Almost 7,000 criminals 'applied to be teachers' last year
Submitted by Kerry on Tue, 2009-02-24 21:01.
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Almost 7,000 convicted criminals, including paedophiles, killers, and kidnappers, have applied to become teachers in UK schools, it has been disclosed.
By Graeme Paton
23 February 2009 / Telegraph.co.uk
Brothel keepers, flashers, child beaters and even drug dealers tried to get jobs in the classroom during 2008.
The convictions were uncovered in a Freedom of Information request to the Criminal Records Bureau.
The CRB - a Home Office quango - is tasked with providing information on people who apply for jobs working with children or vulnerable adults.
But education ministers insisted that the disclosure showed the system was working.
The Department for Children, Schools and Families insisted they were "effective in blocking those who should not be working with children".
The list for 2008 showed out of the 248,220 disclosure applications from teachers, 6,750 had criminal convictions.
There were two convictions of making indecent photographs or pseudo photographs of children, while three had been found guilty of sex with a girl under 16.
Two convictions were listed for brothel keeping, one for indecent assault on a male under 16 and four for sexual activity with a person under 18 when in a position of trust.
One had been found guilty of possessing obscene articles with a view to publication for gain, while 16 convictions of gross indecency were also there.
A shocking 150 drugs possession offences were featured, as were three for kidnapping and four for manslaughter.
Thirty-two stalking convictions were on the books, as were 11 indecent exposures with intent to insult a female, four flashers on under 16 girls and seven indecent exposures.
Six supplied a controlled drug, three committed indecent exposure to the annoyance of residents, 11 were convicted of wilfully ill-treating a child under 14.
There were nine indecent assaults on female of 16 or over, two indecent attacks, three common assault on child or young person and one neglect of a child.
Other drugs offences showed seven cultivating cannabis, nine cocaine possession, seven producing cannabis and four importing class a drugs convictions.
A spokesman for the DCSF said: "It's important to remember that these figures are for people who applied for a job in teaching and do not refer to those who were appointed. These figures show the system is effective in blocking those who should not be working with children. And since 2007, tough new regulations provide that all those convicted or cautioned of sex offences against children are automatically barred from working with them."
However, a tiny number of offenders are believed to have slipped through the net.
A review of sex offences, carried out as far back as 1940, which was launched after the damaging disclosures exactly three years ago, has so far identified a further 50 paedophiles who were wrongly left off the barred list.
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How many?
There are all sorts of jobs for those wanting to work with children. Priests, day-care providers, even those working in orphanages need to be screened for the sake of "child safety"... and yet how many "questionable people" are allowed to work side-by-side with a child?
Gee.... I tend to think that "tiny number" is much bigger than most think, especially if one was to count and review the type of care given to children found in religious organizations and/or
institutional centers"residential homes" over the last few generations.What's not in the numbers
It was the very same sentence that caught my eye while reading this article.
We can all count and given a register of offenders and a register of applicants every monkey should be able to create the intersection of those two lists. It's easy and it's solid. What is not solid, though, is coming up with an estimate of offenders that never got caught. An offence is still an offence even when no-one got convicted. I am not in the position to come up with a good estimate and neither are the
researcherscounting officials.There may be 6,750 (nice round figure by the way) convicted offenders the screening was able to eliminate, though some still managed to slip through. Yet how many applicants were there that have sexual interest in children? That should be the question. Some may feel safer some people weren't allowed to become teachers because they got caught smoking pot at some point in their lives, but does that really make class rooms safer?
That's the whole point with sex-offender registers and criminal back ground screening. It only eliminates those that got caught. As such it creates a false sense of security, because many of the more clever offenders don't get caught. All the research shows is an interest of offenders in teaching jobs, that's not new, but it's good to see that make the headlines once more.
Registering abusers
I wholly agree, an offense is still an offense, and often times it seems the most offensive acts and behaviors come from those a child is told to honor and respect outside his/her home. It just so happens in other areas (just outside of the UK), yet another article about clergy-abuse allegations has been making today's news:
Until victims of abuse come-out, how can the general public know just how misleading these "pre-screening" reports read to those who know all too well the hell that's taking place behind well protected doors?