This looks like a standard park where you might go and kick a ball about,
or race your grandmother.
But wait - a child has snuck in
and is forcing this poor woman to push it on the swings.
Every time the woman wants to leave,
the child screams at her to carry on.
This child is enjoying an ice cream in the street,
but as it drops its ice cream, it then forces this poor woman
to give it hers.
No ice cream for you today, Mummy.
So tonight we're asking the question:
Are these children, or monsters?
I'm here in a street like yours.
It looks safe,
but that building over there houses children up to 5 days a week.
They call it a 'school'
and there's one in virtually every town in the UK.
Can you sleep well at night knowing this?
I doubt it.
If that's not disturbing enough,
have a listen to this person.
They could be you.
This woman is so upset, we've disguised her voice so she sounds funny.
I got married to my husband, and about 9 months later,
we found that there was a child living with us.
Did you call the police?
Yes! But they said that there was nothing they could do.
That it was our fault.
Life would be very different if that's how adults really felt about children.
Continuing with our series on the sacred,
we look at the cult of the child and the value our society
places on children and their rights.
They're so dependent on adults for everything.
They don't have any negativity about them,
so I guess everyone sort of loves that,
'cos they're always trying to be good and stuff like that round then.
When you get older you get a bit more cynical.
With children, there's just a natural part of you that wants to protect them,
and wants to look after them,
and wants to keep everything that's bad away from them.
If you don't look after your children,
if you don't care for your children,
how are your kids going to learn to be on the right path in life?
So, children have taken on sacred significance in today's world,
because of a wider movement
towards regarding human life itself as sacred.
Children have come to be seen as uniquely valuable
in terms of the way their rights need to be protected.
This really began in the 19th century, when towns and cities were growing.
There were more children on the streets and growing concern for their welfare
and anxiety about their potential as troublemakers.
While in the Victorian era it was not uncommon to see children
as young as 5 or 6 working in mills or coal mines,
the 20th century saw the growth of a wealthier middle class,
who could afford to give their children longer, more protected childhoods.
The media play a really important role in terms of reminding us
of the sacredness of the care for children.
One of the most important ways that they do this,
is through their coverage of stories of child abuse,
which, when we see the stories, cases like Baby P,
we feel appalled, we feel sickened at what's gone on in those cases,
and that reminds us of our very deep moral commitment to the care of children.
The moral reaction to paedophiles now seems to be
often stronger than the moral revulsion that's shown towards murderers.
I think that really is an indication about how important the duty of care
to children has become in our society,
how sacred that's become.
People who abuse children - paedophiles - are viewed in a far more harsh way
than say a murderer.
I think there's immediately a completely instinctive, emotional reaction
that sort of overpowers critical judgement,
which I guess is kind of - it's protective and it's outrage.
Yes, if someone's done something bad to a kid,
they sort of treated like pure filth.
So it is more of an emotional response,
it's not very clever, and that's sort of reflected
in what you see in the papers and stuff.
My kids play football all the time,
and I know that we have all been approached as parents taking photographs,
we've been asked not to take photographs of our own children
and other people's children, to send to family and friends.
Whilst I understand the need for certain controls,
I think we've gone many steps too far.
So, when we see stories of children being harmed, in the media,
our natural instincts are
natural moral responses to want to intervene to protect children,
and in many ways that's a good moral impulse,
but it can also have unintended consequences.
It can make us very anxious about the kind of contact,
or the degree of contact that adults have with children,
and put up more and more barriers between adults and children
that make adults worried about whether they may be seen as a paedophile
if they show an interest in supporting things at their local school,
or at their local youth club.
But arguably children have become too important.
We protect them so much, we've started to let them get away with anything.
To which the child then made the man sniff his own feet
before running down there.
Police have described the child as short, looks like a child,
and not to be approached, even if he asks for his Froggy.
Now, back to Biscuits McQueen in the studio.
Biscuits...
This child problem grows day by day.
Look at the person to your left.
Look at the person to your right.
Are they a child?
If so, you could be in real danger.
Goodnight.