Peter Wilby - warning CSA

[IcakethereforeIam]

Just read this article in the Guardian. It reminded me of a very similar one I read recently. I wanted to post it on here but completely forgot where I'd seen it. The previous article (probably the DM) was fairly scathing on the Guardian virtually ignoring the conviction of its former editor and completely ignoring the ramifications of his behaviour while in post. He was a user of csa material and used his influence and position to undermine safeguarding, smear whistle blowers and victims, and kill stories.

I wonder, in a few years, will we look back and see even more influential men and women currently using their influence and positions in the current war on women, children and safeguarding?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/sep/02/peter-wilby-editor-child-sexual-abuse

The last sentence of the article is a question that I can answer

Wilby leaves us a tough question: will we ever learn?

All the evidence points to 'No'.

I saw this Observer / Guardian article and realised for whatever reason I hadn't seen about Wilby's conviction. I do hope that is justs me being unobservant and not the media covering up for one of its own.

I suspect that as with many other men who are lauded by the media, and are revealed after death to have been sexual predators or worse, that many journalists would have been aware.

Or if they weren't aware must have thought his opinions on, if not over the border line. No surprise that the Guardian would have thought it okay to print Wilby's opinion that people were just being hysterical and exaggerating the risks to children. So cutting edge.

And of course its not just the media cronies. Only this week did we find out that the Labour Party was trying to supress members talking about a convicted user of child pornography allowed to stand as a councillor, and the local mayor lying about knowing this.

Apart from the awfulness of the actual crimes it means we can have no faith that either the media or politicians actually care about children being abused. They just use it as an issue when trying to score points. Otherwise they just turn away and shrug if off as thought child abuse was no more worrying than someone illegally parking.

Iwanttoretire - the story has been covered by all the main papers, but unfortunately the verdict was announced the same day as the Letby verdict so it got buried in all that coverage.

Perhaps I'm naive, but I'd like to think that Wilby's colleagues weren't aware of his crimes. Downloading child sex abuse images is the sort of thing it's easy to keep secret (I don't know how it came to light in Wilby's case) so if he wasn't abusing children himself they might not have known.

And I think Wilby's views, although unpleasant, are not that far from the mainstream. Don't forget that quite recently a man, Carl Beech, was found to have spun an elaborate story in which he falsely accused several prominent men in public life of being part of a paedophile ring. So I think it's not unreasonable in itself to say we need to be cautious in how we treat accusations of sexual abuse. It's just that when you know the context of Wilby's crimes you see his use of that argument in a whole different light.

Note that Carl Beech got 18 months for similar images, (tacked on top of 15 years for the false reporting. )

So I think it's not unreasonable in itself to say we need to be cautious in how we treat accusations of sexual abuse.

Maybe, but this is also the arguement used against women who try to report rape. Because of a very, very tiny number of women who have made false allegations, the police and CPS start from the position that women are lying.

And from memory, the Carl Beach accussations got as far as they did because of a failure of policing.

" ... A report of the inquiry's findings found that detectives and officers within the operation's taskforce had committed several errors during the course of their work, and made calls for more effective checks on allegations and accountability by police.

Following the reporting of the inquiry's findings, the Metropolitan Police were forced to make apologies to those who had been accused and to compensate them financially. ... "

100% agree the articles should remain - with additional information about his conviction (put up front so readers read that before reading his opinion/articles).

Why do they say he’s been convicted of MAKING child sex abuse images? I don’t understand that wording. It suggests he took the photos but clearly that would be even more serious than having/viewing the images. Or is ‘making’ a legal term that covers extracting photos from a criminal investigation file and putting them in a personal computer file? I’m shocked he’s only registered as a sex offender for 5 years… why only 5?!

A very chilling article when we now know what we know.

It's worth a compare and contrast with this one from Peter Tatchell, as both seem to have a remarkably similar style:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/libertycentral/2009/sep/24/sex-under-16-underage

Both articles have a clear takeaway in amongst the "reasonable", where Tatchell's is to lower the age of consent and Wilby's is that child abuse isn't happening as much as you think.

"Making" has a very wide technical definition in the context of this law, and can include copying images as I understand it.