Category Archives: UK

Reaming, ‘riting, ‘rithmetic

Posted on by

Via a reader, this article:

The headteacher of Heavers Farm Primary School in South London suspended two 10-year-old Christian students after one of them asked for permission not to participate in an LGBT lesson during “Gay Pride Month.”

In the Middle East “respecting” Islam means participating fully in Ramadan or risking punishment. In British schools, “tolerance” for homosexuality means actively celebrating it.

The headteacher, Susan Papas, who obliged schoolchildren to participate in a “Gay Pride” parade last year, told the two children, who are both of African descent, they are “a disappointment to the school,” Christian Concern reported Monday.

Oh, they’re black. I’ve suddenly detected racism in Ms. Papa’s remarks.

On June 20, pupil Farrell Spence asked his teacher Alex Smith for permission not to take part in a lesson when Mr. Smith handed out LGBT material for coloring. The teacher denied the permission, insisting that the LGBT lesson was part of the curriculum.

This has nothing to do with tolerance and everything to do with indoctrination of the sort Section 28 was designed to prevent.

After class, Mr. Smith allegedly accused Farrell of using “homophobic language” and saying, “LGBT sucks and LGBT’s dumb,” which the child categorically denies.

Which is what children say about anything they don’t like.

The teacher asked Farrell where he was from and the boy responded that he was of “African Jamaican” heritage, and there “everybody is Christian and Catholic, so they don’t accept LGBT.”

If he’s capable of expressing himself like that perhaps he’s a little past colouring exercises? It would equally explain the reluctance of a 10-year old to take part as any in-built homophobia.

Later, head teacher Papas reportedly called in the two children and shouted at them: “How dare you? You are a disappointment to the school.”

Ms. Papas, whose daughter Attie is a lesbian and the School Manager, next put the children in separate rooms and scolded Kaysey: “How dare you say that you want to kill LGBT people?”

In other words, you have an LGBT political activist masquerading as a teacher and abusing their position to indoctrinate children.

Heavers Farmer Primary School educates 750 pupils in a multicultural and multi-religious borough of South London. Along with the School Manager, the Assistant Headteacher Robert Askey is also openly gay.

Uh-huh.

The mothers of the two children complained to the Principal Officer, citing school regulations that state it is unlawful to suspend a student for “a non-disciplinary reason.”

The parents insist their children did not make homophobic comments and have accused the headteacher of failing “to eliminate discrimination based on religion or belief.” They also cited the European Convention of Human Rights, saying it requires that schools respect the manner in which parents seek to raise their children in accordance with their Christian faith.

And we’re back to where we were with the Muslim parents in Birmingham a couple of months back. Now normally it would be easy to dismiss these Christian parents as bigots, but with they’re being African it’s not so easy. Who wins this hand of victimhood poker?.

This is not the first run-in the school and its headteacher has faced over LGBT activism.

In June 2018, the school organized a “Gay Pride” parade in its playground, posting rainbow flags around the school, and telling students to wear bright colors for the event.

Ms. Papas also invited parents to watch the “Proud to be Me!” parade and join in celebrating “the rainbow of things that make them and their family special.”

At that time, 14 Christian parents complained that Papas was “forcing a very aggressive LGBT agenda on to young children in a manner which abuses parental rights and victimises parents.”

Well yes, it’s run by political activists. Welcome to compulsory state education.

In response, Papas declared she was standing against homophobia: “We stand by our decision to celebrate national Pride Month by teaching British values.”

The subject matter may be different, but these values sound more Soviet than British.

Izoduwa Montague, the mother of one of the students and a Christian, refused to allow her four-year-old son to take part in the parade and complained to the Education Secretary that the school had embarked on “systematic proselytism of its young and vulnerable pupils.”

Which is exactly what opponents of teaching children this stuff in schools predicted would happen.

Montague says she felt “bullied” after she complained that her child was “forced to take part in an event that goes against our Christian beliefs,” and later transferred her child to a Catholic school.

Where I expect they received a better education.

Share

Ticket to Pride

Posted on by

Last year we discovered that being the victim of domestic abuse anywhere in Latin America was enough to warrant an asylum claim in the USA. In Britain things aren’t a whole lot better:

Four newly arrived LGBT Syrian refugees will be able to openly express their sexual identity when they join the Pride celebrations in central London on Saturday.

The first thing desperate refugees do when they reach the host country is join in with a massive public jamboree?

They arrived in London on Thursday after waiting for more than two years to be airlifted to safety. Their situation was resolved after the Guardian highlighted the plight of 15 LGBT Syrian refugees stranded in Turkey this year. Others in the group were expected to follow soon.

Are gays persecuted in Syria? It’s an honest question: parts of the country are dominated by religious nutjobs now, but Damascus is still under the control of the Assad government and I don’t think he’s got much interest in hounding gays. His regime was pretty brutal to anyone who opposed him, but it was broadly secular and while I can’t imagine it was as accepting as Brighton, I’m not sure gays were put to the sword as a matter of course. Besides, these lot were in Turkey. Can you be gay in Turkey? Yes, you can, which is why the article must resort to woolly guff like this:

While some Syrian refugees who flee to Turkey are relatively safe, there were concerns over the safety of this group because of homophobic attitudes in the country. Same-sex relationships are legal but negative attitudes prevail and some refugees have reported being pelted by rocks, followed in the street and attacked if people suspect they were not heterosexual.

So they’ve been granted refugee status on the basis that, although homosexuality is legal where they are, “negative attitudes prevail”? Seriously? And have these individuals been pelted with rocks for being gay? Or are they claiming refugee status based on stories of what happened to other people?

Members of the Syrian group were forced to conceal their sexual identity and in some cases to live in hiding. Some received death threats because of their sexuality.

I’m wondering what any of this has got to do with Britain. And how much work is the word “some” doing in this case?

The refugees said they were at risk not only from the population at large but also from their own families, who in some cases did not know about their sexual identity.

His family doesn’t know he’s gay, but he needs asylum in Britain in case they find out.

Toufique Hossain and Sheroy Zaq, of Duncan Lewis Solicitors, who launched the legal action, said: “These men have been forced to conceal an enormous part of their identity, not just in their country of origin but also in Turkey. The detriment they suffered as a result of their sexuality in Turkey simply could not go on any longer; we had to ensure that their resettlement was expedited through legal channels. We are elated that they will at last be able to be open about their sexuality in all walks of life, just in time for Pride.”

Well, I can at least understand why they’re up for a party. I would be too if I’d just pulled off a stunt like that. These people are not refugees in any meaningful sense of the word, and all it’s doing is hardening attitudes to people who face genuine, life threatening persecution. And isn’t it interesting to contrast the efforts expended to grant these individuals asylum with the British government’s decision to refuse it to Asia Bibi.

Share

Grilling Machine

Posted on by

I was going to write a post about the recent appointments at the top of the EU, but I’m just going to post this video of Andrew Neil instead:


Andrew Neil is about the only senior journalist left in Britain capable of asking the right questions about those who would rule over us.

Share

Where do you stand on Israel?

Posted on by

A week or so back Israel Folau, the Australian rugby player who’s been ostracised for exercising his religious freedom in a way which displeased the LGBTQ political lobby, decided to set up a Go Fund Me campaign ostensibly to help him with his legal fees. Now I don’t suppose Folau needs the money – he’s been a top-class professional athlete across three sports since he was 18 years old – but he might have done it to gauge how much support he had. Turns out it was quite a bit and the fund quickly passed five figures, leading the Sydney Morning Herald to abandon journalism for activism and ramp up the pressure to get the appeal shut down. After all, the last thing progressives want is for a designated wrongthinker to have an avenue of financial and moral support once the moral gavel has fallen.

Sure enough, once the inevitable mob had formed Go Fund Me dug around in their terms of service and discovered they reserve the right to yank any funding campaign on a whim, which they duly did. The smug grins of the SMH activists probably didn’t last long, though. Within hours the Australian Christian Lobby had set up an appeal which, when I looked this morning, had attracted over $1.9m dollars. That’s a lot of money, and I expect many donors aren’t even Christian but are seeing this as a way to signal their opposition to the increasingly restrictive speech codes being forced on Australians by their employers and with the full backing of politicians.

But the saga doesn’t end there. Via William of Ockham, the Sydney Morning Herald is now urging the government to intervene:

The Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission has been asked to investigate the Australian Christian Lobby over its role in helping Israel Folau raise more than a million dollars for his legal fight against Rugby Australia (RA).

Asked by whom?

A number of complainants, however, have confirmed to the Herald that they have raised their concerns with the charities commission over the fundraising role played by the ACL.

So it’s basically another attempt to sabotage Folau’s ability to raise funds. For all we know there might be no more than two complaints, both originating from the offices of the Sydney Morning Herald.

According to the ACNC, a charity must be able to show that the use of its funds furthers the charitable purpose in which it is registered, meaning the ACL would need to prove it is “advancing religion”, for example, by agreeing to help raise money for Folau’s individual purposes.

I’d say defending an outspoken Christian who is being persecuted for his religious beliefs is doing more to advance Christianity than the combined efforts of the Pope and Archbishop of Canterbury over the past twenty years.

“We got legal advice on this before we went ahead with it,” [ACL’s managing director Martyn] Iles  said. “Israel Folau is not a member and our charitable purpose is to advocate for changes in law and public policy and the advancement of the Christian religion. This is a religious freedom issue which for law has implications for law and public policy.

Quite, which is why it’s attracted so much support:

“Over 15,000 people have donated and the average donation is about $100 and about 10 donors per minute. That’s pretty incredible stuff. There’s a lot of juice left in this.”

It’s as if a lot of people understand this is a lot bigger than what Folau thinks about homosexuals. Which brings me onto this story:

A disabled grandfather has been sacked by Asda for sharing an ‘anti-religion’ sketch by Billy Connolly on his Facebook page. Brian Leach, who had worked at the Asda store for five years in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, was let go by the supermarket after a colleague complained the comments in the sketch were anti-Islamic.

Now Britain is not Australia, but the progressive mindset which dominates the ruling classes and the subsequent authoritarianism is much the same in both countries. We’ve arrived at a situation whereby expressing Christian beliefs on social media gets you fired while disrespecting Islam on social media also gets you fired. I don’t agree with other commentators who say blasphemy laws are being applied in the UK, this is something else. Far from being inconsistent, the two approaches are quite logical once you understand the objective of those in charge is to denounce, undermine, and ultimately destroy what was until recently the prevailing culture in the developed, Anglo-Saxon world. In practice, this means those who rule over us will pick and choose who can say what and when as they see fit, and deprive us of our livelihoods should we speak out of turn. For now, this means Christians cannot say anything mean about homosexuals and ordinary folk cannot say anything which might be perceived as a slight against Islam.

And you can be sure this won’t stop here. I expect Folau will soon find his bank withdrawing their services, sending him a curt letter that he has 14 days to find an alternative (having made sure the other Australian banks will also deny him). What then? Will his phone company cut him off because the Sydney Morning Herald is piling on the pressure, backed by various government bodies stuffed with vinegar-drinking cat-ladies and the sort of men who, when they were in school, told the teacher which kid drew the picture on the blackboard? Nobody should feel too sorry for Folau, but this is about much more than a multi-millionaire sportsman. What happens when they start coming for ordinary people, like a grandad who works in Asda for example? What happens when they come for you?

People, especially politicians, often get asked where they stand on Israel. I think that question may develop a second meaning, and one no less important than the original.

Share

Don Johnson

Posted on by

One of the patterns of contemporary politics is that whatever silliness happens in the US arrives on British shores a short time later. Identity politics was born in the corridors of liberal American academia from which it spread first to the political mainstream and then corporations, probably via the HR department. Now we have the likes of David Lammy ranting about white supremacists on a daily basis and British companies leaping on the Pride Month bandwagon and droning on about their trans employees.

The last few days have shown the British left have adopted something else American: mass hysteria as a method of political persuasion. Donald Trump had been a household name for 25 years when he ran for president, and as such there wasn’t much about him which remained unknown. But as soon as he declared himself a Republican the left branded him a hard-right rapist and when he got elected went into a collective meltdown that’s showing no signs of abating. It’s been almost 3 years and they still haven’t got over the fact Hillary lost and a good chunk of the country doesn’t mind Trump. The Democrats have assembled a collection of lunatics to run against him in 2020 on a platform of white people paying black people reparations for slavery, the idea that Trump is literally running concentration camps, and open borders. Good luck with that.

As befitting the pattern, the British left have now gone into hysteria over Boris Johnson who looks set to become the next prime minister. Johnson is very much a known quantity: he has been a public figure in politics for two decades and was mayor of London for two terms between 2008-16. But the left now want us to believe he’s some sort of dangerous, far-right extremist who goes around assaulting women. The latter claim – which they’ve clearly borrowed from their American counterparts’ campaigns against Trump and Brett Kavanaugh – is based on a couple of lefty neighbours of Boris’ girlfriend having skulked around on the landing outside her door, made a recording of a row they were having, and sent it to the police “fearing for her safety”. When the police turned up and said nothing was amiss, the couple sent the recording to The Guardian. And so overnight Boris Johnson becomes an abuser of women, helped along by the self-appointed spokespeople of the Metropolitan chattering classes such as The Secret Barrister:

It is quite clear that Cleverly is taking issue with the couple sending the recording to The Guardian, not reporting to the police what they might have thought was domestic violence. But a barrister’s job is to obfuscate on behalf of their client, which in this case is the mass of hand-wringing Metropolitan liberals for whom she works full time pro bono (less book sales). She is quick to point out that there is nothing illegal about recording your neighbours’ arguments and sending a copy to the police, but issues dark warnings about anyone harassing the couple who have inserted themselves into the middle of this national story of their own volition. Meanwhile, the left is now going after Boris’ girlfriend Carrie Symonds, who didn’t do anything to bring this situation about. The hard left are now camped outside her door, a tactic they’ve learned from Antifa who turned up at Tucker Carlson’s house and sent his wife into hiding. So what does The Secret Barrister have to say about this blatant targeting and harassment of an innocent individual? Nothing, of course. And what do Britain’s feminists have to say? Again, nothing: women are only deemed worthy of privacy, protection from threats, and respect if their politics align with Laurie Penny’s. Otherwise, they’re fair game for all manner of misogynistic abuse.

The harassment of Symonds takes place a few days after feminists and assorted lefties emerged from a 48-hour tantrum after Conservative MP Mark Field threw some annoying Greenpeace protester out of a place she didn’t belong. Politicians and the media squealed that it was assault and normalising violence against women, and feminists declared women deserve special treatment as they are different from men after all. Predictably, Theresa May capitulated and suspended the minister concerned instead of standing up for him, but in doing so may well have driven more party members to back Boris over anyone else. Now I don’t think Boris is a conservative, nor will he make a good prime minister. He’s proven to lack any consistent ideology, is prone to blundering, and it remains to be seen if he really is the man to take Britain out of the EU.

But there is something of the Trump in him, and he’s bringing that to his leadership campaign. He’s refused to take part in the silly TV debates Sky has put on, he’s refused to talk about what happened in his flat, and people are getting the impression he’s the only candidate who won’t simply fold like a cheap suit every time lefty launches another round of faux outrage. American conservatives elected Trump in large part because he wasn’t prepared to grovel and apologise to those who hate them, and instead stood up to them in a way which drove them insane. Now the British left have adopted American political tactics, it’s perhaps not surprising the right are willing to back whichever candidate stands up to them, his politics and character be damned. I suspect the squawking over Mark Field followed immediately by the cynical use of “domestic violence” and the staggering hypocrisy over Carrie Symonds will backfire badly, and Boris will sail into No. 10 with a Trump-like immunity hanging over him. Personally, I hope he keeps making remarks which send the left into an apoplectic rage, and then doubles down and refuses to apologise. So long as he keeps doing that he’ll have my support, and I suspect that of many others.

Share

Silly con Khan, eh?

Posted on by

Back in March I wrote about what Lauren Southern said when she appeared on James Delingpole’s podcast:

What she learned was there are professional people trafficking operations selling a dream of an idyllic life in Europe, and charge hopefuls several thousand dollars to make the trip. They have all the logistics worked out, they know the crossing points and which techniques to use at each (which includes charging fences en masse), and coach people to pass the refugee assessment process. They tell migrants they will be welcomed on arrival, given every means of support, and presented with opportunities for work. They get away with such lies because half the west – including politicians and national newspapers – publicly declare that refugees are welcome and citizens have an obligation to accept them. Every time a politician gives a speech about how tolerant their country is and how migrants have always been welcomed there, it is used by ruthless gangsters to sell their people-trafficking services. Only when the migrants arrive they find themselves sleeping rough having blown $5k to get there, and spend years bouncing from one country to another on rumours of better opportunities.

Yesterday the mayor of London posted this tweet:


This is bordering on criminal. Sadiq Khan knows full well that messages like this will be used to persuade people from sub-Saharan Africa to come to London, where they will not be welcomed but instead find themselves with nowhere to live, without any means of support, and thousands of miles from their friends and family. Yes, the government might help a handful but most will end up drifting around the country sleeping rough. This is how thousands of African migrants end up living in Paris, with nowhere to go and a government too scared to send them back home. In London they’ll just end up in squats, under bridges, or in slum housing. Sadiq Khan knows that by declaring that “London is open” he is making a bad situation worse, but he does so anyway so he can look good in the eyes of the dim and deceitful. A serious country would never even have let this man become mayor of its capital city, let alone behave as he does.

Share

Affrayed to death

Posted on by

Here’s another story which involves the hierarchy of protected characteristics:

Four members of a girl gang who inflicted a “sustained and horrific” bus stop attack on a frightened Egyptian student who later died have been given non-custodial sentences.

Mariam Moustafa, 18, suffered a stroke which left her in a coma after being “pushed so hard” that she was slammed against a bus shelter on 20 February last year, and died almost a month later on 14 March.

After admitting affray in connection with the street assault, two 18-year-old women, who can now be named as Rochelle Dobbin and Netesha Lewis, and two 16-year-old girls were handed referral orders by a district judge at Nottingham youth court on Wednesday.

When news first broke of an unprovoked attack on an Egyptian woman in Nottingham, the media was quick to assume it was racially aggravated. However, when the ethnicity of her assailants became known they fell silent.

Lewis launched a violent attack on the student, punching her repeatedly and accusing her of being responsible for a social media account called “Black Rose”.

Moustafa was punched several times during an attack “fuelled by social media” near a bus stop in Parliament Street, Nottingham, at 8pm, while her friend Pablo Jawara tried to protect her.

So it was a premeditated attack. Nevertheless:

The district judge described the teenagers as “aggressive” and said they should be “condemned” for their actions. They were spared detention because the court should “avoid criminalising young people unnecessarily” and the teenagers could only be sent to custody as “a last resort”.

Well, we wouldn’t want to criminalise a gang of girls who beat another to death, would we?

At Nottingham crown court on Friday, Mariah Fraser, 20, was ordered to spend eight months in a young offender institution

For those of you who thought young offenders institutions were for minors, you were mistaken. It seems they’re for violent adult criminals in cases where judges can’t bring themselves to put them in prison. The Sun has more details about the attack:

She said: “Messages were flying around social media by someone called Black Rose and the girls thought that was Mariam.

“They were shouting things like ‘you watch fam, you’re going to get f***ed up when I see you, I’ll f**k you up again.’

“The six got on off the bus and were shouting abuse at Mariam. It was at this point Mariam collapsed.

“The defendants seemed unconcerned and were laughing.”

You know the legal term protected classes? It’s an American thing but it appears to apply to the UK as well, and it means exactly that. See also here.

Share
Posted in UK

Pervaids

Posted on by

This story speaks volumes about what is wrong with modern Britain:

A charity supporting transgender children and young people has issued an apology after thousands of emails were made public online.

Mermaids UK said it was “deeply sorry” for what it called a “historical data breach” after it was first reported by the Sunday Times.

The paper claims the correspondence included “intimate details”, names and addresses, but the charity denies this.

Mermaids said it had taken immediate action and reported the breach.

We have a political lobby group masquerading as a charity which is granted access to young children in order to “support” them should they believe they are of the wrong sex and wish to transition. But that’s all fine, apparently: what’s not is they’ve mishandled people’s data. This is like prosecuting Al Capone for tax evasion while being quite happy with the murders and bootlegging.

If Britain was a serious country those who founded this “charity” would have been run out of town on a rail the very first time they brought the topic up. But it seems degeneracy is nowadays to be celebrated, and adults with an unhealthy obsession with sex and sexuality given access to children regardless of parents’ wishes. I mean:

Transgender and gender variant children and young people need support and understanding, and freedom to explore their gender identity whatever the outcome.

This is taking place 9 years after a supposedly conservative party took the reins of the nation. Everyone is focused on Brexit, but it’s quite obvious the country has far deeper problems than membership of the EU.

Share

The men on the slap ’em omnibus

Posted on by

Sometime last week a couple of foreign women on a London night bus encountered a group of young men who somehow worked out they were lesbians and demanded they kiss for their entertainment. When they refused, the youths beat them up. At least, that’s the story we were told. A few days later the youths were arrested, five of them between 15 and 18. We haven’t been given any names or descriptions, perhaps because they’re minors but probably because it might give people the wrong idea about London’s vibrancy. Naturally, progressives took to social media to denounce the attack and declare this is why corporations need to subject its employees and customers to a month of LGBT propaganda.

The story didn’t sit right with me from the beginning. As always, there is a lack of details. How did the encounter start? What was said? Where was the CCTV? What did the driver see? Were there other passengers? Then yesterday I read this:

Melania Geymonat, 28, and her American partner Chris, 29, said they were punched and robbed following an evening in West Hampstead, north west London, in the early hours of May 30.

Ms Geymonat, a doctor from Uruguay and a Ryanair flight attendant, said that the incident was primarily ‘an attack towards women, and then after homosexual women’, revealing that she was told to ‘get the hell out of the country’ by her friends after the incident.

…

In an interview with Channel 4 News she said the attackers firstly saw them as ‘sexual objects’ who were ‘there to entertain them’. Her partner Chris said that a gang of young men saw they were a couple – as they were holding hands – and demanded they kiss before attacking the pair.

When asked if she still feels safe in public, Chris said: ‘If anything I’m more confident in myself because I know I will stand up for myself.’

Chris also said the reason their attack had caught so much attention was that the picture was ‘very striking’, depicting ‘two white women who were tidily packaged into sympathetic victims’.

When the interviewer brought up that Boris Johnson seemed to be the most likely person to be the next Prime Minister, and referenced comments he had made in 2001 comparing homosexual marriage to ‘bestiality’, Chris said that the Tory frontrunner was not ‘fit to lead anything, much less the United Kingdom’.

A clip from the interview can be seen here; the photos in the Daily Mail show one of the women wearing some sort of anti-fascist t-shirt.

So here’s what I think happened. These two women are political activists, steeped in third-wave feminism and high on the fumes of the extremely dangerous narrative that women can go head-to-head with men and come out on top. They were on this bus when they encountered a bunch of feral thugs of the sort who plague British cities but remain untouchable thanks to the efforts of the same lefty do-gooders who encourage open displays of homosexual affection. These gangs roam the streets and public transport actively seeking trouble and an excuse for violence, and don’t target gay women any more than straight men. Every man who’s grown up in the UK has at least one story of a confrontation with a group of young men itching for a fight, and they learn to avoid these situations like the plague. I went to university in Manchester and students there soon learned when to cross the street, not make eye-contact, get off the bus, or stand near the driver. What you never, ever do is engage with these thugs.

I expect these women, being foreign, didn’t sense the danger. Maybe they believed Sadiq Khan’s tweets about London being a welcoming utopia where diversity is celebrated by all? So when these thugs first noticed them instead of getting up and leaving or moving closer to other passengers, they engaged, perhaps with some sassy feminist boilerplate while thinking feral British youths have some sort of code about smacking women around. Big mistake.

Of course, the blame lies wholly with the thugs and those who defend them, and it is disgraceful that two women should have to move seats or leave a bus because of violence and intimidation. Frankly, these people should be drowned in the Thames. However, some common sense would not have gone amiss. Unfortunately, modern feminism says women should not act sensibly and take basic precautions because bad men ought not to exist. And the fact they’ve been rather silent on exactly who attacked them, and followed it up with a stupid interview where they’ve leveraged their ordeal to make lame political points, shows they’ve not learned their lesson and likely never will. I’m reminded somewhat of this story:

A left-wing German politician who was raped by three migrant men in January in the city of Mannheim has admitted that she lied about their nationalities and falsely claimed they had spoken German because she was afraid of encouraging racism.

Having believed they can legislate their way to utopia, progressives are unable to navigate the world they’ve built for themselves.

Share

After School Detention

Posted on by

Back in August 2017 I wrote a post about a teacher in my old school who’d been jailed for sexually abusing boys when he was at previous schools. I didn’t link to the original news story or name the guy because I didn’t want my old school associated with him on the basis of my blog post. However, I can now say his name is Jonathan O’Brien and the story of his conviction is here. I am able to do so because of this new report:

A former teacher from Bosham has been jailed after being found guilty of indecent assault on a teenager.

Jonathan O’Brien, 61, was sentenced at Guildford Crown Court on Friday (24 May) having pleaded guilty to two counts of indecent assault in the 90’s when he worked at a West Sussex college.

…

PC Yvonne Daddow said: “This offending came to light when the victim contacted us for the first time in 2017. Having courageously come forward he supported our investigation and was ready to give evidence in court if necessary.

“It became clear that O’Brien had used an allegedly mutual interest in computers to in effect gradually ‘groom’ the boy into sexual activity, in O’Brien’s study at the school and his home in Oxfordshire. The boy kept the distressing experiences to himself for more than 20 years until an chance family discussion to some media coverage on the general subject of sexual offending triggered him into coming forward.”

I learned about this because my school sent a letter out to its former pupils informing us. This happened while I was at the school, and I have a good idea who the boy was. I have an even better idea of which other boys he may have been eyeing up for similar treatment, which earned him a reputation of a wrong ‘un among the pupils and at least one or two of the staff. I’m glad the boy in question came forward, and it’s a shame we were all a couple of years too young to have sorted O’Brien out ourselves. I hope the boy – now a man – feels a bit better now.

Share