of Munroe Bergdorf, who also clearly had no clue about safeguarding basics).

But of course to question any of this is homophobic, transphobic etc etc.

Why would an over 18 approaching a 16 year old to initiate a sexual relationship be considered grooming when they are above the age for consent? They haven't been groomed, they are of age. Grooming starts when they are underage.

Not always. If the adult is in a position of authority/power such as a teacher, doctor etc the age of consent is actually 18.

A lot of the posts were homophobic.

Many were comparing him being gay to being a threat to children.

Receipts please. I didn't see people doing that. I saw the likes of Owen Jones twisting things to make it sound like that was what the problem was, carefully skirting around what Makings was actually caught doing, just like you are doing right now.

Being gay does not mean you shouldn't be out on your ear immediately, when you are caught posting videos of yourself wanking in the toilets of your workplace, which also happens to be the HQ of the Uk's largest children's charity. Your sexuality is totally irrelevant.

The NSPCC is a children's charity with a primary aim of protecting children from abuse. They shouldn't be putting stuff on social media about 'consent' without explicitly talking about the age of consent and that children under that age cannot consent, no matter how much they want to do this or that. And they especially shouldn't be doing this with their recent history.

This. It's really that simple. Unfortunately they've written some dubious stuff recently as well as the incidents mentioned, suggesting that child sexual abuse is only a concern when children feel "worried or unhappy".

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3611569-Is-NSPCC-school-guidance-for-kids-re-sexual-abuse-shifting-the-Overton-Window-Need-expert-advise-to-break-this-down

The tweets were homophobic. They had every right to speak out about the abuse their staff were receiving.

How were they homophobic? If there was any, it wasn't by concerned women from Mumsnet. But somehow women seemed to get the blame. Why is it homophobic to criticise inappropriate conduct in a children's charity?

You don't have a right to complain about it though.

I think we do.

Clearly the intention is to encourage adults to have age appropriate conversations about consent with their children. It is a topic that every parent should be regularly dropping into conversations with their children, many years before the child becomes sexually active.

I agree, but it's also crucial that parents know that 'everyone need to be comfortable with what is happening' is not the whole story. The whole point of grooming is to make a child 'comfortable' with what happens. If they are not scared or feel like something is wrong, that does not mean that what happened was ok. This is why it's difficult to put these things into short snappy social media posts, these things should always be qualified with a wider message I think.

Exactly - on three girls one of the victims of the sexual abuse shouts that it was the best time of her life. She was clearly and horribly abused.

You don't have a right to complain about it though.

Wait, what?

People don't have the right to complain when someone working for a massive children's charity commits gross (literally!) sexual misconduct at work and the organisation doesn't appear to outright condemn the behaviour immediately?

Why don't we have the right to complain about that? Because Makings is gay? So if someone is gay then it doesn't matter what they do, they cannot be questioned, people cannot complain?

Many were comparing him being gay to being a threat to children

I followed that issue quite closely on twitter and did not see even one person with an opinion about his being gay. Are you certain we live in the same universe?

You are very invested in defending the indefensible Rwoolley.

If I had put out a tweet like the one in the OP I would have been jumped on but could have legitimately apologised and said that I hadn't thought, but this is supposedly the NSPCC's area of expertise. And the worst of it all is, is that the NCPCC has statutory rights to have access to vulnerable children.

Yes, it's terribly thought out. Consent (not specific to sexual activity) is something that can and should be spoken about at all ages, in an age appropriate way, though. But this post is both insensitive and poorly thought out.

I’d prefer the work teenager

Word ! Not work

Talking about children, sex, and consent, in the same sentence, without mentioning at all the age of consent, seems like a glaring omission. Parents following this advice could end up advising their 16 year old that sex with a "consenting" 15 year old is OK, even though it is technically a criminal offence and could land them in a lot of trouble (note: whether I agree or not with the law is irrelevant)

You'd think a children's charity would advise kids a bit better. It's not exactly in any kid's interest to get filed as sex offenders.

Consent (not specific to sexual activity) is something that can and should be spoken about at all ages, in an age appropriate way, though

It has to be done really carefully though I think. My kids are younger, so we are not talking sex yet, but I have always been careful not to give the message that 'you shouldn't let anyone touch what's in your pants if you are not comfortable with it' but rather 'you shouldn't let anyone touch what's in your pants full stop' (which I think is the message of that NSPCC 'Pants' song - what's in your pants belongs only to you). There are no grey areas with it, it's not qualified with 'if you are uncomfortable with it', it's a firm no. But then I feel like I have to balance that with not giving them hangups about their genitals etc (which is why we don't talk about it all the time I guess!)

But I think the point is that these things have to be handled really carefully and just saying 'everyone has to be comfortable and be saying yes to what is happening' and leaving it at that is a big no no.

@VaginalTarantula

that if an adult has sex with a child it doesn't matter if the child is OK with

But this is false. People always miss that 16 year olds are children and that they can have sex with adults. That if your 16 year old child who hasn't even sat their GCSE exams yet wanted to sleep with a 50 year old man, there'd be nothing you could legally do (unless he was a professional violating boundaries)...

If you want it so that only adults have sex, raise the age of consent to 18.
If you want it so that children can't have sex with adults, introduce a law similar to what they have in other countries - 16/17 year olds can only consent to other 16/17 year olds.

So if you're just 16 and your partner is just 17, you can have sex with them for a year, but when they turn 18, you can't again for another year, until you are 18?!

There are better ways of doing it, e.g. the younger partner's age plus no more than e.g. 3 years.

Yeah gross to film sex videos at work, but it's not ok to blast or even imply that man is a sex offender or a predator due to his sexual orientation or even fetish unless it involves children.

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Christ. He is connected to a kids charity. What he did was wrong enough but to film yourself openly doing it at work and upload is mind boggling. How can his actions sit with safe guarding? If this is ok what the hell would be unacceptable?

And his sexuality has F all to do with it.

Ugh, the wording on that Tweet is gross and bizarre - children cannot give informed consent.

Ffs.

Thank you all for sharing your thoughts on this. I still think that the NSPCC’s tweet was incredibly badly worded and demonstrates at the very least that something as important and complex as consent should not be tweeted out in this way by the UK’s leading safeguarding children charity. The NSPCC should have a really good knowledge about children, consent, sex, grooming and sexual abuse and the safeguarding issues And frameworks that surround this whole area. Abusers try and argue that children and young people can and have consented to sex (sexual abuse). All around the country people in authority failed to protect teenage girls from men grooming in gangs partly because they decided that the girls consented based on interpretation of signs such as the girls repeatedly getting in the car of their abuser or calling their abusers ‘boyfriends’. Children and young people say ‘yes’ or ‘ok’ to their abusers all the time - it is what they are groomed to do and yes sometimes children and young people act in ways that some would interpret as giving physical consent. Obviously nobody wants two 14 or 15 year olds to be prosecuted for having mutually agreed sex with one another and I am sure that most people support young people receiving education about what consent is, what the law says and about the complexities of it all, alongside information about safer sex and the benefits of delaying sex until adulthood. The NSPCC’s tweet failed to reflect any of this and instead ended up sounding as though they supported the position of children being able to consent to sex with an ‘other person’.

Unfortunately some of the NSPCC’s previous failings have resulted in many losing faith in them. Last summer they tweeted that “Abuse is preventable, not inevitable. We want to give #EveryChildhood the knowledge they need to stay safe from sexual abuse.” This was another really poorly thought-out tweet and many people, including a large number who had been subjected themselves to sexual abuse as children, raised concerns about the NSPCC’s thinking on sexual abuse. The tweet and the thinking that goes with it places the responsibility on a child to stop sexual abuse. This is clearly nonsense and victim-blaming.

When you see these tweets alongside all the other NSPCC’s issues such as calling young children’s need/desire to kiss and cuddle ‘sexual behaviour’ and their badly worded definition of sexual abuse that children are taught in order to ‘keep themselves safe’ then a serious pattern of these failings seems to emerge. The NSPCC really do need to examine themselves and deal with the fact that many people are seriously doubt their ability to safeguard and support children appropriately. I really do want the NSPCC to be the great child protection charity that the UK needs.

It’s a shame that the NSPCC’s awful marketing/media team are putting the charities reputation at risk.

For those saying about the safeguarding issues with Rubberman, I know it’s shocking what happened, but what was the safeguarding issue? He did not work in a child facing role at all, no access to children’s information, he worked in an adult only office. I agree he should have been sacked for doing that in work time and on work premises but to say it’s a safeguarding risk is interesting, genuinely curious to understand how?

The NSPCC, as much as they’ve made a few mistakes through the media and marketing side, actually provide SO many face to face services to vulnerable children who wouldn’t otherwise get the support they need for recovering from abuse. The child facing teams are all mainly social workers and therapists who provide long term post-sexual abuse therapeutic services as well as life story work with children who are in care. Folk are quick to criticise them which will result in people withdrawing their donations, no donations = Less face to face work with the children who really need them, who otherwise would be waiting years on a CAMHS waiting list.

It wasn’t so much a safeguarding issue for me as a general appallingness issue. Although it all came to light because he caused the NSPCC to expose itself to a safeguarding issue. He was responsible for the hire of someone who had a very shaky grasp of safeguarding and did something online which no one should ever do - ie - suggest children contact them directly online. No due diligence was done on this person, or if it was, safeguarding was not taken into account, so the safeguarding red flags were missed. The whole thing suggested an organisation way more interested in celebrity than in the boring world of safeguarding.

Agree with you about the frontline work though. I’m a trustee of a charity with some similar functions and my main value add is ensuring the charity sticks to its core work rather than getting side tracked into mission creep, celeb crap and virtue signalling on topics way outside of our charitable purpose

The NSPCC, as much as they’ve made a few mistakes through the media and marketing side, actually provide SO many face to face services to vulnerable children who wouldn’t otherwise get the support they need for recovering from abuse

You see, from a distance, I find the idea terrifying that a charity with access to vulnerable children has no concept of safeguarding.

The backlash against that particular man was nothing to do with his sexuality at all until some people tried to defend what he did by crying homophobia, we didnt even know he was gay when we were asking is it ok for someone working for a children's charity to be wanking in fetish gear at work and uploading it onto the internet with links to a children's charity.
Ive had the odd wank at work, as a young woman, working 60hours a week, not for a children's charity and not filming myself and then uploading it with links to my employer.
Do what you want in your lunch break.
But don't film yourself and make links to your employer whether you work for a childrens charity or not.
It speaks of bad or weak boundaries.
Which anyone working for a children's charity should know about. .
Thats the point, boundaries and safeguarding. No boundaries is no safeguarding.

Exactly.
I dont want this charity that has no idea about safeguarding, or does but believes in sacred castes ie. No safeguarding because some people cannot be questioned or vetted in case you hurt their special feelings, anywhere near vulnerable and traumatised children.
Its not ok.
How do we get rid of these arseholes??