Pervs in schools?

It seems reasonable enough that people convicted of sexual offenses, particularly sexual offences against children, should not be allowed to teach in schools.

But Paul Reeve, who is on the official UK sex offenders' registry, was hired as a PE teacher. Was this because someone didn't check the list? No, a Minister of Government, Kim Howells, reviewed his case and determined that he should not be banned from teaching. Partly because he wasn't on a rather mysterious black list - called List 99.

What did Paul Reeve do exactly to get on the list? Well, he accepted a caution for downloading child pornography from the Internet. He claims that he is innocent. He just might be.

A couple of years ago, there was an investigation by the FBI into child pornography. They collected thousands and thousands of credit card numbers used to purchase pornographic images from a US site. If the credit cards belonged to someone in another country, they handed over the identity of the credit card holders to police. In the UK, there were thousands of arrests. Some of these people are guilty as sin, plead guilty or went to trial. Some of these people, presumably, checked out OK. And some people, people who maybe had only 1 or 2 images in their internet caches or PCs that might be deemed illegally pornographic, accepted police cautions. Essentially they plead guilty in exchange for no jail, but they are listed on the sex offenders' registry for a finite period of time and they do have a criminal record, but without court oversight.

One man, caught in Operation Ore recently appeared on More4's television news programme anonymously. He claimed that he was innocent, but that he accepted a police caution because above all he didn't want to face the publicity of trial and be forever tainted with the smear of pedophilia (potentially dangerous, a number of people have been assaulted and occasionally killed because of mob anger). He says that although he accepts that his credit card number was used, he didn't buy any porn (how many of us have had dubious charges on our accounts?). And he also acknowledges that there was one dubious picture in his Internet cache, but he thinks that was an accident. OK - maybe he is guilty, but maybe he's innocent but thought fighting the charge was a losing proposition.

Now, this issue of potential innocence is being largely overlooked by the media. Partly because cases of other sex offenders given ministerial leave to work in schools have come to light - and these are cases where the public should be rightly outraged. Apparently, pedophiles attracted to young boys have been given leave to work in all-girl schools, and those attracted to really young children have been allowed to work with high school age kids. Sick. Sick. Sick.

Paul Reeve will probably never work as a teacher again. And although I think he should have accepted that this would be the case when he accepted the caution (after all there's no right to teach in schools as there is a right to due process), now that his case has gone public his chances for any meaningful employment are probably now dashed. I don't know anything about Mr Reeve, but I wouldn't be surprised if he were innocent but extremely unlucky.

I still think it's worth remembering that innocent people can be pressured by police to accept the "lesser" caution without court oversight and be ruined for life. Especially as the Labour Government wants to further erode the powers of the court and allow police and prosecutors together to issue summary convictions and punishment for certain crimes - eliminating the ancient liberty of "innocent til proven guilty".

From Tony Blair's recent return to "respect" speech:

This has, bluntly reversed the burden of proof. The person who spits at the old lady is given an £80 fine. If they want to challenge it, they have to appeal. The suspected drug dealer loses the cash. He has to come to court and show how he got it lawfully.