Is the NSPCC being dishonest in order to get our money?

Is the NSPCC just a big con trick?

According to the latest scare story from the NSPCC, at least 64 children are sexually abused every day in England and Wales; a claim that some may wish to question given that the NSPCC has already had one of its major advertising campaigns stopped by the Advertising  Standards Authority for being misleading.

In common with other charities, the NSPCC has seen a drop in its revenue since people realised that they couldn’t go on unnecessarily spending money. Like the rest of the child protection industry therefore, every now and again it needs to put its head above the parapet and come out with some new, dramatic report explaining to everybody that the country is filled with sexual perverts ranging from old men who allegedly committed the offences 50 years ago to kids in primary school who can barely spell the word sex, let alone carry out a sexual assault.

According to the well known charity – or business, depending on your point of view – more than 23,000 offences – including rape, incest and gross indecency – were recorded by police in 2009-10, an 8% increase on 2008-9.

For the first time, its research also looked at the age of abusers and apparently found that a quarter were aged under 18. One in four alleged victims was aged 11 or under.

According to the NSPCC, more than half of the victims were aged between 12 and 15, one in four was aged five to 11, and more than 1,000 were aged four or younger.

“More than 2,000 suspects in these cases were under 18. It’s clear we need more services that address the harmful sexual behaviour of young people, as well as adult offenders.”

What that actually means is that they want more money.

You will note the use of the word “suspects”; so it is by no means certain whether these figures represent real offences or not but, given that the prisons are not full to bursting with children convicted of sex offences, it is a fair bet that the “abuse” quoted has neither been proved nor verified.

Reports such as the one in question often use complex mathematical models to extrapolate the data from smaller samples. It is the same method used by opinion polls – and none of us would bet next year’s income on one of those.

Once again, the emphasis is on “stranger danger” when in fact, as any child protection ‘expert’ will tell you, over 90% of abuse takes place in the home.

The problem is that neither the government or the NSPCC want to suggest that family members are to blame because it is through them that both bodies raise their income; the government through taxation and the NSPCC from individuals. Therefore, they concentrate on the idea of strangers seducing or attacking children, even though the real threat from strangers is tiny compared with the threat of abuse from within the family.

The NSPCC was formed towards the end of the 19th century in what may be described as an expression of collective guilt for the mistreatment of children that had been prevalent in Britain for hundreds of years prior to its formation.

That collective guilt continues to this day and is used by various charitable organisations, the NSPCC among them, to generate millions of pounds every year by laying a guilt trip on the rest of us. What is terrifying is how little of that money actually goes towards the day to day protection of children and how much of it is absorbed in what can only be described as “corporate costs”.

If ever one needed any proof of the fact that much of the money collected from the public, benefactors and other sources under the pretext of spending it on the protection of children is actually used for the running of the organisation, one need only look at the corporate structure and indeed the corporate nature of the organisation.

The NSPCC has more well paid executives than many successful companies – and that is before you look into the lower levels of the organisation which also support its own internal executive industry. Take a look at the list below taken from their annual report:

Chief executive*
Andrew Flanagan

Director of corporate planning and performance*
Nicola Alderson

Director of fundraising*
Paul Amadi

Interim director of communications*
Keith Bradbrook

Director of finance and corporate services*
Ian Chivers

Director of services for children and families*
Wes Cuell

General counsel and company secretary*
Catherine Dixon

Director of child protection consultancy*
John Grounds

Director of adult advice and information services*
Peter Liver

Director of human resources*
Alistair Milne

Director of strategy and development*
Phillip Noyes

Director of ChildLine services*
Christine Renouf

Director of internal audit and inspection
Mary Handley

No wonder the charity needs so much money and may be prepared to be dishonest in order to get it.

According to last year’s annual report, available at http://www.nspccannualreview.org.uk/pdfs/NSPCC_Annual_Report_2010.pdf, the organisation used 71% of its income on what is described as “activities to end cruelty to children”. In monetary terms, that translates to £112,926,000, a figure which is by most people’s standards, an enormous amount of money.

To get to the truth of the matter, one has to examine how the money was spent. These are some of the categories put forward by the NSPCC when describing where the money goes:

• Services directly for children and families.
• Child protection helplines and websites.
• Public awareness, education, influencing and motivation to take action.
• Partnerships with other child protection organisations.
• Professional training on safeguarding and child protection.
• Research on the causes of, and responses to, child abuse.

The most ambiguous of all is undoubtedly the first one which is vaguely described as “Services directly for children and families”.

It is a wonderfully ambiguous title which no doubt could cover a multitude of sins if that was the intention. Even if you wade through the very lengthy report, it is hard to see exactly where most of this money goes. The more one looks, the more vague and complicated it becomes.

The NSPCC acquired ChildLine, the organisation originally set up by Esther Ranzen some years ago. The strange thing is, that although the NSPCC allegedly pay for ChildLine, the helpline also has received a £30 million from the government spread over four years. To be more precise, it has received £30 million from you and me whether we wanted to give it or not.

The third item on the list, “Public awareness, education, influencing and motivation to take action” is a masterpiece of meaningless gobbledygook which could cover everything from placing an advert in a newspaper to supporting a campaign led by the Sun newspaper, hosting an expensive dinner or whatever, all of which involves somebody making a profit somewhere.

Here’s another one: “Influencing and public education – carrying out research into the nature and effects of child abuse and responses to it, influencing policy makers, raising public awareness to end cruelty to children and informing the public at large of the impact on society of child abuse”

The key element in the item above is “influencing policy makers”. This is one area in which the NSPCC is very successful.

Unfortunately, the influence that they wield over politicians sometimes includes the use of out-dated and inaccurate information, often wrapped up in a blanket of ambiguity. They don’t mention that all that is necessary for a £7,000,000 piece of ‘research’ to be classed as ‘education’ is just one reference to a web address or a paragraph telling the reader where to find more information; a trick often used by charities and other organisations, including government.

If you can be bothered to read the full report, (it will take you half a day), you may quickly come to the conclusion that at least 70% of the income received by the NSPCC goes towards supporting its own existence rather than protecting children.

The organisation has form too and has already been proved to have been misleading people, according to the Advertising Standards Authority.

For example, in 2009, the NSPCC was forced to take down an advertising campaign that claimed that 1 in 6 children were being sexually abused. It turned out that the report commissioned by the NSPCC and from which the data was taken was 9 years old and, amongst other things did not define what was and what was not classified as sexual abuse.

Meanwhile, the MPs, Home Office, police and just about everyone else had swallowed the lot believing it to be true. The result was a whole flurry of new legislation, most of which was directed at the wrong target. (see below)

In response to the Advertising Standards Authority ban, a spokesman for the NSPCC said: “We have accepted the ruling from the ASA. Our study Child Maltreatment in the United Kingdom is an authoritative piece of research that is held in high regard and has been cited in numerous journals and parliamentary debates.

“The fieldwork was carried out in 1998/99 and the final report published a year later. At the time it provided – and still provides – the best estimate of the prevalence of child abuse in the UK.

“We are currently in the process of carrying out a second prevalence study that will update and add to the earlier report.”

Note the reference to the report being cited in parliamentary debates. Oh, the stupidity and gullibility of weak, pathetic politicians who dare not argue against the Status Quo.

TheOpinionSite.org suggests that this is proof indeed that the charity is not always honest in its claims and will stop at nothing, including grossly exaggerating the facts, in order to convince us all that we cannot possibly live without the NSPCC in our lives.

Another money-making industry spawned and encouraged by the NSPCC, deliberately or otherwise, is that of “training and Consultancy. Last year’s reports quotes “Child protection training and consultancy – delivering a child protection training and consultancy service to those working with children from our centre in Leicester, and in London.”

Again, the inference is that Britain is so full of sexual deviants that a huge industry that is worth millions of pounds is absolutely necessary if we are to survive this supposed scourge of modern life. Regrettably however, the child protection “industry”, led by the NSPCC relies on generating and maintaining fear and guilt in the public mind in order to successfully get the rest of us to pay for their comfortable salaries.

TheOpinionSite.org believes that the biggest problem of all with the NSPCC is that ever since its creation, it has been supported by royalty, celebrities and politicians. Today, that situation is the same with everyone from the Queen to the Beckhams supporting it. As a result, everyone is afraid to criticise what is much less of a charity and more of a multi-million pound business.

A Home Office spokesman said the government would continue to work with groups like the NSPCC to protect the most vulnerable people in our society. Of course it would say that; to do otherwise would bring the tabloids down on its head and would also be tantamount to political suicide; there we see the guilt trip again.

When the “Full Stop” campaign was at its height, no politician or celebrity would dare be seen on television without a green lapel badge indicating support of the campaign. It was as if they had all fallen foul of some awful, spotty contagious disease.

The real tragedy is this: Britain has one of the lowest child populations per head in the EU but also has the largest child protection industry. Just take a look on Google and try to count the number of child charities, training and consultancy companies and so called ‘experts’ offering their wares.  Britain also has more family intrusive laws, more child protection charities, more possible ways to commit a sexual offence and more child protection officials than any other country in Europe.

In terms of alleged sex offences, we lock up more people on less evidence than any other country; we have more “training and consultancy” companies that ‘assist’ the authorities, many of which are run by Americans who have sensibly seen an opportunity to exploit the market. We have hundreds of commercial outfits and individuals who make their incomes from providing CRB checks, sex offender programmes (including the NSPCC), child protection ‘expertise’, child protection psychology, residential care and academic research.

Much, if not most of this is driven and maintained by fear and guilt; guilt at ignoring child abuse for 200 years and fear that there is a paedophile on every street corner, fear that every man (and now woman) who shows an interest in children must be out to harm them; fear of criticism for speaking common sense and, for those in power, fear of political damage unless every new, draconian measure is carried through Parliament without discussion, without debate and without dissension.

My personal view is that the NSPCC and charities like it, although initially full of good intentions, are now nothing but corrupt, greedy organisations that are prepared to do whatever it takes in order to con the rest of us out of our hard-earned cash in order to support themselves. What is more despicable is that they are prepared to use implied guilt in order to do it.

Furthermore, the report mentions the NSPCC’s Statutory Powers. I don’t know about you, but I start to get very worried when I hear about a charity being given “statutory powers” of any sort. That suggests to me that the NSPCC is simply another department of an over-sized, intrusive government; a department that everyone is too afraid to close down.

TheOpinionSite.org is well aware that the seemingly “Holier than thou” NSPCC and others in the industry will not like this article but if they have a contrary view to express, there is a perfectly usable comment box at the bottom of this page.

It may be though that they are too arrogant and have become too powerful to be bothered to use it.

If they can justify what appears to be a huge waste of our money that could otherwise be spent on genuinely protecting children within the family where most abuse occurs, if they can justify what appears to be a huge con trick to get money out of the rest of us and if they can justify using often exaggerated, out of date or misleading information to force politicians into making unnecessary, draconian and intrusive laws that allow people to be locked up on little or no evidence… if they can do any of that, the comments box is at the bottom of the page.