Paedogeddon on the British Paedoisles - Paed Heath

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Paedogeddon on the British Paedoisles - Paed Heath

dr_rat: Jun 4, 2001

Gonzo McFee posted:

Is "I didn't know I was breaking the law" ever a very good defence?

For a minor, non-obvious, first offense it could very easily be enough to get you off with a warning. If there was no real damage and it seems unlikely the persons going to do it again then there's often little point in doing anything more. Police and judges do get quite a bit of leeway about this stuff.

For a big case like this, with some relatively serious changes, involving people breaking the law while working in a professional setting, then yeah it should be seen as a pretty crap excuses.

# ¿ Feb 25, 2014 17:18

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 22:25

dr_rat: Jun 4, 2001

Strawman posted:

Are you 100% sure she isn't a libertarian?

As Sir Money-bags the third gave the child candy before the incident took place, the court will count the child as an employee of Sir Money-bags, and therefor no abuse could of possibly taken place as in a free market it is impossible for any action of an employer to count as abuse towards an employee, no mater how ungrateful that employee might be on receiving the kind gift of employment from the ever generous accused.

Sir Money-bags you are free to go, and the court again wish to apologies for wasting you precious job creating time.

# ¿ Sep 6, 2014 07:19

dr_rat: Jun 4, 2001

MrNemo posted:

Something to bear in mind, not to excuse but just to help understand why people would be involved in things like this, is that protecting institutions you're a part of is a pretty strong instinct and usually the easiest course of action to take. Things like this snowball quite easily if one pedophile in MI5 (for a 'hypothetical' example) does something to shut up a witness and manages to make his colleagues/immediate superior complicit (and many might be willing to go along with simply to help a colleague or be misled about the reason for going after this guy). Once that comes to light anyone who finds out has the option of blowing the whistle (and probably damaging their own career as well as the reputation of their institution) or adding to the cover up. By the time people higher up are finding out about things like that it probably involves quite a number of people and ruining one person's life in order to protect the reputation and staff of one of your major government institutions is the much easier (while still atrocious and morally reprehensible) action.

It doesn't prove that Thatcher didn't have a problem with pedophilia or anything like that but is a pretty clear demonstration that people in the British establishment (and in fairness probably any establishment) are much more likely to protect them and theirs even if those they're protecting are monstrous. It's not radically different from what happened in the Catholic church except for still being much, much murkier and generating less public outrage (currently).

Yeah this is a pretty huge problem. Were having the same issue in Melbourne at the moment with Pedophilia in the Yeshivah community, which is apparently a reasonably small and very close community, so no one wanted to say anything for a long time due to very real fears of being tossed out of the community and losing the family and social group (which did happen to the whistle blower who made it all public.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-02-16/rabbi-resigns-as-head-of-rabbinical-organsiation/6119458

And as all this is usually so hard to prove, it can become so easy if it comes down to a s/he said, s/he said thing, just to believe an adult over a child as you know if there's no proof.... and kids do sometimes just make stuff up, and known this person for years they would never do that and.... it can become very easy to justify away those sort of claims.

Then once you have two or three people in the organisation saying it never happened, including people who you know weren't implicated at all, and are just trying to stick by their college, it would become a lot simpler for an administration just to not investigate, as you know, there's a whole bunch of people saying it never happened, and if we investigate even if we don't find anything, just the investigation enough could ruin someones career so.. yeah maybe just lose the complient in the paper work, tell ever one to shh up about it, and hope it goes away.

As has been said a bit, pretty much the best result of this stuff coming to light is that, hopefully, organisations are seeing that now they can't just say nothing and hope it goes away if a complaint comes in so it actually gets investigated now, and stopped when it's still going on, rather than, you know an apology and a bit of money 40 years after.

# ¿ Feb 17, 2015 15:50

dr_rat: Jun 4, 2001

OwlFancier posted:

Political power, wealth, and class are still very tied together in the UK. And class isn't just having lots of money either, class has history here, and a lot of that history is rather grounded in the idea of one law for the populace and one law for the elite, not just in practice, but also in actual law.

Certainly in contrast to America I think perhaps that is a significant difference. There is an old, established, and surprisingly continuous culture associated with being part of the political and hereditary elite in the UK, which the wealthy can also become part of. And it's full of old and gross ideas.

Hey you had you're chance to fix this in 1789, but you were all like, nah lets not cut off the heads of our monarch and wealthy elite, lets just discover two of Saturns moons and burn a lady counterfeit to death instead. Not even one royalty partially behead, I mean what the hell.

But yeah, when it all come out about the abuses in the Catholic church, The UK, and Australia, I was hoping that you would start to see a lot more other countries start serious investigations, as its almost certainly happing in every country to some degree. Possibly some have and just haven't heard about it though I guess.

# ¿ Apr 16, 2015 15:28

dr_rat: Jun 4, 2001

Lu Yan posted:

This is it. Society makes talking about abuse taboo, which the abusers absolutely love. It really makes me wonder if sexual abuse is epidemic across the anglo-(whole?)world

It almost certainly is. Every where you see really investigations happening you see cases cases, usually in highly disturbing amounts, turn up.

Although I wouldn't call it epidemic as that implies its increasing, which we don't really have any evidence for as the actually number of cases now and historically are just rough 'best guesses', although both now and historically even oneis pretty sure what ever the number is, its staggeringly high.

# ¿ May 20, 2015 20:05

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 22:25

dr_rat: Jun 4, 2001

Don't listen to them. I hear Margret Thacher will personally haunt anyone who posts the list. :ohdear:

# ¿ Aug 4, 2015 14:14

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