In 1848 a popular new hymn for children All Things Bright and Beautiful portrayed a life that was almost feudal ... This was a divinely ordained universe in which everyone knew their place. Ian Hislop’s Age of the Do-Gooders II: Suffer the Little Children, BBC 2010
God was the great driving force in Shaftesbury’s life. He believed we are all children of God. ibid.
Shaftesbury was a man looking for a mission. And when in 1832 he read a series of articles in The Times about child labour he floundered. The industrial revolution was changing Britain as never before, and it seemed the inevitable price of progress that children worked oppressive, long hours for meagre wages in unregulated workplaces. And few people cared. ibid.
The MP for Bolton, who was a mine owner, argued that it would unjustly deprive children of their honest livelihood, and would drive them and their families into the workhouse. Others suggested that working from a young age was good and developed useful industrious habits ... Others said that the entire mining industry would collapse if it wasn’t allowed to use child labour. ibid.
Ragged schools: run by volunteers they took children off the streets, taught them the Bible and if they were lucky to read and write. ibid.
In 1862 [Charles] Kingsley wrote the book he’s most famous for – The Water Babies ... He campaigned for improved sanitation and against the pollution of rivers. ibid.
Kingsley’s vision for a perfect childhood included a decent education ... Compulsory education for all children was finally introduced. ibid.
Barnardo is perhaps the most famous of all the Victorian do-gooders. ibid.
Philanthropic abduction was hugely controversial. It repeatedly landed Barnardo in hot water. ibid.
Juvenile prostitution was rampant in London. Girls as young as nine worked the streets ... The age of consent was raised to sixteen. ibid.
During Queen Victoria’s reign over a hundred acts of parliament for the benefit of children were passed into law. ibid.
The achievements of our do-gooders remain extraordinary. ibid.
Just the latest in a series of sex gang cases that have come to court. The Hunt for Britain’s Sex Gangs, Channel 4 2013
Telford Police have been running Operation Chalice for almost a year. ibid.
A series of raids begin in which a total of nine suspects are arrested in the market town of Wellington, just outside Telford. ibid.
Some were as young as eleven when they were abused. ibid.
A classic pattern of grooming – starting with friendship and quickly moving to abuse and control. ibid.
The men then introduced the girls to their friends and family. ibid.
The Crown Prosecution Service decides not to proceed with the case. ibid.
The ordeal of going to court was overwhelming. ibid.
At least 10,000 children may be victims of this kind of sexual exploitation. Yet there are only four beds in the whole of the UK to help children recover from this horrific abuse. ibid.
The list of suspected perpetrators has risen to over 200. ibid.
This is the story of three girls who in two years all went missing from the same street ... Until May 2013 they were held captive inside this house. The Cleveland Captives: What Really Happened? BBC 2013
At 6 p.m. a call goes out to trace Ariel Castro. ibid.
Hundreds of news crews descend on Seymour Avenue. ibid.
Four counts of kidnapping and three counts of rape. ibid.
The house is both a prison and a torture chamber. ibid.
Staff here on their own selected the children they wanted to kill. The Nazis: A Warning From History: Chaos and Consent, BBC 1997
On May 1st 1945, Magda Goebbels poisoned her six children before her and her husband took their lives. The Soviets found only their bodies and witnesses. Magda Goebbels, First Lady of the Third Reich
1957: Harry Belafonte: Mary’s Boy Child. The Christmas No.1 Story, BBC 2012
1976: Johnny Mathis: When a Child is Born. ibid.
1978: Bony M: Mary’s Boy Child. ibid.
John Lennon once said that the Beatles were bigger than Jesus Christ. He was wrong. That honor belongs to Santa Claus. An estimated 85% of American four-year-olds believe in Santa. Only 82% of adults in a recent poll told Gallup that they were Christians. Among their respective target audiences, Santa out-pulls Jesus by a nose. Tom Flynn, The Trouble with Christmas
During World War II, labor leader John L Lewis called a coal miners’ strike just before Christmas. NBC opened its radio newscast with the words, ‘John L Lewis just shot Santa Claus’. In the next hour, thirty thousand calls inundated the network’s switchboards. A Texas boy despaired and downed a bottle of castor oil. So frightening was the reaction that NBC hurriedly staged an ‘interview with Santa Claus’ to reassure Americans that the jolly old elf was still alive. ibid.
Reason #1: To Teach and Perpetrate the Santa Claus Myth, Parents Must Lie to Their Children. Reason #2: The Santa Claus Myth Exploits Characteristic Weakness in Young Children’s Thinking, Perhaps Obstructing Their Passage to Later Stages of Cognitive Development. Reason #3: To Buoy Belief, Adults Stage Elaborate Deceptions, Laying Traps for the Child’s Developing Intellect. Reason #4: The Myth Encourages Lazy Parenting and Promotes Unhealthy Fear. Reason #5: The Number of Characteristics that Santa Claus Shares with God and Jesus Verges on the Blasphemous. ibid.
What price are we paying for lying to children about Santa Claus? It may be steeper than we think. Because the myth panders to childhood credulity, some have implicated it in the rising incidence of scientific illiteracy among the young. Because it encourages children to build their world views on authority, not on independent thinking, others have related it to the abysmal judgment supposedly displayed by young adults. Can parents honestly be surprised when children do not consult them before experimenting with sex, drugs, crime, or destructive relationships – so soon after their parents have made it clear that children cannot trust them to provide accurate knowledge of the world? A Christian parent put the issue clearly in a letter to the editor:
‘Certainly we can’t get away with lies for seven to ten years and then expect children to ‘outgrow’ Santa ... then suddenly expect them to believe us when we mention high intensity moral issues.
‘Simply being honest with our children, in my opinion, would outweigh anything Santa ever brought’. ibid.
[A]ny adult who dares tell a child the objective truth on the matter is considered worse than blasphemous. Renzo Sereno
He who would destroy a child’s faith in Father Christmas, and thus annihilate the exquisite poetry of childhood, should be kept chained up beyond the reach of his fellow man. W J Locker
Most children believe in Santa Claus because books, advertising, the entire culture tells them he is real. Cynthia Scheibe, New York’s Ithaca College, study co-author John Condry, Cornell University
The evidence clearly supports that Santa Claus is real, given what (children) know, given the fact that most adults say Santa Claus is real, that he brings you presents and you can see him. ibid.
It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are. e e cummings
All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up. Pablo Picasso
When I was the age of these children I could draw like Raphael; it took me many years to learn how to draw like these children. Pablo Picasso, 1956
During World War II the Vatican was criticised for supporting Hitler and his Nazi regime. To this day the Vatican is still under investigation for plundering Nazi gold from the Swiss bank accounts of Jewish holocaust victims. Over the past five decades more than one thousand five hundred bishops have been identified in the sexual assault of tens of thousands of boys and girls in their trusting congregations and orphanages. Why is this filthy rich institution preaching spiritual values of poverty and chastity while cardinals, bishops and priests cover up their crimes of sexual abuse? Why has the Church fought and resisted the compensation claims of their sexually, emotionally and spiritually traumatised victims? Ring of Power
Instruction: On the Manner of Proceeding in Cases of Solicitation The Decree Crimen Sollicitationis, the Vatican Press March 16 1962 ... Anyone involved in a sex-abuse investigation, the accuser and the accused, are to be restrained by a perpetual silence ... In all matters and with all persons, under the penalty of excommunication. Secret Vatican document uncovered from 2003
Religion that as reported in Time magazine Catholic institutions have recently paid out more than $300,000,000 in the United States in settlement of cases where priests have been accused of sexually abusing under-age boys. And there is no end in sight to other pending cases. Notra Dame Philosophy Professor Ralph McKinnery said, ‘We, the Catholic church could be sued out of existence.’ Derek Partridge, The Naked Truth
I acknowledge the pain that the Church in America has experienced as a result of the sexual abuse of minors. Pope Benedict XVI