January 21, 2006

A contributor who, for reasons that will quickly become clear, wishes to remain anonymous offers a personal perspective on the debate about teachers and sexual offences.


Who protects the adults?

WHO protects the teachers? And the adults. That's what I'd like to know.

Sex, or sexual attraction, you'd think from all the recent hystronics in the UK about teachers and sexual offences, was entirely a one-way process.

Everyone, from newspaper columnists to politicians and disgusted of Tunbridge Wells, has been ranting on about protecting 'children' from teachers.

What about protecting teachers - or any adult for that matter - from the youngsters?

I discovered 'dick' soon after my 10th birthday. Within a few months, I realised that I far preferred 'man dick' to 'boy dick'.

I can't remember exactly why, perhaps there was more of it. I know I had always preferred the shape of men, rather than pre-pubescent boys. I know I still do.

But, as a young teenager, with testosterone being produced far more quickly than it could be masturbated away, I went after 'man dick'. I wanted 'daddy' - as many gay women and, I understand some women, still do - not 'junior'.

Legalisation
I knew that sexual contact between men under 21 was still a crime; there had been enough in the papers that year - 1967 - about the legalisation of homosexual activity in very limited circumstances.

And, yes, as a nice, white middle-class kid, I looked at the daily newspaper, picking it up off the doormat many mornings - those being the days when papers where still, like milk, delivered in many parts of the UK.

I'd also overhear conversations on the bus on the way to school. I'd read over others' shoulders, or pick up papers that had been left behind.

My contemporaries may have been more interested in the successes of Manchester United or female flesh. I was more interested in what men could do together.

So, yes, I knew what wasn't allowed, but somehow, when you're that age, such laws don't seem to relate to you; or at least that one then didn't seem to relate to me.

Brazenly, I chased dick. Big time. I knew what I liked and I knew what I wanted. I was out to get it.

Predatory
Looking back, I frighten myself. I got dick, both from some older boys at school and from some adults. I was well aware of the penalties they could face, but I was determined. I was predatory.

Would I have been given a chance to say, 'hey, I was the one who started it? I took the lead.'

Somehow, I doubt it. The assumptions and prejudices of the time - and still now, in 2006, by the looks of it - would have denied the reality that I, as a youngster, could have been the one who initiated such activity.

Then, those assumptions were wrong. They could be now.

If reports that young people are now reaching adolescence at a younger age, and with sexual references and images everywhere, it should be impossible to believe that 12-year-olds are not highly-sexed individuals.

Remember too, that it is only a few generations ago that our forebears could legally marry at 14.

What happens to that 12-year-old who is attracted to those who are older, if only by a few years?

I can't speak for young women, but I do know that for many a young man, masturbation cannot go on for ever. There comes a time when the thought of another hand, if nothing else, becomes irresistible.

Ignored dimension
And, that's not the only dimension of this debate that seems to have been ignored. Habeas Corpus too has gone out of the window.

Some of those who have been vilified may have been cautioned by the police, but there has clearly not been enough evidence of a criminal offence being committed or such individuals would have been charged, then tried and finally convicted.

Suspicion leading to a caution now incurs these other penalties, without recourse to an appeal.

One story - and even it is not true, the example remains valid - related to a man who, when he was 17, eloped with a woman less than two years younger. That may have been dumb, but was it really 'child abuse'?

Paedophilia - the love of children - is seen by some as attraction to the pre-pubescent, of either sex. Under this definition, it is not the same as sexual attraction to someone, again of either sex, who is physically mature, or well on the way to such maturity.

Ridicule and inconsistency
Yet, someone who is attracted to - and may even have physical contact with - a young man who is hairy and whose 'balls have dropped' or a young woman whose breasts and pubic hair make guessing her age very difficult is regarded with the same random loathing as a person attracted to a clearly immature five-year-old.

'Bland is bad' is a phrase that has a lot going for it. If there's to be a resolution to this dilemma that is to be truly just - and does not bring the rule of law into ridicule for inconsistency - then these nuances must be acknowledged and considered.

That there are some in the UK who have been unable to tell the difference between a paedophile and a paediatrician makes the predicament even more difficult and the situation more volatile, especially when basic passions for the protection of the young are roused - if misplaced.

If we don't, then individuals - younger or older - will be damaged, seriously and permanently. There will be great miscarriages of moral justice, and society will be the poorer for its inability to be mature and perhaps, more importantly, the inability to call itself civilised.