Nursery World - To the point... (24)

Our weekly columnist Beatrix Campbell says that lazy respect for religion and culture can blind us to children's suffering. There is something about faith that makes people lose their minds. In the name of some god or other, children have been ill-treated, terrified, traumatised across the world. Sometimes terror has been spread in the name of the religion; sometimes, in the absence of official sanction, children's terror has been shielded by the churches' awesome power to keep their secrets and control their congregations.

There is something about faith that makes people lose their minds. In the name of some god or other, children have been ill-treated, terrified, traumatised across the world. Sometimes terror has been spread in the name of the religion; sometimes, in the absence of official sanction, children's terror has been shielded by the churches' awesome power to keep their secrets and control their congregations.

At least those circumstances did not give rise to the double whammy of abuse within and racial muddle without.

That is the barricade for those trying to confront child abuse in African religious sects. Their problem is the way that British institutions tolerate abuse by hiding behind the screen of 'culture'. It's their culture, they say, as if only black people have something called 'culture', much as it is only black people who have a 'race' and a 'colour'.

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