Educaring, Part 2

Not so long ago, I wrote a post for my blog called Educaring. Please do not misunderstand me. I really do believe that teachers, youth workers, parents (and indeed anyone involved with young people) all have a duty to protect children and teenagers, to keep them safe. As I argued in my previous posting, I also believe that the task of protecting children is becoming more and more difficult - almost impossible, in fact. Yes, the Internet has a lot to do with it, I am sure, but there is another problem that is hardly ever discussed. 

In a nutshell, anyone who genuinely cares about children finds it very hard to imagine how evil and how subtle child molesters and pedophiles really are. I think that is probably why many teachers and parents just do not know when a pedophile is "grooming" a child and why they often do not believe it, even when confronted with the unpleasant truth.

Michael Green at Windlesham House School

I knew Michael Green when I was teaching at Windlesham House School in Sussex. He was coaching cricket and one or two other sports. Old "Greenie"  was quite a character and often we would laugh and joke together in the evenings, at the end of a long school day, as we ate our suppers in the staff dining room at Windlesham. He was always friendly, a bit of a joker, great with the students and popular with the parents. I had no idea - and I do not think anyone else did, at the time - what sort of person he really was.

It was during my time in Shenzhen that an old friend sent me the news about Michael Green's first conviction: nine years in prison for molesting children. Recently I found out that he had been convicted again, this time for offences that he must have committed while he was at Windlesham, and he was given a further twelve years.

Is my judgement of character really so bad? It is no comfort to me to remember that, at the time, everyone else at Windlesham thought that Greenie was a great guy, including the parents of many of the children, as well as the headmaster and his wife, Charles and Elizabeth-Ann Malden. In fact, Greenie had a rather grovelling and overdone respect for the Maldens. (On reflection, perhaps this should have been a warning that something was wrong, but nobody really took any notice.) Even now that his crimes have been made public and those whose lives he ruined have finally told their stories, I still find it hard to believe that Michael Green really was a pedophile, a child molester and a criminal.   

And here is the article that appeared on the BBC.

Hove sports coach sex attacker jailed for second time

A former sports coach has been jailed for a second time for a string of sex assaults on boys under the age of 16.

Michael Green, 74, of Aldrington Close in Hove was jailed for 12 years having been found guilty at Lewes Crown Court of 18 counts of indecent assault. He was convicted on Wednesday of attacking seven boys aged between 12 and 16 between 1980 and 1994. In 2014 he was jailed for two counts of raping a boy under 16, and two further indecent assaults. Police said the seven victims came forward after publicity about his Green's previous convictions.

Three of the boys were assaulted while Green was head coach of juniors at the Brighton Ice Hockey Club, and one was attacked while Green was involved in coaching junior speedway in Havant in Hampshire, Sussex Police said. Three pupils were indecently assaulted at Windlesham House School in Washington, West Sussex between 1988 and 1994 while Green was a cricket coach, police said.

Green had pleaded not guilty to all the charges. Det Con Dawn Robertson said; "Green's 2014 sentence received considerable publicity and as a result these seven further victims came forward to us over the ensuing months. "It is clear that throughout that period of the 80s and 90s he was actively involving himself in different types of sports coaching, all of which had one thing in common - they gave him access to young and often vulnerable young boys who he systematically abused under the guise of helping them."