challenging institutional disbelief around domestic & sexual violence and abuse
“Glee actor Mark Salling charged over child porn possession” We have filed a formal complaint with the BBC about their use of the term ‘child porn’ in yet another headline. These are the facts of the case: Former Glee actor Mark Salling has been formally charged with two counts of receiving and possessing images of […]
We’ve been campaigning for 2 years to have the BBC stop using the terms ‘child prostitute’ and ‘child porn’. Ann Coffey, MP for Stockport, has called for an end to the term ‘child prostitute’ in law, which will hopefully be followed by media refusing to use them term. In the mean time, the BBC has […]
Child Sexual Exploitation is in the news again – the media are over-run with commentators who are wringing their hands, apologising, claiming that they’re not sure how they didn’t know, telling us that work is in progress to ‘remove this vile scourge’ from our communities. But what are we actually doing? We’ve looked over a […]
(Originally published at Crates & Ribbons) As most of you will have heard by now, an anonymous hacker has stolen the private images of a large number of female celebrities, and posted them on 4chan, an imageboard website notorious for being a cesspit of misogyny. Here are a selection of headlines I’ve seen today: The […]
We were extremely concerned when we read David Aaronovitch’s column “Let’s See Some Evidence. Then We Can Panic” published in the Times on July 10th. As a general rule of thumb, anyone who refers to public inquiries and investigative journalism into organised child sexual abuse rings as “paedogeddon” is already starting from a position of […]
The information contained in the Jimmy Savile reports will not be a surprise to those who have been following this horrific case. Aside from sexually assaulting women & children who were both patients & staff of NHS facilities, it is clear that he sexually assaulted dead people – after being given unfettered access to the […]
This piece featured in Thursday’s Mirror (17th January 2014) which I feel raises some important issues, however, they are juxtaposed with victim blaming and male violence against women and girls minimising language and sadly consequently, dilutes the messages therein. Even the main headline omits the word ‘child’, which is after all what this is about: […]
We have become increasingly concerned about the (mis)use of the word ‘paedophile’, particularly on social media. We wanted to write a short and succinct piece about the problems with using this word, and we’ve referred to Prof Liz Kelly’s piece Weasel Words: Paedophiles and the Cycle of Abuse and the Child & Women Abuse Studies […]
Zahid Akram was a teacher who admitted blackmailing girls into sending him sexually explicit photographs. He claimed to be suffering from depression and being in a considerable amount of debt. Currently adjourned for pre-sentence reports. Douglas Bailey beat his wife to death after a ‘row’ over the heating. The police officer commenting on the […]
UPDATE: This article was originally published on 6.10.2013. The most frequent response to it is not to ask why the mainstream media did not cover this case of white men targeting a child for sexual exploitation and rape. Nor have questions been raised about the euphemistic language used to describe the sexual abuse and rape experienced […]