Rail group 'bans' help for kids-because of the risk of being accused of inappropriate behaviour

[The Straight Story]

Rail group 'bans' help for kids

Staff at a Devon heritage railway can no longer help children off trains, because of the risk of being accused of inappropriate behaviour.

It follows a case in which a volunteer driver at another steam railway in Hampshire was convicted of indecently assaulting a six-year-old child.

South Devon Railway, which runs steam trains between Buckfastleigh and Totnes said the new policy was common sense.

But spokesman John Haslem admitted it was "a sad reflection on society".

The policy was prompted by a case in which convicted paedophile George Sully, 73, from Hampshire, indecently assaulted a girl on the Hampshire Watercress Line.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/devon/7101226.stm

[Atman]

1. Here is the puzzle:

Is this the fault of the assholes who have been conditioned/taught to file charges, or the fault of the lawyers who keep taking the cases?

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[Romulox]

3. Here' a hint: LEGISLATORS, not lawyers, make laws...nt

[Atman]

4. Okay, so you're a lawyer.

Using the letter of a law in contradiction to its spirit isn't the legislature's fault, necessarily. Yes, they're predominantly lawyers, and they should know how to craft cleverly worded paragraphs. But there are way more of you lawyer-types who spend their hours looking for missing punctuation and poorly worded sentences from which you can build cases.

So...who is to blame? Why do lawyers keep taking these cases? BECAUSE THEY MAKE MONEY. Not because of LAW, rather, because of house payments and private school tuitions. And, the simple glut of lawyers. Supply and demand. They all can't be blessed with honest cases, there aren't enough to go around. So they drum up business through bullshit like this.

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[Romulox]

5. I'm not a lawyer, but I know that JUDGES and JURIES decide cases, not lawyers...

Lawyers are frequently the scapegoats for all that's wrong with "the system", when precisely this finger-pointing and lack of accepting responsibility for own behavior is the principle problem to begin with...

[Atman]

7. Judges and juries must rule on what is presented to them.

My argument is about what is presented to them in the first place -- total bullshit by ambulance-chasing hacks whose only interest is in meeting the rent, not meting out actual justice. It's created a society of people afraid of human contact, afraid of normal human interaction, afraid of everything, and willing to sue for their "right" not to be afraid. It's all fucking bullshit. It's not the judges' and jurist's fault for being forced to rule on the crap presented to them. It's the fault of the lawyers who keep presenting it.

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[TheWraith]

2. The sad part is they're not nearly as common as society pretends they are.

The number of actual pedophiles circulating in society is magnified out of all proportion by the lens that society and the media use on them. It turns a group of sick people into a pervasive threat, and as a result turns people paranoid.

[Odin2005]

6. Teachers can't even comfort young kids any more either, because of such paranoia and...

our lawsuit-happy society.