My thanks to Gavin for his guest post about the changing attitudes in society.

Major turning points in society.

We all see the wonderful pictures Pete sends us, and you laugh or cringe at the noticeable societal changes. Less smoking is a classic. On the other hand swear words are now normal and effin acceptable! One must also notice that climate changes as becoming a dramatic turning point. But there is another change that has turned the way we now live – completely. I can only give you the 2 major examples from New Zealand but I well know there are identical cases that occurred in your countries.

In 1987, Teresa Cormack was an adorable 6 year old walking on her own to school in the city of Napier. She was enticed into a strangers car, raped and her body found on a beach. The whole town went out looking for her and every man a suspect. Soon men all over the country were suspects. It broke up marriages and parents now had to drop off and pick their children up from school – the mother, not the father. The roads became clogged twice a day with many children run over and some school turned sports fields into car parks. The culprit was found years later by fluke thanks to modern DNA records. But on the way several men had their lives ruined, had to escape to another country, were never allowed to see their children and change their names.

In 1993, Peter Ellis was a creche supervisor at a day care in Christchurch. Out of the blue a parent told others her child said Peter performed indecent acts and bizarre rituals. Peter was perhaps gay. The education authorities got a psych to interview all the children – who got rewards for saying nasty things about Peter. He spent a decade in jail and recently died of cancer. Just last week he was proved to be innocent – as the “victims”, now adults, stated it was made up and the psych a man hater.

So we now have several generations brought up on the philosophy of “stranger danger”. We have females in their 30s who cannot socialise and many not formed hetero relationships. Many refuse to deal or work with a male and as a JP I have several who will only come to me if they can stand up and I sit down and not look at them. They will be accompanied by a witness and you are not allowed to talk to them. Men will no longer work in teaching and foolish if they do. As a solo dad I can tell you how hard it was being out with my boys and changing nappies in a park and if seen by a female, would get a police call out. Thank God I didn’t have girls. My mate in a similar situation gave his girl up for adoption as it was too hard.

So thanks to these 2 cases, the world had a major change with a gigantic cost.
But the final piece is
https://www.police.govt.nz/advice/personal-and-community-advice/school-portal/latest-news/who-abuses-children

From Gavin Marriott JP, NZ.