Monday 29 April 2013

Concealing the abuse of children by home educating them


There is an endearing naivety about many home educators when it comes to assessing the drawbacks and disadvantages of their chosen lifestyle. Well, I hope it is naivety, because otherwise I would have to conclude that an awful lot of home educating parents are willfully obtuse, which would not be a pleasant thought. Take the assertion frequently made by those who send their children to school; that this provides an element of protection for children which is missing in those kept at home full time. The usual response to this by home educators is to claim that home educated children are not kept at home and are in fact seen by many different people. They then typically list all the places their own children go; ballet, yoga, aromatherapy classes and so on. It is as though these predominantly middle class parents are incapable of understanding that there are any number of wicked and mad people out there for whom home education  would provide the perfect setting for domestic abuse.

Before I go any further, I should make it clear that I am not saying that no schoolchildren are abused at home. Indeed they are and in some cases the abuse carries on undetected for years. What I am saying is that if I wanted to mistreat a child and subject her to cruel or mad treatment; then home education would be an ideal way of keeping this from becoming generally known. This does not mean that home educated children are more likely to be abused; merely that it would be easier for their carers to abuse them than if they were to be attending school.

I posted a link yesterday to a story in the Guardian and somebody commenting later gave us a link to the original court case. Here it is:

http://www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/markup.cgi?doc=/ew/cases/EWHC/Fam/2012/4241.html

For those who do not wish to plough through the whole thing, the story is simple. A mother, who was by the sound of it very weird, adopted three children from various foreign countries. She then wanted a forth adopted child and was denied permission because of concerns about the way she treated those she already had. She then hit upon the ingenious scheme of getting her fourteen year-old adopted daughter pregnant by artificial insemination. The child, who was a virgin, was compelled to rinse out her vagina with vinegar and lemon juice before each procedure; a painful process. This was because the mother wanted only a girl and believed that the acidic environment would favour this. She then made the girl inject syringes of donated semen into herself.

The point about this whole business that interests me is that the mother educated her children at home. Needless to say, she refused visits and rejected any monitoring.  She insisted that all contact with the local authority should be by email. At several times, social services were notified of concerns, but did not speak to the children. This was because the mother was articulate and forceful and managed to deflect any attention. The lifestyle was bizarre; for example the curtains were always kept drawn, even during the day. The family had no dealings with the neighbours, one of whom eventually contacted social services with concerns. The problem was that the mother was very well informed of her ‘rights’ and not only refused to allow visits from the council, she also managed to get rid of social services. This can be done if, as in this case, the allegations amounted only to the suggestion that she shouted and swore a lot. The children were not seen or spoken to and this too is a ‘right’ of the parents, unless there is clear evidence of cruelty or neglect.  In short, the woman behaved like many a home educating parent who was fully aware of her ’rights’!

Would matters have been any different if the children had been at school? Probably they would have been. The girl who was subjected to this degrading treatment had no friends of her own age, nor did she mix with anybody other than the people chosen by her adoptive mother. The mother was thus able to control who her children saw and to keep a watch on what was said. I have an idea that if the child had been at school, then she might well have mentioned, either to classmates or an adult,  such circumstances as having her vagina flushed out with vinegar. It is far less likely that this sort of thing would have remained secret. It is probably the case too that had the local authority been popping in from time to time to chat to the mother and children,  that things might have taken a different turn. Here was a family which had managed to isolate the children almost completely from ordinary society. They did not live in a remote rural area, but in a nice suburban street, with a teacher living on one side and a GP on the other.

I have not the least doubt that I shall now be accused of suggesting that all families are regularly checked for signs of child abuse. I dare say that others will ask why we are not checking children during the holidays or before they reach the age of five and start school. The fact is that quite literally everybody to whom I have ever spoken, apart from home educators, can see the nature of the problem here. It may be stated very simply. When children are kept at home and not sent to school, it is much easier to conceal any abusive behaviour to which they are being subjected.  

36 comments:

  1. If you believe that a local authority representative popping in from time to time would have changed this awful case, then we need to implement that system immediately in childrens homes.

    And why stop there? Maybe those girls being groomed by sexual predators in Rochdale could also have been saved by a nice man or lady from the council coming round once a year?

    Or those abused within the Catholic Church? And let's not forget the Scouting movement. Or sports coaches. Or music colleges. Or abuse in special schools where the kids can't fight back. Hey, let's go one step further and say everyone is a potential nutcase and the state should be rearing children? Only, of course, that leads us back round to childrens homes, so maybe that isn't such a good idea.

    This isn't something that's happening because of HE, it is something that happens because a tiny minority of people are evil and work out ways to do things that most people can't even imagine.

    One of the most awful things about child abuse is the grooming that goes on until the child is conditioned not to tell. A compulsory annual inspection (or even 3monthly of the sort my LA would like) is not going to break through that.

    Inspecting every home educating family 'just in case' isn't going to solve this, and I can see how it could easily lead to 'we must interview the child away from its parents just in case something is happening.' no doubt, shortly followed by 'well, if it saves one child it'll be worth it.' And while they are doing what will inevitably become a box ticking exercise because it is only a tiny minority, the children who really do need help will carry on slipping through the net.

    I don't know what the solution is. I do know that witch hunts isn't it and as one of the overwhelming majority of home educators who would never, ever dream of doing anything like this, I don't like anyone fuelling the 'well, they must be doing something odd or why won't they invite officialdom to examine every detail of their lives' brigade.

    I've had that because of my children's autism, and I already live with the knowledge that each public meltdown could result in a child abuse allegation. I wouldn't wish it on anyone else.


    Anne


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    1. While I don't disagree with you, the problem is home-educators pretending abuse of home-educated children categorically does not happen, rather than condemning those that do it. Perception is absolute in political matters, and we're already a soft target.

      Tangentially, I wonder how long before LAs are privatised through the back door, and monitoring becomes a financial interest for some third-party?

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    2. I don't believe that home educators pretend that abuse of home educated children does not happen. Do you have any evidence to support this claim?

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    3. Some home educators may believe that. Some people also believe that the world is flat, or going to end on a regular basis or that the Queen is actually a lizard. I am not responsible for what other people believe.

      I am not denying that it happens, exactly as it does in any other group of people, but I'd like to see statistics breaking down child abuse cases by ethnic, socio-economic and educational backgrounds before I said that one group of children was more at risk than another. I think it was Simon who pointed out that under 2's from single parent families are most at risk, so it makes sense to concentrate resources on identifying those families.

      Anne

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  2. ' I can see how it could easily lead to 'we must interview the child away from its parents just in case something is happening.'

    You see now Anne, I cannot for the life of me see anything wrong with that. My daughter used to talk to librarians, people in shops, the local authority officers and everybody else without my being present. Why would I have objected to that. When the local authority officer used to pop round each year, I always engineered an opportunity for my daughter to be left alone with her. usually, I would go and make the tea or something and leave them alone for ten minutes or so. What actually is this objection that some home educating parents have to their children being spoken to when they are not themselves present? I honestly don't get it.

    The point I am making here is that when you have a teenage girl at school, there are usually kids traipsing in and out of your house and you know very well that the child is telling everybody what happens at home. The things we learnt about the home life of girls that my older daughter was at school with was utterly astonishing. I have no doubt that she in turn was sharing details of our private life with all and sundry. That is how it is; you don't have any secrets when there is a teenage girl in the house! Keeping a child that age away from school would tend to cut off this free flow of information and make it more likely that unpleasant things could take place that nobody got to hear of.

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  3. When the mother was in hospital for a month the girl considered disclosing to a family friend, Mr P a secondary school teacher, who along with his wife and some other family friends were helped out at home, taking the children to visit their mother, etc. However, despite knowing this man well and spending a month off and on in his company without the mother's presence, she was still unable to disclose. Do you really think she would have disclosed to a stranger from the council who visits for an hour or so once a year?

    It took the extremely stressful situation of a very difficult labour, heavy blood loss, followed by surgery to repair a serious tear to bring this abuse to light - health professionals were able to observe the child and her mother's interactions over many hours. The midwives were concerned that the baby's mother wished to keep the baby herself and had changed her mind about her mother bringing the baby up which was the original plan. But it was the mother's attempt to remove the baby from the ward that led to a child protection referral. It was a further 5 days before the girl eventually disclosed the abuse to Mr P.

    You say that social workers did not speak to the children. A social worker visited the family and saw the three children in 2006. It doesn't say whether or not she spoke to the children but clearly she had the opportunity. In 2008 the mother spoke to social services by phone after a referral by the GP. The mother offered to let social workers visit but they didn't take her up on the offer - another opportunity missed. However, a social worker did visit the children whilst the mother was in hospital and spoke to the children on the doorstep. Given the history of reports being made to social services, this seems to have been an ideal opportunity for the social worker to have a good chat with the children without the mother.

    The girl also visited a psychotherapist twice and ended the sessions herself. Again, an opportunity to disclose that was not taken. I think Simon underestimates how difficult it is for children to disclose abuse to anyone. Yes, access to other children may have helped since children are most likely to disclose abuse to their peers (or ironically their mother), but a home education inspection is very unlikely to help since, "few disclosures made in childhood are to authorities or professionals", even when children have consistent and regular contact with them, according to the NSPCC. Between 46% and 69% of victims never disclose abuse during childhood and fewer than 10% tell a professional (and this includes teachers they see daily for the majority).

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  4. Just to make it clear, I am saying that this was a desperately unhealthy and closed environment in which abuse and mad behaviour was able to flourish. It would be far less likely for this situation to be possible in a home where the children were at school and mixing in the general community. It is entirely possible that having regular visits from the local authority would have had the effect of breaking into this isolation a little and making the mother behave in a less mad fashion. True, the children might still not have spoken out about things, but the very fact that outsiders were coming into the home might have had a beneficial effect on the setup.

    Is it worth going to this trouble, considering that the great majority of home educating parents will not be abusing their children? I think so personally. For those of us who were just home educating for educational reasons, visits were an irrelevance; they were certainly no bother. However, they might serve to moderate the conduct of some of the stranger types who are keeping their children away from school.

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  5. I agree totally with Sharon, and wonder if Simon is judging all teenage girls by the standard of his own confident and forceful daughter.

    And as for not wanting my children to be interviewed without me, I will limit myself to saying that that is a comment on the standard of the majority of professionals that I have had to deal with and that I don't want them talking to me without a permanent and indisputable record of what was said either. I am very glad that he has been luckier than we have.

    Anne

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  6. 'I think it was Simon who pointed out that under 2's from single parent families are most at risk, so it makes sense to concentrate resources on identifying those families.'

    Yes, this is why we have Health Visitors. This group has high levels of detected abuse and neglect. The suggest is that in the case of home educated children, the abuse remains undetected.

    ' wonder if Simon is judging all teenage girls by the standard of his own confident and forceful daughter. '

    I am thinking of teenage girls in general! My older daughter was at school and talked all the time to her friends and about them. We learned an awful lot about the private lives of our neighbours in this way. The Good Lord alone knows what they heard about us via our daughter!

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    1. If health visitors are so effective, why are the under 2's still most at risk?

      And btw, they have no legal right of access to your home either, so maybe we should make that compulsory while we're at it?

      To quote from 1933 Instructions in Huddersfield - Health visitors are "not to cross the threshold unless an invitation is given to enter, not to sit down unless a seat is offered, to remember that every room of a cottage has as much right to privacy as any lady's drawing room".

      I think if those who describe themselves as inspecting or monitoring HE provision followed those guidelines then more people would be happy to have them in their homes.

      Anyway, out for the rest of the day, so I shall simply accept that your views are as immutable as ever

      Anne

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    2. Well said, Anne. I like that Huddersfield quote.

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  7. 'Anyway, out for the rest of the day, so I shall simply accept that your views are as immutable as ever'

    Ouch!

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  8. 'Well said, Anne. I like that Huddersfield quote.'

    Interesting yes, from an historical viewpoint. The relevance to modern day child abuse eludes me, but that might be due to those immutable views of mine!

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  9. "but the very fact that outsiders were coming into the home might have had a beneficial effect on the setup."

    Outsiders did go into the home. Mr P, for example.

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  10. Simon wrote,
    " For those of us who were just home educating for educational reasons, visits were an irrelevance; they were certainly no bother."

    We home educated for educational reasons. Visits were not irrelevant and were a bother. Which group of people home educating for educational reasons do you mean in particular?

    Simon wrote,
    "Yes, this is why we have Health Visitors. This group has high levels of detected abuse and neglect. The suggest is that in the case of home educated children, the abuse remains undetected."

    Home visits, or any contact with Health Visitors, is not compulsory, as you know very well since you avoided contact with them yourself. Health visitors have no more right of access today than they had in 1933.

    I'm not convinced that this type of survellance is effective either. Research has shown that for each family correctly identified as an abusive family by one screening tool, 35 innocent families were also labelled as high risk - and this was considered to be one of the best of such screening tools. There is no evidence to suggest that the family that did go on to be abusive would not have been picked up in less formal ways either.

    False labels are likely to affect how these innocent families are treated by professionals. Dr Walter Barker, director of the Child Development Programme at Bristol University, said on this issue, "The very fact of suspicion that someone may abuse their child creates subconscious barriers and hostile feelings for most people who work with such families". It seems possible that such surveillance might cause more harm than good.

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  11. I've never understood why - in the minds of Simon, Badman, et al - home educators can't avoid intrusive inspection and monitoring unless "proven" to be 100% cast-iron squeaky clean, yet abuse everywhere else is tacitly accepted.

    Last time I looked at the ONS figures, nearly 8000 under-16 conceptions are known to occur each year, and you can be sure that's a good proxy for an even larger number of abuse cases that may be internal or external to home. Hardly a week goes by without some story breaking about abuse by people in positions of power over children - usually in schools or nurseries - and then we see the frequent cases of abuse by parents of children who do go to school - or would if they survived.

    This is awful enough, but then we have cases like the north Wales "care" homes scandal where, not only were children abused dreadfully, but the local authority, on receiving a damaging report on the cases, decided to pulp the report in order to hide the truth and so avoid having to pay compensation.

    The collective hypocrisy of Simon, Badman, the LAs and others highlights a degree of moral turpitude that is ultimately as damaging to society as the abusers.

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  12. Just say no to home visits to your LA that usually does the trick.

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    1. It certainly did the trick for that girl in the article, didn't it?

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    2. "It certainly did the trick for that girl in the article, didn't it?"

      So do you think an ex-teacher visiting to check on education provision for an hour or so once a year would have recognise abuse that was missed by social workers, the psychotherapist the girl had appointments with or the secondary school teacher who visited the home regularly both before the mother was in hospital and during the month the mother was away from home? It seems unlikely to me.

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    3. It's possible that another person who was uneasy about the situation at the house could have provided the tipping point for involvement of social services to be actually productive.

      This is how it works sometimes.

      Telling people to just say no to visits does not contribute to the development of a solution to this kind of situation, does it?

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    4. "Telling people to just say no to visits does not contribute to the development of a solution to this kind of situation, does it?"

      Having visits may work against the detection of abuse. It seems highly unlikely that an annual visit by a stranger will reveal abuse, especially as abusers tend to be skilled manipulators, but the visits may give people with concerns a false sense of security. They may think, well I was worried about them but they passed an inspection by a professional so they are probably fine. The dangers of such false negatives and the effect they can have is a recognized issue within social work.

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  13. 'The collective hypocrisy of Simon, Badman, the LAs and others highlights a degree of moral turpitude that is ultimately as damaging to society as the abusers.'

    Wait, does this mean that I have blood on my hands? Again. I suppose it must do if my hypocrisy is comparable to the abuse of children. How cool is that; I have blood on my hands and am damaging society as much as child abusers!

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  14. '"The very fact of suspicion that someone may abuse their child creates subconscious barriers and hostile feelings for most people who work with such families". It seems possible that such surveillance might cause more harm than good. '

    This is such a no-brainer I'm amazed it has to be pointed out anywhere, even here! And yet it does. Do the would-be authoritarians of this world never consider the possibility of unintended consequences for the people they're trying to help/ monitor/ modify the behaviour of? And for their families?

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  15. Simon wrote:
    "Wait, does this mean that I have blood on my hands?"

    This looks like a plea of not guilty citing reductio ad absurdum. Who mentioned blood?

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  16. ' "The very fact of suspicion that someone may abuse their child creates subconscious barriers and hostile feelings for most people who work with such families"'

    Quite meaningless unless we know what families he is talking about. Families with children? Home educating families? Families suspected of abuse? Families with problems?

    'Home visits, or any contact with Health Visitors, is not compulsory, as you know very'

    Of course not; but the fact remains that almost every baby and small child is seen by them.

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    1. The families he is talking about are those who were screened as high risk by health visitors but who did not go on to abuse their children. So that was the 35 innocent families out of 36 who were seen by Health Visitors as part of their normal duties and marked as high risk of abusing their children. So that would be families with children.

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    2. ' So that was the 35 innocent families out of 36 who were seen by Health Visitors as part of their normal duties and marked as high risk of abusing their children. So that would be families with children.'

      The difficulty that I am having here is that none of this accords with my own experience in this field, which is pretty extensive. We are told that;

      'The very fact of suspicion that someone may abuse their child creates subconscious barriers and hostile feelings for most people who work with such families'.

      Most people? I have very rarely seen hostile feelings under these circumstances. Even where there is the suspicion that a family might harm a child, the more common emotion is one of, 'There but for the grace of God go I'. I have worked with some pretty grim clients, ones, for example, where social services were actually waiting outside the delivery team to take a baby as soon as it was born. I honestly do not recall seeing any hostility or feeling that there were any subconscious barriers between me and the families. All parents are capable of doing bad things with and to their children.

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    3. He carried out the research in question. Maybe he saw an alternative side of the social workers involved?

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  17. 'Simon wrote:
    "Wait, does this mean that I have blood on my hands?"

    This looks like a plea of not guilty citing reductio ad absurdum. Who mentioned blood? '

    Sorry, I thought you would catch the allusion! It was suggested that I would have blood on my hands because of my support of a piece of legislation. See:

    http://daretoknowblog.blogspot.co.uk/2010/03/to-all-supporters-of-schedule-1.html

    I thought it was amusing that I would now not only have blood on my hands, but also be more of a problem for society than child abusers.

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  18. "Most people? I have very rarely seen hostile feelings under these circumstances."

    ............. That does not mean that they don't happen!

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  19. '"Most people? I have very rarely seen hostile feelings under these circumstances."

    ............. That does not mean that they don't happen!'

    I'm sure it does happen. I am just dubious about the idea that it is 'most people'. Social workers are usually parents themselves and do not want to deprive people of their children needlessly. Most abusers are not monsters; the mother in the case I quoted today is not a monster, just a very sad and mixed up woman. We are all able to do bad and wrong things.

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    1. Was this when you worked for a charity as an advocate for the parents of children with special educational needs?

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    2. 'Was this when you worked for a charity as an advocate for the parents of children with special educational needs?'

      I was also helping to run a support group for parents who were finding it hard to cope with their babies. There was a social worker, CPN and me, as well as creche workers. We also had a psychologist working with us.

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  20. That's true, but extremely unusual in this case. All parents should not be monitored as a result of this very bad case, all adopters should not - and certainly all home educators should not. You can't discriminate against and restrict the freedoms of whole groups of people just because of the actions of one person.

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    1. I agree; the obsession with home educators as a target for monitoring would seem bizarre, given that there are richer pickings in the wider community for anyone genuinely concerned about child welfare.

      However, none of this is about child welfare; it's simply about protection of the authorities' backsides, and LAs/social workers dealing with easy, tractable problems in a way that looks as though they're achieving success by hitting some targets.

      There isn't a hope in hell that they can deal with the wider problem of child abuse, but the HE subset is an easy target for them to latch onto. The rest of the kids can go to hell in a hand cart, but if the LAs can claim control of >90% of HE kids, they'll have big bragging rights - and that translates into power, glory and money.

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  21. How dare you assume home educators are abusers, my parents certainly were not! They had to leave a nice area due to my father having a serious accident. I grew up in a deprived area the poor level of education given at the schools meant that I was home educated and so is my child because it was the best thing for me and has turned out to be the best thing for my child so far. To give her a fair start she attended school and hated it because she is naturally quiet and likes to learn which she couldnt do in a classroom full of screaming and bad mannered children. We are not all born to work in Tesco or McDonalds. Some of us do prefer to choose our company and not mix with low class people that plague this country due to poor education! I went on to study and now teach privately and earn a comfortable living from home and teaching online as well as organising private classes. My child attends regular activities and we meet up with other home educators and their children and my daughter has never being abused! Socialisation is not a problem for home educators if they choose to look for activities and maybe there might be home educators who abuse children but fortunately I haven't met any and I have met a lot of home educated children in my time including the ones I grew up with! If there are people who don't send their children to school and abuse them then they aren't home educators, they are simply child abusers. As for dedicated home education; learning is like a big educational holiday with structured lessons. Many children learn much better being home educated than in a chaotic British school enivironment. Usually the ones who do well in school fit in well with working class jobs because they like to follow orders and not lead. You will find that school drops outs would have just been better off being home educated. Ones who are home educated tend to become self employed, lecturers at university etc. There is no way on earth that a child who is home educated is more likely to be abused than one who goes to school. If anything it is school who has issues with peadophile teachers, bullying and the rest. It seems people are quick to judge home educators because they simply ignore the positive aspects of home education deliberately and are jealous that there are some parents who are able to teach their children themselves and what is more hard to bear is that the majority (not MINORITY) of these home educated children end up as well rounded adults with places in university because they are not tarnished by the brush of a state school education. Parents choose to home educate because they look down on state schooling, not because they abuse.

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