Veritas report due tomorrow (Thursday) at midday re: Aimee Challenor

[criticalthinking]

Long time lurker, first time poster - subject says it all really.

Anyone met Aimee's big brother and half sibling?

twitter.com/P_Mickley/status/1083711701852323840?s=19

Huskie / furry thing going on there, WTF

Presumably everyone on this thread is aware of AC's two transwomen lovers? They have all gone for a week at Centreparcs, in what AC describes as a "family holiday"

The two younger ones (sorry not sure about pronouns) look like twins. Weird. An AC doppleganger.

I don't care if the Greens stand candidates who have no chance of winning: they lose their deposit so it's all good.

I have just read the Kiwifarms thread on Aimee and David Challenor, and am gobsmacked that either was ever seriously considered for leadership positions in a political party. As someone on kiwifarms said, if Aimee had not presented as a transgender person would she ever have been looked at for any leadership position? It has puzzled me that coming out as transgender seems to preclude any reasonable scrutiny of that person's character or past behaviour, which should be a given surely, especially if that person is going to work with young people.

I don't know much about the Green Party in the UK, but it would be a pity if important messages about the environment get lost in all this.

I clicked on that Twitter link and now wish I hadn't. And I'm someone who happily reads KiwiFarm.

I haven't read the report, but does it mention "terfblocker"?

I still cannot believe that the Greens let AC do that.

Disrespectful I did feel that I needed a long cleansing bath after seeing some of those screenshots, especially the ones relating to David Challener.

I still cannot believe that the Greens let AC do that.

It isn’t that long ago that their manifesto contained policy to demand that every scientist and academic submit every piece of research work to the government to be approved by commissars before work started. Lysenko didn’t manage to get quite that far, and the reasons are pretty much identical. The Greens attempt to argue that the tools of fascism are safe in their hands because they are the good guys. Every fascist says that.

I have just read the Kiwifarms thread on Aimee and David Challenor, and am gobsmacked that either was ever seriously considered for leadership positions in a political party.

Not just any political party, though: the Greens. Caroline Lucas is a semi-competent political hack who got lucky, but would probably be able to get a gig as a candidate in a marginal seat for the Labour Party if it was a slow night at the selection meeting. The rest of the party leadership are a mixture of idiots, weirdos and fantasists.

And that’s a toxic combination. Safeguarding works when the organisation is basically safe, and the risk is that individuals with evil in their hearts attempt to get a position of trust. Safeguarding fails utterly when the keys are held by bad people and their patsys. IN the case of the Green Party in Coventry, a rapist, a rapist’s wife and a rapist’s child were the party. Let us be charitable and say the worst the wife and child are guilty of is being controlled by a violent and controlling man, and their actions are all read in that light. That leaves a violent rapist in sole charge of the party.

And that’s what’s happening to the Greens at a national scale. Senior members of the party were willing to produce evidence in court cases to support a family controlled by a violent rapist (and if you want to argue Aimee Challenor is not the victim of coercive control by a violent rapist, fine, but that makes the actions much worse). Senior members of the party handed over the safeguarding process, such as it was, to people controlled by a violent rapist.

Safeguarding requires that the organisation and most of its members be healthy and interested in safeguarding. Once the whole organisation has been ceded to a violent rapist, or people unable or unwilling to challenge a violent rapist, no process on earth can make it safe.

Caroline Lucas seems decent enough. Natalie Bennett seemed decent enough. Perhaps they could be asked to explain how they allowed the executive of their party to end up in the thrall of a violent, coercive rapist.

His victim was a child. So paedophile etc etc

Yep, good call. For violent rapist, read violent paedophile rapist throughout. My mistake.

My basic point stands, however.

Thank you Reflectent for that clear explanation of what happened with the Green Party in Coventry.
(I felt real dismay by the way for Aimee Challener reading that Kiwifarm thread - what a terrible background for any child to cope with).
You say that senior members of the Green Party handed control of the safeguarding process to the Challeners - but why? If they didn't know what David Challener was like because they failed to do proper background checks that is gross negligence, but if they did know and ignored it anyway the entire Party leadership should resign en masse.

Anyone met Aimee's big brother and half sibling?

WTF is a 'general nice girl' or do I not need to know ?

This section from the report is important:

6.60
Safeguarding risks are particularly acute in unstructured environments where interactions with vulnerable people are unregulated, unlike environmentssuch as schools where interactions are carefully managed.

Political parties and election campaigns are just this sort of unstructured environment.

We spoke to a number of people in the party about safeguarding. Of those what we spoke to, the chief of staff to Caroline Lucas MP, gave us the clearest explanation of how this case should have been dealt with as a safeguarding issue.

She told us that if she had known about the charges she would immediately have seen it as a safeguarding, as well as a media issue. She said she would have told the chief executive and the chair of the party’s executive committee.

She would have asked if Aimee’s involvement in the Young Greens would have given David Challenor access to young people.

She said that Aimee’s role in the party, which involved working with young people and the risk that arose from that should have been considered.

We asked Aimee whether she considered there were safeguarding issues arising from her father’s involvement with the party.

She told us :“There wouldn’t have been safeguarding... he had no personal access to members or members’ data.”

Comment As we have noted, prioritising the safety of children and vulnerable people is an individual responsibility of every member of society."

Safeguarding works when the organisation is basically safe, and the risk is that individuals with evil in their hearts attempt to get a position of trust. Safeguarding fails utterly when the keys are held by bad people and their patsys

You are also demonstrating a failure to understand Safeguarding.
You are not alone of course.
There is a systemic failure.

It is a cross party and cross organisational issue.

Safeguarding risks are particularly acute in unstructured environments where interactions with vulnerable people are unregulated, unlike environmentssuch as schools where interactions are carefully managed.

Liz Kelly about the conducive context of violence against women and girls.

The precariat status of so many people possibly underpins the sense of hopelessness and feeling that it's impossible to engage with what's happening even when our civic rights and freedoms are in jeopardy and it's happening in plain sight.

This analytic lens also clarified that no amount of ‘awareness raising’ would dissuade desperate people from risking their lives and freedom. Rather than focusing, as much anti-trafficking prevention does, on the supposed naivety of individuals and the unscrupulous individuals and networks who are hidden under the concept of ‘organised crime’, it was necessary to analyse and understand the interconnecting social, political and economic conditions within which exploitative operators profit from the misfortunes of others.
...
Feminists have long noted that certain contexts are conducive to VAW: the family; institutions; conflict and transition; public space and more recently online environments. What is less common is exploration, at a theoretical level, of what connects them, what makes these spaces ones in which men are enabled to abuse women and girls.
...
Other conducive contexts where these conditions apply include residential and locked institutions: children’s homes, mental hospitals, prisons, police stations have all been identified as spaces in which violence is commonplace and is all too often tolerated. Institutionalised gendered power relations can also be identified in educational institutions, faith organisations and workplaces: all are contexts where men’s status and authority, rather than inducing an ethic of care, can be used by abusive men to intimidate and silence.

discoversociety.org/2016/03/01/theorising-violence-against-women-and-girls/

Lisa Muggeridge:

'What Safeguarding is: where we are and what we have done.'

Girlguides: Grooming, Helen Watts and what is in plain sight.

You are also demonstrating a failure to understand Safeguarding.

Yes. Please be careful, everyone. ReflectentMonatomism is attempting to politicise safeguarding frameworks, presumably in service of their own political world view.

Safeguarding is neither political nor ideological. It is neither pro-TRA nor GC. It is neither left wing nor right wing.

It is a framework designed to protect the vulnerable and is therefore sceptical of everything: people and ideology alike.

Safeguarding is neither political nor ideological. It is neither pro-TRA nor GC. It is neither left wing nor right wing.

It is a framework designed to protect the vulnerable and is therefore sceptical of everything: people and ideology alike.

This ^^

It is a framework operated by people. An organisation consisting of people who are intending to harm children and people who are indifferent to harming children cannot protect children. The best and most rigorous safeguarding framework fails if all the people operating it are unwilling to confront potential risks. I struggle to understand how that makes me “political”. Merely saying that safeguarding has to be sceptical, with which I wholeheartedly agree, does not help when the people operating a safeguarding system are not in any way sceptical.

My personal "light bulb moment" came during a visit to a prison many years ago. I was being accompanied by the governor, and he showed me where and how to go through the security check procedure (bag removed; full metal scanner; pat down; shoe examination etc). After I had been cleared, he went through the same process.

I commented about being surprised that the man in charge of the establishment wasn't trusted enough not to need to go through the process, and he explained that security systems are safest when everyone goes through the same basic procedure, and no-one is deemed OK "because you know who they are and that they wouldn't do anything bad". There are no aspersions to be cast on requiring certain members of staff to be checked, because everyone is checked. The fact of the universal process reduces the risk that someone would be tempted to do something dangerous. And someone who complains about the process isn't someone that you want in your establishment anyway

For "security inside a prison", replace with "keeping vulnerable children and adults safe from those who might do them harm"

The fact of the universal process reduces the risk that someone would be tempted to do something dangerous.

Putting some people above suspicion in such a process also makes them targets for others to use.

he explained that security systems are safest when everyone goes through the same basic procedure, and no-one is deemed OK "because you know who they are and that they wouldn't do anything bad". There are no aspersions to be cast on requiring certain members of staff to be checked, because everyone is checked. The fact of the universal process reduces the risk

Exactly this.
Safeguarding is not about working out who are the 'good people who can be trusted' and who are 'bad/evil people who must be locked up'

The majority of Safeguarding risks are not those caused by determined dangerous predators though they will always seek to exploit loopholes.

The framework demonstrated in this example is not just the security check procedure but and more importantly the understanding and organisational ethos as demonstrated by the governor's actions and explanation.
It is seen working effectively by Olennas response.

Safeguarding shouldnt, cannot be politicised. It’s got to apply to everyone.

As part of my work I draw up and regularly review risks. I do this on a blanket set set of assumptions that errors happen and I try to design my systems so that as many of those risks as possible CANNOT happen. Where that’s not possible, I design them so that certain procedures apply to everyone so that the risk is reduced as much as possible and if it happens it’s picked up as quickly as possible. Every breach, fuck up or error triggers a dispassionate, blame free review.

I’ve worked at a company where the process was turned from blame free (blame only assigned with deliberate negligence not error) anonymous reporting to effectively a political system where blame was assigned. The system broke down within a few months and the error rate rose hugely - as this is a patient facing job, it has real life implications.

All political slant has to be discarded. Safeguarding frameworks apply to everyone. The people who assign blame are the courts.

We are seeing a move to politicisation and trial by social media - look what’s happening because of it.