Mermaids charity paedophile & porn photos scandal in the press

[MrsOvertonsWindow]

The Times have covered the Mermaid's employee and his pornographic photos as well as the trustee over interested in paedophilia. I didn't think the press would cover this as it's so extreme but am relieved they have as schools who promote Mermaids really need to know what children are being exposed to. Share token:

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/ca30ddfe-48e1-11ed-8176-c5c5e560820a?shareToken=bb95ff5e988ec157b06e22f7455eb977

My thinking is that if a bloke shows pictures on the internet he cannot complain when people start talking about it.

I'm not sure when it became questionable to say something is inappropriate. A man wearing a short miniskirt draped over his penis is inappropriate. And you can say no to wanting him to work for a children's charity. You can say no to him about anything.

Wearing a miniskirt draped over your cock isn't a protected characteristic!

Indeed, Datun!! Suspending our instinctive understanding of what is safe and appropriate for children or what is safe and dignified for women and girls, because we’re worried we’re not being inclusive or nice enough, is exactly how we got here in the first place.

Wearing a miniskirt draped over your cock isn't a protected characteristic!

Bigot

@Birdsweepsin I don't even want to consider the Google search terms that came up with that!

You really can't see the difference between a man exposing his arsehole on the internet and him wearing make up?

I don't think anyone here is going to be able to help you

GrabbyGabby I guess the point of safeguarding is that it shouldn't matter whether you're a blue-hair green-eyebrow sort or a glasses-and-cardigan sort. The organisation should have a process to check that you understand what is and isn't appropriate behaviour around children and young people, and how you fit into the complex safety net that should surround kids, especially vulnerable ones.

That's not hard. I've asked, and been asked, that question in job interviews. And then it's an ongoing process while you are in post to see how you handle possible referrals, engage with processes and systems, undertake training. And that's where the flags might start to appear (assuming you got through the first interview).

So it doesn't matter what you look like when you turn up to the job interview AS LONG AS the organisation in question understands safeguarding and has strong systems and a laser focus on how their staff engage with those systems.

That's where Mermaids falls down so spectacularly.

Sorry @Birdsweepsin , I had to unlurk at that! 🤣🤣🤣🤣

No @Clymene , i am not blind (although i may need to bleach my eyes).

I just need to understand better when non conforming tips over into inappropriate. I think it really matters that we can explain where at least some of the boundaries are in a way others will understand.

Thinking of Grayson Perry, he at times dresses like a doll and at times like a cross dressing man and at times as a man. He has never triggered my spidey senses in the way the very first pics of Mew did. But if non conformity that involves the trappings of childhood is a red flag, then Grayson Perry should have the red flag bunting, no working with kids for him. One the one hand, I am not sure the general populace would agree with that assessment of a national treasure in the making, on the other hand, Jimmy Saville.

If i am being very honest the first pics of Mew,( before the kilt and the plethora of penii) sent my spidey senses off the scale, i am now thinking it wasn't the gender non conformity that triggered me, rather his very sexualised presentation, even in just head shots (the head on shoulders head, not the other head, just to be clear).

I just want to avoid becoming the horrible bigot i am so often accused of being, so need to spend some time exploring this.

The thing is, there are different kinds of boundaries to push. Some of it is fine, some not.

It's not the gender-non-conformity that's a concern - it's the sexualised nature of the images. If it was a woman who had posted a picture of herself like the kilt picture, while also being responsible for social media for a charity that works with vulnerable children, it would still be inappropriate.

I mean bloody hell I wouldn't post a picture like that and expect it to not raise eyebrows with my employer, and I don't work with vulnerable people.

See also the thread about the mother who attended the school board dressed in the same skimpy outfit as the drag queen who performed at a school. The "queerness" is irrelevant.

Sorry x-posted but I think my answer still stands!

One of the most basic rules of the internet is that a photo once posted may come back and haunt you.

Not sure precisely what a digital engagement officer does but he should know that

Page 3 girls (or the modern day equivalent of Onlyfans models) don't go on Children In Need to help out with the fund-raising.

It is inappropriate for this guy to be working at a children's charity.

The main problem with all of this is that the people working at Mermaids clearly don't understand safeguarding. Even if Darren Mew is perfectly safe around children himself, it is abundantly clear that he has no idea about boundaries or safeguarding children. If he did, then there wouldn't be pictures of his dick and butthole freely available on Twitter with a simple search of his name. His lack of safeguarding knowledge and caring about boundaries is what makes him unsuitable for a children's charity. He has no idea how to keep children safe.

It's exactly the same as the Drag Queens Aida H Dee, and Flo Job. Both had sexually explicit material on the same social media that they used to advertise themselves as 'story tellers'. This tells us that they know nothing about online boundaries and therefore are unsuitable to work with kids.

When Munroe got dropped from the NSPCC after it came out that they had been inviting minors to privately message them, it wasn't because they thought that Munroe themselves was a danger to kids directly. It's that Munroe displayed such a basic lack of knowledge about safeguarding that you couldn't justify keeping them on in a children's charity.

Same for Rubberman. Again, not necessarily a danger to kids himself, but what kind of person doesn't understand that you can't work for the nations largest children's charity and take photos of yourself in rubber fetish gear in your work toilets and then post them publicly online!

Jacob Breslow may actually be a different matter and is perhaps still the most horrifying of all the revelations so far given what he wrote on his blog.

I have just realised, writing all that out, how much evidence is mounting up here, its unbelievable really! Its also shocking/not shocking that every single person referenced here is male.

I think they do know and they don't care.

I was thinking about that kilt picture of Mew and assessing in my head how much of a red flag it was. After all, we are gender critical right, we think that it shouldn't matter what sex you are as to whether you wear 'women's clothes or mens clothes' etc, so a gender non-conforming man shouldn't be a problem.

But then I was thinking about what I would think if, semi aside, it was a woman wearing those clothes and in that pose? Would I think it was sexualised or just a woman going about her day? Would I think a woman posting pictures of herself like that was unsuitable to work for a charity for vulnerable kids - yes, of course I would. Im

@GrabbyGabby

Personally I think any men who gains sexual pleasure from wearing women's and children's clothing shouldn't be in schools wearing that clothing. Because the sexual pleasure is about boundary pushing which means the children (in this example) are unwitting participants in that sexual pleasure.

Grayson Perry gets sexual pleasure from dressing as Clare. So no, I don't think he should go into schools dressed like that. How do we know this?
Because he has written about it and talked about it.

James Makings, who worked for the NSPCC, got a massive sexual thrill from wearing a rubber suit under his clothes and wanking in the toilets at the NSPCC. How do we know this?
Because he took photographs of himself and uploaded them to the internet, telling everyone who looked at them where he worked.

Men like this know that other men are aroused at the idea of them transgressing children's boundaries. So they do it because even if they themselves are not aroused at the idea of children and sex, they know other men will be.

Is that clear enough?

I think my brain has been struggling with this on two fronts. I genuinely do want to break down societal boundaries that serve no useful purpose. I don't give a shit if my doctor has a daith piercing and a neck tattoo as long as they are qualified and do a good job. I would hate to be judging people on superficial appearance alone.

I also haven't been clear enough in my own thinking on what exactly inappropriate boundary transgression looks like. This has been made so much harder by normalisation of things like drag queens in libraries.

It is getting clearer for me now, it is not the pink hair and the extreme makeup, it is the sexualisation that is the issue. And if an individual is sexualised in any public forum, then this should automatically barr them from working with children.

This is why we need the safeguarding experts back.

Grayson Perry is a self aware boundary pusher, who as far as I know has never put himself in the position where he could be on residential trips with vulnerable teens and children or chatting to them unsupervised on Instagram.

whats ok at an art opening is not necessarily ok at a primary school.

what’s ok at a nightclub (drag) is not ok at a library reading time aimed at preschoolers.

i don’t care if Darren Mew made arty porny pictures. What I do care about is that any tween or teen who read his name on a mermaids page/social media account could’ve googled up Twitter and seen his dick.

art porn/rubber porn/any porn OR working a childrens charity.

you can’t have both, certainly not using the same name.

WTF didn’t he at least use a ‘stage name’ for the porny pic?

I don't really agree.

It does not hurt anyone to dress in conventional clothes, if they want a conventional job.

It really does not.

People can wear what they want, to a point, outside of work.

But anyone who is pushing for a significant liberalizing of convention does actually have to either accept that others will consider them potentially dangerous boundary pushers, or make an argument for changing the boundary that most people accept.

It's not like we are talking about social norms that say women have to have bound feet or anything like that.

Some people need to grow up and realize their sense of self shouldn't depend on other people thinking they are cool rule breaking types. If nothing else it can be indicative of a personality that needs a lot of external validation which isn't something that is necessarily a great thing in a teacher or employee with significant responsibilities.

Exactly this.

when these latest revelations have come out, I can’t help thinking back to the Cass Report and how it highlighted how over represented looked-after children are in the population of children and young people with gender distress. These are the most vulnerable children in society, presenting with multiple, complex issues and the standards around the people and organisations who purport to help them should if anything be higher than usual. It’s not a place where people who boast about their boundary-pushing should find a natural home. It needs people with the most scrupulous moral standards, and the deepest understanding of the multi faceted issues at play.

What it gets instead is single issue dilettantes with no discernible relevant qualifications, dodgy personal interests and subject to wildly shoddy or absent background checking. And it’s simply astonishing that they still seem to be failing to see the issue. It should be step one- children's charities will absolutely attract some really dodgy people, so you need failsafe methods of weeding them out at the first possible opportunity.

As I always say re Mermaids- users of this service, for fucks sake will you please demand BETTER for your children. Hold them to some standards. Take your fingers out your ears, stop yelling at the world for pointing out your failings, and fix it.

I think Grayson P is a great artist but his work is in no way suitable for kids.

eg, penis-power-pot.

Edgy art ain’t for kids.

I think you're being a bit disingenuous there about high heels which have long been acknowledged as a fetish for many men. Women have argued that high heels are bad for health and posture, so the same would be true for men. No high heels in any workplace for purely practical and H&S reasons would be the sensible norm. What you do in private, in your own time, is up to you — but if you splash your fetish all over your SM pages don't expect to work with vulnerable people.

Sorry, think I responded to the wrong person. Yes GrabbyGrabby, sexualisation is the issue.

Great posts Smilelesstalkmore and Sophocles

With reference to the point about how over represented looked-after children are in the population of children and young people with gender distress, look at what we were discussing back in 2018 :

www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/3324578-Vunerabilities-of-Looked-After-Children-Social-Work-CP-restricted-by-affirmation-requirement-Trans-Youth-in-Care-Toolkit