A sad reminder that people like this walk among us.
Remember that even the nicest people can still be wrongons. To quote the BTP; If you see something that doesn’t look right, report it.
One Q though. Is anyone familiar with the case? Are the position of trust elements he’s been convicted on related to the school role, or the RAFAC role? I’ve been previously told that we as CFAV don’t actually meet the threshold for position of trust offenses?
This use to be the situation & there were some high profile cases that fell apart because of this.
However there has been a change in the law since then & volunteer adult leaders in youth organisations are now included.
That factsheet (and legislation.gov.uk) suggests that the broader definition in s22A is only for activities in sports or religion. I don’t know why they haven’t included ‘youth organisations’ or similar, but that doesn’t seem to include RAFAC, scouts etc? It seems like a big gap in the legislation still.
Yep, still appears that the gap exists.
I think anyone abusing a position of trust from our POV should get their sentences seriously extended.
I think one of the biggest ones where there is an identified problem is driving instructors.
The Sentencing Council is a little wooly on this:
In order for an abuse of trust to make an offence more serious the relationship between the offender and victim(s) must be one that would give rise to the offender having a significant level of responsibility towards the victim(s) on which the victim(s) would be entitled to rely.
However, in R v Oliver and Ors
[2003] 2 Cr App Rep (S) 15
, it was stated that:
the offence would be aggravated if […] the offender has abused a position of trust, as in the case of a teacher, friend of the family, social worker, or youth group leader.
Whilst this was a case about child pornography, there is precedent there to regard a youth group leader as someone in a position of trust.
Aggravation can be pretty vague in that it just moves things up the sentencing guidelines
Absolutely. The point was an example of a youth group leader being explicitly referred to as someone in a position of trust (and by an appellate court).
Sure, but that’s for sentencing purposes only, not for the purposes of the specific offences. CFAVs are in a ‘position of trust’ but they’re not in a “Position of Trust”.
Yeah that’s was the point I was making badly, you won’t get done for the offence but if you have committed another offence when it comes to sentencing it’s going to move up the culpability scale.
Got you. I get the point now.