A NEW Rainbows group for girls is being formed in Tendring – but unfortunately the rest of the details are secret!

Apparently, in the interests of child safety, the Girl Guide organisation does not publicise where it meets because it does not want predatory or unsavoury people knowing where the children are gathered.

Presumably therefore, taking such a stance to its logical conclusion, we will have to shut all schools, junior sports clubs, Barbie conventions, movies aimed at a younger audience, concerts by boy bands and anywhere else you might get four or five young girls congregating, regardless of the fact they will be supervised by adults.

It also stands to reason that for such a ban to have any impact, the Girl Guides will have to change their uniform to camouflage so they blend in with the surroundings and are not readily identifiable, and parents wishing to take their children there will have to disguise them or travel in vehicles with blacked-out windows.

If all that seems a little flippant, let us get one thing straight, child safety is no laughing matter.

Everyone fully supports society taking reasonable measures to protect the welfare of children.

However, in child protection, as with civil liberties, there comes a time when reasonable measures can become counter-productive.

If we try to impose too many restrictions on civil liberties, we generate people who fight society because of it.

If we try to do too much to protect children, we can end up harming them.

In recent months, there has seemingly been a realisation that stopping children playing rough and tumble games in the playground does them more harm than the odd cut or scrape they may get playing British Bulldog – presumably, however, the PC brigade will want the game to be renamed “child of the world bull and cow, cat and dog” instead, to be more inclusive.

The realisation has also dawned that keeping children indoors, rather than letting them out to play in a properly supervised manner, is bad for their health.

The facts of the matter are (however difficult they are to stomach), the most common form of abuse children face is parental violence in the home, and 90 per cent of sexually abused children know their attacker.

Logically then, surely the safest thing to protect this minority of children is to take all youngsters away from their parents?

Of course this is ludicrous but the point is a real one – rather than worrying about predators at the school gates, the problem is often closer to home.

It is difficult to know if the incidents of child attacks have risen over the years because stastics are patchy, but certainly, most commentators agree, society’s perception of risk, and the measures it has taken to combat the perceived problem, far outweighs any escalation of real risk.

Tendring Talk supports reasonable measures – and far sterner ones for anyone who harms children – but sometimes it seems, when Girl Guide groups meet in secret, the world has gone a little mad.




Tendring Talk is an irreverent, controversial and unofficial look at local life. The views here do not represent those of the Gazette, or of Newsquest, its parent company.