Guilty Until Proven Innocent

Last year, when my wife and I were visiting London, she took a cab one morning, and the driver, making conversation, asked her what she did. When she replied she runs kids' camps and was in town to recruit staff at a job fair, the first thing out of his mouth was "Oh, I wouldn't want to do what you do. You never know if you're hiring kiddie fiddlers" [pedophiles].

The irrational fear of child molesters was everywhere we traveled in the U.K. Within days, I even fell under suspicion myself when I took pictures of children at an Irish-dance festival. It was surreal. (For other examples of the pedophilia panic that has gripped the Brits, see here, here, and here.)

I return to the topic because I belatedly happened upon an excellent column by libertarian journalist and Member of Parliament Boris Johnson. Johnson, whose name regular readers of this blog might recognize, was recently asked to change seats on a British Airways flight because he was sitting next to two children. This arrangement was considered potentially dangerous to said children's wellbeing, as there is no telling what disturbing things a man might do to underage travelers in front of a planeload of passengers.

Luckily, the flight attendant who told Johnson to scram withdrew her request when the children informed her that the would-be pedophile was in fact their father.

Writes Johnson:

[C]ome off it, folks. How many paedophiles can there be? Are we really saying that any time an adult male finds himself sitting next to someone under 16, he must expect to be hustled from his seat before the suspicious eyes of the entire cabin? ... [M]aybe all adults will have to carry personal cardboard partitions with them on every plane or train, just in case they find themselves sitting next to under-16s. 

(In fairness, airlines have the same ugly guidelines Down Under.)

Johnson points out that this lunacy has consequences that are actually detrimental to the welfare of children. Viewing all men as potential child buggerers is

...a huge deterrent to any public-spirited man contemplating a career in education that society apparently regards all adult male contact with young people as being potentially a bit dodgy, a bit rum, a bit you know… It is a total disaster. It is not just that both boys and girls could do with more male role models in the classroom. Worse still, it often used to be men who taught physics, and maths, and chemistry, and it is the current shortage of such teachers that explains why 80 per cent of pupils studying physics are now taught by someone with a degree in biology; and that in turn helps explain why the numbers doing physics A-level have halved, and why physics departments are closing all over the shop, with all the consequent damage to our science base.

One of the commenters on Johnson's article notes that the consequences of the moral panic can be more severe than educational setbacks:

I was once walking to work in London — I had the good fortune to live about 10 mins from the office in Islington and took a route along some busy but not main roads. One morning I came across a screaming toddler who appeared to be on his own. My instinct was to hand him in as lost property at a police station on-route, but upon more careful consideration — an adult male approaching a lone toddler and leading him off...no chance. It caused me great pain, but I had to walk off. 

I'd like to think I would have offered — literally — a helping hand; but given the overall hysteria, I certainly understand the urge not to get involved.

Also check out the comment by a physician named Lisa Silver. Her account, about her good-Samaritan husband being branded a potential pedophile, neatly encapsulates all that is wrong with the British child-molestation obsession. Still, the Silvers have devised a way to extract something good from a bad situation: next time they travel on British Airways,

...my husband is going to call over the hostess and mouth to her that he has unfeasibly nasty tendencies and under no circumstances can he be entrusted to sit anywhere near any youngsters, and if [BA] could see their way to getting him one of those flat beds up the pointy end of the plane, he will give them his utmost assurance that he will keep his odious habits to himself.

It's a perfect combination of spite and spoof; I might try it myself.