There is an immutable law of unintended consequences. The new child abuse vetting laws will, in the end have entirely the opposite effect to that which is intended.
One thing that law enforcement and the abuse industry agree on, is that intentional abusers are clever and single-minded in achieving their purpose.
To stop them we are now going to assume that everyone is an abuser, unless they have a piece of paper that says they are not. Having got that piece of paper, an abuser is at liberty to insinuate themselves into positions of trust from where they will be able to abuse to their hearts content. No one will question them – “They’ve been checked, so they must be okay. Anyway, it’s got nothing to do with me – it’s up to the Government.” Will be the cry of anyone with suspicions.
And so, as with the Catholic Church and many other institutions before, abusers will be protected by the very system that seeks to get rid of them.
It used to be said that it takes a whole village to bring up a child. Well, we don’t have villages anymore. We have given up responsibility for the bringing up of children to the state. The state is to be trusted less that anyone else in this matter. Now, with vetting, we are giving up even more to the state. We are giving away trust and personal responsibility.
The new vetting scheme came out of the Soham Murders. Thanks to government interference through the Data Collection Act, the police did not pass on information about Ian Huntley, the murderer. Maybe with a scheme to stop his sort entering schools in the first place the tragedy could have been averted. But if the police had passed on the information about a known abuser the chances are it could have been averted – that time – but Huntley was on a downward spiral that would have led him to commit an horrendous crime in due course.
The law of unintended consequences came into play.
So, I predict, within ten years we will be having an inquest into:
How could a ring of abusers have infiltrated the Vetting Headquarters and placed a high level worker inside to change data on known abusers?
How the Vetting System destroyed lives and caused the suicides of those innocently mistaken to be someone else and accused of their crimes.
How those cleared by the system still managed to continue practicing their abusing ways because everyone thought they must be okay because they had been cleared.
This is all before we account for the damage that will be done to society. The State has got too large and too intrusive. It’s job should be to facilitate personal responsibility – that is what keeps an eye out for bad behaviour and keeps us all on the right side of the line.