We mustn’t be scared off caring for children
ReveLATIonS of the possible abuse of vulnerable youngsters at Ampleforth School are deeply distressing — but I’d urge extreme caution about legal action. I’ve spent many years teaching in residential schools where often one was faced with lonely and sometimes neglected youngsters who desperately wanted close relations with sympathetic adults. not infrequently, I found myself in the role of a substitute parent. Taking these kids on adventurous excursions, one sometimes found oneself in situations which could all too easily have been misinterpreted. on one occasion, I was camping with a group in Wales when the tents blew down in a storm and we retreated to a nearby barn. It was a dark and spooky place and I woke up to find all of the kids lying next me. Common sense would say the youngsters were frightened of the dark and wanted the reassurance of contact with an adult. But snuggling down in the straw with a bunch of kids on a dark night? There could be other interpretations. on a youth expedition in ecuador, I had a lad with Asperger’s syndrome whose difficult personality exposed him to a lot of bullying. one day, he had a stomach upset and messed himself in a bus station, so I hurried him into my hotel room where he cleaned himself up without any of the potential bullies learning of his humiliating predicament. I thought I’d acted wisely by saving the lad’s dignity and avoiding the teasing, but on our return to Britain I was hauled over the coals for opening up myself and the school for possible paedophile accusations. Having retired, I now do an annual volunteer stint in a remote Hungarian enclave, helping out in orphanages. often, the children are victims of neglect and horrible abuse. They’re very tactile and desperate for affection. They embrace you, hug you and sometimes even kiss you. one little girl refused to go to bed unless I’d given her a cuddle and a kiss. Avuncular care or ‘inappropriate sexual contact’? All too often the serious question of child abuse is polluted by vested interests and unscrupulous gold- diggers. After the ghastly Soham child murders, a huge raft of restrictive law was passed curtailing school exchange visits and contact with ‘unvetted’ adults. This culminated in the grotesque nonsense of a small boy having to walk five miles through a stormy night because none of the adults at his youth club were legally allowed to give him a lift home. Too often, sleazy lawyers have cashed in on allegations of historic child abuse. The losers in all this are the vulnerable children who are too easily denied the care and activities they need. Children aren’t an endangered species who need to be sealed off from the world. They’re us. All too soon they will be faced with the problems of the world. They need adult guidance. But who is going to give this guidance if they are going to be accused of paedophilia? I think of a Hungarian kid who, as an unwanted small boy, was found hidden under the floorboards of his mother’s house, half-starved, dehydrated and lying in a week’s worth of excrement. Taken into care, he made progress. But when he left the orphanage he was thrust into a harsh and unforgiving world with which he couldn’t cope. Without adult guidance, he drifted into crime and drug addiction. ‘Suffer the little children to come unto me and forbid them not.’ How long before some seedy lawyer accuses Jesus Christ of paedophilia?
TONY ARTHUR, Durham.