To be honest, it would be stretching it a bit to say that a blog described as “distasteful” by the Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) Centre actually has police “approval”. A recent official statement from the quango, which has police powers and functions, is sponsored by the British Home Office, and is set to become part of a new National Crime Agency later this year, has however confirmed that the blog has been inspected and not found to be in breach of any laws.
The statement was issued in response to a complaint about Heretic TOC by a certain Dr Liz Davies, whose (WordPress) blog website describes her as “a registered social worker who, following a career in frontline child protection social work, is now a Reader in Child Protection at London Metropolitan University. Oddly, her site has a “Gallery”, which is the sort of feature you might expect to see at a porn site (or so I am told!) Sure enough, be warned, the photos exhibited here are very heavy indeed – way too scary and sickening for all but the strongest stomachs. Entirely legal, though: no kids.
Dr Davies says her specialism is “the investigation of child abuse and the investigative interviewing of children, particularly in the context of organised and institutional abuse”. Awarded her PhD as recently as 2010, she is becoming quite a high-profile figure. Tom Watson MP said he relied heavily on her work and advice in his published response to Jon Henley’s Guardian article on paedophilia, covered here early last month (in Finally, a word in edgeways at the Guardian! and It’s all kicked off in the British media ). Aspiring to be an “organised and institutional abuse” crime buster, perhaps Davies sees Heretic TOC as fair game in this light. But why? She says she reported Heretic TOC to CEOP but gives very little indication as to why she felt police action was needed. It would seem there is no distinction in her eyes between, on the one hand, expressing the view that the laws relating to adult-child sex need reforming and, on the other, breaking those laws or inciting people to break them. To the censorious mind it is doubtless all one and the same: “promoting paedophilia”.
Which leaves me wondering, whatever happened to education? Has this woman never, at school or since, learned the principles of free expression and the democratic process?
CEOP’s response to her complaint, which she reproduces on her blog, apparently in full, is mercifully somewhat more sophisticated. Attributed to a CEOP Intelligence Officer, the message quotes a report on Heretic TOC from the Internet Watch Foundation indicating that no abuse images had been found at the site, so the IWF felt unable to act. The Intelligence Officer then adds on behalf of CEOP, “Furthermore, the content of what Tom O’Carroll is writing does not constitute as an offence, he is stating his opinion, and although distasteful he is entitled to free speech. Therefore CEOP will unfortunately be unable to take any further action.”
For a public body which exists to uphold the law rather than to moralise, CEOP here exercises considerable freedom of speech for its own views: Heretic TOC is considered “distasteful”, and it is “unfortunate” that no action can be taken. But at least, unlike Dr Davies, CEOP has clearly accepted that free speech is not just for popular opinions. So, bravo: credit where it is due.
I still think they need to take one further civics lesson, though. The Intelligence Officer grudgingly refers to my freedom of speech as though allowing heretics to have their say is really just another tiresome example of “political correctness gone mad”. Instead of thinking of my freedom of speech CEOP should try thinking in terms of everyone’s freedom of access to information and argument from every shade of opinion and standpoint. When any voice is silenced by censorship the right of the entire community to hear that voice is forfeited.
They should try reading J.S. Mill’s classic text On Liberty, in which the Victorian philosopher advocated an open market in opinion, from which the “buyer” should be free to choose, according to perceived merit. Even Mao Tse-tung once said that “letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend” was a good idea, although his sincerity has to be doubted. His encouragement of free speech was just a ruse. Having “enticed the snakes out of their caves”, as he put it, he had all those who revealed themselves as dissidents locked up! Heretic TOC can only hope CEOP is not being just as crafty as the ruthless old dictator!
I think it’s crazy how people are being more and more restricted as to what they can and can not say. I think that everyone is intitled to their own opinion, whether or not it is agreed with. Take the show Duck Dynasty, for example. Phil, who is a big part of the show was penalized because he expressed in GQ the fact that he didn’t approve of gay marage. Because of that, a&e said they no longer wished for him to be a part of the show. The rest of the family said they wouldn’t be part of it either, if he wasn’t allowed to be. I don’t know what what his opinion about gays has to do with Duck Dynasty. What happened to freedom of speech? Besides, he was asked about it, so he answered honestly. It’s the same for you. You are stating an opinion. Apparently, that’s horrible and wrong, because it doesn’t go along with what the majority of people believe. How truly scary it is to live in such a world. I’m sure if it was possible to penalize someone based on a thought, that would be done as well, whether or not it made sense. Sorry for any spelling errors in this. I am using a screen reader, and I can not easily edit what I am writing in an edit field. What’s going to happen next? Oh, you don’t support the same baseball team as I do? Well, then I can’t associate with you. Bla. Yah, freedom of speech, only as long as it fits the majority as to what is okay to say, which really isn’t freedom at all.
TOC: Practical, shmactical!! Show me where every other (non-radical) analysis gets you/us!! Seems to me all the reformers are in the exact negative situation as the radicalized, even tho the reformers did their part to divide, conquer, suppress and push the radicalized (and anyone else they labeled suchly) away! (Basically, shooting themselves in the foot in the process, which is exactly what the brutality experts seek, divide and conquer style!!!)
What has the reform movement gained?
Your scholarly approach seemed like a surefire thing, but then it got derailed by one polytrickster (j. helms), and the chain-of-command cult-ure went along. You were shut out, completely. Else the APA lose its funding and become suddenly delegitimized!
You got police “acceptance” of the blog? Reminds me of the Dutch Ped leadership, all self-congradulatory (while looking down their noses at the radicalized) after similar news, until the police (not to be trusted) turned on their heels and kicked em in the balls and everyone/everything went flailing in chaos. …Which also reminds me of Bob Moore’s book “Victims and Survivors” where ww2 Jewish middle class tried such (often at the expense of their own), finding, too late, that they had only been hoodwinked by the usual cynical divide and conquer tact of the brutality experts.
No, the bottom line is that we’re standing with the DREAM of humanity when we stand with and put our lives on the line to defend kids!
And it’s this DREAM that some of us realize the value of going into 100%, not the nightmare of convention with all of its stupidized evils. Convention can only suppress humanity, it cannot lead humanity! (show me a her/history to the contrary!) Convention only keeps humanity under wraps in backwards dogma (i.e. the so-called “stupidity” of “the masses”, never allowed a context to be empathized with). You read any serious history (say Bud and Ruth Schultz, or Howard Zinn, or voices of the survivors themselves) and you see that “the people” are the ones who change things for the better! Only their “leaders” come in to try to water down their fight and “lead” them back into places where they can once again be fooled into victimization.
[TOC: The above is 365 unedited words, which is more than ample to express your rather limited point, “crucialtruthteller” – or “interminablewaffler”, which would be a better name. 200 would have been enough. From this point on I have cut a whole lot more: the full post was 1161 words! I read the lot, but I’m going to spare other heretics any such time-wasting endurance test.]
I’m not entirely sure what you are referring to, but in the late 1980s, researchers from the University of North Carolina had their grant for research into adolescent sexual attitudes and behaviour stopped by the U.S. government following political objections. The American Psychological Association said it was unprecedented for a peer-reviewed project to be stopped in this way. But Congress responded by passing a bill, sponsored by Jesse Helms of North Carolina, prohibiting federal funding of national sex surveys. However, 10 years later it was an APA journal, the Psychological Bulletin, that published the highly successful (ultimately!) Rind et al. meta-analyses.
Not that great at spotting irony, are you interminablewaffler? The headline, in particular, was intended to amuse heretics and irritate the hell out of those who would love to see H-TOC silenced.
And you are one of the people, right? So do it, then: instead of wasting your time waffling here, make things better! Lead the revolution! What are you waiting for?
And rightly so, Tom. This exchange points to two things that for the disciplined scholar become aggravating in the extreme.
The first is the presumption that somebody else, some political activist, knows more about one than one knows oneself, inevitably getting it all even more wrong than one’s supposed adversaries.
I tell you, the first thing these days that gets my antennae pricking up is some prick coming out of nowhere suddenly telling me how much they like my stuff and how much they agree with me.
The second is the appropriation and mobilisation of views and opinions based on disciplined review of real field data to somebody else’s political agenda. This is not merely plagiarising it is extremely dangerous and self-defeating.
A core feature of my ongoing campaign here in Australia is to expose and embarrass these stupid apparatchiks and party machinery people who insist on filtering every little thing to suit their own ends before the relevant politician or minister gets to hear of it.
There is one rule to follow – send everything to the relevant member directly, and tell these congenital dingbats to piss off out of the way. The sooner we rid our political system of them the more clearly we are going to be heard, and the better off we are all going to be.
I think we should write to Dr Davies, offer to listen to her views and offer her friendship. I think we should invite her to explain to us why she believes that freedom of expression is not an absolute, why some examples of freedom of expression should be tolerated and not others and ask her to explain if there are any other human rights that she thinks should be abolished and why.
Back in the 1970s, I think it must have been, when I was chair of PIE, I invited Mary Whitehouse – then Britain’s No. 1 “morality” campaigner – to a restaurant dinner as a “get to know each other” thing. Talking together informally, I supposed, would advance mutual understanding. Not that I expected her to convince me she was right. No, I of course hoped to be at least a bit persuasive in the other direction. Even if I could only get her to understand that paedophiles are just as human as others, and not driven by the devil as she seemed to believe, such a meeting would be worthwhile. She did not reply to the invitation. About 10 years ago I met her spiritual successor, as it were, Esther Rantzen, in a BBC hospitality room BBC ahead of a TV programme in which we were both to be panellists. She refused to shake hands or to speak to me. I would be very surprised to find Davies is any more open-minded than Whitehouse or Rantzen.
P.S. Not sure, on second thoughts, whether “spiritual” successor is quite the word for Rantzen!
Tom, your responses to these figureheads of the propaganda system reminds me of Indigenous people trying to approach their fellow humans rationally when faced with treaty gamers and the like.
Time and time again, their attempts to be human beings with such people was and is trampled, and deceit wins the day. And so goes the same for EVERY group being attacked in such ways. Each time, they are befuddled with such things, just like Indigenous once were (some still seem to be, of course) –not understanding the real challenge!
To find you still puzzling over all of this, i find curious in the extreme. Moves me to think that you’d do well to escape the game of liberal/conservative thought and dare into so-called “radical” analysis of those you have so far feared (?). If not anarchist critique, then how about decolonizing Indigenous truths?
Post this or don’t, just so you read it!
[TOC: >”dare into so-called “radical” analysis of those you have so far feared” — I’m not sure, in practical terms, where that gets us. Show me radical analysis making a difference and I might be interested. The children’s rights “movement” looked pretty radical once, especially just post-1968 when school kids’ power was really feared for a while in the wake of revolutionary student power. These days, though, children’s rights have been hijacked by the children’s “protection” racket.]
I am tempted here to add my own view that we also have a right to good quality, valid and reliable information in whatever field into which we choose to enquire; a right to know, and to not be constantly berated with what usually turns out to be utterly exasperating, enervating drivel.
It soon becomes obvious that much of the abovementioned ‘offensive’ material subject to all this review comes rather in the wake of said drivel, in response to said drivel, and to my mind very certainly constitutes a defense.
Here I quote one of my great favourites, however, being G. K. Chesterton, “Ideas are dangerous, but the man to whom they are least dangerous is the man of ideas. He is acquainted with ideas, and moves among them like a lion-tamer. Ideas are dangerous, but the man to whom they are most dangerous is the man of no ideas. The man of no ideas will find the first idea fly to his head like wine to the head of a teetotaller.”
It does have to be said, sooner or later, that this debate over paedophilia and sexual relations between children and adults is a debate over dangerous ideas and their expression, though, not more or less dangerous than other ideas merely more piquant, savoury, stimulating, full of zest and appeal, flying too quickly to the head of the teetotaller who becomes drunk on them rather than being illuminated by them.
A sharp, well-educated, well-trained intellect, like the palate, is indeed among the greatest of gifts.
An amendment: replace “paedophilia and sexual relations between children and adults” with “childhood sexual activity”.
For these sad people, the very idea that children might enjoy it and seek it is more than enough apparently to send them into panic-stricken hysterics.
Better, yet, why is England still exporting these sad miserable people . . . to the ends of the earth, along with their slum scrapings, and ‘poor’, whatever, terrified of being loved and human, along with their ‘carers’ and ‘protectors’, attacking viciously any who remotely approach them, usurping policy and law, instead of, like, getting their own society and economy and humanity sorted, finally?
BY THE WAY, I am an age peer and ostensibly class-mate and dormitory or room mate of Charles, had he been sent rather to Albury than Geelong, back then, hounded out of Eaton when he might have been nurtured and loved, as a boy, without all the bullshit he was made to suffer.
That is entirely my position on all this, and always has been.
Prince Charles was “hounded out of Eaton”? There is a confusion here, Gil. With the release of new letters in January, there has recently been considerable publicity about how the Queen ignored the perceptive pleadings of her mother to send Charles to Eton instead of Gordonstoun, where he was lonely, miserable and mercilessly bullied.
I should imagine Eton was a stuffy place compared to your school, and I understand that Charles was exceptionally happy in Australia. Nevertheless Gordonstoun it most certainly was not. All pundits seem to agree with the Queen Mother, and I feel sure that if he had gone to Eton, he would have met some very nice boys in any number of senses.
My sincere apology, Edmund; Gordonstoun.
As a very partially droll excuse, I’d have to say that from this far away, and very certainly from our experience with them at this end, the English all look and act the same. Some just happen to be rich and live in Mediterranean style houses along the coast, while the rest bring their slums with them.
With Charles, still today it is our perception given his happiness here; his ongoing fondness for Australia, that there is little difference among English public schools.
I look perpetually forward to the day it is demonstrated otherwise.
Gil, on March 2 you said: “why is England still exporting these sad miserable people . . . to the ends of the earth, along with their slum scrapings, and ‘poor’, whatever, terrified of being loved and human, along with their ‘carers’ and ‘protectors’, attacking viciously any who remotely approach them, usurping policy and law, instead of, like, getting their own society and economy and humanity sorted, finally?”
It’s about neocolonialism, period. These nuts are basically the 2nd wave shock troops after the initial crushings by the formal soldier deployments. Think about how nifty it is to send these crazies to places like Africa, via programs like The Peace Corp. Everyone there KNOWS they are off their rockers…but by the time they’re done trying to deal with such people, the neocolonial tricks have gotten in under their radar, and they’ve implanted themselves firmly.
Say, formal schooling versus informal, village schooling.
While I don’t have any anecdotes to serve this sample scientifically, doesn’t it make a lot of sense? I think of how every neo-colonial imperative gets rammed through the awareness of the average survivor of Western aggression. THAT would be an interesting exploration! Anyone know of any good reads on that? All I can think of is Franz Fannon and Wewa Wewo of “Just Leave Us Alone!” off-hand.
Well, for the record, I did have one ex-colonial social work professor – Africa, Western Pacific – staying here at one point. Chap couldn’t figure out why nobody would give him a job, and depressed ended up knocking back a goony bag or two per day until, incontinent, he started shitting on the floor, in my office, and we evicted him.
He was making a particularly big thing about the charges against me to that point, so I guess natural justice had its own way of sorting things.
I won’t mention his name because his cousin and niece were famous in film.
For my part, no sympathy.
“As the European Court of Human Rights has made clear, Article 10 protects not only speech which is well-received and popular, but also speech which is offensive, shocking or disturbing (Sunday Times v UK (No2) [1992] 14 EHRR 123):
“Freedom of expression constitutes one of the essential foundations of a democratic society … it is applicable not only to “information” or “ideas” that are favourably received or regarded as inoffensive or as a matter of indifference, but also as to those that offend, shock or disturb …”
32. Freedom of expression and the right to receive and impart information are not absolute rights. They may be restricted but only where a restriction can be shown to be both:
>Necessary and
>Proportionate.
These exceptions, however, must be narrowly interpreted and the necessity for any restrictions convincingly established (see the judgment of the European Court in the Sunday Times case at paragraph 50)
33. The common law takes a similar approach. In Chambers v DPP [2012] EWHC 2157 (Admin), the Lord Chief Justice made it clear that:
“Satirical, or iconoclastic, or rude comment, the expression of unpopular or unfashionable opinion about serious or trivial matters, banter or humour, even if distasteful to some or painful to those subjected to it should and no doubt will continue at their customary level, quite undiminished by [section 127 of the Communications Act 2003].”
34. Prosecutors are reminded that what is prohibited under section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act 1988 and section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 is the sending of a communication that is grossly offensive. A communication sent has to be more than simply offensive to be contrary to the criminal law. Just because the content expressed in the communication is in bad taste, controversial or unpopular, and may cause offence to individuals or a specific community, this is not in itself sufficient reason to engage the criminal law. As Lord Bingham made clear in DPP v Collins [2006] UKHL 40:
“There can be no yardstick of gross offensiveness otherwise than by the application of reasonably enlightened, but not perfectionist, contemporary standards to the particular message sent in its particular context.”
Interim guidelines on prosecuting cases involving communications sent via social media; Issued by the Director of Public Prosecutions, December 2012.
http://www.cps.gov.uk/consultations/social_media_consultation.pdf
*****
http://therealosc.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/broken-truths-part-2.html
The OSC
Good information. Many thanks.
Was the following comment of mine “grossly offensive”?
The Gallery exhibited six photos of Dr Davies. Perhaps I should explain that my comment was not meant as a gratuitously unpleasant attack on Dr Davies’ personal appearance. If anyone had taken me to task over seeming to make such an attack, I would have replied by explaining what I really find scary and sickening, namely that Dr Davies must have a ridiculously inflated sense of her own importance to believe anyone would really wish to see so many photos of herself, especially a collection in which, as Gil also noted, she is seen looking so uniformly sour and pompous. I’m sure we could all get that message loud and clear from yet another “grossly offensive” (or “distasteful”, at least) photo of her in the banner atop her Home Page, which in fact appears on every page of the site.
However, it’s her website. She’s entirely within her rights literally to make an exhibition of herself.
In legal terms, the definitive judgement on censorship, now cast in bronze and cited conspicuously in the current bible on censorship law; being Lewis, ‘Literature, Obscenity and the Law’ (Southern Illinois 1976), is Judge Frederick L. Hackenburg, “Enforced silence about disturbing facts does not clear the air.”
This sad woman herself, without being too rude and trying to avoid the openly defamatory, simply stating facts, is an object lesson in what I persistently refer to as lifelong unhappiness and misery. There is not a laugh-line or trace of a smile on her face.
Just imagine how a bit of skinny dipping, running around laughing and playing, having a bit of a fondle and a giggle, would have changed her entire life. Sad, really sad. I grieve for the poor lonely creature. I wonder whether she has any kids of her own, or ever had a good (something else more personal) allowing her to start viewing life through the lens of joy finally.
Clones all looking alike; all obese, bedraggled and miserable with the same whining self-righteous tone, have been exported to Australia where we find them likewise taking very late doctorates in some obscure, left-wing, Labor-funded university, and then marched out as experts in child sexual abuse and child protection under their pretentious new title ‘Dr.’
Frankly, all it does is diminish the award. I am on public record for asking somewhat pointedly, who is to protect children from you? adding, we have provided you with references, bibliographies, lists of papers, extensive data, and you haven’t bothered to read one word of any of it.
Now (continuing), I am the legal parent. I have Family Court orders a copy of which is before you, granting me “sole care and control of [said] children”, under my breath so the microphone wouldn’t catch it, and later transcribed as ‘indeciperable’, “so you can just fuck off.”
No wonder the children are traumatised . . .
I’d wager that Dr Davies knew perfectly well that there was nothing illegal on your blog and that reporting it to the police and posting their response was simply a publicity stunt.
The police’s use of “distasteful” and its cognates has strong precedent in US constitutional law concerning free speech. In Texas v. Johnson, a case about flag burning, Kennedy wrote in his concurring opinion, “The hard fact is that sometimes we must make decisions we do not like. We make them because they are right, right in the sense that the law and the Constitution, as we see them, compel the result. And so great is our commitment to the process that, except in the rare case, we do not pause to express distaste for the result, perhaps for fear of undermining a valued principle that dictates the decision. This is one of those rare cases.”
In Cohen v. California, a case about a man “convicted … for wearing a jacket bearing the words ‘Fuck the Draft’ in a corridor of the Los Angeles Courthouse,” Harlan’s wrote in his opinion “while the particular four-letter word being litigated here is perhaps more distasteful than most others of its genre, it is nevertheless often true that one man’s vulgarity is another’s lyric. Indeed, we think it is largely because governmental officials cannot make principled distinctions in this area that the Constitution leaves matters of taste and style so largely to the individual.”
Great legal quotes. Thanks AlexP.
Is the whole self-serving scam ‘Child Protection-Racket’, judgemental – or just mental ?
Meanwhile G Q/K H-TOC’s mean line says it all: ” When any voice is silenced by censorship the right of the entire community to hear that voice is forfeited. ”
We’ll think to that.