15th December 2011 9:00
By Blue Tutors
This week we reported on an article from the US, where a convicted sex offender was attempting to set himself up as a private tutor, and if not lying to his potential students about his past, certainly wasn’t forthcoming about why he no longer practised medicine, and the popular opinions regarding his suitability to tutor young students.
There is an important debate here about a person’s right to conduct activities once a conviction has been served. Most governments place restrictions on the future activities of people convicted of sexual assault, often because of concerns about the psychological state of the person, and the likelihood that they will reoffend. However in this case the wannabe tutor had no such restrictions placed on him. His attempts to become a private tutor were not illegal, but would you want him tutoring your son or daughter?
There isn’t the time or expertise of the writer to address the above debate, so instead we’ll focus on what a student, or student’s parent can do to ensure that they’re not unknowingly put in a situation that they don’t want to be in.
Many readers will be thinking, parents must ask for a CRB Disclosure. Of course, for the person mentioned above, a CRB Disclosure would now show his past convictions, and that would almost certainly discourage every parent from employing him as a tutor. However, what if this person hadn’t been convicted of his crimes? It’s common for people to not report sexual offences, and it was only the sheer volume of this doctor’s victims that led to enough evidence to secure a conviction. A clean CRB Disclosure simply means that someone hasn’t been convicted of an assault, not that they’re a moral upstanding individual. This doctor’s original victims could all have asked for a CRB Disclosure, seen it was clean, and allowed him to examine them. The goal here is to ensure that our children aren’t placed in dangerous situations, not to ensure that if they are molested, the person doing so, is doing so before a conviction.
Our advice has always been to follow good child protection practises. In this case the reproachable doctor was assuring parents that his wife would be present while he was tutoring. The fact is that she wasn’t, but even if she was, why should a parent trust this man’s wife any more than they should trust him. If you’re a parent concerned about your child’s safety then demand that you are present for the lessons. You don’t have to be in the same room, but make sure that you can hear the lesson, and never close the door and leave tutor and student alone.
The goal is for you to trust your tutor, but also to be vigilant against inappropriate situations. We tell our tutors the same thing, and they often advise parents not to ignore child protection practises, because they want to protect themselves too.