Originally Posted by
ramAnag
Okay, a few observations.
In my experience incidents of abuse/inappropriate behaviour between teachers and pupils appears to have reduced very significantly over the years. I have never ever witnessed or had suspicions about *****phile type behaviour on the part of teachers however I have been aware of plenty of rumours of relationships between teachers and sixth formers in other schools. Seemed much more acceptable forty or fifty years ago than now.
As regards more serious abuse. My experience involves attendance at a great many case conferences over the years. For the uninitiated these are multi agency meetings called when there are genuine fears concerning children being at risk in terms of safety and/or abuse. These are not for the faint-hearted. The suspected guilty party - usually parents/other relatives - will invariably have legal representation who know all the tricks of the trade as far as defending the often indefensible is concerned and you have to choose your words very carefully.
Equally there are sometimes fairly militant social workers who can make things awkward. To cut a long story short, one reported me as being racist on the basis that a mixed race girl didn?t want to spend time with her absent black father, because he hit her mother, or her grandfather, because he abused her. The girl had confided in me rather than the social worker which hadn?t gone down well, but the social worker felt that the girl?s awareness of her roots was more important than her feelings of safety. I disagreed. Oddly others at the meeting who had remained conspicuously silent throughout rushed to say, glad you said that, someone needed to at the end. This was an isolated incident and untypical of social workers who have a hugely difficult job.
As someone who ultimately had the unpleasant task of initially reporting abuse it is not uncommon to subsequently be confronted by angry threatening (invariably male) parents when something like this arises and it can be enormously time consuming. I once spent four hours as a four**** year old boy?s chosen adult at a police station in Derby while he gave evidence about alleged abuse perpetrated by his uncle. The evidence was both shocking and compelling but the case went nowhere because the police didn?t consider him a sufficiently reliable witness. Enormously frustrating on many levels.
So, frustration, fear, reluctance to tell tales are all possible reasons.
On the one, very major, occasions when I was involved in instigating action (for misappropriation of resources NOT anything ***ual) against a very senior colleague I was aware that the local authority made things very difficult and was very much aware that because the whole teaching staff acted together there was safety in numbers. We won, but going it alone would, I suspect, have been very ill advised.
Final point. I have been involved in addressing many cases of child abuse and have to say that the vast majority of the cases I have been involved in have involved white children and white parents. To a large extent that probably reflects the description of the young people most of my teaching career was spent with, but it is my observation based on my experience. Towards the end of my career I was increasingly aware of a problem between certain 14-16 year old girls and Pakistani men - often taxi drivers. I would not and will never defend such men however the girls seemed to find it funny and a reliable source of income. Again to cut a long story short, often their parents couldn?t have cared less and may have sometimes been complicit. It?s a can of worms and more complicated than many think, imo. Hope that helps.
