According to Court News UK, a group of Deaf people have been accused in court of helping to allegedly defraud the government out of nearly £1 million in Access to Work funds.
The court case, at Southwark Crown Court, is ongoing.
The article, dated 14th April, reads:
CROYDON, SURBITON, SURREY; KENNINGTON; PENARTH, SOUTH WALES Four deaf people and a sign language interpreter helped defraud the government out of nearly £1million in an ‘Access to Work’ scam, a court heard. [They] allegedly used their disabilities to defraud the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) out of huge sums. [They] allegedly used a registered charity as a front for their frauds, Southwark Crown Court heard.
Please note: this article has been amended from the original post.
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John David Walker
April 18, 2016
Deaf Editor. As it is published in your blog, do you think the term ‘Deaf Gang’ is appropriate? If you are allowing this article to be published on your site, are you by default endorsing this language? It would be good to receive greater clarity that diminuitive terms only serve to belittle a community’s identity. John
Editor
April 18, 2016
Hi John, in posting this article I am sharing the information that’s been published elsewhere and has been widely shared in its original form by members of the Deaf community on social media and by email over the last few days.
I feel it’s important to share it as it was published, rather than censoring it or adjusting it to make it look more acceptable for our readers. However, it’s not intended as an endorsement of how that article was written, and as such, those accused are described differently in the words I’ve written on the article.
Thanks Charlie
Natalya D
April 19, 2016
I worry about high profile reporting of Deaf AtW fraud cases cos it only serves to make it harder for the rest of us to get legitimate AtW funding for communication support etc by creating this idea of “disabled as fraudster”. I wish reporting would be clear that while these cases are clearly bad they make up under 1% of AtW applicants.
I am glad to see people challenging the original source for their patronising and dehumanising language. I hope they change it.
sue maclaine
April 19, 2016
Hi Charlie,
I think very few native sign language users would know the English term ‘allegedly’ and what it means and how important that word is. You have by reprinting the article behaved as a tabloid, going for the quick win of gasp and shock. The original article names all those accused; the impact and ramification of that action within the original publication ‘The Court reporter’ is very different to it being re-printed here. Limping Chicken is known for being a ‘deaf blog’ therefore the power of its presence here is far more than on other social media forums. You have brought the names of those community members (who may well be innocent) directly to the community without any commentary. I would also suggest that Limping Chicken could have reprinted the article in its original form and also provide a translation into BSL. This would have been responsible journalism. I am sure you will argue that ‘you are just the messenger’ but I think the issues are here are more complex and are as much about identification with a community and a language and attempting to serve that as they are about ‘just sharing’ something.
Best wishes
Sue
Editor
April 19, 2016
Hi Sue,
You’ve made a few different points here so I’ll respond to them one by one and also give a sense of how we share articles relating to court cases.
First, there’s a clear divide in how our readers feel about this story.
The Court News article was posted on Thursday 14th April, and was widely shared throughout the Deaf community via email and social media over the weekend.
Many readers clearly felt this was important news, because I received a number of emails and messages from Deaf people forwarding the article to me, asking me (in strong terms) why it hadn’t yet been shared on Limping Chicken. They felt it was very important that it was shared.
However, since this article was shared on the site yesterday, I’ve also received a number of messages from people asking me (in equally strong terms) to explain why it was shared, and discussing other issues around it.
My view as Editor is that there is a strong public interest in cases like this within the Deaf community, and that it’s important to share this information so that people know what is going on.
Further, I have consistently shared stories on cases like this one over the last few years. However, as Limping Chicken is a small site, I am unable to visit courtrooms and as such, know what reporting restrictions are in place in some cases (which has led to situations where we can’t report stories that are widely being discussed by Deaf people on social media). So, as a rule, stories are only posted here on Limping Chicken when they have appeared on an external site, and then they are shared.
In terms of commentary around the original articles, there’s a limitation there too because these are ongoing court cases, so any commentary would have to be very carefully judged so as not to potentially fall into any legal difficulties, and that would apply to both an English version and a potential BSL version too. So a second rule is that there is a minimum of commentary, and I largely stick to sharing the original text of an article with a minimum of extra words.
In terms of the English on the article, although I accept that there are difficulties for BSL users in knowing the word ‘allegedly,’ I also added the word ‘accused’ to the title, and in the brief introduction to the article, I added the sentence: ‘The court case, at Southwark Crown Court, is ongoing.’ However, I appreciate that point, and I will consider your feedback on this issue in the future.
Lastly, I would strongly defend the site/myself from the accusation of “behaving as a tabloid.” This is public information, and it’s a story that has also been widely shared within the community prior to us sharing it. I have shared it in exactly the same way as I have shared many other cases over the last four years.
The remit of this site is sharing blogs and news stories on the things that Deaf people are thinking about and discussing, and my view is that is clearly the case with this story.
With thanks,
Charlie (Editor)
Tim
April 19, 2016
I am very concerned about this particular headline and the way it talks as if the accused have already been convicted.
It’s in the public interest to report on court cases, but that does not trump the principle of innocent until proven guilty.
Editor
April 19, 2016
Hi Tim, do you mean the headline on LC or on the article we shared?
Thanks
Charlie
Tim
April 19, 2016
The headline on the article, Charlie, the LC headline is fine and is how these things should be reported.
I don’t like the look of that ‘court news’ site, I am far from convinced that they do things properly.
Editor
April 19, 2016
No probs, thanks for clarifying.
Best
Charlie
sue maclaine
April 19, 2016
Thanks for your reply Charlie. You say the ‘remit of the site is sharing blogs and news stories on the things that Deaf people are thinking about….etc’. I would ask you to contemplate the ethic of ‘do no harm’ when following this remit.
Sue
Editor
April 19, 2016
Thank you for your views and feedback Sue, I’ll take them into account.
Best
Charlie
pennybsl
April 20, 2016
Naturally we who use ATW are very, very wary of the Governments attitude towards us as Deaf, Deafblind, etc., professionals.
Even non-ATW deaf workers have showed reluctance to apply for ATW funding, because they regard it as “huge stressful experience” “don’t want the hassle” “what is the point”…..
We are very concerned about bureaucratic “trigger-happy” handling of the vast, vast innocent majority of ATW funding, claims and communications.
That is one key reason behind the reactions of LC readers.
Aine
April 21, 2016
Those names was mentioned in an article The “Recruiter” a while ago, obviously ongoing investigations and court adjournments.
Nothing wrong with names being divulged as its public funds, it’s in public interests to know- seems to me its hit a nerve with a few people above, thing is the government are going to continue doing their checks and Audits and that’s a good thing.
John Walker (@chereme)
April 22, 2016
I believe people are innocent until proven guilty. If they are sentenced, then it is an entirely different matter and I would agree with what you say, but not until then.
John
April 22, 2016
Yes, I agree with John’s latest comment & Sue’s views. From what I can see LC has reported on ATW fraud cases after a verdict has been reached & sentencing passed. But in this instance, you have reported on this case before a verdict has been reached and have set a dangerous precedent as readers may assume that there is ‘no smoke without fire’ and that these people are guilty.
There have been several prominent cases involving deaf people in the last couple of years where sentencing has been passed but there has been no mention of these on LC.
So it is rather weak to say that it’s important to share this information so that people know what is going on. It could be argued that there is selective sharing of information but that is part and parcel of being an editor.
Editor
April 22, 2016
Hi John,
Sorry, but you are not correct. We have reported on a number of recent court cases involving Deaf people while they were ongoing, as well as when sentencing was passed.
As I said in earlier comments, in some of the cases, reporting restrictions were placed which meant we could not report on cases or sentencing, even though the whole Deaf community knew about and were discussing them.
It’s certainly not selective sharing of information –
With thanks
Charlie (Editor)
John
April 22, 2016
What about the recent cases related to attempted murder and child pornography?
Editor
April 22, 2016
I’m not sure exactly which cases you’re referring to (and incidentally we don’t report on absolutely everything, we only post several articles a day).
But certainly in one high profile case, which generated a lot of discussion on Facebook, there was a reporting restriction, which is why there was no reporting at the time, by anyone, including this site, but also many others.
As I said in earlier comments, we don’t report on court cases unless it’s reported elsewhere, because of the risk of contempt of court.
Hartmut
April 26, 2016
The use of ‘deaf’ in front of a noun that does not represent to a person is OK. We do use the terms ‘deaf school’, ‘deaf church’, ‘deaf business’, etc. 100 to 60 years ago, we used to use the terms ‘silent’ as in ‘silent world’, ‘silent press’, ‘silent sports’, etc. which have become passe.