One of the few unqualified Good Things achieved, in the hideous but thankfully short-lived period when I served as Chairman of North Cunninghame Young Conservatives - about 500 of your Earth years ago - was a sponsored walk to raise money for the fledgling Childline charity. Walking from Fairlie (close to Largs) to Ardrossan and raising a few hundred pounds for the "Speak to someone who cares" organisation made a change for us from our usual activities (congregating in a farmhouse to scream at one another about the death penalty, writing letters to the Ardrossan & Saltcoats Herald to denounce the Association of being a "traitor to Thatcherism", and cycling, endlessly, around the Isle of Cumbrae).
At least it always used to feel like a Good Thing. Having listened to the organisation's founder, Esther Rantzen, on Today this morning, I'm no longer so sure.
Ms Rantzen was speaking in favour of the ever-enlarging set of anti-paedophile tests to be carried out on adults who want to have anything to do with children: up to a quarter of the adult population are now targeted to be subject to these tests. I didn't make notes as she spoke, but she said something about how she would be overjoyed to be tested herself, with the clear implication that anyone who doesn't want to be so tested clearly has something to hide.
Now, it's very hard to write anything in objection to this, without sounding at best like some sort of callous fool. But object to it I do, and not only because attaching a prior assumption of malicious intent to adults is insulting - more, this lurking suspicion in the minds of us all does damage to the general wellbeing of the children it is intended to protect, just as it does damage to the general wellbeing of a community. It dissolves the glue that binds us one to another.
Regular readers (that's you, Sally) know that I'm not the greatest fan of sociology. But Professor Frank Furedi, author of "Licenced to Hug" for thinktank Civitas, describes very well what's wrong with the assumption of criminal intent:
"When parents feel in need of official reassurance that other parents have passed the paedophile test before they even start on the pleasantries, something has gone badly wrong in our communities.
"We should question whether there is anything healthy in a response where communities look at children's own fathers with suspicion, but would balk at helping a lost child find their way home".
That's the point, isn't it? There are scores of anecdotal reports of parents and other adults shying away from contact with children because of the unspoken fear that any contact between an adult and child will be viewed as paedophiliac in nature. My friend B took me to the park with his toddler W recently. I despise myself for admitting this, but it is true: as we kicked the football about, and swung W about in the air, causing him to shriek with joy, there was a small, unwelcome voice in my head, murmuring "I wonder what the other people here think about two blokes being out with a child". I certainly avoid running to help any child in distress, hanging back in the hope that a woman will deal with the cries of those who fall from their bikes. And I'm not alone. Professor Furedi relates the experience of "a father [who] was given 'filthy looks' by a group of mothers when he took his child swimming on his own in 'a scene from a Western when the room goes silent and tumbleweed blows across the foreground'".
This is absolutely ridiculous and it has to stop. Adults who work with children should obviously be checked over somehow (although the self-protection engendered by the official checking is itself debilitating. The same friend B showed me a report from W's daycare centre. W had, as is the nature of toddlers, fallen over. His carer felt that she had to describe the incident in detail - "W was very excited to be playing with the skittles, and tripped and fell" - as well as her response - "I calmed W down by physically touching him to express affection" - even a professional carer, who has been checked out by the Review Board, feels that she has to write a justification for physical contact with her charges), but this prejudice in favour of officially-sanctioned adult-child interaction is, I think, one of the root causes of lots of the problems we face.
The "someone who cares" can't only be an anonymous voice at the end of a Childline advice line: it has to be all of us. Next time I see a child fall over in the park, I'm going to go and help them back up. I'm going to default to my natural instinct and revert to gurgling and waving at any baby in a pram I happen to pass. We are not criminals because we are adult and male. Enough of this creeping, toxic prejudice to the contrary.
