One of the things which never ceases to amaze me is the way in which people commenting here apparently go out of their way to confirm what I am saying. I have remarked before that some of them seem almost like my sock puppets. The day before yesterday I posted about the New World Order and its popularity with some home educators. Somebody promptly posted a link to an Internet site called UK Column:
This is of course a New World Order conspiracy site, one of those places where people who believe that the United Nations are taking over the world hang out. Even more perfectly for my purposes, the piece about Martin Smith is also to be found on David Icke's site! You couldn't, as they say, make it up.
One person commenting here seems to be hinting that there is something fundamentally unsound about Education Otherwise. He drew our attention to the case of Lianne Smith, who was a regional organiser for EO, involved in a local authority's Children's Services, married to a paedophile rapist and also killed her children. We were urged to 'open our eyes' and asked if we could see 'the bigger picture'. I interpreted this to mean that it was being suggested that this case was the tip of the iceberg and that other stuff like this was going on with Education Otherwise. I assume that this was the same person who posted details of a number of American home educators who abused or murdered their kids.
Now in any large organisation, one is bound to get the odd paedophile. This goes for children's charities as much as it does for insurance companies or banks. Enterprises involving children are bound to attract such characters more than most. This is because they offer the opportunity to gain access to children. This is why the child abusing scoutmaster has become such a stock figure and also why CRB checks are necessary. Such people gravitate towards schools and youth organisations, swimming pools and playgrounds. Some of them, those determined to surrender to their perverted lusts, get jobs at such places. For this reason, I always took it for granted that Education Otherwise was bound to have its share of child molesters hovering in the background.
Having said all this, as far as I am aware there have only been two verified incidents of this sort. One was the case of Lianne Smith and the other that of the longstanding trustee responsible for child protection, whose husband allegedly had unfortunate tastes of this sort. Obviously there are others who have not yet come to light, that is inevitable, but is the whole charity riddled with this sort of unsavoury activity? It seems unlikely. It is not however inconceivable and it might be helpful is the person who was hinting at this could give more details here. I am open minded about the possibility, but we certainly need a little more evidence. As I said above, one finds paedophiles all over the place and it would be surprising if EO did not turn out to have a few, but the suggestion seems to be that there are more than just a few. Can anybody shed any light on this idea?
