Firstly, whilst I am not particularly surprised by either the moral panic which has been successfully whipped up or the uniformity of views expressed about this, it's far from clear to me that it is or should be a closed question. Indeed, I rather think that if it is decided, it should be decided in quite another direction. The man whose case initially sparked the controversy had admitted guilt, but not in a criminal trial. He has no conviction, as I understand the law, for child sex offences, and there are reasons quite separate from those of innocence or guilt for accepting a caution rather than going to trial, just as presumably the police had reasons for choosing to offer the alternative of a caution rather than going to trial. The question of his guilt does not thus seemed wholly settled to me.
Further, and more importantly, even if his guilt was a settled matter, the assumption that that guilt automatically rules him out from ever working with children seems to me obviously wrong. One drunk driving offence, an act which can negligently take the lives of others, surely a more serious wrong should it occur than looking at child pornography, does not prevent someone from ever using a car or drinking again. As a punishment for the offence, being barred from any employment which involved children seems to me disproportionate, because it denies the possibility of reform. To deny the possibility of reform is to deny the possibility of agency, of control over the direction of a life, and, close as much of the coverage of such cases does come to doing that, surely if paedophiles did totally lack agency, we would treat them quite differently, as one would treat dangerous animals or the criminally insane. Of course, it would incredibly careless not to make assessments of whether or not reform has occured, but since, one hopes, qualified professionals have judged that this man was neither criminally insane or a dangerous animal and did not pose a risk to his charges, maybe we should extend some trust to them and to him.
Postscript: Shuggy further demonstrates his clear and well-argued views on this matter here, and Aaronvitch Watch has two related pieces here and here.
Saturday, January 14, 2006
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12 comments:
I agree.
God knows what is for the best in cases like this. But "qualified professionals": that'll be broadly the same bunch who keep letting out murderers to do it again? The prob is surely that Homo sap is such a complex beast that there really aren't any such things as qualified professionals.
simple view: what do the 'people' think?
Damned, like it or not, he is (not intending to sound like a SW character), so the question then becomes:
"How do you prevent further erosion of faith in a (number of) failing system(s)?
Answer. Don't employ the fella.
surely if paedophiles did totally lack agency, we would treat them quite differently, as one would treat dangerous animals or the criminally insane
Agreed, except that I think that's precisely the perspective that underlies the frenzy (if a perspective can do that) - "You mean we're not treating them like dangerous animals? This must stop!"
On the agency thing, if paedophiles did totally lack agency, it would actually make the moral panic rather difficult to understand, because it views them as genuinely evil, and evil (conventionally) is thought to require choice. When animals attack people they aren't evil, they're dangerous.
On the 'you shore up confidence in a system by sacking people you believe to be qualified for the job' thing, that stance assumes degrees of disconnect both between what is required to shore up confidence in a system, and what is required for the system, and between the what is required to shore up confidence in the system and the public attitudes of those who run the system. It is as if public opinion has never been changed by a government, as if the accomodation with the legacy of Thatcher that New Labour came to is an accomodation with a natural fact not a historical one.
I have to say I'm surprised at just how many journalists and bloggers are willing to give the benefit of the doubt to someone whose grasp of their professional repsonsibilities was so poor, he didn't seem able to grasp that shagging pupils wasn't part of his remit. The gentleman in question has ruled out the possibility of reform at least in his own case with the typical response you get from people like this who have disgraced themselves and their profession: it's not black and white, it's more complicated than that. Sorry, but it is black and white and it's not complicated. Pupils fancy teachers not despite the fact they are a teacher but because they are a teacher. If someone doesn't understand this, they are too stupid to be a teacher. If they do understand this but don't care, they are too bad to be a teacher.
Shuggy,
the case I was originally referring to was of someone who had looked at dodgy things on the web, not shagged his pupils, so that's not really relevant. Even if it were, the more general point, that to rule out anyone who had ever managed to get themselves on the sex offenders list from ever working with children is dubious, would still stand. The points that it's possible to get on to the sex offenders list without being convicted of anything and that it is possible for people to reform are unaffected by claims about a specific case.
One could quibble about the various different cases here but in general, your analogy with drunk-driving doesn't work. This is a matter of professional ethics: a policeman who takes a bribe should nebver work as a policeman again, a doctor who uses his or her position to take advantage of patients should be struck off, and someone who has had sex with a pupil should never work in a school ever again. Someone who has admitted viewing child-porn, even if they haven't been convicted of a criminal offence, shouldn't have been working in a school in the first place.
I know that wasn't the case you were using but I'd have to say that I'm more than a little shocked by the number of people in the blogosphere who seem to be so sanguine about teachers having relationships with pupils. I take the view that one shouldn't have to demonstrate harm or that consent was legally absent; any teacher who has a relationship with a pupil has shown he or she has - despite training and presumably some professional experience - absolutely no concept of what a teacher is.
I have to play the professional card here. If more of you had some experience of what you're writing about, I think more of you would be more inclined to take my view: these things don't just happen and they aren't complicated. Any teacher worthy of the name will tell you what a pathetic creature the teacher who is willing to compromise their professional distance is. A teacher who wants to be 'friends' with the pupils has already most their way and is doomed to fail. How much more those who even imagine for a second that it could ever be understandable, or forgivable to have a sexual relationship with a pupil.
My vocation is to teach a subject, a small part in the general task of introducing the pupil to the general conversation of mankind. If the teacher imagines they are there to be liked, to be a friend to the pupil, to ingratiate themselves and be popular, to flirt and be fancied by teenage girls - they have already lost their way and compromised this vocation. Can you even imagine how many boundries, how many professional barriers one would have to breech before you could even consider having a sexual relationship with a pupil?
The drink-driving analogy is supposed to be very general: it's supposed to show that we generally regard people as being able to reform themselves. I suppose the directly relevant analogy would be of someone who drove for a living: a lorry driver perhaps. I'm inclined to think that, in the event that the person in question had clearly realised their mistake and taken appropriate action both to remedy the original wrong and to ensure that it didn't occur again, that would not debarr them from working as a lorry driver again. The analogy's not perfect though, and the action, if indeed there always could be such action, required to remedy and remove the possibility of re-occurrence of the original wrong, would obviously be quite different and of a different order of magnitude.
The drink-driving analogy is supposed to be very general
I appreciate that but I don't like the driving analogy at all. A professional driver of whatever capacity could be caught speeding once and I think most people wouldn't necessarily assume this meant the driver's attitude to speed was essentially disfunctional.
But if a teacher in his thirties is disposed to a 15 year old, that is a different matter. The question of how young is too young isn't really difficult to answer: if they still live with their parents and they haven't stopped growing, they're way too young. Even if a teacher has failed to grasp this even once, he or she should respect the dignity of their profession and fall on their sword.
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