As increasingly sickening details emerge about the criminally abusive behaviour of Jimmy Savile and others in prominent performing arts positions, I can’t help thinking about the training “industry” and its potential dangers to children and young people.
Of course the vast majority of people who train under 18s in schools, classes, youth theatres, residentials and so on are – thank goodness – decent, straight-up sort of people who would no more dream of sexually molesting a child than they would of burgling a house or committing bigamy or arson.
But there are tens of thousands of men and women involved in developing performing arts skills in minors. Statistically a handful of these will have instincts and habits which make them totally unsuitable to be anywhere near children.
For some years now everyone working with children has had to be CRB (Criminal Records Bureau) checked. It helps.
But remember that, as a wise local authority child protection adviser once pointed out to me, a CRB check shows only that you have never been caught. It doesn’t show that you don’t have the potential to commit a child protection offence.
There has never been a time when you are more likely to be listened to and taken seriously. No one should get away with child abuse. Ever.
He made that observation in the 1990s, before Ian Huntley was convicted of the murder of two children in Soham, Cambridgeshire in 2002. Huntley was employed as school caretaker and had been CRB checked. But he’d never been found guilty of a child protection offence, so he was clear.
The same adviser told me that in a school the size of the one I was teaching in at the time (about 200 employees) sooner or later there would be a ‘child protection incident’ because these people are out there in every group in society – especially, of course, amongst adults who choose to work with children. Chilling stuff.
Worrying as it is, it applies to performing arts training just as much as to any other form of youth work – arguably even more because some aspects of the training may need more use of touch than if you’re teaching, say, maths or French which rely less on physicality.
Now the last thing I want to do is to start a McCarthy-style witch-hunt – and Arthur Miller’s The Crucible is a salutary lesson in what happens when these things get out of hand. No one wants the careers of innocent people destroyed by false, malicious or hysterical accusations.
Nevertheless, I know that, given the numbers involved, there must have been incidents in the past which never came to light. And young people taking part in residential summer schools must be at the most risk – especially some years ago, before child protection was so widely discussed.
So my message – and it’s a sober one – is this: If you took part in a performing arts training event in your youth at which things happened to you which shouldn’t have done, then speak out. Now.
There has never been a time (a tiny silver lining to the horrible Savile cloud?) when you are more likely to be listened to and taken seriously. No one should get away with child abuse. Ever.
If you need or want to talk, these organisations can help you:
- National Association for People Abused in Childhood, www.napac.org.uk
- Kidscape, www.kidscape.org.uk
- ChildLine, www.childline.org.uk
- NSPCC, www.nspcc.org.uk
Meanwhile, what can the rest of us who work in performing arts training do to make sure that every single child in our charge is safe?


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Comments 4 comments
Susan you are to be congratulated on this blog(column). I think if anything good is to come out of the Saville allegations, and the issue of institutions effectively covering them up to save their reputation (even if this was done in the passive way of not really listening to the gossip surrounding certain people) then it is that victims (survivors) of abuse can finally get their voices heard, regardless of who the perpetrator(s) is/was. As the recent case has proved it just takes one brave person to step forward and speak out which gives permission for all the others. A decent society surely means that all allegations are investigated thoroughly and justly, not, as Susan says, in a witch hunt, but in a considered way by the correct authorities. It’s time for the pack of cards to fall once and for allReport comment
this article totally misses the problem with current legisaltion. If you teach in a full time school (stage school etc) you will need to have a CRB. But if you teach in a partime school, say for example, where you run lots of 1 hour classes, there is no legal requirement to have a CRB check as you are not providing child care. Your insurer may make a CRB check a requirement for them to insure. If you have bothered to get insurance that is. How many local dance/drama/music schools actually really have insurance and CRB checks? Cdet have long since been running their Recognised Schools and Teachers system but this is a voluntary code that you choose to sign up. Two of the 9 requirements are insurance and CRB. Frighteningly few schools and teachers have choosen to sign up to this very cheap scheme. I wonder why. This scheme really ought to be set in legislation but whilst it isn’t the majority of teachers in part time schools continue to operate without insurance, crbs’ etc.Report comment
The checks are meaniless. If you have a gut feeling that a teacher is ‘grooming’ certain pupils, legislation can make it difficult to cease employing them.
Running my own school I didnt re employ
a man for a second term.He immediately took offence. When the substitute teacher
joined I learnt that the ‘dodgy’ man had
not been remployed for a 2nd term at a
full time stage school. He has been teaching at one for years!!
How about ‘gut feeling’ in the state school sector.Report comment
I have been involved in teaching young people for years. It is often advised that a staff member not be alone in a room with a single pupil. So if a child wishes to discuss a personal issue or is poorly there ought to be sufficient staff in an emergency to accommodate this guideline thus protecting the young person. Although incidents outside the educational setting cannot be monitored in the same way parents should offer guidance regarding this. Further in a theatre, film set etc. young people do spend a great deal of time with often large numbers of adults, which can often be of huge benefit to the child. A licensed chaperone should have their eyes actually on the child at all times even to the point of checking the toilets before the child enters. This is their job and parents/ adult performers should be as supportive as humanly possible . Our young peoples safety should be paramount to all adults and I’m sure childline staff, nspcc workers etc must find some of their work terribly difficult.Report comment