What The State Did To These Women Was Far Worse Than Anything The Father Did..

Mark walked away with no criminal record or any form of monitoring. He was not placed on the sex offender register and there is nothing he has to disclose to an employer or a partner.

Because he hadn't broken any law, he's written some fiction. That this fiction involved the sexual abuse of his daughter is neither here nor there.

All images of children being abused are grounds for arrest, even when the men are not physically abusing anyone. Yet Emily’s case turned out to be not so clearcut in the eyes of the police. Were written fantasies about child abuse, shared on a legal site, against the law?

In short, no. Not even when an undercover police officer is watching.

This question would lead Emily all the way to parliament to try to toughen the law on sex chat sites.

Of course it did. 

The sexual assault charges against Mark were dropped and changed to the sending by public electronic communication messages of an indecent, obscene or menacing character under the Communications Act 2003. A court date was set and Emily and Fiona expected Mark to plead guilty as he had never denied the horrendous way he had described abusing Emily online.

But that was before he sort legal advice clearly. 

Within days of the arrest, Fiona took radical steps to completely reshape the life that Mark had blown to pieces. “I had a job interview a couple of days later and I just went to it in a daze. I barely remember it but I got the job, and at that moment I decided I would move house and start the new job as soon as I could.”

While Fiona was preparing to move, Emily was going down a rabbit hole into the darkest recesses of the internet. She began to read all she could about sex chat sites and was horrified to learn how easy it is to step straight into sexual chats about children.She wanted the police to know Mark hadn’t touched her, but she wanted him to be prosecuted for sharing his child abuse fantasies online. And she wanted to be recognised as a victim, something the police didn’t seem to understand.

Of course, victim status, what every teenager desires most these days. 

But one day in the run-up to the court hearing, Fiona got a text from Mark saying he was not going to plead guilty. “He said, ‘I’ve found a loophole.’ With help from his lawyer, he had found a way to plead not guilty.”

Just days before the court hearing, the police got in touch. They were dropping the case. “They told us that, after discussions with the Crown Prosecution Service, they didn’t think there was a realistic chance of conviction. The officer I spoke to told me that in the eyes of the law, Emily was not a victim and therefore no crime had been committed. He actually said that in this situation the ‘victim’ was the undercover officer as they were the ones who read the messages.”

Once again the CPS dropped the ball, but shouldn’t they have realised that there was no law broken here before it got this far? 

Fiona has seen Mark only once since the case was dropped: when she met him to get his signature on divorce papers. She saw then how happy he was to have escaped prosecution. “He made it clear that he considered it a prudish response, the public disapproval of a private fetish. We were prudes, the police were as well. It might have been embarrassing to have the messages revealed, but it wasn’t anything that should involve the law.”

Nor should it be. We don't criminalise people for writing fiction. Even if it's distasteful fiction.

For both Fiona and Emily, there is a feeling that people looking in at their situation might be judging them, questioning why they didn’t spot the signs.

They might well ask... 

She and Mark had had their ups and downs. “He was controlling of me. I had discovered in the past he had been chatting to women online. We went to therapy to work on our relationship and I thought we were both putting in effort. Just before this happened I had been feeling he had a swagger to him. Now I know it is because he was still getting fulfilled by a secret online life.”

And like vengeful women everywhere, she cannot tolerate the thought. And is being used by people who do not have her or her daughter's wellbeing ay heart to push their own agenda.. 

McGlynn wants to see “a specific criminal offence to advocate, counsel or glorify child sexual abuse in text”, which would cover discussions in chatrooms and beneath videos on porn sites.

The State should not be encouaging women or men to believe that something they find distateful falls within its purview for the dead hand of the State to resolve. 

Tough! Live With It....

 

...especially if you are going to tell us a nobody from Rotherham drove 300 miles to kill her, but you have 'no information' that it was a politically motivated killing. Well, you have it now, don't you, and counter-terror has the investigation as a result.

CCTV shared with police from the day of Widdecombe’s death showed a man leaving a Rotherham address linked to the suspect at 7am and driving off in a Vauxhall Corsa, the Times reported.

Who shared it with them, and why?

Sir Peter Fahy, the former chief constable of Greater Manchester police, said there had been a “very noticeable trend” for politicians, including government ministers, to comment on police incidents and murder investigations while they were still unfolding.

They no longer trust you either! And they are right to...giving you access to the media is like giving alcopops and matches to a ADHD toddler and expecting the house not to burn down.

'But Since That's The Plot Of Every James Bond Film, They Didn't Think It Mattered'

A secret inquiry by MI5's watchdog concluded the security service knew an abusive agent it defended in court was a misogynist who was "obsessed" with violence, the BBC can reveal.

Hard to see why they’d feel they had to care about that… 

The inquiry took place after BBC News originally exposed how MI5 had covered up for the man - a neo-Nazi informant known publicly as agent X. The government took the BBC to court in 2022 in a failed attempt to block our investigation, but it won agent X legal anonymity.

Useful in a spy, but didn’t he already have it? 

Following the BBC story, the office of the investigatory powers commissioner (IPCO) Sir Brian Leveson launched an inquiry, which - like much of IPCO's work - was secret. Details of the inquiry can now be reported for the first time.

• IPCO - which oversees the use of covert investigatory powers, including the UK's intelligence agencies - concluded: "Strong indications" of agent X's interest in violence, including video footage of him threatening his girlfriend with a machete, did not lead to an MI5 review of his suitability of as an agent.

•  IPCO said it "should have done" (sic) agent X was "openly misogynistic" with his MI5 handlers, who knew he was involved with a "pick up artistry" movement that seeks to exploit women for sex, but "none of this attracted much attention" from the handlers MI5 knew agent X was "obsessed" with violence, because he told them, and there were indications he might be a threat to others "arising from his general interest in extreme violence". 
• But IPCO said there was a "lack of sufficient professional curiosity" about him by MI5.

Frankly, if he was a good agent, should it have mattered at all?

I Must Have Missed The News That Hungary Was A War-Torn Nation

A Hungarian teenager broke into the bungalow of an elderly couple in a terrifying raid that left their beloved dog dead.The teenager, who cannot be named for legal reasons, admitted charges of robbery and assault occasioning actual bodily harm.

Is he a refugee? There's no war in Hungary, is there? Why is he here?

The boy was not charged with any animal cruelty offence and police treated the dog's death as unexplained.

More lazy policing. 

The teenager fled with Mrs Thompson's mobile phone and purse but was soon arrested in a park.

In a statement issued at the time, South Yorkshire Police said: 'Violence and abhorrent acts of this kind have no place in our communities and will not be tolerated. 'An elderly couple has been physically and mentally affected by this incident, and we will do all we can to ensure justice is served.'

Well, you didn't in this case, dis you? And the rest of the so-called 'justice system' didn't do any better. 

The boy was handed a two-year detention and training order at Sheffield Magistrates' Court on July 1.

Pathetic, but surely to be followed up by a deportation order? 

Oh, and that police promise? A lie, like every statement they make these days:

Police refused to disclose his nationality, claiming doing so was not in the public interest.

What would they know of the public interest, since it's clear they no longer serve it? 

Cruel, Maybe...

 

...but apposite! Matt always has his finger on the pulse

Sunday Funnies...

 "House of the Dragon" costumiers had to get inspiration from somewhere...

Well, Yes, 'Trying To Wipe Away The Evidence Of Their Mistakes' Is What They Always Do!

Children who were groomed, sexually abused and then prosecuted for crimes, including prostitution, are still being failed, the author of a landmark report has said. Baroness Louise Casey, who led the national investigation into grooming gangs, called on the government last year to quash any convictions of victims who were criminalised when they should have been protected.

We really shouldn't have expected anything else of this failing government, should we? 

"Everybody told me that I was this problem - that I was guilty and I had committed a crime," she said. Her criminal record of more than 40 prostitution convictions has prevented her from applying for jobs, going to college, travelling abroad and even volunteering at her children's school. Joanne and thousands of people like her are due to be pardoned for loitering or soliciting, following the new legislation. However, she said the law change does not go far enough.

She has soliciting convictions from when she was aged 18 and was still being trafficked. However, the change in the law does not recognise adult convictions, so those will remain.

They had to draw a line somewhere. And they chose to draw it here.

Baroness Casey said, one year on, the government had made "huge progress in many areas" but on the issue of quashing the convictions of child sexual exploitation victims, "they haven't gone far enough, quickly enough". She said she wanted to hold the government to account.

That's our job, the voters, and we do it by kicking the bastards out. Why don't you concentrate your fire on the people we have no recourse for, the unelected civil serpents who made the decisions?

Fiona said the government's decision to only remove convictions for child prostitution offences feels "like they're trying to wipe away the evidence of their mistakes and their incorrect labelling rather than actually trying to fix an issue".

It feels like it because that's always what they try to do. 

Not With Any More Taxpayer's Money, You've Had Quite Enough

The Bundibugyo Ebola outbreak now being fought across the region shows again what Africa already knows. When an emergency arrives, the continent cannot wait on distant supply chains or other people’s goodwill. It must make and move the things that keep its people alive. The fight to end Aids by 2030 runs on the same truth.

When is it going to start standing on its own two feet then? Instead of whining about people expecting them to do just that?

Africa has earned the right to set the terms of that fight. Over two decades the continent helped turn the epidemic around. Aids-related deaths have fallen by 59% since 2010 and new infections by 68%. Nearly 22 million Africans are alive today on daily treatment. Keeping them alive is a permanent commitment.

Only because the Western taxpayer was paying, and not voluntarily either!

That obligation now meets a hard fact. External health aid to Africa was estimated to have fallen by 70% between 2021 and 2025. The model that brought the response this far, in which Africa delivered while others financed and directed, is ending whether or not anyone plans for it.

And not a moment too soon. 

The Common Africa Position for this week’s 2026 High-Level Meeting at the UN in New York on HIV/Aids is Africa’s answer. Agreed across member states, experts and institutions, it speaks with one voice. It is built on the Africa Health Security and Sovereignty agenda, which heads of state adopted to treat health as a matter of sovereignty rather than charity.

It’s bad news for Mercedes & BMW, but every silver lining has a cloud… 

Really? In A Female Dominated Workplace?

Gender-based prejudices carry disturbing echoes of historical patriarchal assumptions and myths about the mysteries of female bodies. They lead to women being perceived as anxious, hysterical or irrational, and can result in their symptoms being dismissed as psychological rather than physical, if they are taken account of at all.

And that’s not all… 

This gender bias is compounded for Black and other ethnically non-white women by racial stereotypes. One of these, the belief that women from particular ethnic groups have higher or lower levels of pain tolerance, has the same outcome – inaccurate, mistimed or missing pain relief in labour.

People who have recently used maternity services, or visited an NHS hospital, may find this surprising, because the make-up of staff is invariably nearly 100% ethnic minorities. As well as usually overwhelmingly female!

It is vital now to implement ways to regulate for safer care in a learning healthcare system which recognises the valuable contribution to safe and compassionate care that women’s voices can make.

Better start recognising some home truths instead! 

So Shame Does Still Exist...

Four councillors who voted to allow a rapist taxi driver to keep his operator's licence have quit Highland Council's licensing committee.

Good!  

David Brown, 50, was jailed for six years and nine months in May after attacking an 18-year-old female passenger in December 2023. Last month, following a request from Brown's family, the committee's six male councillors voted to allow his operator's licence to continue, while its four female councillors voted against it.

 What were they thinking?

After criticism of the decision, the chairman Sean Kennedy along with John Grafton, Duncan Macpherson and Willie MacKay have resigned from the committee. Independent councillor MacKay has also resigned as a councillor, while Grafton has been suspended by the Scottish Liberal Democrat group on Highland Council.

SNP councillor Chris Birt, another one of the six male councillors, has been asked by his party's leader on the council, Raymond Bremner, to resign from the committee.

Asked? He should have been fired!