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December 15, 2012 / December 03, 2013
NSPCC maintain abuse hysteria
as donations fall
By Raymond Peytors - theopinionsite.org
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This article was published on December 15, 2012, on TheOpinionSite.org. It is published here by the kind consent of the author. On TheOpinionSite.org the article is followed by readers' comments.
Raymond Peytors is a professional author, journalist and broadcaster who specialises in UK crime and the politics behind criminal legislation. He is the administrator of The OpinionSite.org. Further information here.
Marianne Haslev Skånland
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After cashing in on increased claims of ‘historic’ abuse, many resulting from the publicity surrounding Jimmy Savile and others, the NSPCC is now trying to scare everyone over ‘present day abuse’; the decision of the prime minister not to support the automatic blocking of Internet porn sites has also come under fire from what appears to be a totally dishonest organisation that claims to protect children.
Indeed, the NSPCC has gone from being a once genuine organisation to one that now seems interested only in profit and its own survival.
Having tried to convince us all that hundreds of British children are abused every day and that there is likely to be a paedophile on every street and in every home, the NSPCC is now rattling its collection tin even louder; principally because the public are sick to death of reading about abuse and hearing from the multitude of charities who make money out of supposedly supporting ‘brave’ victims.
These ‘victims’ by the way are in fact “complainants”; nothing more, nothing less.
Real victims are people who have been subjected to proven violence, abuse or other suffering; not individuals who simply make allegations.
The difference is important and usually ignored by the authorities and the organisations that support the mass hysteria pumped out by the NSPCC and other charities.
TheOpinionSite.org is fed up to the back teeth with the lies put out by the NSPCC ever more frequently in an attempt to get more money. Lies that most commentators are afraid to stand up against and lies which insidiously have worked their way into the British psyche to such an extent that most people are no longer even prepared to examine the truth.
Here are just a few examples of the kind of lie and exaggeration put out by the money-grabbing NSPCC and which are accepted by weak and pathetic MPs and law makers, seemingly without question:
• Last November, the NSPCC claimed that one in four babies in Britain were “at high risk” of being abused. No concrete proof of this was ever offered. As a result, the corporately run charity was accused of gimmickry for supporting a campaign to get Facebook users to change their profile pictures to those of cartoon characters to raise awareness – or more likely to raise money.
• In 2010 the NSPCC released a totally staged video warning music teachers not to touch their students while demonstrating how to play their instruments properly – in case their actions be interpreted as being “inappropriate”. Even the sanctimonious education secretary Michael Gove suggested that the video was “…playing to a culture of fear among both adults and children” and “sending out completely the wrong message.“
• In 2009 the Advertising Standards Authority banned an NSPCC ad campaign which claimed that one in every six children are sexually abused. This claim was based on very questionable, out of date figures which were collated as part of an equally doubtful piece of ‘research’. The ASA noted that the presentation of the figures would lead people to infer that the physical abuse of children was far more prevalent than it actually was; presentation that the NSPCC often relies on for its multi-million pound income.
• The above criticism was made only two years after the ASA had already censured the charity for using ‘completely made-up’ stories of child abuse in order to solicit donations in a hard-hitting campaign that “…was liable to cause recipients undue fear and distress.“
In fact, the whole modern history of the NSPCC – since Tony Blair actually – is littered with lies, untruths and exaggerations that have been criticised by official watchdogs.
A report by New Philanthropy Capital which was covered by the Guardian newspaper in 2007 concluded that despite spending £250 million in its ‘Full Stop’ campaign, the NSPCC had been singularly ineffective in making any significant difference to the abuse of any children. It also noted the NSPCC’s addiction to high-profile PR campaigns, effectively drawing public attention to child abuse through exaggeration and less than accurate research.
The report said the campaign was something that “…had very little bearing on whether a substance-abusing parent neglects their child behind closed doors, or whether a sexual offender chooses to abuse a child when they have the opportunity to do so in secret.”
The NSPCC has dramatic form when it come to telling lies.
In 1990, at the height of the so-called “Satanic Ritual Abuse” (SRA) hysteria, in a typically cynical attempt to justify its own privileged position, the NSPCC further fuelled the panic with a report that claimed that SRA was widespread in Britain.
The NSPCC claimed that up and down the country, groups of adults were engaged in the systematic production of child pornography.
In fact, no evidence demonstrating the truth of any such allegations was ever produced by the NSPCC or anyone else; even the police could find no evidence but nevertheless, families were torn apart, reputations irrevocably ruined and the doctor leading the charge was entirely discredited, only to receive an award from the charity at a later date!
Whenever these exposed lies and untruths, exaggerations and dishonest practices have been put to the NSPCC, the organisation has simply ignored them all.
So, TheOpinionSite.org asks, if the NSPCC is such a bunch of money-grabbing, over-paid charlatans, why are they still allowed to have such influence over government policy and allowed to tell lies that are conveniently ignored by those in authority when exposed as such?
The answers are simple, if rather depressing:
• The NSPCC is the only charity with statutory powers of investigation and referral. This means that the charity is 100% an arm of the government of the day and as such, is allowed to continue its dishonest practices with impunity.
• Its activities and falsely secured respectability mean that the government has a ‘fall guy’ when a policy goes horribly wrong. Ministers just blame the NSPCC advice and its alleged ‘research’ and claim the government was acting in good faith.
• The royal family and celebrities have strong funding connections with the NSPCC. They give it an air of further respectability and surround it with a protected status that most will not even dare to criticise.
The fact is that today, most people are afraid to criticise anything to do with child protection for fear of themselves being branded as a ‘paedo lover’. It is therefore even less likely that anyone with any authority – moral or otherwise – is ever going to be prepared to criticise the very wealthy flagship organisation leading Britain’s massive ‘child protection industry’.
Even the church and religious groups are too frightened to speak out against the fear generated by the NSPCC and other charities.
Despite the lies, despite the dishonesty that is there for all to see, politicians and the media insist on pandering to these guilt-dispensing organisations that claim to be protecting children with our money but are in reality paying their own management huge salaries whilst causing moral panic amongst ordinary people based on false evidence.
In its latest whinge over Cameron’s refusal to back the automatic blocking of porn sites by ISPs, the charity’s response was given by the NSPCC’s ‘Director of Corporate Affairs’.
We didn’t even bother to remember his name but TheOpinionSite.org does ask is why an organisation that alleges to be protecting children should even have a ‘Director of Corporate Affairs’ together with a whole raft of other well paid ‘executives’, a corporate management structure that any profit-making business would be proud of and a huge office building to go with it.
The NSPCC is supposed to be a charity that protects children, not a multi-national corporation or a sub –division of the police and probation services. Donations and government grants are supposed to benefit real children; not go to academics, overpaid managers and pay for £250 million TV advertising campaigns that don’t make a difference to anyone.
Donations are not given for the provision of bloated salaries and expensive office blocks, not for running sex offender programmes that should be run by the probation service and which may or may not work and certainly not for the entertainment of politicians, policemen or corporate chiefs.
Just how long will it be before the British public wake up to the fact that they are being conned and frightened on a regular basis by this flabby, overweight, false, money-sucking bunch of liars?
The NSPCC are not alone either; there are plenty of other dishonest, so called ‘charities’ after your money as well.
TheOpinionSite.org has a simple solution: Don’t give in to their moral blackmail or false claims and next time they spend millions of pounds asking you for £4 a month, keep your money in your pocket or spend it on your own kids.
Government is supposed to protect children, not corporate money machines that rely on guilt and panic to spread untrue facts in the hope that gullible, well-meaning people will offer up their hard earned cash.
It’s about time the NSPCC was recognised for what it really is and closed down – and the sooner the better.
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