Why Men Shouldn't Volunteer With Children

**christianj** · #1 25th-July-2009

Quote:

Why Men Shouldn't Volunteer With Children

By Amy Alkon | Jul 24, 2009

Why Men Shouldn't Volunteer With Children
While children of divorce, especially, benefit from contact with male role models, this chilling story posted by Wendy McElroy should serve as a warning to volunteering-minded men. An excerpt:

I haven't been able to get Anthony J. Tripoli out of my mind. He is the 69-year-old man I wrote about in a July 19th blog post. He was a volunteer who tutored children one-on-one in reading skills at a public school in Florida. Based on the testimony of an 8-year-old girl and without any supporting evidence whatever, he was given a life sentence for allegedly touching her in an inappropriate -- that is, a sexual -- manner. In reading the news story, I thought the man was probably innocent and a victim of the public/legal hysteria that surrounds the issues of children and sex. I looked further into the story in the hope of finding reason to believe Tripoli is guilty because I hate, hate, hate the thought of a man's life being ruined because of an act of kindess he rendered to a child. But the more I uncover the more I am convinced of his innocence.
Let me run down some of the facts giving me great pause:
--There is no physical evidence that molestation ever happened. No suspicions reported by the parents. Medical personnel who examined the girl found no signs of penetration.
--Volunteers for the program Tripoli was in undergo a screening process, that includes exhaustive local and national criminal history and sex offender checks. His record was so clean that he literally did not have a speeding ticket.
--The police could not find other children molested by him. The man was 68-years-old. I find it difficult to believe that Tripoli, who worked with children, suddenly became a child molester in his years. .
--The tutoring and, so, the alleged molestation supposedly took place in a cafeteria-like area at the public school where food service workers were coming and going unpredictably. Volunteers also know that school officials will monitor their work in some manner from time-to-time.
--No one witnessed Tripoli taking the girl to or from a secluded area.
--Parents approve the tutoring as well as the tutor matched with their child.
--In the courtroom, the girl couldn't identify Tripoli. The prosecuting attorney ascribed this to the fact that he had lost 20 pounds -- undoubtedly from stress-- and was no longer tanned.
--One of the alleged incidents occurred on February 15th, 2008. (Amy's italics) Tripoli was not at the school that day. He established his presence at a softball game through several witnesses.
--The girl was interviewed by Tripoli's female supervisor at least three times and never said anything about inappropriate touching.

You're a guy and you want to "give back"? Keep away from the kiddies or you could lose everything you have.

Zuberi · #2 25th-July-2009

I wonder did the girl's mother have something to do with that accusation being thrown?

**Percy** · #3 25th-July-2009

Quote:

Based on the testimony of an 8-year-old girl ........The girl was interviewed by Tripoli's female supervisor at least three times and never said anything about inappropriate touching.

But this elderly man was hounded nevertheless and presumably so was this little girl otherwise there would be no 'testimony'.

A Witch-hunt by rabid, viscious bastard feminazis.

It is not only Knackered Old Shit abuse, it is child abuse too.

I don't like the title ot this piece. It should be 'Why men are driven away from volunteering with children'.

Doris Lessing, the famous British early feminist author, said at the Edinburgh Book Festival, in August, 2001:

I find myself increasingly shocked at the unthinking and automatic rubbishing of men which is now so part of our culture that it is hardly even noticed.

The most stupid, ill-educated and nasty woman can rubbish the nicest, kindest and most intelligent man and no one protests …

**Diogenes** · #4 15th-August-2009

so is this man convicted now? is the life sentence verified? is he in jail now?

shaazam · #5 15th-August-2009

the feminit system needs hate victims !!

they reinforce the feminits allegations agin men and the contrast heightens wimyns high falutin holier than thou opinion of dar selves

this process is working well for wimyn in the lower levels of educations where hardly a male teachers survives for fear of such as above accusations - next step gaol doing hard time

Daveyone · #6 15th-August-2009

In the UK there are very few men in nursary or pre-primary class places inspite of all teachers having to undertake CRB check for each place they take up! ( CRB; Criminal Record Bureau will issue a certificate)

**rohara** · #7 15th-August-2009

Does anybody know whatthereasonsfor the alligations were? What exactley were they?

**christianj** · #8 17th-August-2009

Now here is a certain amount of truth that needs to be told..

We're it not for men and their automatic response to protecting children many would not have survived..

Quote:

We approach others’ children at our peril

Jenni Russell

There’s just one element of the stories of my childhood that fascinates my own children. It’s not the absence of mobile phones, or the idea of a world before the internet. It’s the fact that so many of my small crises ended in the same way: with my being rescued by the kind intervention of an unknown man. Whether I was a nine-year-old being kicked to the ground by a gang of girls in the park, a 14-year-old lost in the Welsh hills on a walking holiday or a 12-year-old who had taken a bad fall from a horse and couldn’t ride home, it was adult men who stepped in without hesitation to stop the fighting or give me a lift or bandage my grazed arms.
I might as well be telling my children about life with the Cherokee Indians. This isn’t a world they know, where children expect to explore by themselves and where passing men and women are the people you turn to when things go wrong. Their generation have been taught from the time they start school that all strangers may be dangerous and all men are threats. So children have become frightened of adults, and adults – terrified that any interaction of theirs might be misinterpreted – have become equally frightened of them.

When my offspring and their friends have been mugged on buses, or attacked on the street by teenagers, no one has helped. Every passing adult has looked the other way. The idea that it’s the responsibility of grown-ups to look out for one another’s young is disappearing fast. That isn’t making our children safer. It’s making their lives more fearful, more dangerous and more constrained.

Last week the charity Living Streets reported that half of all five to 10-year-olds have never played in their own streets. Almost nine in 10 of their grandparents had played out and so had many of their parents, but now children were kept inside, imprisoned by the twin fears of traffic and paedophiles. As the Play England organisation has found, parents keep them in because they believe that if they aren’t watching over their child, no other adult will do it for them. Older children, too, are affected. Two years ago research by the Children’s Society showed that 43% of parents thought children shouldn’t be allowed out on their own until they were 14.
What began 25 years or so ago as an understandable desire to raise awareness of child abuse is turning into something extremely destructive – an instinctive suspicion of any encounter between grown-ups and unrelated children. It has happened without any political debate or rational discussion. It’s starting to poison our society. And with every passing month it’s getting worse.

Last month in Bedfordshire, 270 children from four primary schools had their annual sports day without the normal audience of proud parents watching them compete. All adults except teachers were banned. The reason? The organisers could not guarantee that an unsupervised adult might not molest a child. They preferred the certainty of ruining the pleasure of hundreds, and the instilling of general paranoia, to the phenomenally slight possibility of a sexual attack.

This is part of an insidious new orthodoxy that’s taking hold: that only authorised adults have any business engaging with children. It is no longer just about sexual abuse. In Twickenham last month the mother of a five– year-old who was being bullied decided to talk to the offender. She knelt by his chair and asked him politely to stop. The next day she was banned from the classroom for doing something that would have been regarded as rational and responsible behaviour at any other time in the past century.
Much worse was to happen a few days later to Anisa Borsberry, from Tyne and Wear, whose 11-year-old was being bullied by agroup of girls. She, too, asked the bullies to stop. In retaliation, and knowing what a powerful weapon this was to use against an adult, the girls claimed Borsberry had assaulted them. Within hours they admitted lying. Nevertheless, the accusation of assault against a child is regarded as so serious that Borsberry was handcuffed in her home and held in police cells for five hours before hearing that no further action was being taken.
Or there is the case of Carol Hill, the Essex dinner lady threatened with dismissal for telling a mother she was sorry her daughter had been tied up and whipped in the playground. Normal, empathetic human behaviour, you might think. That wasn’t the school’s reaction. Hill was suspended for breaching “pupil confidentiality”.

In every one of these cases a woman has been punished for daring to do what adults have always done in every society: uphold norms of behaviour by talking about them. But it has blown up in their faces because new unwritten rules about engaging with children are apparently being invented every day. The extent of society’s neurosis means the consequences of approaching children are becoming alarmingly unpredictable.
That’s as true for professionals as for anyone else. Traditionally, teachers have been thought of as potential mentors for children or confidants for those in distress. Increasingly they are being warned away from that role and told to keep their distance by schools. Nowhere is that made clearer than in a draft advice guide for teachers issued this spring by the Purcell school for young musicians.

The guide begins by telling staff: “Some adolescents experience periods of profound emotional disturbance and turmoil when they may be unable to differentiate between fantasy and reality. They may even be temporarily insane. They can thus present a danger to even the most careful of teachers.” This is child as wild animal; one that may bite at any moment. Teachers are told not to talk to pupils after coaching sessions, but to “usher them out of the room in a brisk nononsense manner”. They are told never to text pupils from their private mobiles, but to buy a second one for school use. This “should only be used for arranging appointments; chit chat should be avoided”. Nor can a teacher ever be alone with a pupil in a car, except in case of medical emergency, when the child must be seated in the back, a written record made of time, date and place and a telephone call made to the pupil’s parents to justify it.

The guide concludes that these procedures must become second nature, as any child may accuse a teacher and “your accuser could be of unsound mind”. It finishes with this chilling sentence: “It is helpful to think of current pupils as clients, rather than friends, as a doctor does.”
That these norms are taking hold is a sign of a sick society. What we are creating here is mass mutual distrust. First, children were warned about adults; now adults are being warned about children. It is bad for all of us; bad for our humanity, our happiness and our sense of belonging to anything but a narrow, trusted group. It is also disastrous for any hope of improving social mobility or social cohesion. The effects of this coldness and detachment will be worst for those who need adult guidance and contact most: those children who are growing up without strong social networks around them.

The Labour government appears to understand none of these dangers. Obsessed with physical safety, it is bringing in a screening authority this autumn, one that will cover perhaps one in four adults. It won’t acknowledge the psychological and social disaster that’s unfolding now, nor the pointlessness of much of the exercise. Most abuse is, after all, carried out in the home, and determined abusers will always evade the rules. David Cameron has made some of the right noises by saying children’s behaviour should be a matter for all adults. It will take extraordinary determination to dismantle the walls of suspicion that we have begun to build.

**Percy** · #9 17th-August-2009

Quote:

We approach others’ children at our peril

Jenni Russell

There’s just one element of the stories of my childhood that fascinates my own children. It’s not the absence of mobile phones, or the idea of a world before the internet. It’s the fact that so many of my small crises ended in the same way: with my being rescued by the kind intervention of an unknown man. Whether I was a nine-year-old being kicked to the ground by a gang of girls in the park, a 14-year-old lost in the Welsh hills on a walking holiday or a 12-year-old who had taken a bad fall from a horse and couldn’t ride home, it was adult men who stepped in without hesitation to stop the fighting or give me a lift or bandage my grazed arms.
I might as well be telling my children about life with the Cherokee Indians. This isn’t a world they know, where children expect to explore by themselves and where passing men and women are the people you turn to when things go wrong. Their generation have been taught from the time they start school that all strangers may be dangerous and all men are threats. So children have become frightened of adults, and adults – terrified that any interaction of theirs might be misinterpreted – have become equally frightened of them.

When my offspring and their friends have been mugged on buses, or attacked on the street by teenagers, no one has helped. Every passing adult has looked the other way. The idea that it’s the responsibility of grown-ups to look out for one another’s young is disappearing fast. That isn’t making our children safer. It’s making their lives more fearful, more dangerous and more constrained.

Last week the charity Living Streets reported that half of all five to 10-year-olds have never played in their own streets. Almost nine in 10 of their grandparents had played out and so had many of their parents, but now children were kept inside, imprisoned by the twin fears of traffic and paedophiles. As the Play England organisation has found, parents keep them in because they believe that if they aren’t watching over their child, no other adult will do it for them. Older children, too, are affected. Two years ago research by the Children’s Society showed that 43% of parents thought children shouldn’t be allowed out on their own until they were 14.
What began 25 years or so ago as an understandable desire to raise awareness of child abuse is turning into something extremely destructive – an instinctive suspicion of any encounter between grown-ups and unrelated children. It has happened without any political debate or rational discussion. It’s starting to poison our society. And with every passing month it’s getting worse.

Last month in Bedfordshire, 270 children from four primary schools had their annual sports day without the normal audience of proud parents watching them compete. All adults except teachers were banned. The reason? The organisers could not guarantee that an unsupervised adult might not molest a child. They preferred the certainty of ruining the pleasure of hundreds, and the instilling of general paranoia, to the phenomenally slight possibility of a sexual attack.

This is part of an insidious new orthodoxy that’s taking hold: that only authorised adults have any business engaging with children. It is no longer just about sexual abuse. In Twickenham last month the mother of a five– year-old who was being bullied decided to talk to the offender. She knelt by his chair and asked him politely to stop. The next day she was banned from the classroom for doing something that would have been regarded as rational and responsible behaviour at any other time in the past century.
Much worse was to happen a few days later to Anisa Borsberry, from Tyne and Wear, whose 11-year-old was being bullied by agroup of girls. She, too, asked the bullies to stop. In retaliation, and knowing what a powerful weapon this was to use against an adult, the girls claimed Borsberry had assaulted them. Within hours they admitted lying. Nevertheless, the accusation of assault against a child is regarded as so serious that Borsberry was handcuffed in her home and held in police cells for five hours before hearing that no further action was being taken.
Or there is the case of Carol Hill, the Essex dinner lady threatened with dismissal for telling a mother she was sorry her daughter had been tied up and whipped in the playground. Normal, empathetic human behaviour, you might think. That wasn’t the school’s reaction. Hill was suspended for breaching “pupil confidentiality”.

In every one of these cases a woman has been punished for daring to do what adults have always done in every society: uphold norms of behaviour by talking about them. But it has blown up in their faces because new unwritten rules about engaging with children are apparently being invented every day. The extent of society’s neurosis means the consequences of approaching children are becoming alarmingly unpredictable.
That’s as true for professionals as for anyone else. Traditionally, teachers have been thought of as potential mentors for children or confidants for those in distress. Increasingly they are being warned away from that role and told to keep their distance by schools. Nowhere is that made clearer than in a draft advice guide for teachers issued this spring by the Purcell school for young musicians.

The guide begins by telling staff: “Some adolescents experience periods of profound emotional disturbance and turmoil when they may be unable to differentiate between fantasy and reality. They may even be temporarily insane. They can thus present a danger to even the most careful of teachers.” This is child as wild animal; one that may bite at any moment. Teachers are told not to talk to pupils after coaching sessions, but to “usher them out of the room in a brisk nononsense manner”. They are told never to text pupils from their private mobiles, but to buy a second one for school use. This “should only be used for arranging appointments; chit chat should be avoided”. Nor can a teacher ever be alone with a pupil in a car, except in case of medical emergency, when the child must be seated in the back, a written record made of time, date and place and a telephone call made to the pupil’s parents to justify it.

The guide concludes that these procedures must become second nature, as any child may accuse a teacher and “your accuser could be of unsound mind”. It finishes with this chilling sentence: “It is helpful to think of current pupils as clients, rather than friends, as a doctor does.”
That these norms are taking hold is a sign of a sick society. What we are creating here is mass mutual distrust. First, children were warned about adults; now adults are being warned about children. It is bad for all of us; bad for our humanity, our happiness and our sense of belonging to anything but a narrow, trusted group. It is also disastrous for any hope of improving social mobility or social cohesion. The effects of this coldness and detachment will be worst for those who need adult guidance and contact most: those children who are growing up without strong social networks around them.

The Labour government appears to understand none of these dangers. Obsessed with physical safety, it is bringing in a screening authority this autumn, one that will cover perhaps one in four adults. It won’t acknowledge the psychological and social disaster that’s unfolding now, nor the pointlessness of much of the exercise. Most abuse is, after all, carried out in the home, and determined abusers will always evade the rules. David Cameron has made some of the right noises by saying children’s behaviour should be a matter for all adults. It will take extraordinary determination to dismantle the walls of suspicion that we have begun to build.

In every one of these cases a woman has been punished for daring to do what adults have always done in every society: uphold norms of behaviour by talking about them.

The biter, bit.

It started out as Feminist 'control' of men, through demonisation.

It moved to elevating women as 'perfect.

It produced a neurosis as reality moved further away from the preferred fantasy.

It distanced children from their fathers.

It drove men out of children's lives altogether.

Then it started demonising mothers.

It became psychotic.

Only a parent who has been given a certificate by a 'Official', a stranger, can even talk to a child and even then only say what is expressly 'authorised'. Every other interaction is strictly forbidden.

The Impostor was on the scene quickly.
Ready, Definite.
Re-defined.
By Order. She said.
Scripted.

The Princess of Lies rides
over barren lands.
Long hair her spider-silk, chain-mail
down her back.
Across her breast,
Over her steed’s flank.
Hooves on skulls.

The children gabble and cry.
No words
describe
their pain.

They were
forbidden.

Tahiri · #10 16th-October-2009

1) I remember being at a theatre with my gf, and I found a lost child. I brought her to the front desk for them to find her mom, who then walked up behind me. She started to thank me but I ran off in fear of being called a pedophile

2) Can we please stop blaming everything on feminazis? The flaw with feminism is that they turned it in to man-hating. We shouldn't fall into the same trap.

Marx · #11 18th-October-2009

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tahiri

2) Can we please stop blaming everything on feminazis? The flaw with feminism is that they turned it in to man-hating. We shouldn't fall into the same trap.

Feminism (a minority of women & some men) blames men (half the population of the world). Anti feminists (a few men & women) blame feminism (still a minority of both men & women). We attack the ideology - not the sex. Big difference.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tahiri

1) I remember being at a theatre with my gf, and I found a lost child. I brought her to the front desk for them to find her mom, who then walked up behind me. She started to thank me but I ran off in fear of being called a pedophile

You say not to attack feminism, but which group has promoted so heavily the notion that just because you're male you must be viewed as a paedophile? Hmmm?

**outdoors** · #12 18th-October-2009

i quit vollunteering as a trainer for minor sports a few years ago - it is to scary-false accusations are rampant in minor sports.
yesterday,i was asked to be a trainer for my child's hockey team and to get updated courses on my trainer skills. I didn't know what to say.
now i know.

Tahiri-get off your knees-typical feminist trained canadian mangina

**Percy** · #13 18th-October-2009

There is a blog called (something like) 'Who'swhointhemensmoment' - I posted something about it a few days ago. They gave me a bit of a serve and used the words in my post above to lable me as a woman-hater, a misogynist, for defending that old man.

Now here we have Tahiri asking that we don't blame everything on feminazis. Who else is to blame?

It isn't 'women' per se. It is some particular women. Feminazis.

But those other Women-in-General said nothing at the time. They smiled at men's denigration and happily exorcised men. While Jenni Russell points to the kindnesses of men-past, (the good that men do, seldom does them any good) she omits the pain of men-present and presents us with female victims.

Now she complains. But not for men.

......Edit:

Found it.

http://antimisandry.com/miscellaneous-chat/fame-infamy-23998.html

The blog is at :

http://whoiswhoinfathersrights.blogspot.com/

...and the specific urls are:

http://whoiswhoinfathersrights.blogspot.com/2009/08/amfortas-percy-kingfish-king-amfortas.html#comments

http://whoiswhoinfathersrights.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2009-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-08%3A00&updated-max=2010-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-08%3A00&max-results=13

The piece says:

Quote:

This is what an old Misogynist looks like. This guy who comes from Tasmania just hates women.
He's all over the net and uses the name Amfortas, king Amfortas, Percy and Kingfish amongst others.
We're on the trail to reveal his history but he sure likes to spend a lot of time on the internet and likes to contribute to discussions including one on old men not being able to volunteer at schools because of child molestation accusations.

A self confessed MRA, he's close friends with ally and fellow elderly misogynist ChristianJ and together the pair are flooding the internet with their old man ramblings and hatred of women. He claims to be an avid reader by reading 2 library books every 3 weeks (wow) which he defaces if they contain positive articles about women. Has been married twice and hates "sodomites" (homosexuals). He's a big contributor to Dads On The Air, not surprising given that they are desperate and he's a hardened misogynist and right up their alley.

Nothing new here in that he refers to women as "feminazis" and denigrates them at every opportunity, same old same old Mens Rights garbage.

His views on allegations made by an 8 year old who said she was touched inapropriately by an elderly man volunteer at her school (a discussion started coincidentally by his friend ChristianJ):

"But this elderly man was hounded nevertheless and presumably so was this little girl otherwise there would be no 'testimony'.A Witch-hunt by rabid, viscious bastard feminazis.It is not only Knackered Old Shit abuse, it is child abuse too.I don't like the title ot this piece. It should be 'Why men are driven away from volunteering with children'."

"There are some quite nice women who are older and in work. I like some older women, being an older man myself. I like some young ones too."

http://antimisandry.com/discrimination-raw-deals/why-men-shouldnt-volunteer-children-21670.html
Posted by Expose The Truthat 11:33 PM
Labels: Amfortas, antimisandry.com, Dads On The Air, Hobart, King Amfortas, kingfish, Percy, tasmania

I am not sure where they get 'Kingfish' from !

**outdoors** · #14 18th-October-2009

Percy wrote;

Quote:

Now here we have Tahiri asking that we don't blame everything on feminazis. Who else is to blame?

people like Tahiri--thats who.

Solaris · #15 18th-October-2009

My unfortunate recent experience. And this was even a FAMILY event.

http://www.the-niceguy.com/articles/YourKids.html

Quote:

My uncle Sid turned 80 the other day. He's a pretty tough old guy, so it didn't surprise me that he made it such a good age (though I think it surprised him). Naturally, a celebration was in order, so his wife Betty organised a birthday bash for their extended family. Betty is actually my Grandad's sister, so although I knew a bunch of people at the party, there were a fair few I had never met before.
When you have a party with a large number of related people, you expect there to be a few kids present. People get married and have kids with a certain regularity so there always seem to be a few running around at these kinds of parties. This time was no exception. Among the guests were a few of my cousins (aged 11 and 12), my second cousins (aged 11, 14 and 15) and two younger children, Dylan and Maggie (aged 2 and 5 respectively). Since I'm the youngest legal adult in our extended family who actually shows up to these kinds of events, it's usually expected that I'll look after any of the kids who are present. It's kind of an unspoken agreement between my relatives and I. Some people might resent that, but I enjoy it because I love being around kids.
Ugh, who would want to be around other people's horrible snot-nosed brats all the time?
I would, actually. Part of it comes from the fact that I have a fairly unique problem; kids adore me. Seriously. I have no idea why, but usually no more than half an hour after meeting me, they're following me around like they've known me forever. My Mum sometimes jokes that "Solaris is doing his Pied Piper impression again", which she finds hilarious. I don't have any children of my own, but I really fail to understand how some people can dislike kids so much. I admit some behave like little horrors, but it's always seemed to me that they become much more agreeable if they know you won't put up with that kind of behaviour.
Anyway, on with the show. My poor cousins were looking bored out of their brains. I can't say I blame them. They really didn't have anyone else to talk to or anything to do, so I decided that I'd chat to them for a little while. I'd probably have stayed talking to them longer, but then lunch was served so everyone made a rush for the food. When I went to sit down with my lunch at the table my Father and I had claimed earlier, we had a new guest sitting with us. He was a shy two-year-old dressed in designer children's clothes called Dylan. He was sitting with my father's cousin Bruce, and he spent a lot of time trying to hide behind Bruce's jacket. Bruce tried his best to introduce him properly, but Dylan's only response was to smile and then push his face into Bruce's jacket again.
Doing silly things is always a good way to attract a child's attention. I started sticking the little plastic "80's" that were scattered around the table on my face and acted like nothing was amiss. The look of amazement on Dylan's face was priceless. Everyone else at the table was chuckling. I was a hit! Dylan forgot his shyness and decided that if it worked for me, he'd give it a try. His attempts to stick little plastic table decorations on his face were so comical that everyone roared with laughter. Dylan grinned as he was now the centre of attention. I was secretly pleased with myself.
After a full lunch, Betty announced that we would have to wait for the cake to be served. It wasn't quite ready yet, so everyone started to mill around again. I spotted a little girl over in the corner of the yard who looked like she was desperately trying to entertain herself with a small inflateable beach ball. Emboldened by my success with Dylan, I walked up to her and snapped up the beach ball before she could react.
"Hey!"
"It's mine now", I grinned.
"I want it back!" she said, stamping her foot.
"Are you sure?" I asked slyly.
"Yes! Yes! Give it back!"
"OK."
I bounced the beachball off her head. She stood there in open-mouthed astonishment.
"You were too slow! I gave it back to you and you didn't even take it."
"You cheated!" she said with an accusing tone.
I bounced the beachball of her head again and smiled mischeviously.
I saw a moment of confusion cross her face, and then a smile slowly appeared. "You can't hit me again! I'm too fast!" she squealed, daring me to throw the beach ball at her again.
We spent the next few minutes trading taunts back and forth as the beach ball flew around the yard. Her little brother, obviously deciding he didn't want to be left out, rushed to be part of the game. The little girl told me her name was Maggie, and that her little brother was Dylan (I already knew of course, but I didn't want to spoil her proud introduction of him). Dylan laughed wildly every time the beach ball bounced off his head. Maggie was having a great time "hiding" from her younger brother every time he grabbed the ball. I was having fun too - who wouldn't?
I mistimed a throw and managed to stumble. Feigning injury, I crumpled melodramatically.
"Ow! She got me!"
In a flash, Dylan was climbing on me, laughing himself silly. Maggie took full advantage of the situation to repeatedly bounce the beachball off my head. They stopped dead a moment later though.
"That's enough you two!"
Their mother, Sally, had appeared out of nowhere with a stern expression on her face. The children didn't move an inch, and I could see that Maggie looked particularly upset. As I stood up and brushed myself off, Sally gathered the children behind her.
"Dylan likes to climb like that on his father", she said as she looked at me suspiciously. She folded her arms, and I could see an unspoken accusation in her eyes.
"I'll go and talk to my wife."
Like most women, she just had to try and get in one last dig. "I think that would be best."
I was faintly embarrassed by her behaviour. In the past I probably would have gotten angry, but I just couldn't be bothered. I was here for Uncle Sid's birthday, not to put some over-protective mother in her place. I knew the look she had given me, because I'd seen it before. I used to teach music, and it was the same look that myself and the other male teachers used to get on a depressingly regular basis. She had decided (using her "women's intuition" no doubt) that I was going to molest her kids. There was no point in trying to talk to her any further, or worse, attempting to talk to her children as any further communication would be taken as further evidence that she was right.
I don't blame people for being protective of their children, but enough is enough. How on earth was I going to molest her children in front of over 50 adults sitting not 5 yards away? I'm sick of the irrational fear of men that has developed over the last 10 years. It's one of the reasons I quit teaching music, in fact. The risk was just too great that an accusation would be made. The young guy teaching to a class full of students in the room next to me was dragged through the mud by a hysterical mother who claimed he "touched her daughter" in front of a class of 20 students with a half-dozen parents looking on! Not one of the parents who were in the room were prepared to stand up and defend him, but all quietly acknowledged to the director of the school that nothing had happened. Frankly, he got lucky, because the next time that woman accused him, there were no parents watching the class. Fortunately, she had very little credibility left at that point. To say he was a nervous wreck after that would be an understatement though.
It isn't pleasant to viewed as a potential child molester. Those kids were having a great time, and I was no threat to them. If I had been a perfect stranger, I might have even been prepared to be understanding, but this was a family gathering. Granted, I hadn't met Sally before, but I had met her husband (who was nowhere to be seen, sadly). There's a lot I want to say, but it would sound more like an incoherent rant than anything else. Men, in the general sense, are not a threat to children. In fact I would suggest that men's increasing absence from childhood activities has caused tangible harm. Men have been gradually driven out of children's lives by a moral panic fed largely by the fears of mums like Sally, and I'm sick of it. Apparently it's even official policy for companies like British Airways to separate men and children now.
I sat down and quietly finished the piece of cake my father had grabbed for me. Ugh. Just what I need - more sugar. Now I was going to have to work it off. I looked over at my cousins Kyle and Mikey. I pulled myself to my feet and walked over to them. "Come on guys, let's go play some dodgeball at the park across the road."
My aunt looked at me with tangible relief. "Oh would you darl? That would be wonderful. The boys have been beside themselves with boredom."
"It's no problem. It'll be fun, and help me work off that cake I just ate."
Kyle and Mikey perked up right away and set about hunting for tennis balls and other things to take with them to the park. Sally stood there scowling at me the whole time. Just to make sure I knew not to try anything funny.
Sorry Sally, nobody is going to molest your kids today, so take your righteous indignation and find a better use for it.

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Why Men Shouldn't Volunteer With Children

Why Men Shouldn't Volunteer With Children

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