Michael Gove:Dereliction of duty to protect school children from child abusers
Michael Gove is not known for being shy and retiring when it comes to forcing decisions on the nation’s schools. Yet rather curiously he has disclosed that he has no intention of intervening to ensure that when children are sexually abused in the nation’s state funded and private schools that the incident should be reported.
My colleagues Frederika Whitehead and Mark Conrad have written the full story for Exaro News ( see http://www.exaronews.com/articles/4999/michael-gove-blocks-move-to-force-schools-to-report-sex-abuse) .
Put simply he has written to Cheryl Gillan, the ex-minister and Tory MP for nearby Chesham and Amersham, saying that he is against mandatory reporting of allegations to the specific local officer because it could ” swamp ” officialdom ” with every incident reported”. He says : ” schools should be trusted to make their own professional judgement ” to report the matter.
This statement is extraordinary for two reasons. Why does Gove think authorities are going to be swamped? Does he think they are loads of kids in the nation’s schools waiting to accuse their teachers of sexual abuse? Or does he suspect, as the abused tell us, that this much more widespread than we realise and he frankly doesn’t want to know?
Also sadly the idea of relying on schools to use their professional judgement to report sexual abuse cases appears to be rather hollow from my experience. In the investigations I have covered what appears to happen is that schools and social services are prone to cover this up. Both the London borough of Richmond and the Roman Catholic Salesian order have paid off victims and in the case of the Salesians got the person to sign a gagging order not to reveal what happened. This results in the perpetrators often being moved to avoid a scandal and getting new jobs elsewhere where they repeat the pattern, Jimmy Savile style.
I am sure that Michael Gove is not a supporter of paedophilia nor am I accusing or even inferring in the headline that he is remotely sympathetic to child abusers. But unwittingly by not doing so he is giving aid and comfort to those who want this hushed up. My accusation against Gove is more dereliction of duty as secretary of state for education in not providing the protection of the law for children who are sexually abused. I know from other sources that the Metropolitan Police Paedophile Unit take a similar view.
Westminster Confidential 
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Reblogged this on theneedleblog.
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“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing” Edmund Burke, Reflections on French Revolution 1790
Why is it , that when so many persons in authority have a duty to act , they then fail to do so ?
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Maybe because many of them are either victims or abusers themselves and for many complex psychological reasons this kind of avoidance is the easiest course for them.
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In the news recently a teacher kidnaps a fifteen yr old girl…
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A Head-Teachers conflict of interest with maintaining a schools reputation I think is a salient point in leading to any future possible cover up.
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Whats new? I first came across so called good men doing nothing in the early 1980’s after I saw and read confidential reports/attached docs about what had happend at Pine End Residential School Reigate. All the documentation is still around: the dozens of pupil, teacher and staff complaints. News of the World? – no the ILEA/Plod and the CPS did not proceed. Why? I cannot figure it out after recently re-reading the above docs.
The Head or he qwas moved by promotion. I bet he was in the County Lodge as well.
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Reblogged this on Vox Political and commented:
With reports of a teacher kidnapping a 15-year-old girl still fresh in our minds, Michael Gove has said he doesn’t want every incident of sexual abuse in schools to be reported to the appropriate authority. See what you make of this; I’d be interested in your opinions.
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Would he be happy for this ‘policy’ to inhibit the protection of his own children?
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Reblogged this on Ufohunter.org .
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I am entering the 3rd year of getting a school to let my child leave evidence about a headteacher bullying her in a SATS test in full view and with a partial admission by the head. Schools fear outcomes of litigation etc much greater than the children they’ care’ for being harmed.
It is highly unlikely that the evidence from a child given to a school would be acted on as the ethics in side such places have disappeared under damage limitation policies.
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Joy
Sadly this does not surprise me. The investigation I am still doing into child sexual abuse and bullying suggests schools either try to deny this or when they can’t offer compensation with a gagging clause to the parent to prevent them talking about it
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‘implying’ not ‘inferring’
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My accusation to Michael Gove is that he is a first class prick who should be one of the first trampled in the stampede of revolution. He’s a pathetic, sorry excuse for a minister and makes me long for corporal punishment…. just for him and his kind. He utterly disgusts me.
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Gove by his own admission acknowledges there is a widespread problem which all the evidence being revealed by Exaronews and others. To leave it to the school’s own judgement leaves many children open to continued abuse either emotional, physical or sexual. Especially if senior staff are the cause of such abuse
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Not a million miles away from Amersham, just on the other side of the M40 was a ILEA Special School linked to a central London children’s home, where according to a former associate editor of the Daily Mail and a local politician, children were abused. In fact one of the victims did go to a SOIT unit, who after interviewing her said ‘we believe you…but there is nothing we can do’. Nothing they could do? or nothing they were allowed to do? Could it be the status of the accused men and the man who was supplying and also allegedly abusing the girls as well prevented any action? Two of the three named men are long dead and the third has gone to live in Thailand.
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