The programme centred around Yorkshire schoolboy Ben who at the age of 13 announced on Facebook that he was gay. This came as a shock to his parents who thought that he was a bit young to make such a decision publicly. However, they accepted the situation but warned him to be careful ‘as there are some nasty people out there’. Previous to his announcement Ben had many school friends but they all melted away when his homosexuality was revealed. We are constantly being told by the politically correct class that attitudes to homosexuality have changed out of all recognition in recent times. However, the response of Ben’s schoolmates suggests that many people still take a different view to the establishment line on this matter.
Because he had been shunned by his school fellows Ben felt isolated and started to search online for youths of about his own age who might be gay. At no time in the programme is Ben ever criticised for the many foolhardy and irresponsible actions he took. Instead he is presented as a helpless victim of events beyond his control. Quite soon Ben is sending out naked photos of himself to an older teenager, and is being contacted by adult men looking for sex. As a result Ben contacted Childline who in turn informed the police. Two police officers visited Ben and advised him not to send out naked photos again, the issue which Ben was mainly concerned about as the older teenager had started to blackmail him. The police took no action on the advances of the older men as Ben himself was less concerned about this. In the words of Ben ‘he did not think this much of an issue’.
So Ben continued to chat online with the older men and agreed to meet up with some of them. Ben’s behaviour started to change and his relationship with his parents began to deteriorate, and there was also a detrimental impact on his schoolwork. However, at this stage the parents were still unaware of the extent of Ben’s activities. They would soon find out as his school had discovered that he had been meeting up with men for sex during his lunch breaks. The police were called and his mobile phone and laptop were confiscated. Ben claimed that his mental state began to deteriorate and he started to self harm. He blamed the men whom he was meeting for ‘brainwashing’ him into this sexual activity, in so doing absolving himself of all responsibility for his potentially deleterious actions.
By now all the major safeguarding agencies had become involved but according to the programme ‘had failed to get a grip’. It was alleged that these agencies didn’t treat the sexual exploitation of boys with the same seriousness as that against girls. The parents started to blame themselves for what happened and warned the men contacting Ben to keep away from him. Ben however was still meeting them and even travelled to London to stay the weekend with one of his contacts. On this occasion the police were called who tracked Ben down, taking him to a police station where his parents had to make the long journey to London to collect him.
The police informed the parents of the large cost of the operation to find Ben involving several police forces. At the same time the police warned Ben that he was the ‘facilitator’ and that if it wasn’t for his age they would not be investigating the matter. They also threatened him with being placed in a ‘secure unit’ if he did not change his behaviour as he was wasting police time and money. In the programme the parents are outraged by this police response, failing to acknowledge that Ben’s reckless behaviour could be a contributory factor. Ben himself stated that the police ‘didn’t want to help him and just considered him to be a nuisance’. Ben, like his parents, takes no responsibility for his own behaviour, describing himself as ‘vulnerable’.
Although Ben’s parents now start to take more responsibility to prevent Ben seeking out men, Ben himself still manages to continue seeing them. Another meeting is arranged between the parents and the police, where Ben is again accused of being a facilitator and that they do not have the resources to monitor him until he reaches the age of 16. This response appalled the parents, who still viewed Ben as a blameless victim. According to a police memo the case officer recorded that ‘I get the impression that the family only see Ben as a victim, and are blinkered to the fact that he is partially responsible for instigating the offences himself.’ A ‘child protection expert’ recruited by the BBC blamed this outlook on police prejudice against ‘gay young men who want to experiment with sex and go out looking for it’. The BBC’s expert denounced this as a ‘dangerous’ viewpoint, without providing any evidence, analysis or arguments to back up this opinion. Despite the police’s concern about Ben’s behaviour and the impact on time and resources, in practice, the police continued to investigate the ‘grooming’ behaviour of men targeting Ben, covering a period of several years.
It should be realised that this radio programme was a one sided piece of propaganda in which the BBC controlled all the information provided to the listener. For example, we never get to hear how Ben presented himself on social media and whether he notified his contacts of his true age. There was plenty of criticism of the police for failing to investigate the men who were supposedly ‘grooming’ Ben, despite Ben himself not being much troubled by their attentions.
Grooming is a 21st century legal term coined as a result of the spreading paranoia over teenage sexual activity. In popular parlance it is called ‘chatting up’, a preliminary ritual in which young men flatter reluctant young ladies in the hope of eventually ‘scoring’ with them. However, homosexuals rarely do chatting up, since both parties being promiscuous they pretty soon quickly get down to business. The criminalisation of chatting up teenagers now means that it is an offence for an 18 year old youth to ask a 15 year old girl for a date, as the authorities now deem this to be ‘evidence’ of ‘grooming’ and thus a sexual offence.
Although physically now an adult, in the programme Ben is repeatedly described as either a ‘boy’ or a ‘child’, and the message is repeatedly conveyed that he is a helpless victim who requires the open ended involvement of the safeguarding authorities, regardless of the time, cost or effort involved. Coming out as gay was presented in the programme as being nothing more than a label, or a badge, supporting a favoured minority group, with the implicit message that Ben had demonstrated honesty and courage in publicly displaying his sexual orientation. What the programme failed to realise however was that coming out as gay meant in practice that Ben now believed that he had reached an age when he wished to engage in sexual relations with other males. So it should have really come as no surprise that as soon as he was provided with an opportunity to do so, he quickly put his sexual orientation into practice by willingly engaging in sex with the men who had contacted him. This is what being gay is all about and Ben through his recklessness, willingly and repeatedly assumed the role of a rent boy.
There is no doubt that Ben behaved foolishly in engaging in sexual relation with men he hardly knew, as he could easily have become infected with sexually transmitted diseases (STD), which because of their often rampant promiscuity, homosexual men are much more likely to suffer from than the general population. But the BBC showed no concern about the risk from STDs since it would stigmatise homosexuals, and thus be contrary to their agenda of always presenting gay people in a positive light. Instead they focussed on the ‘abuse’ that Ben was supposedly facing. However, the police in a rare display of realism, rightly recognised that Ben was a willing participant in the sexual activity with older men, and because of this they were castigated for the crime of telling the truth and not sticking to the approved script of combating the ‘abuse’.
The safeguarding authorities take the view that all instances of sexual activity involving teenagers below the age of consent constitutes ‘sexual abuse’, regardless of whether they were willing participants, or whether they were harmed in any way. Enormous publicity is given to middle aged adults claiming that they were ‘abused’ ‘over a period of years’ when they were in their teens. They can do this safely under cover of anonymity and it is impossible to challenge or investigate their accounts. We are never told why they continued to collude in the ‘abuse’ without taking the obvious and easily achievable steps to put a stop to it. In conformity with this agenda the wider media never investigate or challenge the collusion of these often compensation seeking ‘victims’.
During the programme Ben, against all the evidence, continued to insist that he was a blameless victim, a vulnerable teenager brainwashed by these demonised men. But we were never told what harm he experienced through his willing sexual encounters, just a repetition that he had been a victim of ‘abuse’ in conformity with children’s charities money minting agenda that sexual activity becomes a psychological pathology whenever engaged in by young teens. The degree to which state authorities now consider it appropriate to micromanage the personal lives of young teenagers is invasive, intrusive as well as pointless given the vast numbers of individuals involved practicing this state disapproved behaviour.
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