Compassion for Epstein's victims - but what about those closer to home?

Does Scotland really get children's rights?

The Edinburgh Academy last week

Picture the scene.

A class of ten-year-old boys sit in their smart blue and grey uniforms at one of Scotland’s best-known private schools, the Edinburgh Academy. The room is at the back of a modern building. The form master Mr Brownlee struts in. He is all-powerful. This is his secret kingdom.

Brownlee, a sadistic bully prone to exploding into tempestuous rage, has formed the habit of picking on one small, quiet boy. Nobody knows why. Today, the child has committed some alleged misdemeanour. Brownlee calls him to the front of the classroom. He takes the shaft of a metal golf club and savagely beats the boy until he loses control of his bladder.

A friend of mine was there that day. He remembers the steam rising from the stream of urine spreading across the polished classroom floor.

These boys were not especially vulnerable. Most were not boarders but went back at the end of the day to comfortable houses in leafy streets. They were probably asked by kindly parents, “How was school today?”

But they didn’t say what happened.

Perhaps they were afraid. Perhaps they thought they wouldn’t be believed. Looking back, my friend, while knowing that he was a child and it wasn’t on him, wishes that he had been able to do something.

That is the thing about children. They are small and powerless. They do not know they have rights, or how they can speak up for those rights - unless adults tell them and give them the opportunity to do that.

I am writing about this now because my friend was angry last week, reading a report in the Times Scotland which questioned the veracity of testimony that the former head of the junior school, James Burnet, supplied to Scotland’s Child Abuse Inquiry.

Burnet, 94, refused to apologise to the victims of his deputy, Brownlee, and three other masters (1) during his tenure.

He could have said something like - I wish I had asked more questions. I wish that, as head, I had managed to ensure that the children in our care were treated with respect.

Instead, Burnet painted a picture of an establishment that was mainly delightful, with occasional bouts of horrific abuse of which he claimed he knew nothing - although the Times reported that there was at least one complaint, which Burnet had dismissed without investigation.

He said: “The words that come to mind to describe the culture of the school are civilised, friendly and happy.”

The words that came to mind reading that were complacency and denial.

It was a similar story when Labour grandee Brian Wilson, appeared on BBC Scotland's Sunday Show at the weekend. He talked, rightly, about the need to focus on Epstein’s victims.

But Wilson, who is interim Celtic Chairman, became flustered when interviewer Gary Robertson tried to ask about Celtic Boys Club. Dozens of boys were subjected to sexual abuse there. Their complaints were initially disbelieved. But then - for decades - Celtic tried to say they had no link with Celtic Boys’ Club.

Wilson refused to discuss the case. He said: “Sorry, I think I was asked in here to talk about (the Labour Party and Epstein). You’ll only see the connection if you try to make it.”

I am sure there are many people who were involved with Celtic Boys’ Club back then who see the connections; who wish now that they had done more. People who were children at the time may have seen things that made them feel uncomfortable, but didn’t know what to do with that or who to speak to.

Of course, things have changed.

Scotland has incorporated the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child into law. On paper, we are progressive. We are proud of it.

But do we really get it?

Much of the current debate around schools and discipline has a sour undertone: children are “out of control”, “feral”, “entitled” - they are bad, naughty and deserve to be punished.

I think in some part of Scotland’s puritanical soul it still has a repressive attitude to children - “spare the rod, spoil the child” - although of course, a shepherd does not beat the sheep with his crook, he uses it to bar gaps in the wall and so forth.

There is a certain sense in these debates that the children’s rights thing has gone too far. People sometimes seem to misunderstand what they mean.

But children’s rights don’t include: choosing your own bedtime, eating crisps for dinner or gaming all night. That is not what the UN Convention says.

Children have the right to be safe from abuse. They have the right to education. They have the right to be treated with respect. They have the right to be heard. They have the right to be consulted about decisions that concern them - though not the right to get their own way all the time. And they do not lose those rights because they misbehave. They are smaller but their human rights are not smaller.

Scotland’s Children’s Parliament has an “Unfearties” programme as part of an effort to embed understanding of children’s rights into society. If you sign up to be an Unfeartie it means you pledge to be part of a grassroots movement that wants to make sure that these rights are real and part of everyday life not just for show.

Most people can probably remember what it was like to be a powerless child, seeing injustice towards oneself or others. Bullies can be children - they can also be adults. In the moment, a child may just feel relieved that they are not the one on the receiving end.

As adults, we can speak up. But sometimes we don’t. It is easier to look away, to pretend it is not our business, like James Burnet and Brian Wilson did last week. Unfearties don’t do that.

Click here to join the “Unfearties”

(1) I just want to note that most of the masters did not act like this and did not know what was going on - each master’s classroom was his fiefdom