Andrew Gilligan Times: 'Green high-flyer Aimee Challenor hid father’s rape charges' David Challenor 'A paedophile rapist posed a “major safeguarding risk” for almost two years'

[R0wantrees]

(extract)
"A paedophile rapist posed a “major safeguarding risk” to young Green Party members for almost two years because one of the party’s rising stars did not clearly tell colleagues that the man had been charged with serious sex crimes.

An independent investigation has found that Aimee Challenor, a transgender activist and candidate for the Greens’ deputy leadership, committed a “serious error of judgment” by appointing her father, David, as her agent at two elections even as he faced trial for kidnapping, raping and torturing a 10-year-old girl.

The inquiry, by the investigations consultancy Verita, criticised the Greens for treating the matter “primarily as a communications one” and “failing to see the safeguarding issues that arise”. The party’s “support for diversity” did not remove the need for someone like Aimee Challenor to have proper “training and support” in a leadership role, the investigators said.

A 17-page summary of the report was quietly published last week. However, the full 80-page report, seen by The Sunday Times, is more critical. It says Challenor, the Greens’ equality spokeswoman, had been guilty of a “serious omission” by not telling her local party and most national officials about her father’s charges.

Challenor blamed her autism for not doing so and told the inquiry: “At the end of the day you can’t go about telling every Tom, Dick and Harry.” The investigators said they found it “hard to understand some of Aimee’s actions and explanations”.

The omission allowed David Challenor to run his daughter’s office and mix with young activists and members’ children at events that included a picnic only weeks before his trial.

A jury at Warwick crown court convicted Challenor of holding his victim captive in the attic of the family home. He was jailed for 22 years for the series of offences." (continues)

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/green-high-flyer-hid-father-s-rape-charges-kdhrfhll3

current thread:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3474311-Veritas-report-due-tomorrow-Thursday-at-midday-re-Aimee-Challenor

Also maybe try to astroturf more relevant threads. It's like someone jumping in to parking threads to explain the virtues of going vegan/joining PETA/buying your cheese from Waitrose instead of Tesco.

I don't trust fucking UKIP on safeguarding or women's rights any more than I trust that bloke with the baseball bat with 'die terf scum' written on it.

I don't trust fucking UKIP on safeguarding or women's rights any more than I trust that bloke with the baseball bat with 'die terf scum' written on it.

With good cause.

Pomo reframing of practices as beliefs / identities works to defang those practices (feminism itself is a good example)

The misunderstandings of safeguarding in some of these discussions have a similar ring to me. Safeguarding isn't something you believe or identify with. It isn't a property of a good or bad belief system. It's something you do. It's observable and everybody can see whether you are doing it right or not.

We need a national review of safeguarding practice benchmarked against existing standards in the light of these disclosures. As pp have said, the gp is just the tip of the iceberg here.

it's kind of flattering.

but mostly annoying

anyway, back to safeguarding. I'm a private sector It person so know nothing about this - I'm learning lots!

We need a national review of safeguarding practice benchmarked against existing standards in the light of these disclosures. As pp have said, the gp is just the tip of the iceberg here.

Agree.

We need a national review of safeguarding practice benchmarked against existing standards in the light of these disclosures. As pp have said, the gp is just the tip of the iceberg here.

I honestly think that what is needed is clearer explanations of what is already known and for people to take a little time to understand what Safeguarding is (and isn't)

A lot of Safeguarding training is predominantly focussed on policies.
It clearly needs to focus on first principles.

It isn't neccessary for people to become experts in the complex legislation that professionals who work with children and vulnerable adults use.

There will though be significant changes that comes out of the Historic Child Sexual abuse enquiry

There will though be significant changes that comes out of the Historic Child Sexual abuse enquiry

You're right - but how long is that expected to take?

Safeguarding is political I'm afraid.

There are places which do not have safeguarding or limited safeguarding. Why?

And we are actively seeing lobbying to remove various forms of safeguarding at present.

Safeguarding was victorian era lobbying and politics which introduced us to modern day concept of safeguarding children. But eugenics as a political and scientific idea post dates this.

Safeguarding can only exist because the current politics value its worth, and the census is that harm to the vulnerable is a bad thing and we need social safety nets to prevent this.

What we are currently seeing is a number of political movements and opinions which actively reflect eugenic ideas in which only the strongest survive and certain people are a 'drain' or 'burden' on society and are not worthy of being seen as equal humans to all other humans (look no further than trump with his immigrant rats or kardashians who think everyone should have surrogate children for easy popular main stream examples. Or various attitudes in the UK to do with benefits or immigration)

What is NOT political is what happens if you do not have safeguarding structures in place. It exposes the vulnerable to exploitation. This is unfortunately a reality of the human experience.

The point is here is that the Overton window has shifted in the sense of how this is being spoken about and how its valued and by whom.

It's about the power of the state over you and the power certain groups over others, which is fundamentally changing. Previously this thinking was about this liberal idea of equality and balancing the needs of all.

This rising authoritarianism is hugely political and is precisely to do with power dynamics.

Neo-liberalism as an idea values people not as humans but as commodities. Which harks back to the politics of a time when slavery was viewed as an essential part of society and how slaves wouldn't be able to cope without their masters anyway 'because of their inferior intelligence'.

I think there is huge danger in suggesting that safeguarding is not political when it most certainly is.

I think what you are trying to say is that a failure of safeguarding or opposition is politically unacceptable in mainstream politics. Which is demonstrably false - its just about how you spin it and justify how it's politically acceptable in order to shift the Overton window further towards your end goal or belief.

This failure to understand rights as a political construction just leads you to taking them for granted. Safeguarding is merely part of the political mechanism to protect those rights which is then backed up by legal frameworks. But you can remove them because they are not something that has always been universal nor existed for all of human history as an unchanging unchallengable thing.

They are, when all is said and done, something which is open to debate and review. It's just that the end result of their removal is deeply unpleasant and harmful to other human beings. Whether we think this is OK, is a matter of politics.

There are observable failures in safeguarding practice occurring within the nspcc, girl guides, women's refuges, schools and nhs services at a minimum. The problem seems to be an endemic shift in how policies are understood and applied at the highest level.

Add prisons to that list.

The problem seems to be an endemic shift in how policies are understood and applied at the highest level.

Which is wholly political...

RTB of course you are right. But I think it's important to separate this into 2 questions

1. how do you do safeguarding (evidence-based, not political)

2. should you do safeguarding (rights-based, political)

Messing about with 1) achieves a change in 2) by stealth.

VickyEadie A lot is already out and is instructive as to how abuse goes unchecked, what contributes to predatory offenders going unreported and victims and concerns dismissed or ignored.
Its not neccessary to wait for the final report.

Reflecting about and being aware of how power can be used and abused against those who are vulnerable will always be central.

I think by not political, people mean that safeguarding is not inherently left wing or right wing

it's about giving a shit about vulnerable people, and as we've seen, there are plenty of both left and right wingers who don't give a shit, and some across the political spectrum who do

Safeguarding is about protecting children ,young people and vulnerable adults from abuse or neglect. We are all responsible for the safety of the most vulnerable members of our society.

The key problem seems to be that all of the parties with any chance of winning a general election are going along with the dismantling of safeguarding measures. We can debate how much of that is stupidity and how much is malice (and how much is the process by which lobbying works being a mess in general), but the solution is clearly not going to be trying to persuade women concerned about safeguarding to vote for a fringe party that hasn't a hope in hell of winning a general election. The Tories, Labour, and the LibDems all have troubling policies on this. All of them have been influenced by lobbying by dodgy groups. Although applying strategic pressure to each party as and when possible is a good thing, the underlying question of how those policies came to be enacted across the board in the first place remains.

Tallulalah, the idea that medicine should be based on evidence is currently one opening up to debate in the face of market forces.

That's the problem.

Science is being politicised. Rather than searching for biases and removing human influences on a subject.

It's part of the same process of how authoritarian gets a grip over society.

You can not separate it. You can only merely identify it and point out its flaws, which often does not hold the same emotional power over people.

We are facing a tidal wave of this. I don't think it can be rationally reversed. It has to come from so sort of huge emotional kickback against it.

That's what scares me and that's precisely why Ukip are positioning themselves where they are. Not because they believe in something. Rather they want to try and harsh some of these emotional responses that are driving politics currently.

Harsh = harness sorry

The ref made people realise that emotion not logic was a better way of controlling the public and getting votes.

redtoothbrush

Thanks for that post (14.38) I have to do some training by a very woke organisation soon so I'm sure it will come in very handy

What we are currently seeing is a number of political movements and opinions which actively reflect eugenic ideas in which only the strongest survive and certain people are a 'drain' or 'burden' on society and are not worthy of being seen as equal humans to all other humans (look no further than trump with his immigrant rats or kardashians who think everyone should have surrogate children for easy popular main stream examples. Or various attitudes in the UK to do with benefits or immigration)

Hell I'd only thought of Trump/Kardashians etc as hopefully short-term nutjobs with too much money but the scale of followers I guess does make them, as a body, a movement. How utterly depressing.

I think we're on the same page red

My response to it all is to keep on advocating for the evidence base

All of them have been influenced by lobbying by dodgy groups. Although applying strategic pressure to each party as and when possible is a good thing, the underlying question of how those policies came to be enacted across the board in the first place remains.

The questions need to start with groups who have lobbied.

Just as The Green Party have had to review following David Challenor's abuse and Aimee Challenor's actions, Stonewall have a similar responsibility

It seems possible that as a consequence of allegations against Jess Bradley, both NUS and Action for Trans Health will be closely scrutinised.

The systemic Safeguarding failures within The Green Party will likely also be revealed in these organisations.

Yes. Agree. Selling rights is a long boring hard slog IMHO.

It's something which I don't think people buy into until they see injustice.

And you have to be there to 'catch people when they fall' in terms of having their eyes open. Otherwise they will be 'caught' by people like Ukip.