The Evil that Is Brook

I could scarcely credit it.  Brook run training courses, to instruct teachers and others that:

• solitary masturbation
• sexually explicit conversations with peers
• obscenities and jokes within the current cultural norm
• interest in erotica/pornography
• use of internet/e-media to chat online
• having sexual or non-sexual relationships
• sexual activity including hugging, kissing, holding hands
• consenting oral and/or penetrative sex with others of the same or opposite gender who are of similar age and developmental ability
• choosing not to be sexually active

 all 'reflect safe and healthy sexual development. They are:

• displayed between children or young people of similar age or developmental ability;
• reflective of natural curiosity, experimentation, consensual activities and positive choices.' (source)

From a Catholic point of view, of course, there are problems with many of these. But even leaving to one side a morality informed by Faith, or by the whole of Western Civilisation for centuries, there are severe problems.

There seems to be a strong consensus in the academic literature that early sexual activity is harmful, physically, emotionally and psychologically. Brook, in pursuing its ideology of 'consent is the only morality,' completely ignores that. It is children (and they are explicit about that - children as young as 13!) we are talking about. So it is children who will pay the price: physically, emotionally and psychologically.

This is evil.

Consent as the only moral criterion doesn't work, even in purely secular terms. Increasingly, reality -the dreadful reality that provokes Serious Case Reviews - has displayed the links between consensual underage sexual behaviour and child sex exploitation/abuse.  For example the 2013 Torbay Serious Case Review states in section 5.12:

“Underage sexual activity by young people between thirteen and sixteen years old is judged on the perception that if it takes place with partners of a similar age, it is by mutual consent. This perception has to be reconsidered in light of the growing evidence in this case that the abusers were not much older than the girls and also that the girls, who often did not consider that they were being abused, lied about the age of their partners as they were aware of the potential professional response.”

The Torbay Review also recommends that:

 “There appears to be a need to review current national guidelines to examine if they are sufficiently robust to account fully for the growing evidence around sexual activity and its links to sexual exploitation.”  

But Brook pays no heed to any of this, apparently. Indeed, their guidelines suggest that all of these:

• solitary masturbation
• sexually explicit conversations with peers
• obscenities and jokes within the current cultural norm
• interest in erotica/pornography
• use of internet/e-media to chat online
• having sexual or non-sexual relationships
• sexual activity including hugging, kissing, holding hands
• consenting oral and/or penetrative sex with others of the same or opposite gender who are of similar age and developmental ability
• choosing not to be sexually active

'provide opportunities to give positive feedback and additional information.'

I should not, I suppose, be surprised. But note that it is Brook and their ideological allies who are among the key experts consulted by government in formulating policy - not least with regard to Sex Education.

In fact, in front of the Select Committee, Simon Blake CE of Brook, when facing the evidence, that the best quality of research on this topic (including randomised control trials), published in the prestigious BMJ, shows some programmes have adverse consequences, suggests that his intuition is more important than the research data. (see here for the Select Committee hearing. The remarks I refer to are c. 9.41).

There's also something else: the shamelessness of Brook in suggesting that such intimate things should be 'opportunities for positive feedback.' Just think what that means in practice. 'Oh James, I hear that you were reading pornography at break. Well done! And Maciej and Sundeep: I gather you had protected oral and penetrative sex in a very consensual way! Congratulations, keep it up. Freddy, it's wonderful that you masturbate alone in the toilets at lunch time!' And if not that, what? 

If you think that 13 year old children should not be given 'positive feedback' about 'consenting oral and/or penetrative sex with others of the same or opposite gender who are of similar age and developmental ability' by teachers, social workers or indeed anyone else, make your voice heard.

Write to your MP, letting him or her know about this. Write to your schools, expressing your concern and asking about their programmes, and specifically whether the Brook Traffic Light approach to safeguarding is used. If your children are in a Catholic school, don't assume it is any better. Write to your bishop and the CES and ask for concrete assurances.

Sub tuum praesidium confugimus, Sancta Dei Genetrix.
Nostras deprecationes ne despicias in necessitatibus nostris,
sed a periculis cunctis libera nos semper,
Virgo gloriosa et benedicta.