Today's post is likely to be a bit negative just because for the most part much of the news has been centred around some common concerns of mine one of which does go back a few years and the other was something I kind of touched on only about a month ago.
The first thing to say regarding the sex scandal enveloping the charity Oxfam is if there ever a way to totally mishandle a serious matter then my goodness they did it with style being a state of denial until the the eleven hour and whole world knows all about it.
The second is I fear the business around the actions of staff both soliciting for and forcing people to provide sexual services in Haiti both staff and ordinary women are the tip of an iceberg where a culture that went beyond turning a blind eye to such things was common place.
One has to remind oneself of what Oxfam is for - helping often in relief situations the very poorest in the world - and ask oneself why anyone in that situation would be looking at no only abusing fellow staff but also using women in that society.
We need to remember much of world is not like Las Vegas where Women themselves may own and control such services but instead are controlled by men who take any money from them, where health services are poor and young girls may be pressed into it too.
In those situations whatever ones personal views on paid sex work happen to be, to engage with it is whole morally repugnant because you are exploiting such women and girls.
Moreover in many organizations there are clear rules that say you may not engage in such practices while being employed there.
Those men let not just Oxfam but the people who they came to help down the minute they crossed that line of decency as well as the tens of thousands who fund raise for necessary relief.
The is the eventual sentencing for 31 years of a soccer coach who lived but a few hundred yards from here for sexually abusing boys as young as nine in youth teams which for personal reasons I am pleased he has been given even though the way in which one team for which he did a lot of work and sadly caused real emotional harm to boys in the course of still cannot account for why he was allowed to be employed after the first allegations were made and deny the word of a management board member who says it was raised as a specific item in the presence of the then manager twice.
Thankfully safeguarding procedures in the last few years have been improved no end since those from the late 1980's onward but even then a person who kept inviting children to their home sharing a bedroom with no other responsible adult present would of raised questions.
As someone who worked on child abuse cases as a job what happened in both instances sickens me to the core.
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