Empathy Flows from the Foundations of Respect and Genuineness
PP12
Empathy
Gerard Egan
“Empathy involves understanding the experiences, behaviours and feelings of others as THEY experience them.”
“Empathy flows from the foundations of respect and genuineness”
Carl Rogers
“It means temporarily living in the other’s life, moving about in it delicately without making judgements, sensing meanings of which he/she is scarcely aware but not trying to uncover feelings o which the person is totally unaware, this would be too threatening.”
“It means communicating your sensing of his/her world.”
“It means frequently checking with him/her as to your sensing and being guided by the responses you receive.”
“To be with another person in this way, means that for the time being you lay aside the values you hold for yourself in order to enter another’s worldwithout prejudice. In some sense it means that you lay aside yourself and this can only be done by a person who is secure enough in himself…”
Read the articles on the following pages.
Nursery worker Vanessa George guilty of child sex abuse
A nursery worker, Vanessa George, and two accomplices, Angela Allen and Colin Blanchard, have pleaded guilty to child sex abuse.
By Nigel Bunyan and Richard Savill
Published: 11:44AM BST 01 Oct 2009
Nursery worker Vanessa George has pleaded guilty to child sex abuse
Colin Blanchard was sexually abused as a child
George, and her co-accused, all aged 39 and parents themselves, appeared at Bristol Crown court, facing a combined total of 37 charges, including making and distributing indecent images of children.
George, of Plymouth, Devon, Blanchard, from Smallbridge, near Rochdale, Greater Manchester, and Allen, from Nottingham, appeared together in the dock.
George admitted seven sexual assaults and six counts of distributing and making indecent pictures of children.
She denied one sex assault, which was ordered by the judge to lie on file.
Blanchard pleaded guilty to 17 child pornography counts and two sexual assaults on children. He also admitted a further charge of possessing extreme pornography.
Allen pleaded guilty to four child sex assaults and one count of distributing an indecent image.
Allen wept as she pleaded guilty while Blanchard showed no reaction and George hung her head in the dock.
Following Blanchard's arrest in June, mother-of-two George, who worked at Little Ted's nursery in Plymouth, was arrested and the nursery, which catered for up to 60 children, closed.
George, who abused babies and toddlers in her care, swapped her collection of images with the two other accused, it emerged.
The married mother met her accomplices “entirely by chance” in a Facebook chat room.
George used what she termed her “fun phone” to take 150 obscene images of infants in her care.
She passed these on to her two accomplices, together with images of her abusing some of those she was photographing.
Today relatives of some her victims were in court to see her plead guilty to playing a pivotal role in one of the most sickening abuse cases ever to come before a British court.
As George awaited sentence it emerged that she had worked in childcare for more than a decade before she began to feed her paedophile fantasies while working at Little Ted’s.
By then she had already embarked upon a “cyber sex relationship” with Allen, and Blanchard, 38, the man both women claim was their Svengali.
She kept in touch with both via Facebook, by text or MSN, or via a secret paedophile web address.
In return for her own obscene photographs George received shocking images of Allen and Blanchard carrying out violent acts of abuse on young girls.
The judge at Bristol Crown Court, however, rejected suggestions that Blanchard was the main instigator who groomed the two women to abuse children.
Judge Royce said of George: "She is not a child, this is a married woman who can make up her own mind whether she indulges in this sort of activity or not."
Police have confirmed that education officials had no suspicions about George’s behaviour and she had passed the routine CRB check required of adults working with children.
She had even managed to hold down a job as a classroom assistant elsewhere in Plymouth without anyone suspecting she was a paedophile.
A startling feature of the case is that until they appeared in the dock together the trio had never actually met.
George is believed to have taken a large number of her photographs in the United Church Hall opposite Little Ted’s.
She thought her crimes would never be exposed because she took care to photograph only the torsos of the infants she was supposed to be caring for.
But detectives spotted part of the Little Ted’s logo on an indecent photograph she had sent to Blanchard.
Later, as they interrogated the hard drive of her own computer, they found the full logo on an entirely innocent photograph she had taken of a colleague at the nursery.
Detectives moved swiftly to arrest George before she could start another day’s work.
Detectives doubt that they will ever identify George’s young victims, despite four months’ work in analysing the full catalogue of abuse found on her “fun phone” and computer.
The closest they have come so far has been to narrow the number of possible victims down to 30 babies and toddlers, mostly girls, aged between 12 and 18 months. Many of George’s victims were photographed as they lay on changing mats. Some were penetrated either with a sex toy or a toothbrush.
The paedophile had deliberately chosen younger victims, knowing they would be unable to report her. Even from her prison cell she refused point-blank to help with the identification process.
Police sought the advice of a specially-formed ethics committee to prevent them unintentionally causing further distress to possible victims or their parents.
Detectives remain astonished that three paedophiles from disparate parts of the country could meet “at random” on the internet and then form so sinister an alliance.
They were caught after one of Blanchard’s business partners logged onto his office computer while he was on a trip to Abu Dhabi. He was so appalled by the images he saw that he immediately called in police.
Blanchard, a one-time college lecturer who lived a seemingly middle-class life in Littleborough, near Rochdale, Greater Manchester, was arrested as he flew back into ManchesterAirport.
The trail then moved on to Vanessa George in Plymouth and a few days later to Angela Allen in Nottingham.
Nursery worker Vanessa George: women and child sex abuse
Child sex abuse by women may be more widespread than people realise, according to experts, following the case of Nnursery worker Vanessa George, from Plymouth, Devon.
Published: 11:39AM BST 01 Oct 2009
Vanessa George
Because of the position of trust they hold, it is thought that many cases go unreported.
And the psychological damage it does to their victims can be even more severe.
The Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) centre, which assisted detectives investigating the abuse by Vanessa George, Angela Allen and Colin Blanchard, has commissioned studies into the behaviour of female sex predators.
Staff at CEOP said female sex offending is perceived as rarer and therefore more shocking than male sex offending.
A spokeswoman said: "It's very difficult for us as a society to accept that women can be capable of those crimes and be sexually motivated to commit them.
"The way we think of women as carers of children, it's hard to conceive they could be capable of treating children that way."
The spokeswoman said the number of female offenders was difficult to quantify, but "more and more" were being identified due to raised awareness of sexual offending and the training offered by agencies, including CEOP.
"This does mean the number of female offenders is therefore likely to increase," she said.
"It's accepted that sexual abuse is under-reported. Children rarely come forward and disclose sexual abuse - even if it's uncovered. Children rarely discuss their experiences.
"But with female perpetrators that under-reporting is even greater.
"Women are afforded a greater position of trust and children are asking themselves 'am I going to be believed if I come forward?' or 'is this going to make it worse for me?'."
The spokeswoman said some studies have suggested the percentage of female sex offenders could be as high as 20%.
But differences between male and female offenders have been identified, she said.
"Women use the internet differently. We don't see a high volume of image collection on women's computers, as we do on male offenders'.
"Women use the internet to network and talk on forums online about their offending."
The impact a female offender has on a child can be even greater than the devastating influence of a male offender, the spokeswoman said.
She said: "The impact abuse has on the way children form attachments to others can be so destructive.
"It's hugely destructive anyway, but it has a particular impact when that perpetrator is a woman."
Nursery worker child sex abuse case: Vanessa George profile
Vanessa George was trusted for three years by parents and staff at Little Ted’s nursery in Plymouth, Devon. The paedophile was seen as “an angel” and "a second mother”.
By By Richard Savill and Nigel Bunyan
Published: 12:10PM BST 01 Oct 2009
Nursery worker Vanessa George has pleaded guilty to child sex abuse
But unknown to everyone around the nursery, her latent paedophile tendencies had taken over her life and turned her from playing the role of a seemingly loving carer to that of a deviant sex offender.
George has shown little remorse for her crimes which have shaken the lives of the local community in Plymouth.
Despite having been involved in one of the worst ever cases of child abuse in Britain, George is apparently unable to grasp or comprehend the enormity of what she has done.
DS Steve Hambly, of Devon and Cornwall police, said: “She knows she has done wrong, but is she remorseful? I don’t think so.
“I don’t think she understands the gravity of her actions. She understands she has done wrong but has no perception of the level of her offending.”
Parents of children at Little Ted’s have found it difficult to come to terms with the depravity of her crimes.
She appeared to bring up her two teenage daughters well, and photographs of her taken at the nursery show the level of trust people had in her.
These show her posing with cut-up newspaper stuck to her face, and using a plastic cover from a child’s cheese snack to make a pair of false lips.
However, the awful reality was that while she was presenting a fun loving image she was cynically abusing children in her care.
One mother said: “On the face of it she seemed very open about her personal life, maybe too open as we got the impression she was a bit promiscuous. But none of the parents ever suspected she was hiding anything.
“Nothing she did ever led me to suspect she was a paedophile. When I found out what had happened I felt sick. I was so angry I wanted to kill her.”
George had passed the CRB check and worked at Little Ted’s for three years. She holds an NVQ Level 2 in childcare.
She had been employed looking after children since 1998, previously as a classroom assistant at a primary school.
A parent said: “You put your children into nursery expecting them to be safe. She was the last person we expected to be involved in this.”
One of the detectives in the case said: “There was nothing to suggest she would be involved in anything like this. She was clean. She had never done anything before that brought her to anyone’s attention.”
George, an only child, lost her mother Sylvia to breast cancer in 1985. She lived a seemingly innocuous life in a three-bedroom 1980s semi-detached house near the nursery, in the Plymouth suburb of Laira.
Children frequently play in a park opposite the house, which she shared with her husband of 20 years, Andrew George, 41, an engineer for a catering equipment firm, and their two teenage daughters, aged 14 and 15.
The family spent weekends at a caravan in HarlynBay, near Padstow, north Cornwall.
Mr George and his daughters were said to be “in pieces” when the crimes were discovered. Mr George has now disowned his wife and is believed to be seeking a divorce. His primary concern has been to minimise the impact on his daughters, friends said.
When asked by The Daily Telegraph about his wife’s crimes, as he left his house to pick up his daughters from school, he declined to comment.
A detective said: “Her (George’s) family are struggling to come to terms with what has happened. The daughters have been left in a terrible place. After all, it is their mum. They are very upset. All are finding it incredibly difficult to understand what she has done.”
Nursery worker child sex abuse case: Angela Allen profile
Paedophile Angela Allen offered a three-year-old girl as a sexual trophy to strangers she encountered on the streets of Nottingham.
By Nigel Bunyan and Richard Savill, Published: 1:00PM BST 01 Oct 2009
Angela Allen: "sinister and totally evil"
To her disappointment, none expressed any interest in abusing the child to whom she had access.
Allen had no such reservations and instead took time and effort in coaching the child to engage in acts of depravity as if they were normal.
Detectives are still trying to come to terms with the extent of Allen’s depravity.
Det Supt Adrian Pearson, head of Nottingham’s public protection unit, said as she awaited sentence: “Angela Allen is a sinister and totally evil individual.
“She has shed not a tear of remorse for her victim. In interview she never once enquired of her welfare or what her future might be, or reflected on the acts she had done and the things she had shared with other human beings.
“I cannot imagine what that young child went through at such a tender age. It is truly shocking that she was (forced) to accept such behaviour as normal.”
He added: “Allen has invaded this child’s privacy and innocence and then expressed absolutely no remorse. She is a truly chilling individual living on the fringes of society.”
Allen, 39, spent many of her younger years working as a prostitute in Manchester. As well has appearing six times on charges of soliciting, she was convicted in 1992 of theft and going equipped.
When police arrested her she and her daughter were living in squalor in the Bulwell suburb of Nottingham. Officers found little furniture in the pebble-dashed house and only a few scraps of food.
Allen had not even bothered to clear her computer of incriminating evidence, despite knowing that her accomplices had been arrested.
Her house is now boarded up with steel shutters. So, too, is that of her sister who had to be moved out of the area for her own safety.
Nursery worker child sex abuse case: Colin Blanchard profile
Colin Blanchard, an accomplice in the Vanessa George nursery worker child sex abuse case, is a classic case of an abused child becoming an abuser in later life.
By Nigel Bunyan and Richard Savill
Published: 12:30PM BST 01 Oct 2009
Colin Blanchard was sexually abused as a child
The 39-year-old IT salesman was attacked by a relative during his childhood, although because others in his family were also assaulted the case involving him never came to court.
Blanchard, originally from Norris Green, Liverpool, and at one time a college lecturer in the city, met his future wife, Anne, 44, when she was a student.
The couple lived in Ashton-under-Lyme, Greater Manchester, before moving to a modern detached house in Littleborough, near Rochdale.
Blanchard was quickly given the nickname Billy Bull---- by his neighbours. He claimed to have a £10 million fortune in Abu Dhabi and boasted of having a plasma TV screen in almost every room.
Shortly after moving into the executive estate he arranged to have a palm tree winched over the roof and into his garden.
When the couple’s daughter was born they quickly put her name down for a private kindergarten.
For all the trappings of wealth, Blanchard was massively in debt to credit-card companies and there was an eviction order on the house. Both that and his black Volvo S60 were repossessed within days of his arrest.
Blanchard first came to police attention in October, 2001, when Customs and Excise investigators found obscene photographs of children on his computer. Because the images were at the lower end of the scale he was let off with a caution. However, his name remained on the Sex Offenders’ register until 2007.
Police now believe that in the months before his arrest Blanchard began trawling for like-minded women on the internet, generally by revealing to them his own history as an abused child.
Detectives moved in on June 6 after his business partner, Noman Ahmed, became suspicious about his wheeler-dealing in electronics.
Mr Ahmed took a look at Blanchard’s office computer while he was on a business trip to Abu Dhabi. He was so shocked by what he saw that he immediately rang police.
Detectives were waiting for Blanchard when he flew back into Manchester. It later emerged that the laptop, iPhone and pen drive he was carrying bore further images of child abuse that might have cost him his life had he been arrested in the United Arab Emirates.