Archbishop warns of childhood crisis

Modern children are suffering increasingly from mental illness because they grow up in a climate of fear and are starved of love and affection by their parents, Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams said yesterday. This crisis in modern childhood is breeding a new generation of ?infant adults? incapable of caring for their own children properly. ?We have to go to the roots of the difficulty, and it (?) has to do with a shared unwillingness in our culture to let children be children for long enough.? His warning coincided with the launch of an inquiry into the state of childhood by the Children?s Society charity.

The inquiry, the first of its kind in Britain, will take evidence from children, parents and experts and publish recommendations at the end of 2008 which it hopes will shape future government policy. ?Preoccupied with protecting our own children from harm, we often fail to reach out to those who need attention most. And all the while our young people are continually subjected to pressure to achieve, behave and consume like adults at an ever earlier age.? Williams said the drive to improve standards in schools and the testing of pupils from an early age had produced an ?anxiety-driven? education system. ?The fear of failure is there,? he said.

The childhood inquiry follows a warning last week by an influential group of more than 100 teachers, psychologists and children?s authors who said Britain?s children were being poisoned by a ?junk culture? of processed food, computer games and over-competitive education.

The experts ? including internationally acclaimed authors Philip Pullman and Michael Morpurgo, and Penelope Leach, a leading childcare expert ? said society was forcing children ?to act and dress like mini-adults?, stealing their childhood. ?It?s gradually soaking like a poison into the culture,? Morpurgo said. ?There is less room for reading, for dreaming, for music, for drama, for art, and simply for playing.?

Architect jailed for ?tramp? sex attacks

A senior council official who dressed as a tramp to sexually assault six teenage girls was jailed for 13 years yesterday. Anthony De Boise, 58, from Surrey, had pleaded guilty to indecently assaulting the girls, aged from 13 to 16, between 1989 and 1996.

De Boise, an architect who worked as a planning officer for Wandsworth Council in southwest London, will remain on the sex offenders? register indefinitely.

The married father-of-two wore a dirty tracksuit and trainers and disguised his voice during the assaults, a jury heard at Southwark Crown Court in London.