Mermaids being investigated by the Charity Commission - thread 2

[ResisterRex]

The first thread, towards the end of which there was a discussion about having a second thread but it wasn't added:

Mermaids being investigated by the charity commission
http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4644323-mermaids-being-investigated-by-the-charity-commissionn_

There's been a new development so maybe a second thread would be useful:

Lottery pauses trans charity cash during investigation

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/c959a286-44e4-11ed-8885-043c27446b97?shareToken=6d482edb1a386656502f33453da5c230

Miriam for PM, please.

One day, please , I'd love it if public people owned up to their MN names!

I know you are here! I want a face to go with your names, for the heroic work you've done educating, researching, archiving this shitshow.

Is it time to ask Gendered Intelligence what their safeguarding procedures are? They run youth camps and work with children as young as 8. A LinkedIn post from a transman mentor Tate Smith says that the children there "cry and bask in trans joy" at these events. What are the adult volunteers condoning at these private events? Binders? Hormone blockers outside of prescriptions? How to hide things from your parents? It's time that other trans organisations who work with children are also scrutinised.

Thanks Cher. That does help and I will have a look at the filing history

In terms of safeguarding (expert answers please!)...

What is a normal safe age range for a residential trip? Obviously it depends on many things, but surely, as a guide, keeping residential trips to kids the same age (within maybe a year either way, maybe two school years) is best practice?

What sort of safeguarding should be in place if you have 19 year old and 11 year old participants?

How do the answers get tighter if the purpose of the event relates to sex, sexuality and "gender" (whatever that is)?

Hmm. Think scouts. They would be organised by sections.

MrsJamin yes it is time. Definitely

Scouts used to be organised differently in terms of age. (It might have been 10 to 16 for scouts and 16 to 25 for Ventures but memory fails me).

After a number of issues they reorganised to 10.5 to 14 (ish - there is some movement on that slightly) for Scouts and then 14 to 18 for Explorers and 18 - 25 for Network.

I can't remember exactly what the old age ranges were but it was leading to two crucial problems - it meant you had relationships forming that weren't always appropriate or there were age inappropriate situations arising and you had the older ones not realy wanting to hang out with the youngest so were dropping out of the organisation which created a gap in progression to leadership.

This tends to work ok, but even now, there is some questions marks over certain activities/conversations that arise where there are older and younger explorers present in a situation. You do need to have a degree of caution. For example a group of explorers were organising their own evening and decided that perhaps they would like to play Cards against Humanity - leaders had to step in and explain it wasn't appropriate due to their age, sexual content and the fact there was only one girl present so this might get potentially awkward. It was a useful exercise in its own right in making the Explorers aware of certain issues as it turned out. There's also simple stuff like if they want to watch a film, the leaders have to be a little careful over 15 rated movies. Its not just about sharing tents.

Its much easier to deal with school years because of the narrowness of the age range and development. Any organisation with even with 4 years span has particular challenges because this does make a HUGE difference. Bigger than that is pretty unworkable / asking for problems.

DH is a scout leader but occasionally helps out with other sections (particularly explorers) so knows well they are completely different in their needs in terms of how you encourage independence / to think for themselves and what you need to consider for safeguarding. Scouts, ironically, sometimes need more supervision than cubs because they do riskier things and are more prone to doing stupid shit, whereas cubs tend to follow instructions and do as they are told more. Explorers on the other hand have much more responsibility themselves needing guidance to do the health and safety stuff but with this added element of sex being an issue.

The idea that you can mix 10 year olds with 20 year olds is absurd and leads to problems which have been DEMONSTRATED in the past with how scouting ran. The changes were made with good reason - its better for the kids and young people involved in terms of their experience as well as making it easier to protect them.

On a practical level narrower age bands wouldn't work in terms of the leadership demands. Its a struggle to get enough for the divisions as it is. The size of groups in an area doesn't give enough scale to make it viable. There is a trade of in terms of size of groups thats impossible to avoid.

They were still accredited after this and Mermaids response "incredible, thank you so much heart" on their twitter account.

God, that video was so disturbing. I'd forgotten about it. Has it been scrubbed from the Internet? I don't even want to describe it - I think it was probably here that I saw it reposted anyway - but it was worse than that description makes it sound. Really, if someone told you it was an excerpt from a horror movie or that it had been found in a serial killer's basement you'd have believed it.

If anyone's still got a link to the video it might be worth adding to this thread for any interested reporters, complaint-compilers or future historians documenting the scandal.

Mew is an appropriate name since, somewhat like Schrödinger's cat, he appears to be simultaneously both employed and not employed by Mermaids.

Employed-fluid, coming soon to all inclusion doctrines?

Employed-fluid 😂

I am struggling to understand this. When DC were younger I used to volunteer to help run their swimming club, and got landed with the task of renewing their Swim21 accreditation. Swim 21 is essentially the same as Sport England ClubMark and is a daunting checklist of paperwork. That was until I read through it and realised that each and every item was necessary, either to meet safeguarding, equalities legislation, good financial practice and so on. Pages and pages of the stuff. Staff knowing evacuation procedures for pools, parents helping on overnight trips and residential training camps being DBS checked and receiving appropriate safeguarding training, important medical information and emergency contacts being held securely but accessibly, and and and. Including requirements to have key policies on the website.

Swimming pool owners: Local Authority Leisure Centres and Schools made it clear that they would not allow us to operate on their premises if we were not up to date. It was fine. The very fact that we complied with requirements probably kept some of of the dodgier characters, the sort who are interested in children wearing swimming costumes, away. The requirements were also protected staff and volunteers and were presumably required by the insurers.

What I don't understand is this.

If Local Authorities and others can demand high levels of compliance to safeguarding and regulatory standards from sports clubs in exchange for access and support, why can't Children and Need and the Lottery demand similar from charities delivering to often vulnerable children.

It would not be so difficult. Mermaids had £500,000 from the lottery. Even basic stuff like DBS checks for staff, trustees, volunteers.

DM has dropped the Mew Story.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11302231/Parents-children-used-trans-charity-call-probe-worker-posed-explicit-images.html
Parents of children who used trans charity Mermaids call for watchdog probe after worker 'posed naked in explicit images and posted 'sexualised' photo of him as a schoolgirl on Instagram'

Darren Mew became digital engagement officer at Mermaids in September 2021
But parents of children who have used charity have complained to the watchdog
It comes after Mew shared explicit picture in a short skirt on Instagram last year
They also featured in naked collage holding penis for LGBT outlet Haus Magazine
Mew no longer works for charity, which says it's not been informed of complaint

Article is surprisingly low key in tone BUT then segways into talking about Breslow. And we do have some pics (safe for work ones).

We have a statement though:
Mermaids has insisted it is the victim of a 'smear campaign', adding that it has been forced to close its contact centre after being bombarded with abuse.

A spokesperson for the charity said: 'Mermaids would like to update our service users and allies in light of recent events. Firstly, we have regrettably continued to receive a high volume of distressing, and in some cases threatening, calls, emails and web chat contacts as a result of some of the recent coverage.

'We must protect our staff from this unacceptable abuse, and therefore we will be closing the helpline service tomorrow (Wednesday) in order to give them respite.

'We will be resuming a normal service as soon as we can, but we are operating in a particularly challenging environment at present and there may be further interruptions to our usual service.

'We are taking all possible steps in response, including referring all contacts of a criminal nature to the police.

'Secondly, The Times newspaper published an article today about a former member of staff. While we can confirm that the person referred to no longer works for the charity, we are unable to comment further due to the need to maintain confidentiality.

'We note claims in the paper that an anonymous person has made a complaint to the Charity Commission but have not been informed about it directly and so are not aware of its precise nature. Should the Charity Commission have any questions for us then we will of course answer them.

'We must apologise for the need to write again with news of this nature but remain enormously grateful for your support as we navigate this challenging period.'

This sounds like the helpline is now COMPLETELY down (not just outside hours) and they are blaming it on abuse (not the fact they keep losing staff or finding creeps in their midst).

Taking all possible steps in response, with the emphasis being on reporting nasty people to the police rather than making the point about getting their own house in order first. Again, staff are the priority here, they have to get the boot in with no mention of safeguarding children first.

naked collage holding penis

Even the back-in-the-day News of the World would have scratched their heads over whether to include that.

From what I can make out, the vast majority of Mermaids employees are 20 somethings who think ‘safeguarding’ means ‘encouraging kids to trans themselves and not letting those meany parents stop them’

Same with GI - the person mentioned up thread has multiple comments from camp attendees on their Instagram posts. Surely it’s never OK for an adult volunteer to have online contact with a minor outside of the strict parameters of their volunteer role, all comms directly through the organisations system?

Reminds me somewhat of the inquiry into the abject failures around Challoner's work with the Green party, where the inquiry had to conclude after repeated conversations, explanations and encouragement that the person being interviewed thought safeguarding meant data protection, and did not actually have the capacity to understanding safeguarding.

It makes you wonder what other qualifications are needing in addition to identifying as TQ+

Not to mention that safeguarding requires a culture and solid workplace routines and habits and expectations of practice. Being soaked in sex positivity is great and means anything at all goes, we love no boundaries, children can consent to anything at all, anything we can sneer at as heteronormative or any other buzz words means we don't have to take any notice of it, and kink is a normal, natural part of being TQ+ (and everyone else roped in to that label) has pretty much ended this before it starts. And this is why they employed and worked with someone who openly embraces pedophilia and wants the world to, has employees who have no issue with broadcasting their penis and anus all over the web while working with children and are pretty much embracing many of the strategies and values from the pedophile manifesto - because there isn't such as thing as going along with some of it. Any step on that path enables all the rest of the steps. They're seen as good, positive, anarchistic queering of boring old silly society rather than something that any rational organisation would see as a fundamental catastrophe.

Its a classic institutional SNAFU. Situation Normal: All Fucked Up.

Fascinating how they can't apologise - for something that every decent person knows is wrong. They're backed into a corner because their whole ethos is about breaking down children's boundaries about what is factual, safe, right for children, confidence in parents.
Most organisations faced with this would have issued a fulsome apology, an assurance that this does not represent the organisation, a promise that children's safety will always be prioritised. Presumably Mermaids are unable to do this because......

When faced with four, (so far, give it a few days, they keep appearing) separate, major safeguarding fails, would any reputable org that knows about safeguarding immediately:

a) stop everything, embrace and welcome all information and commit to absolute transparency and vigorous work to limit further harm, identify harm done and repair this devastation to work and reputation?

or

b) wail piteously about how if people wouldn't point out safeguarding disasters and insist on talking about them and bringing them to light, then the staff would all be happy and they could all get on with disastrously failing to safeguard in peace and harmony.

One of those responses is a safeguarding fail that fades the other four into mere insignificance.

I'm wondering something here... what is the timeline on these recent developments in education?

• schools develop strict safeguarding policies and make sure every teacher is trained in how safeguarding works
• LGBT+, especially trans issues, become an increasing focal point for schools, even primary schools
• chunks of the education curriculum (particularly in relation to LGBT+) get outsourced to third party organisations which have no requirement for their staff to be trained or certified in safeguarding, or indeed in anything much.

I always think those ‘Protect Trans Kids’ t shirts kinda funny because the wearer presumably thinks they are protecting children with an innate trans identity from us..

The meanies who are trying to stop paedos accessing kids, against telling teenagers there is something wrong with their bodies… and against genital amputation?

Will they ever have a ‘are we the baddies?’ moment?

@TastefulRainbowUnicorn

Short clip here

twitter.com/gprofessx/status/1517988954502430720?t=mYdFahgxVcD0y4V1urUcag&s=19

Completely agree