Family Education Trust

The UK’s national research institute investigating and informing public discourse on issues affecting the flourishing of the family. 👩‍❤️‍👨👨‍👩‍👧‍👦🚹🚺🚸

[James Esses @JamesEsses]

Giving evidence at the Conversion Practices Bill Select Committee, non-binary Dr Igi Moon says: “we don’t want to be making somebody believe that they are something they are not”.

They are literally telling children they can change their sex.

You couldn’t make it up.

[Family Education Trust @FamEdTrust]

The National Crime Agency (NCA) is appealing to the public for information as two Rotherham grooming gang members remain on the run after being convicted of raping a 14 year old girl.

https://t.co/IKKtnicNnV

[Family Education Trust @FamEdTrust]

“Then Vegas straddled the young woman, pinning her to the floor, and kissing her for quite a while. Most disturbing, perhaps was that around half the audience seemed to find this really funny.”

What has gone wrong with British culture that people laugh at sexual assault?

[Jo Bartosch @jo_bartosch]

Bit quiet isn't he? https://t.co/L7bLkoElSy

[Ermine 🟩⬜️🟪 Courage is Contagious🟥 @ErmineAmies]

@LouiseGrace12 @ZacGoldsmith Look how ineffective that education in school is -with 1 in 6 young people thinking Only Fans is a fine way to earn some money. So much for PHSE lessons.

@ProtectTeach https://t.co/NKpz07vrnT
https://t.co/bt7XzxxtXY

[Family Education Trust @FamEdTrust]

The law also allows for 13-15 year olds to have sex as long as they ‘consent’ and there isn’t a big age gap.

The response of police and social services to victims of grooming gangs, blaming the girls for ‘lifestyle choices’ reflects the current legal guidelines.

[Paul Embery @PaulEmbery]

This is a fair point. The Walliams/Brand affairs aside, I'm seeing a lot of people curl their lips at the thought of older men having sexual relationships with young women. But the law allows for it. Parliament has legislated in a way that permits a 70-year-old bloke to have sex with a 16-year-old girl (position of trust scenarios excepted). If that makes our skin crawl as a nation (it certainly does mine), we should change the law.

[Family Education Trust @FamEdTrust]

Until the concept of motherhood is given the status it deserves instead of successive UK governments rushing women back into work and encouraging them to put their babies into nurseries, mothers won't get the support they need and deserve.

It seems hypocritical to make women feel like failures if they struggle to breastfeed only to force them to hand their nine month old babies into the care of strangers for fear of losing financial support.

[Family Education Trust @FamEdTrust]

Ministers need to look at raising the age of legal consent to 18.

This would go some way towards keeping vulnerable teenagers safe and protecting them from predatory older men.

16-year-olds are CHILDREN, most of whom are still at school.

They shouldn't be having sex.

[Caroline Farrow @CF_Farrow]

As mum of teenage girls this resonates particularly hard and makes me incandescent with anger.

I unequivocally believe them.

[Family Education Trust @FamEdTrust]

@breastfeedorg @sue_haddon @deb_cohen @BBCfileon4 Yes - breastfeeding can take 6 weeks to properly establish with the first baby,

[Family Education Trust @FamEdTrust]

@NoLongerTheFuzz How is Ross horrified by Walliams dating younger women when he started dating his now wife when she was 16 and he was 26? He’s described being a “parent” as well as her husband.

The age of consent needs raising to 18 to prevent child grooming.

[Family Education Trust @FamEdTrust]

@smartpunk6 @AjaTheEmpress Yes - it should be raised to 18. If children can’t legally vote, drink alcohol or get married, why is it ok for them to have sex?

[Family Education Trust @FamEdTrust]

Notice how the journalist described a vulnerable 16 year old schoolgirl - a CHILD - as being ‘troublesome’ and looking ‘worse for wear’ while out drinking with a man nearly twice her age.

As we pointed out in our 2017 report ‘Unprotected’, the normalisation of underage sex is why grooming gangs and sexual predators got away with their crimes for so long.

The media has been a big part of enabling these men to target young girls and shaming their victims.

The age of consent really should be raised to 18 to prevent adult men from targeting young teenagers.

[Congolesa Rice @judeinlondon]

If you’re outraged about 31yr old Russell Brand dating a 16 year old, stay tuned for 33yr old Noel Fielding dating a 16yr old when she was still in Yr 11.

Whom he met after a gig with… Russell Brand.

[Family Education Trust @FamEdTrust]

@aliraff11111 This 👆Bill Wyman said in his autobiography, “she took my breath away ... she was a woman at thirteen". He was 47.

[Family Education Trust @FamEdTrust]

@Lene909 Because she was a child who was studying for her GCSEs out drinking illegally with an adult man twice her age?

[Family Education Trust @FamEdTrust]

In ‘The Boy in the Dress’, a boy called Dennis dresses up as a girl called Lisa and attends school wearing a dress.

When Dennis first sees himself dressed as a girl, the narrator describes his happiness: “He felt so happy he wanted to dance. Sometimes you feel things so deeply that words aren’t enough.”

Yet somehow this book ended up in many school classrooms while Roald Dahl’s and Enid Blyton’s books have been removed, rewritten or given trigger warners by ‘sensitivity readers’.

[The New Statesman @NewStatesman]

THE DISMAL WORLD OF DAVID WALLIAMS
(This piece was first published in September 2023.)

Why does David Walliams retain such a grip on our children’s imaginations when his own is so impoverished? His 2008 debut, The Boy in the Dress, a story of a cross-dressing lad gaining acceptance from his divorcee father, was elevated by illustrations by Dahl’s former collaborator Quentin Blake. But Walliams’s subsequent output has offered diminishing returns, and the “World’s Worst” series is, well, the worst. Let’s put to one side the dubious stereotyping of Mr Raj the Asian news agent, the Chinese boy Brian Wong “who was never wrong” (but was later deemed to be “wrong” enough to be removed from publication) and the women who are constantly brandishing mops and “bog brushes”. After all, Dahl was a reliable source of unpleasant prejudices, as the row over “updated” editions earlier this year reminded us.

But Dahl’s work has a subversive linguistic energy that cannot be denied. Walliams’s only gifts are for repetition. Characters are scatologically formulaic: Windy Mindy and her lethal “bottom burps”, Terry Tetch, whose “chunder thunder” ends up on his own face. (In The World’s Worst Pets Walliams raises the stakes and introduces a goldfish that can “furp” – “when someone, or something, farts and burps at precisely the same time”.) Original scenarios are rare. When Posy Pooch’s two Tibetan mastiffs conceive, they have 99 puppies, leaving a household of “one hundred and one dogs”. Bertha the Blubberer is a Violet Elizabeth Bott-style screamer, so of course her nemesis is called William.

https://t.co/tY0a1u8Sbu

[Family Education Trust @FamEdTrust]

@OldRoberts953 @SDewherst From one safeguarding disaster to another…

[Family Education Trust @FamEdTrust]

A reminder that Children in Need, along with other major UK children’s charities, have moved far away from their founding principles of safeguarding children.

We outlined this in our recent report, Welfare vs Ideology.

[Jonathan Sloman @SquidyUK]

Here another horror I was in the audience for to witness live.

[Family Education Trust @FamEdTrust]

Yes, CPS guidelines treat sex under 13 as absolute rape but there is a grey area for 13-15 year olds if they are judged to have “consented” to sex with someone no more than 3 years older. We believe this is a loophole that needs closing and that the age of consent should be upheld.

[Family Education Trust @FamEdTrust]

As the ITV documentary points out, it’s understood that Jonathan Ross did not write this joke, only delivered it.

Ross started dating his now wife Jane Goldman when she was 16 and he was 26, and married her when she was 18. Here he describes being a “parent figure” for her.

[James Spiro @JamesSpiro]

Jonathan Ross: “The comedy awards is 15 years old… and like most 15-year-olds, it's drunk, it's unpredictable, and it's probably going home with David Walliams.”

Everyone knew. Just like they did with Russell Brand.

[Family Education Trust @FamEdTrust]

Russell Brand: the culture that made him

https://t.co/DvY9A2hfHD

[Family Education Trust @FamEdTrust]

A three-year joint investigation by ITV News and the Guardian reveals allegations dating back to 2003 that David Walliams preyed on teenage girls and young women for sexual purposes.
•One woman described her alleged encounter with Walliams at 15 years old as a “sexual assault.”
•Multiple women accuse Walliams of “grooming” them when they were teenagers. One says he began contacting her when she was 15, after meeting her at a Little Britain fan event, before starting a sexual relationship with her at 17.
•Walliams is also accused of inappropriate conduct and sexual harassment at Britain’s Got Talent and at the publisher, HarperCollins.
•The investigation reveals he had a sexual relationship with at least one junior employee at HarperCollins - and pursued another.
•Walliams denies all allegations against him, stating: “I am not a sexual predator... I have not broken the law”.