LETTERS Child abuse
Sir: Even allowing for the fact that Myles Harris's article on child sexual abuse (The Cleveland conundrum', 9 July) clearly went to press a few hours before the Butler-Sloss report was published, I found it one of the most disappointing and unpleasant pieces to have appeared in The Spectator for a long time.
In one important respect, Myles Harris's attitude to his child patient seems to be unwittingly the same as those who use children as sexual toys — a child is not a human being with feelings, a sense of physical integrity or thoughts, but a mere object, the property of adults.
Take the question of physical discom- fort. If, like his eight-year-old child pa- tient, Harris had 'red and inflamed' genit- als, would he be happy to be prescribed `confident noises', an 'innocuous cream' and be left to suffer while his doctor indulged in 'masterly inactivity'?
As for this writer's support of Stuart Bell MP, it should be remembered that one of the Cleveland fathers Mr Bell so,unthink- ingly championed turned out to have pre- vious convictions for child sexual offences unknown even to his wife. His daughter clearly described to doctors the father's sexual assaults on her.
Myles Harris states in one part of his article that American experience says that only one child in 2,000 falsely accuses an adult of sexual abuse. Yet, he continues, 'I find it worrying that such inquiries, which can lead to the destruction of an entire family, have to rely almost entirely on the evidence of a child'. Why? Sensitive and skilled listening to children is the only way forward in this agonising conflict of in- terests.
Alexandra Artley 1 St Chad's Street, London WC1
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