Every child a Victim of crime?

[BOD]

Just saw this with my morning coffee.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/rtrs/20071009/tuk-uk-britain-children-crime-fa6b408_2.html


I don't know what you think but I think these people are simply nuts. To label the events of childhood as "crime" is fraught with risk. The do-ers become labeled as 'criminals' and the others as 'victims' with the likelihood of affecting the way they see behaviour turning some into angry rebels and the others into hysterical paranoids who react to any disagreement by calling the other party an aggressor.

Using the word crime brings the state into the equation further eroding individual libertires and social responsibility.

 

[gregorach]

So what age do you have to be before getting beaten up and having your stuff nicked stops being "the events of childhood" and starts being "crime"?

 

[dave k]

So what age do you have to be before getting beaten up and having your stuff nicked stops being "the events of childhood" and starts being "crime"?

When you leave school.
then it's called `care in the community` and `taxes`

 

[Cobweb]

totally agree there dave. This silly world is becoming too PC, next we'll have the wardens out stopping cats from chasing bits of string and a mentor to teach the birds to sing.

 

[gregorach]

So what, suggesting that kids beating each other up is perhaps not entirely hunky-dory is "too PC", huh?

Look, I got severely bullied as a child. I've spent most of my life trying to deal with the consequences of that. I've suffered years of depression and spent an alarming amount of my time contemplating suicide. I started self-harming at the age of eight years old. And you lot think that's just fine? Well, excuse me if I disagree.

 

[Silverback]

I too was a victim of bullying at school and believe me if you had ever been a victim (and yes Victim is the right word) and experienced the day in day out misery of continual physical and mental abuse you may well look upon this differently. There may well be elements of the report that could fall foul of the PC police but bullying has serious and extremely damaging consequences and I am saddened that Gregorach has had to use his own personal circumstances to try and reinforce this

 

[dave k]

I was bullied at school. What I didn't need was everyone feeling sorry for me, saying how bad it was. All the kind words are reassurance from parents, teachers and everything didn't help one bit. NONE of them understood what it was like, and NONE of them offered to do anything to help.It taught me to treat life as basically unfair, and you have a good starting point to get on.

I refuse to take any cr** from anyone now. If there is one thing it's taught me is that the only person that can change *one single thing* is yourself. If you let it it will ruin your life, and take it over. You have to make the change, you have to be prepared to stand up. I'm successfull career wise, I have a house and a wife and I'm proud. I wouldn't say that I would have changed anything in my life, be it at school of after, but I would not have a positive attitude towards everything I face if I didn't go through some of those experiences.

I never said it was fine - you don't have to put words into my mouth. I would not want to dismiss or cause ill-fealing towards anyone who has been bullied - at school or at work ( and yes, I've seen a person destroyed because of work-place bullying). It's not a laughing matter what you experience, but you have to recognise you are the person who can make the change.

What doesn't break you makes you stronger. Never a truer word said.

 

[xylaria]

This country has gone mad.

Children are as violent as the world they raised in. Children left to they own devices will be violent to each other. Adults are then supposed to tell children the diffrance between right and wrong. If that gets neglected they carry on, the behavoiour remains unchallenged, and every child loses.

Neglect is a form of abuse. It is should not be exceptable, but it is OK for head teachers to have no effective displine policy, it is OK for the police to turn around and say the vicious assaults in schools are the schools responsibility. Social services are too wrapped up in class prejustice and over worked to call the parents to account. I think todays teenagers are doing a great job of dragging themselves up, considering they risk getting raped and stabbed tryng to access an education.

There is a differance between the normal roughness that every child is victim to and perportrator of, and some of the stuff that can go on in bad schools. Viewing every childhood act as criminal is just another way of abusing all children. Feeding the twisted ideas of abusers that all children are born corrupted and need it beaten out of them. Children should not be judged by adult standards, but gently incouraged to take responsibility for their actions by adults that can provide a good example.

I am a whistleblower. Four years ago I reported werrington young offenders (15-18 year olds) for failing to tackle bulllying. Basically it works like this, prison officers aren't allowed to beat up inmates so they bribe other inmates to do their bidding. An officer that was shipped from feltham after the zihead mubarak killing was paying a 6'4" violent offender to repeatly abuse a 5'6" sparrow of kid, because the little kid reported a racist incident invovling that officer. That can give some idea of what happens to child once you criminalise it and ask your self what can a young adult learn from that expeirance.

 

[gregorach]

All the kind words are reassurance from parents, teachers and everything didn't help one bit. NONE of them understood what it was like, and NONE of them offered to do anything to help.It taught me to treat life as basically unfair, and you have a good starting point to get on.

Well, I can certainly relate to that - I just don't think it's a good thing. Perhaps, just perhaps, if people were to start taking bullying seriously, then future generations might not have to suffer the same.

I don't buy the idea that the world is inherently so bad that you need to be "toughened up" to deal with it. We make it that way, in order to justify what we ourselves have suffered in the past. And then we inflict in the next generation, secure in the knowledge that "it happened to me, and I turned out all right". So we get this self-perpetuating culture of "toughness", that somehow manages to make suffering seem noble, or necessary.

And whenever someone stands up as says "It doesn't have to be like this", people start going on about "political correctness".

 

[Dougster]

Watching an 11 year old crying because they have been beaten and had property taken from them is not fun.

Hearing of the PC response of the bully having to 'apologise' and being reprimanded just makes me sick.

It IS crime, theft and assualt are exactly that at any age. Fighting is what boys do from time to time, but beating someone weaker (or fewer in number) is not right in anyones world.

When they say almost all, I HONESTLY believe it, and I see it every day.

 

[dave k]

I don't buy the idea that the world is inherently so bad that you need to be "toughened up" to deal with it. We make it that way, in order to justify what we ourselves have suffered in the past.

I didn't say bad, I said unfair. Nice people will have horrible lives, and horrible people will live the life of riley until they die of old age at 98.

I'd like to know how as an 12 year old I made my life the way it happened
I don't think people should have to put up with any of this abuse. Labeling people as victim's doesn't make it any better - it just stigmatized them, lables them as something that they are not. People are victim's because they don't have the confidence to be anything else. I'm not talking about being violent or aggresisve back to people. It's more about assertiveness. They should run more courses like they do, for female safety - "don't be a victim". it's something you *can* control.

Teachers and parent's are basically unable to controll any of this. No-one is in a position to stop any bullying at school, because there are times and places when you will be alone and subject to it. I don't think it's something you can eradicate by telling people to stop or having any stupid pointless `Q&A` sessions in assembly - no kid in their right mind is going to put their hand up and speak openly about it. but if you give the kids the choice and empowerment to make their own decisions - you give them the knowledge that they can affect the change, and that they can make it stop.

I'm sounding like an american motivational speaker now

PC-ness is out of hand. making up lables and telling people they can't talk, discuss or say anything about anything is not correct. We live in a free society, bound by certain laws, but still free speach maintain's. I may not agree with what a lot of people have to say, but I agree in their *right* to say it, good or bad.

 

[dave k]

Hearing of the PC response of the bully having to 'apologise' and being reprimanded just makes me sick..

They tried this at my school, once. The poor kid who was `apologised` to got a severe beating by several people. they didn't try it again.

 

[gregorach]

I'd like to know how as an 12 year old I made my life the way it happened

That's not at all what I meant - I was using the pronoun "we" in the expansive sense, as in "we as a society". What I meant is that people tend to perpetuate the social structures that they themselves have experienced, as a means of normalising and coping with those experiences. This is why virtually all people who sexually abuse children were themselves the victims of similar abuse.

but if you give the kids the choice and empowerment to make their own decisions - you give them the knowledge that they can affect the change, and that they can make it stop.

Great. But first we, as a society, have to start taking the problem seriously. Now, I'm not saying that you, personally, are not taking the problem seriously. But from my own experience, and some of the responses in this thread, it is quite clear than many people regard it as "just part of growing up", like acne or something.

 

[dave k]

That's not at all what I meant - I was using the pronoun "we" in the expansive sense, as in "we as a society". What I meant is that people tend to perpetuate the social structures that they themselves have experienced, as a means of normalising and coping with those experiences. This is why virtually all people who sexually abuse children were themselves the victims of similar abuse.

I've never look at in this way, but I have to agree you're correct. I don't have any sort of experience of abuse (thank god) but my dad was not the most secret alcoholic. Put me off having kids for life. That and the noise I'm not sure about the repeat though - I've known people who have been subject to horrible experiences - and they are as normal and well balanced as I am (however normal that is !)

Great. But first we, as a society, have to start taking the problem seriously. Now, I'm not saying that you, personally, are not taking the problem seriously. But from my own experience, and some of the responses in this thread, it is quite clear than many people regard it as "just part of growing up", like acne or something.

This is a problem - recognising there is a problem, and being able to do something about it are 2 different things. I don't think anyone other than the receiver of this in a school or work-place environment is placed to do anything about it. I don't believe you can make people behave or act in an acceptable manor, esp. when they are young.

 

[Tadpole]

I don't buy the idea that the world is inherently so bad that you need to be "toughened up" to deal with it. We make it that way, in order to justify what we ourselves have suffered in the past. And then we inflict in the next generation, secure in the knowledge that "it happened to me, and I turned out all right". So we get this self-perpetuating culture of "toughness", that somehow manages to make suffering seem noble, or necessary.

And whenever someone stands up as says "It doesn't have to be like this", people start going on about "political correctness".

you are so right it does not have to be like this.
There is no way to prevent the damage done in the past but there is a way to stop it, listen to the kids, listen to Your own kids, and I mean listen to them when they tell you and when they don’t. Ok it mean being a parent all the time, as in 24/7, 365 it also means watching your kids, all the time, if little Jenny, or Johnny is extra quiet, or seems to want to throw a sicky instead of going to school, talk to them, but more importantly listen to them, not only what they tell you but also the stuff that they are not saying.
My daughter was being bullied by another girl she kept on feeling 'sick' or had a heachache so I talked to her, after a while (a few days0 I found out that she was being bullied by a girl whose parents was divorcing, she was feeling ‘any attention’ was better than ‘no attention’. when I found out I made a point of speaking to both parents, both of whom were quite reasonable about the whole matter; in at incidence two kids lives were made better, my little girl as the bullying stopped, and the other girl who was able to tell her parents about her feeling.

A year ago, a friends daughter was being bullied, my friend believed in his kid, so spoke to the parents of the other child, who was several years older, the parents did nothing, so my friend took his daughter to Jiu-jitsu classes. She was taught self-reliance and self-confidence; I think it must have shown in her attitude as the bullying stopped with in weeks of her newfound self-confidence.
I was bullied at school, and it took years and years for the nightmare to stop, as an adult with a child of my own I no longer lay the blame solely on the scum that made my school life a living hell, I blame their parents equally as much.
There was not a week that when by when my lunch money was not stolen from me, and about 60 of my classmates, (by the same three scumbags). Think about it what you would think if your own child came home with £36 in change, (even today that is a lot of money for an 11 year old), money that you knew they hadn’t got from you?
How long would you accept that they ‘found it’?

 

[w00dsmoke]

I've sat and watched this thread evolve with great interest and many have said some very true things based on their experiences and observations within society today. I am a professional working with young people who many would regard as the modern worlds lepors, (sex offenders, murderers and those who have perpetrated violent crimes against others) who for a short time no longer have the right to live freely in society. It seems to me that the problem is vast and complicated and entwined within our historical cultural persepectives as well as it's evolvement and development. For what was accepted by some in the past an example of this would be the belt or cane at school as punishment, it is no longer tolerated by society at large as it is deemed abusive yet the replacement social control mechanisms do not appear to deter the problematic behaviour, hence the failure. We must ask why the replacement does not work? You can take any example within (micro or macro )society and see our collective failure across the board. What you will find if you look hard enough is a MORAL VACUUM, where children grow up with confused boundaries, confused ideas of justice and crime, when they grow up and they breed the cycle continues with their kids and you have a small yet very confused part of society today taking up huge resources that we all have to pay for and take responsibility for.

Confusion is created by this vacuum, no one is saying bullying is an everyday normal accepted part of the playground, it never was, but it is a fine line between rough play and harrassment and it is the adults responsibility to define that. When the adults don't, it becomes a cultural normative and is valued as such and the child takes these values into adulthood causing yet more havock on communities...

I don't have an answer except that I do my best to work with some of the most written off within society to try and let them reflect on a better way forward, it is then their choice to choose which path is best for them.

 

[madrussian]

This country has gone mad.

I would have to disagree with you. The WHOLE WORLD has gone mad. Just watch the news. You'll see its true.

 

[xylaria]

This thread reads very oddly.

Everyone seems to be more or less agreeing that some of things that are regarded as normal childhood behaviour are really damaging in the long term. Because alot of us have been damaged we are getting emotive about it.

May be the report was trying to get people to think about how damaging children been allowed to be criminal to each other is. I dislike the idea of criminalizing childhood, but dispair of the lack of good adult input children get. Bullying policies in schools are there so the ofsted inspector can tick a box, no bullying policy can make up for headteacher that doesn't care. As tadpole wisely points out a chat that asks why can work wonders, but where parenting lacks nobody else seems to care to find out what a kids problems are, they just want to condemn a child as a criminal.

 

[gregorach]

Well, that's not how I read it. I read BOD's initial post as suggesting that the behaviour referred to in the linked article (assault, theft, etc) is merely normal childhood "hi-jinks" and not to be taken seriously. When I see a sentence like "Using the word crime brings the state into the equation further eroding individual libertires and social responsibility.", I get this red mist...

Yes, it erodes individual liberties. It erodes the individual liberty to beat people up and steal their stuff.

 

[xylaria]

Well, that's not how I read it. I read BOD's initial post as suggesting that the behaviour referred to in the linked article (assault, theft, etc) is merely normal childhood "hi-jinks" and not to be taken seriously. When I see a sentence like "Using the word crime brings the state into the equation further eroding individual libertires and social responsibility.", I get this red mist...

Yes, it erodes individual liberties. It erodes the individual liberty to beat people up and steal their stuff.

You think you have 'issues' I know what the state does with criminalised children. I want to beat the government up and erode thier liberties.:bluThinki

Boy I need therepy