Old Lags and Retrograde Justice.
Life on the Zimmer frame wing… In the year of the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta, the wheels of Justice appear to be not so much turning slowly as spinning uncontrollably in reverse.
On the one hand we have demands for pardons for offences that were seen as heinous 50 years ago, whilst on the other we have a race to see who can jail the most nonagenarian of the nonagenarians – based on allegations of offences that used to be dealt with by a swift kick in the shins 50 years ago.
We have a bumper crop of entrants this week for the title of ‘The Man who put the Old into Old Lag’.
Today, 91 year old Marcus Marcussen will be sentenced after being found guilty of ‘a string of sexual offences’ at Birmingham Crown Court. These ‘sexual offences’, committed 58 years ago, include striking a boy with a whale bone, and ‘sadistically’ turning the showers from hot to cold alternately. He also ‘forced’ boys to swim naked in the swimming pool.
The first victim came to the attention of police following psychiatric support after a mental breakdown – subsequent publicity led to a string of former pupils remembering the ‘horrors’ of their schooldays.
During her opening address, Miss Buckingham asked jurors to bear in mind that society was “very different” in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, with little chance of complaints by children being taken seriously.
Quite so – any young boy reporting to their parent that a teacher had hit them over the head with a whalebone, would have immediately been asked ‘what had you done’? These days we see that as victim blaming and the correct response would be ‘I’ll kill the bastard for laying a finger on my son’ followed by a visit to the personal injury lawyer.
Mr Marcussen is likely to be receiving his 100th birthday card from the Queen in Wandsworth Scrubs Geriatric Wing; I’m told that his likely sentence will be 10 years – assuming that a victim support group doesn’t complain that this is overly lenient and demand a minimum of 20 years.
He will possibly not hang onto his ‘oldest lag’ claim to fame for long; lagging behind him comes 95 year old Jack Mount. Jack is being hauled before the Beak for the fifth time in respect of historic sex offences.
Four times, over the past years, the prosecution has failed to prove him guilty of a string of lurid allegations made by former pupils at a school for maladjusted children in Shropshire. As a result of further trawling by abuse lawyers he is, this month, being tried again. When Moor Larkin looked at this case back last year he thought that Jack might be safely dead by now – but no, he is still kicking obstinately, and currently in Birmingham Crown Court answering charges in respect of offences alleged to have occurred 60 years ago.
Back in June last year, 94 year old Frederick Smith was sentenced to 12 months. The ‘94-year-old pervert‘ stood in the dock using a Zimmer frame to become the oldest paedophile to be jailed in Britain for offences the jury accepted occurred 40 years ago. Three months later he fell out of his prison bed – and died.
Judge David Goodin told Smith, of Haverhill, Suffolk, as he sent him down: “As frail as you are, bent over your Zimmer frame, justice cries out that you be sent to prison for your crimes. You need help with stairs, bathing and dressing but otherwise your memory is not bad and you can communicate clearly,” he added.
How is it going to work when neither the ‘victim’ nor the ‘predator’ can remember what happened, when, how, or if they gave consent? The victim because of the ‘dreadful trauma’ of a famous hand on their bum, and the predator because he’s 94 and no longer remembers being 34 anyway?
The Care Act 2014 has had to take account of this phenomena, and in April 2015, will for the first time introduce a statutory framework for the delivery of social care in prisons. On 31 March 2014 there were 102 people in prison aged 80 and over. Five people in prison were 90 or older.
Juliet Lyon, the Director of the Prison Reform Trust, said: “Caring for wheelchair-bound, doubly incontinent, often demented people is beyond what we can reasonably expect of prison staff.”
Death shall not release them – it cannot be long before we are digging up corpses buried 50 years ago and demanding that they stand trial.
There is absolutely no suggestion whatsoever that another nonagenarian, Shadrack Smith, has ever even thought of offending in any way against a child, nor has anyone ever suggested that he did so – but in case anyone is thinking that it is an outrageous suggestion to dig up the dead, I am including his unhappy tale.
Shadrack was buried in a traditional Romany ceremony a bare ten days ago. Rest in peace Shadrack? Not a bit of it. Local community leaders are demanding that the family dig him up again. His crime?
Non-believer! Not that Shadrack had no belief, he was a committed Roman Catholic; like British Rail snow – he simply had the wrong kind of belief. He was buried in his own plot, bought and paid for by his family years ago, in ‘an award winning multi-faith and non-denominational cemetery providing a number of interment and memorial options in a peaceful, serene, picturesque environment’. What could go wrong?
Shadrack didn’t peg it quickly enough – by the time he came to claim his hole in the ground, aged 89, the council had already buried a Muslim in the adjoining plot. The Muslim family are now demanding that Shadrack be disinterred – for as Muslims they do not wish to be buried next to ‘unbelievers’ aka the ‘wrong kind of believers’.
The council are now trying to persuade Shadrack’s family to sell them another plot that they had bought for future family members so that they can plant a hedge between our anonymous Muslim and poor Shadrack, barely cold.
You really don’t want to get to be 90 in today’s society – though if you make it to a theoretical 150, you may catch a pardon as society goes through another metamorphosis…
- windsock
February 12, 2015 at 7:49 am -
That Shadrack Smith story appalled me. If the moslem families do not like to be buried next to non-believers, a) they should have checked first because that cemetery is not consecrated , deliberately, so those buried there can be of any (or no) faith and b) why can’t they just move their own dead relative if they are still unhappy about the system (at their own cost)? Plus, said relative is DEAD. They are hardly going to complain.
As for the historic offences – I get that a crime is a crime, but as you say, when these are”crimes” simply because morality has changed (casual cruelty – or as I see it, discipline – to children was quite common in my younger years as part of maintaining an efficiently running school) it makes no sense at all to pursue them. These men are hardly going to offend again. Putting them in prison now deters nobody from the future. They will be dead before they are rehabilitated.
What, exactly, is the argument against a statute of limitations for these sort of offences?
- Mrs Grimble
February 12, 2015 at 9:30 am -
Sorry Anna, but that burial story is not quite as reported: http://freethoughtblogs.com/godlessness/2015/02/11/no-a-romany-mans-body-is-not-being-exhumed-to-placate-muslims/:
“‘Any application for moving a body would have to go through the Home Office if a family wanted that doing’, one of the council’s officers told the Daily Mail, presumably meaning the process would be difficult and dramatic enough to be improbable – though the comment has now been spun to suggest the possible involvement of cabinet ministers. There’s zero evidence the Muslim family involved want to do so, or even that they want Smith’s body exhumed at all – just that, before his burial, they complained about his grave being on their patch.”- ivan
February 12, 2015 at 1:04 pm -
No matter how you look at it it has all the hallmarks of the muslims wanting to have things all their own way as they do in most things.
- ivan
- Mrs Grimble
- Mudplugger
February 12, 2015 at 8:37 am -
At my all-male senior school in the 1960s, it was the normal convention to swim without the benefit of a costume – no-one questioned it, everyone did it, including some of the masters.
I can now see that, in my youthful ignorance, I was being horrifically and systemically abused, have ever since suffered immeasurable trauma, unquestionably compromising my whole life and quite possibly affecting my sexuality.
All I need now is a sympathetic firm of lawyers to gain me redress in the form of multiple beer-vouchers – I think I heard of a firm called ‘Peter & Gordon’, or some such – no doubt they’ll be cold-calling me soon. “So I wait and in a while……”- CF
February 12, 2015 at 8:45 am -
“it was the normal convention to swim without the benefit of a costume ”
Same here. As for the showers, a master attempting and failing to compensate for the commonly bad plumbing and heating systems might have had more to do with it; also, at our school other boys would routinely change the temperature the other way as they left the showers, for a lark.
- windsock
February 12, 2015 at 8:53 am -
At my all male senior school, the teachers used to shower with us. should I consult a lawyer to see if that was abuse?
- Peter Raite
February 12, 2015 at 11:52 am -
Yes, because he was clearly guilty of retroactive noncey!
Obviously in some of these case you hear of behaviour which prompts you to think, “yes, that was out of order even in 1976,” but a lot of this make you want to channel that famous At Last the 1948 Show sketch. “Hit with a whalebone? You were lucky. One week out geology teacher beat the entire class because just two or three of us hadn’t done their homework.” True story. He was very big on collective punishment.
What’s the number for Slater & Gordon, again..>?
- Frankie
February 12, 2015 at 8:28 pm -
“… At my all male senior school, the teachers used to shower with us.”
Windsock. As a matter of interest, was it this experience that persuaded you that you preferred other boys to girls, or would you say that you always knew which side you ‘buttered your bread’ on? Nature or nuture? It would be enlightening to know.
We had a bullying Welsh PE teacher who used to pull open the front of the boys shorts (allegedly to see if they were wearing their’shreddies’ under their PE kit; watch while the boys took a shower, end up in the shower with the boys at the end of term and… for anyone with a birthday during the school week – which coincided with a PE day – well they got ‘Deep Heat’ or linament (Ralgex) rubbed into their ‘private parts’ by said teacher – and it was only years later that I realised the significance of this.
He also routinely assaulted boys by thumping them with his not unsubstantial fist – if one of them annoyed him after he had enjoyed his traditional liquid lunch at the local hostelry.
No one complained!! No idea why, because the teacher was clearly completely unsuited to his job, but he got away with it for years.
The teacher is dead now, or he would be joing these other bastards in the dock, old age or no… IF there is a wealth of anectodal evidence – as there seems to be in at least one of the cases shown then I say they should hang!!
- windsock
February 13, 2015 at 9:38 am -
That’s difficult to answer. I would say that nudity in my home was NOT A THING, (mother being Mistress Prude in the Extreme) so when I went to an all boys school at 11 and got changed in the communal changing rooms for the first time, I had no idea what my body would turn into at a later stage in my life. But one of the boys was VERY physically advanced and I think it was he who made me think… Hmmm, that looks nice.
The teachers did not really start showering with us until we were all pretty much through puberty, so around 13/14. The headmaster came into the changing rooms after games from year 1, when we were naked and showering and sometimes grip certain boys by the shoulders and say “You’re a VERY big boy. aren’t you?” We all cringed but that’s as a far as it went (as far as I know).
Post puberty, other boys were bringing in porn mags with close ups of lady gardens and breasts and they did NOTHING for me. Doesn’t mean that I didn’t give it a try though. I didn’t become sexually active til I was 18 (too scared) and by 23 had decided that though the sex with men was nice (i.e. great), I was not getting emotional fulfilment. I had a friend, who was a girl, who knew I was gay, and we talked. We ended up living together in a sexually monogamous hetero relationship for three years before a series of events (you don’t need all the details), persuaded me I was living a lie and denying her a chance to be what she wanted to be – a mother. I realised I was far too selfish to be a father so we separated. But we’re still friends and I hang out with her and her partner and children and took her grandchild out the other week. I’m somewhat less selfish now and have more time for others.
I don’t know if that’s too much information for you. Personally I think it’s nature and nurture. i.e. your genes inter-react with your environment. My parents never divorced or lived apart, but Mum wore the trousers and Dad was just THERE. Absent as any sort of force but present as an example and in body. Does that help?
And your teacher was a sadist thug, by the sounds of it.
- Frankie
February 13, 2015 at 8:15 pm -
@Windsock… Wow!! That is about as complete an answer as I ever could desire.
Very interesting. One hears various arguments on this subject and you were clearly honest enough from the get go to establish, beyond any doubt, where your interests truly lay and not to subject someone you cared about to a life of false expectations.
I salute you.
I am troubled by the news of the conviction of weatherman Fred Talbot – not that there should be any doubt in this instance – as his own diaries appear to show his unhealthy sexual interests in 15 year old boys. Troubled, because of his apparent insouicance on being convicted and because it may be utilised as evidence that it is somehow wrong to pursue people like him and others, because of the length of time that has elapsed, and because the facts of the case are not supported by corroborating evidence, other than evidence of similar fact.
As I say, when these bad things were happening in front of me no one, least of all me, mentioned anything to anyone, not even my parents. It was just accepted by all those who were the participants, willing or otherwise. I only thought about how wrong it was many many years afterwards – as if I had somehow put these memories away somewhere, to be largely forgotten about. My birthday never fell in term time so this is the only instance I am aware of where being the youngest in the class, an August baby was a positive boon. I remember discussing this exact issue with a school mate only fairly recently. He too had hidden this away in his memory and his reaction was much as mine had been ‘The bloody pervert! He should be locked up!!’ Too late, now, for justice to catch up with the late and unlamented PE teacher who, ironically enough was called Mr. Christian.
I can therefore see why people at the time may have failed to do something about it, as they have done in several other highly publicised trials recently.
It cannot only be that their 1960’s 70’s behaviour is now being judged adversely by the standards of the day, or that the accusers only have their ‘eyes on the prize’ – a big cheque.
I don’t support the view that just because a multitude of people say he was it means that Sir James Wilson Vincent Savile OBE KCSG is guilty, despite being decidedly ‘odd’, but surely all of these people, Rolf Harris, Stuart Hall, Garry Glitter Max Clifford, Dave Lee Travis and several others, less well known, must have some hard questions to answer?? Savile was denied a trial during his life and was subjected to a witchunt in death, but the same cannot be said for the others named above.
Tried and convicted, by a jury of their peers. Not a flawless system, but the only one we have at present.
- Moor Larkin
February 13, 2015 at 9:59 pm -
* not that there should be any doubt in this instance *
He was deemed Not Guilty in 80% of the allaegations. Given your previously attested to unshakeable faith in the cogency of “The Law” that means that 80% of the vitims were lying. How can you be so insouciant about such a degree of bad faith.? It’s disgraceful. One way to comabt this vicious CPS approach of lobbing in grenades at random would be that whatever sentence is left when the smoke has cleared should be automatically reduced by the same percentage as the number of proven false alleagtions. That at least would begin to introduce a modicum of justice even if this whole area of historical jurisprudence has about as much balance as Hitlers bollocks.
- Frankie
February 14, 2015 at 2:37 pm -
I don’t think I would go so far as to say 80% of the ‘victims’ were lying, I just think that their accounts did not persuade the jury to the criminal burden of proof… but 20% did. And the fact that it is a jury of ordinary citizens goes some way to defusing the suggestion that it was aimless grenade throwing by the CPS.
See what I did there?
- Frankie
- Ho Hum
February 13, 2015 at 10:35 pm -
“convicted, by a jury of their peers”
I don’t get angry too often, but bloody hell, you are naive.
Or, as one example, aren’t you aware that Grand Juries, their peers, indicted the Salem Witches, and trial juries, their peers, convicted them?
And don’t you have any understanding of the concepts of localised morality, generational morality, guilt, be it relative or absolute, and the effect of those, of the blatant ongoing, perpetual, manipulation of legal frameworks for political and social purposes? And the potential combined impact of all those on the value judgements of your ‘peers’?
Or are those just more questions that are too hard to answer?
I don’t know much of the detail on any of the cases quoted but, at its simplest, juries are very often the product of their prejudices, and if you’re lucky, the facts might get a look in.
- Moor Larkin
February 13, 2015 at 11:14 pm -
@Ho Hum
The juries would be fine if the system wasn’t being gamed. The defence barristers are stopped by the judges from cross-eaxmining the complainants properly and the jury is told that “Victims mustbe believed”. Any juror seeking to do his duty and put aside his normal brain and only judge matters by what they hear in court is automatically biased. Add to that the responsibility that rather than merely having to guage whether the man in the dock is the guilty party, they actually have to to adjudge whether the event happened at all, because if it happened he MUST be guilty. If they judge him not guilty they are saying it NEVER happened and the victim is lying in court, which is Perjury. Faced with such a tangle of responsibility it’s a bloody miracle any Not Guilty verdicts are being delivered at all. It’s not the Jurors who are at fault, it is the Court and legal System that is corrupt. UK law is fucked.- Ho Hum
February 13, 2015 at 11:54 pm -
And that’s without your even mentioning the recent rapid increase in the number of laws that try to create offences of ‘strict liability’. Just to be sure that the jury can be in no doubt as to where their duty lies, of course….
- Moor Larkin
February 14, 2015 at 10:02 am -
7 February 2003
….. The modern approach to sex offences has little to do with human rights. It is really concerned with patrolling sexual behaviour, and protecting spiritual women from animalistic men (a stereotype also invoked by nineteenth-century ‘social purity’ campaigners) (16). There is no point in such a radical change to our criminal law, as a symbolic gesture to people who ‘feel violated’. The significant fall in convictions in rape cases is unlikely to be affected by it. If you are a rapist, you’ll say that you checked and she said ‘yes’. But it will encourage unrealistic complaints of rape and hopeless prosecutions. And it will have a chilling effect on human relationships.Barbara Hewson is a barrister at Hardwicke Civil
http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/6776#.VN8cRyxlxD1
- Moor Larkin
- Ho Hum
- Frankie
February 14, 2015 at 2:43 pm -
We may agree to differ in this regard.
I have a great deal of experience of the subject of which I speak and to each and every criticism I raise the question ‘How do we improve upon the present system?’ I agree it is not perfect but how to improve upon it? The South African system? The recent and much watched trial of Pistorius must raise questions, given that the trial judge made a very basic error in law, hence the appeal by the prosecution.
Cue deafening silence…
I really cannot see that one can equate the Salem witch trials with the present trials of celebrities. I think that things were just a little bit more backward back in the 1600’s. Presumably, man’s understanding has advanced, if only a little?
- Moor Larkin
- Moor Larkin
- The Blocked Dwarf
February 13, 2015 at 8:26 pm -
@windsock. so glad i took the time to read that.
- windsock
February 14, 2015 at 10:30 am -
Thank you. Anything to help mutual understanding in the crazy mixed up world!
- windsock
- Carol42
February 13, 2015 at 8:28 pm -
At least you did the right thing, back in the 60s a friend of mine married a gay man but she had no idea at all, I doubt she even knew what it was then! She though he was a perfect gentleman for not pushing sex before marriage. They only managed full sex once and she got pregnant then he said he needed to be on his own, he was very good to her and their son, bought them a lovely flat and paid good maintenance. It caused her great damage, for years she didn’t know why he never wanted sex and blamed herself for everything, he never admitted he was gay even when she realised and he was living with a ‘friend’ . I though what he did was unforgivable, she was a Virgin and a total innocent when they married. I know it was still illegal then and he wanted to hide it but he should never have taken advantage and used her as a cover.
- Frankie
- Moor Larkin
February 13, 2015 at 10:13 am -
Don Revie has become quite notorious in recent years for having a thing for “soaping” all his Leeds players back in the day. Was this a gay thing or a bonding thing? I find it hard (oooh Matron) to believe anyone would have Deep Heat rubbed into their gentleman-parts on the simple premise that it would bloody hurt wouldn’t it? Are you sure this isn’t a false memory [personal fantasy]?
I do recall that several of my team-mates in the footie changing-room back in the day, seemed addicted to Linament and would stink the changing-room out rubbing it on their thighs and I’ve a vague notion that the most addicted would even ask a team-mate to do it on their behalf – rubbing other peoples thighs is actually easier than rubbing your own. Was this a gay thing? Well, back in the day we were regularly being told that one in four of us lads was gay, so we were always casting an eye round the changing room wondering who they were, hiding in plain sight. The Linament lads always seemed the most overtly masculine ones though, bristling with testosterone in fact.
I’ve noticed more recently that now one in four of us have been child-abused or is it one in four of us who ARE child abusers. It’s hard to keep up…… ooh Matron again……….. Coincidences abound in this field it seems.
- Frankie
February 13, 2015 at 8:20 pm -
No… not a false memory, and, as I was an August baby it never happened to me in personam, as it were, but it did happen. Unbelievable, but true. I would swear on a stack of bibles if so asked. And yes, judging by the reaction of the persons to whom this was done it did bloody well hurt!!
- Moor Larkin
February 13, 2015 at 10:00 pm -
If it’s paedophilia you’re on about, then the younger you were, the more likely you would be to be appealing. Logic.
- Moor Larkin
February 13, 2015 at 10:12 pm -
Oh I see, you mean you were on hols in August. Pretty odd sort of a paedophile. He only attacks boys on their birthday? The pain… Linament on the testicles… This is all like some kind of Regimental things isn’t it. Initiation type ceremonies. Not sexual perversion at all. Methinks you’ve blown this up out of all proportion. Sorry for my misunderstanding.
- windsock
February 14, 2015 at 10:26 am -
Regimental things…. hmmm, ok among consenting adults maybe (but those I’ve heard of have made me retch – drinking pints of urine with human faeces in it? – an initiation ceremony as described by one who undertook it – that is bullying and dehumanising in my book)…. but on teenage boys? Where is the line between sexual perversion and initiation ceremony (a bit like frat-house hazing in which newbies are sexually humiliated – broom handles shoved up bottoms for example – before they are part of the gang).
Human nature and sexuality are weird. Which is why the world of consenting adults should be unpoliced, in my view, but where children definitely need protecting. Even from sadistic “initiation ceremonies”.
- Moor Larkin
February 14, 2015 at 11:18 am -
and sadistic “caning”. The battle has been won. Why can folk not enjoy the victory but rather seek to return to the battlefield. God knows. A country that fears it’s future perhaps canot help but wallow in it’s past – both imagined as well as real.
- windsock
February 14, 2015 at 11:27 am -
I’m with you on enjoying the victory, such as it is considering what some consider pornography that others do not. As for the past, well, sleeping dogs and all that, but sometimes those dogs left nasty scars. Which is why I’m still confused as to WHY we don’t have a statute of limitations.
- Moor Larkin
February 14, 2015 at 11:43 am -
My dad told me one or two tales of his military days in his older years before he died. One of them was how the barracks-room would tell their new joiners that they had to to eat the regimental meal. He explained how sausages would be arranged in a gravy and presented to the newbie in a chamber pot and he would be ordered to eat it. He of course didn’t know, I guess once it got closer he would notice the lack of odour but the fun was his reaction at the sight…
Another tale, which I have told before in the Snug was his story of their gay comrade. They were a unit based on the Call-Up so they got all sorts. Anyhow, a while after joining, this soldier began to experiment with nightly sorties to the nearby beds – just on the off-chance presumably, or perhaps he was a believer oin the 1-in-4 rule. No way to know now. Dad’s tale was that the platoon (or whatever a barrack-room is collectively called) were not only embarrased about his behaviour but one or two were a bit peeved, so they resolved to teach him a lesson. He fell asleep one night and I assume they had all been having a few beers because the story went that they carried his bunk outside without him waking (it was winter). Then, they ripped his blankets off as they ran back into the warm hut, leaving him in his shreddies. After a while, they let him back in the hut, on the promise that he would “stop fucking about at night”… Dad’s tale segued that eventually this guy became a reasonable Grunt (Dad liked soldiering) and they were all pals thereafter. Of course nowadays counsellors would be called in and everyone would quietly hate one another in Group Therapy but not dare to speak its name. Progress, progress, progress.
- Moor Larkin
February 14, 2015 at 11:47 am -
Oh, I should add of course that the platoon knew full well that if they “reported” this guy he would not only be thrown out the army, but forever marked in “society” as Queer (this would have been about 1951). They knew full well how homophobic the Establishment was, even if they the people, were prepared to “live and let live”.
- windsock
February 14, 2015 at 1:04 pm -
I think we have all been subjected to harmless pranks – but the initiation ceremony I described was not imitation – the teller of the tale maintains it was all “real”. And he is not ashamed of it, nor does he feel he was bullied into it.
As for your Dad’s treatment of the gay squaddie – it doesn’t sound unreasonable and not outing him seems like the sort of class solidarity that is missing in our “classless society”. These issues all meld into one in the end don’t they: how do you get along with other people who aren’t the same as you, especially at a time of enormous social change?
- windsock
- Moor Larkin
- Frankie
February 14, 2015 at 2:46 pm -
You may be right. Mr. Christian (ho ho!) was a rugby player by predilection. Perhaps the ritual of putting linament on someone’s privates was related to some form of sports initiation, but it was bloody odd nontheless.
No doubt he would have been in a cell these days.
- windsock
- Moor Larkin
- Moor Larkin
- Frankie
- windsock
- Peter Raite
- Ho Hum
February 12, 2015 at 12:42 pm -
I can see it now, the Peter & Gordon TV ad emerging, dripping, from the Dark Lagoon of Ancient Times.
“When swimming at school, were you ever exposed to Pinky and Perky? Call us with your porkies now…”
- Ho Hum
February 12, 2015 at 12:55 pm -
And in keeping with the theme of the day…after the outrage has smoked their bacon a bit, the revised version would add
- Ho Hum
February 12, 2015 at 12:56 pm -
(oops…finger trouble….)
…. “and for those who don’t do porkies, call our special halal line on xxx xxxx xxxx”
- Ho Hum
- Ho Hum
- CF
- Alexander Baron
February 12, 2015 at 8:50 am -
Some of these stories are utterly shameful. I had six of the best when I was 9, and I can still recall graphically a teacher grabbing me by the arm and slapping my legs when I was 6 for decorating the classroom ceiling with my paint brush. Half a century ago that was pretty much the norm. If this woman is still alive, could I report her?
You couldn’t make it up. By the way, in the US, the Cosby rape stories are continuing not only to come in but to be deconstructed. A bloke named Raskin has just shown that the timelines of some of the original accusers don’t hold up, and one of these women is clearly gaga; she’d been Sectioned (or whatever they call it) for among other things hallucinating.
- AdrianS
February 12, 2015 at 4:46 pm -
As others have pointed out should be a statute of limitations for these types of crime .80 year old men shouldn’t be sent to prison for forty year old crimes except murder
- AdrianS
- Henry the Horse
February 12, 2015 at 9:09 am -
Statue of limitations anyone? None of these cases would have gone to trial anywhere in Europe or in the US. There are very good legal reasons that all but the very worst crimes (and that I would restrict to murder) cannot be pursued after a long number of years have passed in modern western jurisdictions.
- eric hardcastle
February 13, 2015 at 12:03 pm -
And even with WW2 war crimes prosecutors are now saying victim’s memories are failing and convictions may be unsafe so a mass murdering concentration camp guard may walk free.
But whale bone slapping is a different thing of course and should be pursued to the bitter end.
- eric hardcastle
- Duncan Disorderly
February 12, 2015 at 9:28 am -
Regarding the plan to pardon all the gay men, I wonder if there will be any attempt to differentiate between those convicted of things that are now legal, and those that are still illegal now (shagging in public etc.)? Is a team of QCs to be hired to review this?
- Peter Raite
February 12, 2015 at 12:04 pm -
In certain respects it’s similar to the demand for a blanket pardon for all those “shot at dawn” during the Great War. You can cherry-pick individual cases where the condemned clearly was underage, under duress, or there were mitigating circumstances not taken into account. On the other hand, some of them were serial offenders with previous – and sometimes multiple – commuted deaths entences. Some had deserted before they got within earshot of the front lines, let alone having actually been in them at all.
In 1915 my Army Service Corps great-great uncle got a month of Field Punishment Number 2 and stopped pay because he overstayed his leave for a few days while still in Blighty, despite the fact that the leave in question was granted so he could attend to his own father’s funeral. After that he never put a foot wrong, and eventually died a lingering death from meningitis due to a shrapnel wound to the head two years later. I know where my sympathy lies.
- eric hardcastle
February 13, 2015 at 12:06 pm -
So that means poor old Wilfrid Brambell won’t be getting a pardon.
- Peter Raite
- Robert the Biker
February 12, 2015 at 9:29 am -
Even though the grave of that Tink looks like the worst sort of chavtastic shrine imaginable, I am bang alongside him being left alone and the ‘slims told to fuck off; they have gotten far too used to everyone wringing their hands and folding because of some imagined offense.
As regards the whale bone, what? I mean seriously WTF is going on here? I should think they mean a piece of whalebone such as reinforced corsets and dress hoops etc back in the dim and distant, a cane in other words. I am surprised none of these bogus and bullshit cases have gone to the ECHR.- Mrs Grimble
February 12, 2015 at 9:37 am -
Robert, thought you were old enough to know that you shouldn’t rely on the tabloid press for your information. Anyway, I bet you didn’t know that there are Muslim Romanies? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_Roma
- Robert the Biker
February 12, 2015 at 9:44 am -
Well Mrs, my only excuse is that the story has changed so many times I don’t know WHAT is true anymore. Fact it is though that the ‘slims had a moan and I presume that was with the intent of its being taken seriously!
As to muslim romanies, two issues here: does the koran have anything to say about dodgy tarmacing of driveways, and if a muslim tink is buried next to a regular muslim, do the family have a moan then?- Robert the Biker
February 12, 2015 at 10:54 am -
I wonder, was there a spate of ‘camel nicking’ when the muslim tinks (hereafter mts) went through the village? Perhaps you came out of the tent to find it up on bricks with the legs missing
- Robert the Biker
- Robert the Biker
- Mrs Grimble
- dearieme
February 12, 2015 at 9:38 am -
One of your tales reminds me of what Kissinger said about Iraq vs Iran” “Pity they can’t both lose”.
- Moor Larkin
February 12, 2015 at 10:21 am -
* Frederick Smith was sentenced to 12 months. The ‘94-year-old pervert‘ stood in the dock using a Zimmer frame to become the oldest paedophile to be jailed in Britain for offences the jury accepted occurred 40 years ago. Three months later he fell out of his prison bed – and died. *
Oh dear. Bit late to the party. Needed a new keyboard after that passage. Coffee in the mouth when reading.
Why have a legal farce when you can conduct a complete Pantomime!What did the liberals tell us about prison when they were campaigning for reform all those years ago?
Rehabilitation? Death will come soonest.
Protecting the Public? Are kids so obese nowadays that they cannot outrun a zimmer frame?
Punishment? Bring it ON !!!!Vindictive, nasty, and frequently lying through it’s teeth. The Law has become like its much-lauded Victims.
- Mrs Grimble
February 12, 2015 at 10:30 am -
When we moved to Scotland a decade or so ago, we found a pile of old school magazines in the loft – the old-fashioned typewritten, roneoed sort. They were from the nearby Kiliquhanity Free School, which was founded on the same principles as Summerhill school; the newsletters dated from the 70s and 80s. The topmost one had a cover drawing of naked children jumping into the school pond – it was a very decorous drawing with no naughty bits showing, but it was still jaw-dropping. According to the newsletters, skinny-dipping by both pupils and staff went on all the time (in suitable weather, or course) and nobody was at all bothered by nudity.
Intrigued, I googled the place and found a website (now disappeared) of reminisces by ex-pupils, who all had happy memories of their time there. It seemed that the older children did have the odd sexual experience (with each other) and they were very well aware of the hi-jinks the younger members of staff got up to in private. One ex-pupil related how he had barged into a shed and found two teachers naked and engaged in, er, “discussion”; the male teacher, very angry and still naked, had chased him all the way back to the school, shouting. The teller of this tale thought this was all hugely hilarious and not in the least bit traumatic.
There’s a short film on Youtube about the school: http://youtu.be/xNtnIpaZ7Jo. If you watch it, be warned! You’ll see quite young children handling sharp tools and lighting fires without any adult supervision at all – oh, the horror! - GildasTheMonk
February 12, 2015 at 10:32 am -
What appalling stories. How can any of these convictions been safe? And as for the last one…..dear God!
- Ken442
February 12, 2015 at 10:38 am -
This never-ending pursuit of historical “sexual” offences is beyond ridiculous. At infant and grammar schools in the 50s and 60s caning and assorted minor physical abuse was commonplace. I well remember a PE teacher wielding the long window pole over the heads of his 30 strong class of 11 year olds and woe betide you if you didn’t duck in time. Board rubbers hurled for any trivial misdemeanour and muddy football boots scraped over the back of naked boys in the showers. You soon learned avoidance strategies. I am not aware of any of my contemporaries being particularly traumatised by any of it. Just par for the course in those days. And, so what? Any real sexual predator amongst the staff would usually find his advances rebuffed by a good thumping from the intended “victim” and learn his own lesson!
Pursuit 50-60 years on is palpably absurd and simply gives rise to the sort of dismissive response we see here from any half-way sensible person.
One does wonder whether the time of the relevant authorities might not be better spent pursing current sexual abusers in Rotherham etc.- Engineer
February 12, 2015 at 12:20 pm -
I certainly remember the blackboard rubbers. We had one Master who was an absolute dead-eye dick with a board-rubber. He was all the more deadly because he didn’t even need to be holding the rubber if he decided to loose one off – he could locate, grab, aim and discharge in a milli-second. The worst part was not the subsequent bruise, it was having to walk round for the rest of the day with your blazer covered in chalk dust. Talk about a lasting mark… Not only that, but he made you return the board-rubber to him. That said, he didn’t do it very often. He didn’t need to.
- John Derbyshire
February 12, 2015 at 8:07 pm -
This as nothing to do with canes, slippers etc. My gym teacher wearing only a pair of shorts used to chase naked lads around the showers How this can be perceived depends upon a number of social and psychological factors. I was educated after the war and some teachers at today would be facing criminal charges for physical abuse.
The abuse some of us are researching is the organised systematic sexual abuse of children. and in particular by those who have been in positions of responsibility. It is dreadful to think that the intelligence services of this country have been actively employed covering up the seedy goings on of our Honourable members of Parliament.
- Engineer
- Moor Larkin
February 12, 2015 at 10:43 am -
With reference to the Link to my 2013 blogpost about Mr. Mount when I assumed him to be dead, circumstances led to me making an Update in 2014 and revealing the story of the weird comment stream that previously I had suspended after I was informed that Mr. Mount was in fact alive and endeavouring to protect himself against a growing web-conspiracy, which in due course was shown to be only too real.
This was the Update and is the truth.
http://jimcannotfixthis.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/narcissima.html - English Pensioner
February 12, 2015 at 11:14 am -
At the grammar school that I attended, we were forced to run naked through a row of showers after sports. The sports master often used to slap us on the backside to get us to hurry up. I can’t even remember his name, but I’m sure it was wrong and that I should be traumatised. Strangely it never worried me, but I feel that I should lodge a claim somewhere.
As for assault, I would appear to have claims against most of the masters, everything from being hit by bits of flying chalk or the blackboard (whoops, sorry, PC, Chalkboard) rubber or being pulled out to the front of the class by my ear.
Personally, I can’t believe that there is real evidence of a crime committed that long ago. I know in general terms what happened at school, but can only remember a few of the masters’ names, certainly I couldn’t remember any details about specific instances. If I was on a jury, knowing what my memory is like, I’d find it very hard to convict anyone of crimes all those years ago just on the basis of individual recollections.- The Blocked Dwarf
February 12, 2015 at 12:08 pm -
“If I was on a jury, knowing what my memory is like, I’d find it very hard to convict anyone of crimes all those years ago just on the basis of individual recollections.”
I wrote an article about exactly this but it was too XXX for publication on this blog – basically though I can remember every detail of having sex with a girl, even down to the brand of knickers she wore and what exactly we did. For 15 years of my adult life I could have passed a polygraph on that memory. Then I met the girl again and discovered that it never happened (she kept a VERY accurate diary, even down to my STD Clinic visit results!).
- The Blocked Dwarf
- The Blocked Dwarf
February 12, 2015 at 11:27 am -
I know the Landlady doesn’t like us describing the *details* of the abuse in abuse cases but I’m hoping she’ll let me bend the bar-room rules slightly in this case because they are just so horrific…
Aged about 15 my class mate (male) was abused for months by our English teacher, female (25ish I guess). He had to sit at the front of the class while she intimidated him by wearing short skirts *sans culottes* She used to force him to go over to her house after school where she would groom him by forcing him to go to the theater with her and cruelly inflicting some culture upon him. Then she’d take him back to her den of iniquity and teach him to cook exotic foreign food like lasagna . Further the prosecution contends she also committed a ‘hate’ crime upon him by teaching him to speak in RP and thus depriving him of his ethnic cultural Norfolk heritage and the inalienable human right of sounding like he’d been raised in a Norfolk cow shed (which he had as it happens).
Then she’d drag him to the bedroom and force him to perform all manner of unsavory sexual acts upon her.
Ruined his whole life. For the life of me I can’t understand why he refuses to go to the Police and get her banged up. Probably some kinda ‘Stockholm Syndrome’ , something to do with the trauma ?
- Moor Larkin
February 12, 2015 at 11:51 am -
When I was in the Infants, so under 10 presumably, the Headmistress smacked my legs several times (more than once – see how Semantics works!), not for the offence I had been called to her for, but because I frowned at her while she told me off. That’s feminism for you…
- Moor Larkin
February 12, 2015 at 11:54 am -
I should add for historical clarity that kids of that age all wore shorts back then, so no – there was no sexual motive on her part under the guise of punishment, merely to enable her see me with no kecks on.
Can’t think for the life of me why I’m defending the old cow.
- Moor Larkin
- Moor Larkin
- windsock
February 12, 2015 at 11:35 am -
We had a math teacher at our all male school. He was very particular about our trigonometry homework. If any was ever handed in drawn with a blunt pencil, he would come up to you the next lesson, sharpen the pencil to a pinpoint and then dig it in the back of your ear, behind the flap where it joins the head. Until you cried out in paid. Sometimes he would actually beat you around the head with a fullt chalk encrusted board eraser. We all laughed.
Happy memories…
- windsock
February 12, 2015 at 11:35 am -
cried out in paiN
- The Blocked Dwarf
February 12, 2015 at 12:01 pm -
Our math’s teacher was a dead shot with the blackboard eraser. For those not of the i-zimmerframe generation I should explain that a black board rubber was a chunk of hardwood with felt on one side and it hurt like hell if thrown by a former county cricketer . http://www.boardsdirect.co.uk/store/product/28770/Traditional-Wooden-Board-Erase/?gclid=CIWNzuWt3MMCFc_LtAodGkUAYg
- Mudplugger
February 12, 2015 at 12:22 pm -
We had an art/woodwork master of Austrian origin who, in an earlier life, had been a circus performer.
His party-piece was chisel-throwing – if he spotted you doing something in an unapproved manner, a chisel from afar could thud into your work-piece: for example, that tea-tray you’d been working on all term and that you’d promised your mother would astound her – well it did with a great big chisel-divot missing from the middle, and all because I’d been spotted using a file instead of a spokeshave.- The Blocked Dwarf
February 12, 2015 at 12:36 pm -
“because I’d been spotted using a file instead of a spokeshave.”
A crime so heinous that he would, I feel, have been justified putting the chisel through your hand. You do not want to know what happened to the ‘student’ mechanic whom I caught using a torque wrench as a hammer (I used to unofficially supervise the college workshop)….
- The Blocked Dwarf
- Mudplugger
- The Blocked Dwarf
- windsock
- Peter Raite
February 12, 2015 at 12:11 pm -
Window poles, blackboard rubbers, beatings for the slightest transgressions…. it’s all so familiar!
- Moor Larkin
February 12, 2015 at 12:21 pm -
My Granny was a great believer in smacking. She said little children were just small animals and needed to be trained accordingly when necessary. She always then made the rider that folk should only ever slap them on the bottom or the legs with their hands because that way, they would never physically damage the child, due to their own pain. Old fashioned common sense. Watching and listening to some of the mind-numbing nagging that little kids have to endure in public from their miserable mothers in the supermarkets these days, I thank god I got an occasional clout but was always left with my dignity intact.
- Moor Larkin
- Engineer
February 12, 2015 at 12:31 pm -
I was wondering slightly about the current hype surrounding the film of ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’. Apparently, staff in B&Q have been warned to expect a sudden increase in demand for cable ties, tape and rope. Suppliers of ‘marital aids’ are expecting a rush on whips, paddles and other ‘toys’ (and no doubt on dodgy lingerie and high-heeled boots, too – and that’s just for the blokes).
However, reading the comments above, there does seem to be a distinctly masochistic element creeping in – flying board rubbers, canes, cold showers, etc. Maybe it’s not so surprising, after all.
- Moor Larkin
February 12, 2015 at 12:42 pm -
This made me snort more coffee over my new kyboard and I haven’t even got a sound card in this computer…
http://youtu.be/gnGX4FuIK60It’s becoming an expensive day.
- The Jannie
February 12, 2015 at 10:04 pm -
“kyboard”? Slippy one, is it, Moor?
- The Jannie
- Moor Larkin
- GildasTheMonk
February 12, 2015 at 12:39 pm -
I echo the comments regarding the hurling of blackboard rubbers and so forth. We had one maths teacher who turned a boy upsdide down and shook him. The boy was a little shit and deserved it. Order was restored. No harm done. This is all PC bollocks, coupled with hysteria. And frankly, these prosecutions must be unsafe and not in the public interest.
As for the last story…outrageous!- Peter Raite
February 12, 2015 at 1:06 pm -
Yes, it’s even like corporal punishment is still allowed, but these are just prosecutions for “going too far.” What message is being sent now? “You’re being punished for something you can’t do now?” It seems almost “reverse Turing, ” to coin a phrase.
- Peter Raite
- The Blocked Dwarf
February 12, 2015 at 1:39 pm -
AR, incase no one has mentioned it already the link -http://www.hinckleytimes.net/news/local-news/dispute-over-grave-plots-after-8584294- is dead, the article removed.
- giles2008
February 12, 2015 at 1:56 pm -
And here is another one.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-31443236 - Ms Mildred
February 12, 2015 at 2:00 pm -
I never remember bullying at the girls section at the council school in the forties. I recalled being caned on the hand for ‘insolence’ at 9 years old, after we found out recently, from the old punishment books, when the school was to be closed down. My brother was bullied there. They used to call him a dunce and followed him home jeering, and I clouted one with a yard broom and threw dried horse muck at them from mum’s roses. Probably a forbidden word now….dunce. As for a doddery old zimmer man dying from a fall in prison….how hard and cruel to put him in there. We are just as barbaric as those who burned heretics at the stake, broke people on the wheel and harried Oscar Wilde to disgrace and an earlier death. Now we are doing this for crimes alleged to have taken place more then half a century ago. It is extreme cruelty/torture in a psychological form. I visualised an enormous whale rib being wielded. It was probably one of those plaited ‘bones’ like my gran had in her stays. They were still called corset bones in the forties and fifties….so even that evidence is perhaps inaccurate. A very flimsy, small, flexible item that might cause a bit of discomfort. There is ,too, the constant threat that more ‘victims’ will decide to make allegations.
- JimmyGiro
February 12, 2015 at 3:10 pm -
When the caring powers-that-be finally get around to the ultimate recycling scheme, I wonder if we will have Halal Soylent Green?
- binao
February 12, 2015 at 3:30 pm -
I guess all of us of a certain age will have memories of various punishments & abuses from schooldays. Mostly harmless even though painful, but I do recall one cane mad teacher. There were a lot of ex service people in education then, and it was believed he’d had a rough time as a POW, so no one was going to kick up.
Instant retribution is a bit like: I put my hand in the fire, it hurts. I won’t do that again.
OK not many of us have fires any more, but I can see how waiting months for investigations, social worker & psychiatric reports will take the edge off retribution.- Moor Larkin
February 12, 2015 at 5:12 pm -
My Grandfather was supposedly expelled from his school because they had an especially vicious teacher. One day, at about the age of 14 or so, my Grandad apparently had had enough of being cuffed and bullied so he kicked the teacher hard in the shin as another blow approached… and broke the teacher’s leg….
One benefit of “kids” in hobnailed boots in them thar days was the abilty to fight back it seems. By my calculations this would have all taken place in about 1915 or so and thus we cannot blame the war, unless perhaps it were the Boer War.
- GildasTheMonk
February 12, 2015 at 7:23 pm -
Great story!
- GildasTheMonk
- Moor Larkin
- Paul Widdecombe
February 12, 2015 at 4:03 pm -
How’s about this for a bit of H&S madness then?
(Caution – may contain images disturbing to Raccoons…)
- WJohn
February 12, 2015 at 4:21 pm -
Shirley the use of a wholesome breaks all CITES and Greenpeace rules and he is lucky not to have been tied to the last polar bear surviving and cast adrift on the last extant ice-floe.
- Moor Larkin
February 12, 2015 at 5:13 pm -
Spam associated with whalebone presumably…..
- jS
February 12, 2015 at 11:08 pm -
Polar bears are doing fine:
http://business.financialpost.com/2015/01/15/faux-polar-bear-figures/
- Moor Larkin
- Bill Sticker
February 12, 2015 at 4:49 pm -
Cold showers and being caned? All my senior school teachers should be quaking in their geriatric orthopedic slippers in case they’re hauled before the beak. Especially the Games master. That shower was icy, freezing I tell you. Well, lukewarm because the water heater was on the fritz, but, but, it wasn’t as hot as it should have been. I want compensating!
Jailing nonagenarians and pardoning real criminals? Oh FFS. No wonder I emigrated.
- IlovetheBBC
February 12, 2015 at 9:11 pm -
The old boy just found guilty did evidently have sexual contact – of a fumbling kind, by the sound of it. There is no mention of any more serious assault such as penetration. To make the accusations sound worse, they dressed up clobbering children (100% normal then) and hot/cold showers as ‘sadism’. That is actually what he’s termed – a sexual sadist. For anyone brought up in this era, this is pretty daft. I’m appalled we are jailing nonagenarians for offences which are towards the bottom of the scale of depravity. It’s utterly, utterly pointless and inhumane.
- Ed P
February 12, 2015 at 9:48 pm -
I’m concerned about the origial Olympic games, where men were naked. Can’t we do something about that?
- Ed P
February 12, 2015 at 9:48 pm -
original
- Engineer
February 12, 2015 at 10:11 pm -
You’re not suggesting reinstatement, are you Ed? In the current climate, even the feminists would baulk a bit at that!
- windsock
February 13, 2015 at 9:41 am -
I like that idea.
- windsock
- Engineer
- Jonathan Mason
February 13, 2015 at 6:16 am -
And not the women? What vile inequity. Pity the poor spectators. However I am sure that the sight of Jessica Ennis in tiny shorts helped to keep eyeballs glued to the telly.
- Mudplugger
February 13, 2015 at 8:25 am -
Glad to knowI wasn’t alone……
- macheath
February 13, 2015 at 9:31 am -
And don’t forget the Beach Volleyball. Research for a post on the last Olympics led me to the published rules for the Athens competition:
while the men’s uniform followed a basic singlet-and-shorts pattern, merely stating it should be close-fitting and not baggy, the women’s kit was described in meticulous and heavy-breathing detail:‘The top must fit closely to the body and the design must be with deep cutaway armholes on the back, upper chest and stomach.[…] The briefs should be a close fit and be cut on an upward angle towards the top of the leg. The side width must be maximum 7 cm.’
- Peter Raite
February 13, 2015 at 10:39 am -
It’s certainly bizarre given that for swimming the FINA regs are merely:
* for men, [the swimsuit] must not extend above the navel nor below the knee, and
* for women, shall not cover the neck, extend past the shoulder nor shall extend past the knee.There are dispensations for medical and religious grounds, but they must be provable. Ultimately it has to do with reducign any possible advantage due to the different aquadynamic properties of swimsuit fabric as opposed to human skin, in reaction to the dark days of “shark suits” a few years back.
I, of course, use swimshorts, because they hid a multitude of pies… I mean… sins!
- Peter Raite
- Mudplugger
- Ed P
- Carol42
February 14, 2015 at 11:44 pm -
Thank heavens for one onc thinking outside the box that there may be something else going on, as you said too many would just have thought all your symptoms were due to the LC metastasis. I was lucky too that a Dr. thought my anaemia might have a more serious cause. It’s a shame that so much can depend on one doctor.
- Lucozade
February 16, 2015 at 5:04 am -
Re: “These ‘sexual offences’, committed 58 years ago, include striking a boy with a whale bone, and ‘sadistically’ turning the showers from hot to cold alternately. He also ‘forced’ boys to swim naked in the swimming pool”
If these are the standard of all the allegations against him I could probably get my parents jailed – and my parent could definitely get theirs jailed (even though they’re dead)… :/
- The Blocked Dwarf
February 14, 2015 at 7:01 pm -
” I subscribe to the view that most of these stories originate in genuine abuse, either from family members too close for people to want to upset the family apple cart, or non entities that they genuinely didn’t think they would be believed over ”
That deserves a long post in it’s own right, you can’t just tease us with morsels. Hobbling down the stairs into the barroom and making deeply insightful and profound comments in passing whilst heading towards the medicinal Brandy just isn’t on.
- Carol42
February 14, 2015 at 9:36 pm -
Absolutely wonderful news, I am delighted for you both and long may you continue to feel good. I am surprised it wasn’t picked up sooner though I always get FBC which of course includes Thyroid. It can cause havoc if not working properly, I am so glad you are able to enjoy life again and looking forward to more long posts.
Carol - The Blocked Dwarf
February 14, 2015 at 10:17 pm -
Anything I say would somehow seem trite, lame and cliched but I am so happy for you and Mr.G. Thank you for sharing that. Think I shall now have to rewatch tonight’s TV News to take the edge of the vicarious joy….can’t be doing with all those good vibes….I might even crack a smile and then the World would truly rend asunder and foul Beast limp towards Dereham.
- macheath
February 15, 2015 at 3:46 pm -
Very glad indeed to hear you are climbing out of the hypothyroid pit; just keep on taking the tablets!
- Engineer
February 14, 2015 at 10:26 pm -
I’m cracking a smile, too! Keep that stripey tail held high, Anna!
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