It’s not true that children never lie
Jennie Bristow reviews “Researching Sex and Lies in the Classroom” in the Spiked Review of Books:
One of the most pernicious prejudices of our time is that adults, given half a chance, will abuse the children in their care.
This is the prejudice that lies behind the UK government’s out-of-control, increasingly unpopular mass vetting scheme, in which adults who want to spend time with, or take responsibility for, children other than their own must first be issued with a licence showing that they have no record of child abuse. It is also the prejudice that lies behind the ‘professional truism or working hypothesis or mantra that “children never lie about abuse”’: the subject of Pat Sikes and Heather Piper’s bold and disturbing investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct in schools.
Of course, some adults do abuse children. Sikes and Piper, along with myself and other critics of the current ‘stranger danger’ hysteria, acknowledge that some adults do terrible things to children and that society should punish and attempt to protect children from these individuals. But the recognition of the reality of child sex abuse is one thing; the overheated obsession with child abuse that characterises today’s society is a different phenomenon altogether. Researching Sex and Lies in the Classroom is a valuable attempt to emphasise that distinction, and work through the process by which trusted, responsible adults – in this case, teachers – can suddenly find themselves barred from school and forbidden to talk to their colleagues, based on nothing more than an adolescent’s claim that ‘he touched me’.
January 1st, 2010 at 22:43
This is news?
Children in care know perfectly well that all they need to do to regain their “freedom” is to make allegations against their foster carer. Just one breath of scandal and that’s it, the kid is whisked away to a fresh home and the carer faces a worrying investigation. (Last time I saw it happen, it was because the foster carer had forbidden the kid in question from attending a PARTY, after dark, with a dodgy crowd.)
I don’t always blame the kids either – they’re often insecure and emotionally troubled, and they’ll seize on whatever power lies within their grasp. But until there’s an equal right of redress for the carer, I can’t see many people being eager to be foster carers.