India Knight. To be shocked by the lack of self awareness.

[Tacono1]

I feel sad writing this as I have enjoyed her writing at times. I have been quite disturbed by recent developments but do still read The Times as I do still value their overall output ( their ongoing campaign on behalf of those impacted by the cladding scandal is excellent )so do still scan her articles. Today was a discussion of veganism etc. which did make some interesting points but right in the middle was the following statement
‘ I don’t much believe in hypocrisy, which is often the stupid person’s way of oversimplifying complicated and nuanced human choices’
The fact that it was written, then the fact that it wasn’t picked up by editors is astounding.
I think her position is untenable.

@Anaiis

I was referencing your rather pious statement about defending women and children...

I think the best way to advocate for people is to ensure they have accurate information; hence why on threads like this I feel it's important to correct the usual misinformation put forward as fact.

And uncomfortable as that may be, it extends to referencing Eric Joyce as a paedophile. He is a convicted sex offender, but it's reductive to label him or others convicted of the same offence as 'a paedo'. Some are, some aren't. Bear in mind that it is possession of the image which is the criteria for conviction; the CPS don't have to evidence any intent in relation to that image. Lucy Faithfull has a lot of helpful information for both offenders and their families, making it clear that matters are rarely black and white.

Personally I wouldn't stay with someone convicted of a violent offence so I have no desire to support Eric Joyce per se, he's clearly not a pleasant man. However as said above, it is interesting that a man can be violent to others, even kill another person, and be free to live their life without approbation (on completion of their sentence) often without any judgment of them or their families. Yet a non contact offence relating to images of child sexual abuse results in the offender and their family being effectively ostracised and subject to derision. Of course, as fewer such offences are publicised and indeed prosecuted, it's less likely people will ever be aware and this level of public censure will not occur.

I find this very problematic as there is no such thing, really, as a “no contact” offence. The child in images of sexual abuse is demonstrably a victim of a “contact” offence, and downloading the images fuels a trade which ensures other children’s abuse. To call crimes like this no contact offences as though nothing all that terrible has been done is very minimising and a whitewash of the truth. I get what you are saying, that we don’t establish all the nuances of intent in cases like this, and personally I feel that is probably why IK has stayed with her partner. I imagine that he has told her he did it deliberately as the most drunken, self loathing, self destructive thing he could do, or because he experienced abuse himself as a child, or any other myriad of reasons that would change her perspective. Whether any of the things he may have said are true or not who can say, but she is a mother of three and I think would have ended it if she believed him to be a paedophile. However the motivations, or what he says, or even feels the motivations to be, don’t really matter. The crimes against children matter, and downloading images like this means more and more children raped and abused and their lives destroyed. The men who download such images are actively participating in the sexual assaults of children, they are not the passive bystanders that “a no contact offence” would suggest.

Yes quite RickiTarr. We have thankfully moved on from a world in which middle aged men could openly have sex with children.

Are you saying this man has had sex with children Clymene? I'm sure he would have been charged with such an offence if he had.

RickiTarr I think I get the point you're trying to make ie that unlike 30-40 years ago - albeit that even then many people considered this to be revolting, the abuse of children (especially where under the guise of relationships) is universally unacceptable. Quite rightly. But I think you're wrong about societal condemnation of offences relating to the possession of images of child abuse. As more police forces stop prosecuting offenders (moving more towards a model of engaging with treatment), and the line drawn by the legal system between contact and non contact offences grows more defined, it seems more likely you will see less disapproval, not more, simply because the outputs (people being prosecuted, their offences being reported in the paper) are reducing.

Well I’m a bit sleep deprived but I didn’t think I was being so oblique that you actually had to decode me, anthropologist style.

Frankly, I think you’re out of step in your dogged insistence that minimum sentencing guidelines are the only possible viewfinder through which to survey this issue. I’m not entirely surprised some posters are speculating on your motives or ASing you, TBH.

And before you tell me Anaiis that no contact offence is the legal definition, I realise that, but your whole tone is one of minimising sexual offences against children.

Out of step with what? The line of thinking taken on MN that any man who commits an offence of this nature is a paedophile and will directly abuse children? Or perhaps - like views that have been espoused on other threads - that anyone convicted of such an offence should be imprisoned, never see their children again, their address should be made public and other vigilante type measures?

That certainly isn't the stance taken by the legal system, police and social services. If anything, I'd say it is MN which is out of step with those organisations.

Yes, I see that personal comments about IK, or any woman in the public eye, aren’t helpful... Just idle gossip, the sort that keeps Mail Online & Tattle alive. And it all adds to the toxic Twittersphere, etc... I’m guilty of being too interested in finer details that are none of my business!

That said, it doesn’t change what I think of Eric Joyce & people like him. I have a one year old, and honestly... I had nightmares about this thread last night, having contributed.

Out of step with what? The line of thinking taken on MN

You don’t think MN reflects popular opinion? Or at least popular female opinion?

No, I did not say that @Anaiis. I was clearly replying to RickiTarr and was referring to men like Bill Wyman.

We do know that Eric Joyce’s relationship with India Knight was used as mitigation during his sentencing for child sex offences, @theomeo. And that he gave her address at trial. A trial that revealed that police saw a pattern of Joyce searching for child sex abuse dating back to 2014.

www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/eric-joyce-suspended-sentence-former-labour-mp-a4519216.html

I realise that, but your whole tone is one of minimising sexual offences against children.

Exactly this. How dare you even try to minimise the horrific crime committed here @Anaiis? Your attempts on this thread to downplay what this man has done are sickening.

I didn't see any of this pile on when he got convicted for beating someone up. Or is it ok to stay with a violent man but not one with a sexual offences conviction?

@Anaiis you’re seriously comparing a drunken brawl in the House of Commons bar to watching a film of a child being abused? You honestly can’t understand why one of those offences is so very much worse than the other? WTAF?

Seems IK has company on this thread. Sickening.

@Anaiis -

if you think a drunken brawl with an adult

is comparable to

contributing to utterly ruining a child’s life

you need your head examined.

MN you can delete that if it’s not allowed.

I cannot understand why she is still writing puerile drivel and being paid for it, and he isn’t in jail.

@TheOtherTrees legally both offences are viewed similarly. Hence why he's not in prison for either offence, receiving a suspended sentence in both cases.

In real terms I would be more concerned for my personal safety in the vicinity of someone with an assault conviction.

There is a lot of minimising in your posts Anaiis.
Police and social services are overrun. From my own work as a teacher I know that the bar is ridiculously high in terms of child neglect right now before we see any intervention . That is due to scarce resources. That doesn’t mean the cases that are currently not escalated are somehow acceptable. Your thinking is backwards.
I don’t think you speak for the police or social services in your attitudes to these offences.

What skin have you got in the game, @Anaiis?

I think the posts are odd too @TheOtherTrees

@Anotherlovelybitofsquirrel

She lives with and supports a pedophile. She is a vile, loathsome disgrace. Nothing she says has any value.

This

@SusannahMartin

I just cannot get my head around this. I've read India for over 20 years. I know this sounds stupid but I really thought I knew her. I keep thinking that there is something we don't know. I remember hearing of a case where the dad took the conviction when the teenage son did the crime. I keep thinking it's that. I really need to rearrange my brain about this 😩

She’s always been a hypocrite. I’ve been reading her columns since I was a teenager. E.g she use to criticise older mothers, like 35+ as she herself had her children superiorily in her 20s (never mind she’d got divorced as she’d married someone who was or turned gay), till of course she herself has another child in her late 30s.

I think she's clearly utterly miserable. She's overweight by quite some margin, stuck in the sticks with her paedo partner.

The neighbours will all be revolted by them. Her disgusting man is probably revolted by her if his tastes are more the newborn end of the age spectrum, so she's lonely and sad and the only thing she can do is keep stuffing her face and keep changing her username on MN in a pathetic attempt to defend her despicable actions.

@TheOtherTrees I have knowledge of this area, and criminal matters generally, and try to correct misconceptions when they are presented as fact, that is the reason for my posts, since it seems I need to provide a reason for posting...

I'm not a fan of India Knight; would I have made the same decision she has? Without all the facts (which only she will know) it's impossible to say. However whether or not people agree with her staying with him, she didn't commit an offence and (given that there are many other men and indeed done women who have committed the same offence but not been held to public account) it seems more than unfair to essentially seek to punish her for his crimes (specifically focusing on one of those crimes, because no one was calling for her to be sacked or with suggestions that her daughter was at risk when he was convicted of assault) by calling for her to lose her job.

Despite the fact that these were his actions, not hers, and that in any event he has completed the sentence(s) handed down at court. As I have said previously, she has always been someone who polarises opinions and I do wonder whether a more generally popular, less obviously privileged or wealthy person would have elicited a different response? Or indeed if her daughter had remained at home whether that would have altered the response, given that a lot of the critical voices seem to focus on the fact she has allegedly abandoned her child.

@Anaiis
I think a less privileged person would have had a similar response. We would certainly have safeguarding concerns about any children.
You seem to be taking the lack of resources available to deal with these scenarios as evidence that there is some kind of tacit acceptance. You actually seem to be pushing that idea which is why I am very suspicious of your motivations.

I'm not sure why you would be 'suspicious' of my motivations - because I don't toe the MN line, which is in itself out of step with all agencies in these matters?

If the agencies themselves were getting it massively wrong, where is the public outcry or campaigns challenging sentencing for example? Or lack of social services involvement? The decision by certain police forces not to prosecute? A decision taken not as much due to a lack of resources per se but a policy decision to focus on those sex offenders who pose a greater danger to the public at large, ie those committing grooming or contact offences, or both.

Whether or not you agree, the direction things are moving is that prosecutions for non contact offences will decrease, it's already rare for them to reach the papers or for custodial sentences to be imposed. In a few years, you'll have no way of knowing who has committed them. I'm not saying that because of some hidden agenda (I don't have one), or because I'm a man (I'm not) but because that is, rightly or wrongly, what is happening.