UK Child Protection

"I actually felt like I’d faced evil for the first time…” Amanda Stanhope, who has waived her legal right to anonymity, speaks to @vicderbyshire about how she was inspired by Gisèle Pelicot to speak out after being raped by her ex-partner multiple times while she was sedated. #Newsnight

Most of you will never have had: Measles Mumps Rubella Tetanus Diphtheria Polio And none of you will ever have had Smallpox Why? Because vaccines work

Yet another one. Planned and executed after a separation. #8Stages metro.co.uk/2026/04/03/mum…

In the autumn of 1942, a slight, 32-year-old Polish social worker named Irena Sendler passed through the gates of the Warsaw Ghetto with a carpenter’s toolbox in her arms. Beneath the hammers and nails lay a drugged six-month-old infant, breathing softly, utterly silent. One cry would have meant instant death for both of them. Irena smiled at the guards; they waved her through. They never suspected that this quiet woman would repeat the journey 2,499 more times. The ghetto was a slow-motion extermination. Starvation, disease, and random murder stalked every street. Jewish parents faced a choice no human being should ever have to make: keep their child and watch them waste away, or hand them to a stranger who promised a chance—however thin—at life. Irena came officially to inspect for typhus. In reality, she came to steal children from death. Babies left in toolboxes or ambulances under false bottoms. Toddlers sedated and tucked into potato sacks. Older children led by the hand through the stinking, lightless sewers while German boots marched overhead. “Not a sound,” she whispered as rats scurried past their feet. She knew that the rescued children would be given new names, new religions, new families. Their pasts would vanish unless someone remembered. So, on fragile scraps of tissue paper, Irena wrote each child’s real name, their parents’ names, and their new hiding place. She rolled the papers tight, slipped them into glass jars, and buried them beneath an apple tree in a neighbor’s garden. If she were caught and killed, the truth might still survive. She was caught. On October 20, 1943, the Gestapo kicked in her door. They took her to Pawiak Prison and demanded the list. When she refused, they smashed both her legs with iron bars. Then her feet. Then her arms. For weeks the beatings continued. She never spoke. They scheduled her execution. On the appointed morning, guards dragged the broken woman from her cell. Instead of a firing squad, she found herself outside the prison walls—alive. The Polish underground council Żegota had bribed a guard to mark her file “shot while trying to escape.” Officially dead, Irena Sendler limped back into the shadows to keep working.When the war finally ended, the first thing she did was dig up the jars under the apple tree. She spent years trying to return the children—now scattered across convents, farms, and foster homes—to whatever family might remain. Almost no parents had survived. But the children had. Because of her, 2,500 Jewish boys and girls lived to grow up, to marry, to have children and grandchildren of their own—an entire secret branch of the human family tree that the Nazis never managed to cut down.For decades her story stayed buried deeper than the jars themselves. Then, in 1999, four high-school girls in rural Kansas stumbled across a brief mention of her name. They found the old woman still living quietly in Warsaw and brought her courage back into the light. Journalists called her the greatest rescuer of the Holocaust. Irena only shook her head.“I could have saved more,” she said. “That regret follows me to the grave.”Irena Sendler—armed with nothing but a ghetto work permit, a toolbox, and a refusal to look away—proved that even in the heart of the worst evil humanity has ever devised, one determined person can still keep the darkness from winning completely.

Japanese football fans have been praised online after staying behind to clean up Wembley Stadium following their team’s 1–0 victory over England. After the historic win, Japanese supporters remained in the stands to tidy the stadium before leaving.

Trump has authorized the removal of permits that were put in place to protect endangered species and now workers are allowed to kill these animals so they can drill the oceans for oil. There are only 50 of these whales left in the wild and they may all die because of this. They are trying to find loop holes in the endangered species act to do this and it will result in the deaths of innocent animals and may even lead to an entire species’ extinction. Please contact your representatives and demand action be taken to stop this. These animals do not have a voice to advocate for themselves. We must be their voice and protect our planet. Please share this!!!!!!

16-year-old in Kentucky gave birth after r*pe. R*pists parents filed for custody. Granted. "Better stability." She visits supervised twice monthly. They call her "the birth mother" in front of her. But go ahead, keep saying family courts prioritize children.

I’m asking ⁦@attorneygeneral⁩ Lord Richard Hermer to refer this sentence to the Court of Appeal as an Unduly Lenient Sentence. bbc.co.uk/news/articles/…

Ladies, be as picky as you want because marrying late never killed a woman but marrying the wrong man did

BREAKING We are fighting for his extradition & he is running out of road. Dozens of charges await him in Scotland. Meanwhile today-this from a school he taught at in the 80s in South Africa. I can now write the words. ‘Iain Wares is a convicted pedophile.’ bbc.co.uk/news/articles/…

Sarah Everard’s mother pays tribute to ‘loving’ daughter on fifth anniversary of her murder | Sarah Everard | The Guardian share.google/boocxVK4zHm8Iz…

Sarah Everard’s mother pays tribute to ‘loving’ daughter on fifth anniversary of her murder | Sarah Everard | The Guardian share.google/m4KminZ9UYQfv6…

Two photos and 43 years of difference ... Beautiful bonding between Mother-Son.❤️

Reyhaneh Jabbari from South Azerbaijan (Iran) was executed in 2014 after being convicted of murdering a man in self-defense who attempted to r*pe her. She was tortured and kept in solitary confinement for two months after her arrest. The last words of Reyhaneh, sentenced to death, addressed to the Iranian court: Judge: — Why did you kill him? Reyhaneh: — To protect my honor. I defended my dignity. Judge: — This is not a valid reason. May Reyhaneh be remembered. And let freedom ring in Iran.

Pharmacies really need to improve the way they require people to give personal information at the counter. Date of birth, address, and sometimes health info. This really concerns me as it can be heard by people in the queue. For stalking and DA victims this is a safety issue.

In 1943, Paris - a woman sits in a Gestapo interrogation room, her feet bleeding, her body broken. The officers across from her know she's holding secrets. Names of British agents. Locations of resistance safe houses. Intelligence that could dismantle entire networks across France. They've already started the torture. Her toenails are being removed, one at a time. Soon they'll use heated irons on her back. They'll lock her in darkness for weeks. They'll promise her life in exchange for just one name. She's a 30-year-old mother of three. Not a soldier. Not a spy by training. Just a French-born housewife who was living quietly in England until Hitler's armies swallowed her homeland. That's when Odette Sansom made a choice that most of us will never have to make. She left her three daughters behind and volunteered for Britain's Special Operations Executive, the shadow organization built to sabotage Nazi operations from within. The SOE didn't want career military. They wanted people who could disappear into occupied territory. People who spoke native French. People willing to accept that capture likely meant torture and execution. Odette knew the odds. She volunteered anyway. By 1942, she was operating in occupied France under the codename "Lise," coordinating resistance cells, organizing sabotage, funneling intelligence back to London. She worked alongside Captain Peter Churchill, building networks that struck at German supply lines and communications. For months, they were ghosts. Then a collaborator sold them out. Now she's in this room. In this chair. Facing men who have perfected the art of breaking human beings. And here's what they don't understand: Odette Sansom has already decided she won't break. Not for pain. Not for promises. Not even to save her own life. Because she knows that every name she gives means another agent tortured. Another resistance fighter executed. Another family destroyed. So she gives them nothing. Through months of interrogation. Through agony most of us can't fathom. Through solitary confinement and death threats. Nothing. The Gestapo eventually realizes they can't break her. They send her to Ravensbrück concentration camp, condemned under "Night and Fog" protocol, prisoners meant to vanish without trace. She survives more than a year there by convincing the commandant she's related to Winston Churchill. It's a complete lie, but it keeps her alive. When Allied forces arrive in 1945, that same commandant tries using her as a bargaining chip. The moment they reach American lines, Odette identifies him as a war criminal. He's arrested on the spot. Britain awarded her the George Cross, the highest civilian honor for courage. The citation was clear: for refusing to betray her comrades despite torture that would break nearly anyone. Then in 1951, someone stole the medal from her home. Months later, it arrived in the mail with an anonymous note. The thief had researched what it represented and couldn't live with keeping it. Even criminals recognized what that medal meant. Odette Sansom Hallowes lived to 82, spending decades honoring fallen comrades and embodying quiet strength. She always insisted she'd simply done what anyone should do. But that's not true. What she did was extraordinary. She proved that the most powerful resistance to tyranny isn't violence. It's the absolute refusal to break, no matter the cost. 📷© Imperial War Museums (Restored & Colorized) © Daughters of Time #drthehistories

My proposal is First Sec of state which is office currently vacant. We have a deputy pm. No suggestion we should have a de facto deputy as well!!

The “rough sex defence” is the most appalling defence to homicide. See how easily it is reached for in this disgusting case- “these things happen, blame her, you’ll get off.” As ever, she is treated as completely disposable, her death an irritation to be flicked away.

My roomate was attacked by her boyfriend in a jealous rage. He tried to choke her and instead of screaming or resisting she stayed calm and started to caress his face and then kiss him. This calmed him down and they spent the night together. The next morning she was on the train back to her hometown. Men cannot even start to comprehend what women are sometimes forced to do to merely survive.