'I lost my job because I was a man playing with children'

Philip Bennison, 55, from Cambridge, has been married for 33 years to Jane and has six children and eight grandchildren. He ran a printing business for 20 years, did youth work for 25 years and completed nine courses in caring for children.
Here he tells Gill Swain why he believes men are right to avoid working with children.

I find Ruth Kelly's plans to open hundreds of after-school clubs and the government's pleas for more men to work in them a complete joke. What happened to me when I was a playleader demonstrates why men steer clear of these jobs and why they are right to do so. There could have been few men better qualified for the part-time job I took at an after-school club for four-to-11-year-olds. I was always a very active father and, when mine grew up, I missed that involvement.

I adored the job, but the restrictions imposed on me became unbearable. I have never been accused of abusing a child, but I was judged to be “too tactile”. I lost my job, in effect, for being a man playing with children.
I started in September 2002 and the first year was wonderful. I taught skipping, roller-skating, balancing along the tops of walls and playing the electric organ. Parents appreciated the presence of a male playleader because children relate to you differently.
I learnt in training about “inappropriate touching”, being told that piggybacks were all right, but men shouldn't take children on their laps. Children would want to climb on my knee but I'd immediately stand up and push them away.
Last spring the committee told me I was “getting too close” to some of the children. They said I must stop holding children around the waist and only take their hands. It wasn't easy teaching children to skate that way and it was unpleasant to feel I was being watched and under suspicion.
One day a girl of nine ran up crying, saying she had been bullied by two boys. She leant her head on my chest and I put a comforting arm around her. For that I was given a written warning. Apparently, when she put her head on my chest it was “child-led touching”, which was acceptable, but when I responded it was “adult-led touching”, which was not. I was told that if it happened again I should fetch a female playworker.

Piggybacks were banned. I was not allowed to tickle children, pick them up or swing them around, no matter how much they pleaded. When I pointed out that women colleagues often sat with children on their laps, I was told it was a fact of life that males were seen as more of a risk to children.
I felt I was being victimised for being a man. I didn't think it inappropriate to hold children around the waist, but I agreed to adopt a “no touch” policy and withdrew from the children to concentrate on office work.

One day last June, I was suspended. Someone had allegedly overheard two children talking about me and had made a report to the police. I have never been told who it was, who the children were, or what they said.
The police never contacted me and when I rang them after six weeks they said they had no record of any investigation. It's impossible to defend yourself when you don't know what the charge is or who is accusing you.
But the fact a report was said to have been made led Ofsted to tell the committee to ensure I was always supervised when I returned to work last September.
I was asked to resign but refused. They produced a document citing “causes for dismissal”, containing statements from eight people relating to incidents which they said supported their case.
Some of them were true, such as when I cheered up a girl of five who was miserable on her first day by holding her hands and helping her jump. One statement said the girl's skirt was flying up, “clearly displaying her underwear”. The mother had given me a “look”, but I didn't stop.

Other incidents were equally minor or could not have happened. A boy told his mother he'd seen me with a girl on my knee and my fingers in her trouser waist-band. I had never taken a child on my lap.
I was devastated and wanted to fight, but my union told me it was impossible to prove a negative. Very reluctantly, I agreed to resign with compensation of £1,390 and was given a reference which said I had “difficulty in complying with the club's child-protection policy”.
I feel very angry and stigmatised, but also helpless because a man in this situation gets no support.
In training I was often the only man among 20 women, but now there is one more man lost to childcare because I will never work with children again.

You don't have to do anything wrong or be near children. Being a man in that job makes you vulnerable.

19 June 2005

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,1509786,00.html

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