A teacher was  recently awarded more than £8,000 ($12,000) when a Fair Employment Tribunal ruled in her favor that she was unfairly chosen to be laid off because of her faith.

The Tribunal ruled that Julie Brudell, a Protestant and former tutor, was discriminated against when she was selected for redundancy after it was learned that Catholic pupils at Ballykelly Primary in Derry were more plentiful than Protestants, the Belfast Telegraph said.

Brudell, who has taught for over 25 years, was awarded £8,250. She and three other Protestant teachers were made redundant.

However, all Catholic teachers kept their jobs although three of them had less experience than Brudell.

In the past Ballykelly’s Protestant students had always outnumbered Catholics. However, when the Ballykelly Army barracks closed many of the service children, mostly Protestants, moved away. As a result there were 170 Catholic students and 130 Protestant pupils in the school, the Belfast Telegraph said.

The school had five Catholic teachers and 10 Protestant teachers.

In the hearing, Fr. Michael Collins, Limavady parish priest governor cited the school ethic that staff should be consistent with the religious leanings of the students. Collins felt that there was a need for teachers to believe in what they were teaching, and he felt Catholic teachers were more equipped to respond to the spiritual needs of the children, the Belfast Telegraph said.

However the tribunal said, “It is clear that there was an awareness that the Roman Catholic pupils now outnumbered the Protestant ones, that the school had lost so many children already and would lose even more depending on who was made redundant,” the Belfast Telegraph said.

The Tribunal noted that “The fact that the respondents acted with good intentions in the interests of the school does not provide them with a defense,” the Belfast Telegraph said.

Brudell now works in the nursery unit at Ballykelly Primary.

Of the ruling she said, “I am very glad that this has been resolved and that the tribunal has found that my selection for redundancy was unlawful discrimination on the grounds of religious belief.”

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A popular Christian band cheated death recently through the intervention of a Myanmar general after they had illegally sneaked into the country to perform in a concert, according to CNN News.

The Irish Christian band Bluetree cheated death when they slipped into Myanmar through Thailand to sing for the Karen Christians, CNN reported.

Bluetree’s popularity soared in the United States last year when Chris Tomlin covered its praise song “God of This City” and videos of American Idol winner Kris Allen singing the tune were posted on YouTube, according to CNN.

After the concert for the Karen Christians, the band became the point of dispute between high ranking members of two different military units, both of them screaming, yelling and pointing at one another.

The band’s interpreter fell silent, and Jim Jacobson, president of Christian Freedom International (CFI), the NGO that had brought the band there said, “This is bad. This is really, really bad.”

It was only when they were back in Thailand that the band members were told it was their fates that was being debated by the troops.  “We were told later their general said ‘we’re not even going to waste our bullets with them, we’re just going to slice their throats,’ ” Boyd told CNN.

In Myanmar, Christians are targeted and killed.  The conflict between the government and the Karen and other ethnic groups such as the Karenni, Mon and Shan is considered to be the longest-running civil war in the world.

CFI’s Jim Jacobson is a wanted man in Myanmar.  He and Bluetree chose a time when the riverbeds dry up to slip into Myanmar. They brought food, clothing, Bibles and whiskey–to bribe the militia that, according to Boyd, threaten to burn down Christian villages and kill the men.

They gave the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA) the booze and food in exchange for access to a refugee camp where Bluetree sang and listened to the children sing some songs, Boyd told CNN.

They could only stay a few hours, lest the Myanmar army detect them, label them as spies and execute them.  But the DKBA general who had allowed their safe passage asked them to come up to his office and demanded that they sing for him, CNN reported.

“They didn’t ask politely,” Boyd said.  They were on a balcony and even before they could sing, members of the Myanmar army saw them, and the screaming match between the generals occurred.

Boyd believes the DKBA general offered the army troops part of the bribe to dissuade the military regime’s general.  Later the general even showed Jacobson the school where his troops’ children were being educated, according to CNN.

The general “asked Jim for his help in bringing up his kids,” Boyd said. ”This, from a guy whose mission in life is to kill Christians,” CNN reported.

Jacobson and the band members left as quickly as possible, driving the five hours back to Thailand in silence.

The trip was recorded and will be released in July as a DVD documentary, Boyd said. An audio recording of the Karen children is also an added track to a live album the band recorded in Belfast in March.

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Mandy Smith, the former child-lover and later wife of the Rolling Stone’s bassist Bill Wyman, said recently that the age of consent in Britain should be raised to 18.

Smith said at the currently legal age of consent, which is 16, girls are still emotionally vulnerable, and that even at age 18 some girls are still not ready for sex.  She adds, “You can never get that part of your life, your childhood, back.”

Bill Wyman and his Rhythm Kings Middelburg 27-01-2009/Credit: Jacco Barth

Parliament first established the age of consent in the UK at 13 years in 1875 in response to concerns that young girls were being exploited for prostitution.

The age of consent was amended to 16 years in 1885 under the Criminal Amendment Act because girls as young as 12 were still being sold in the sex trade.

Christian campaigner Josephine Butler, who fought to protect girls and prostitutes from exploitation, was primarily responsible for the changed law.

Two years ago Parliament passed a bill requiring Northern Ireland to lower its age of consent from 17 years to 16 years.  This caused a furor with Northern Ireland’s Legislative Assembly (NLA).

Some NLA warned this would only encourage sexual predators.  Belfast’s Rape Crisis Centre also objected to the change, saying the new law would make it more difficult for them to protect vulnerable girls.

Wild Child

In the 1980s Smith was deemed by media as London’s Wild Child.  She first dated Wyman when she was 13, and publicly admitted they had sex when she was 14 and Wyman was 48.

When Smith reached 16, the age of consent, their relationship became public and their marriage when she was 18 was depicted as a fairy tale wedding.  Two years later they divorced.

Today Smith is 39, single, celibate, and living out a revived Catholic faith.  She mentors young girls and is involved in charitable work.  She laments a childhood that she “could never get back.”

Smith says, “Sometimes, I drive through the city on a Saturday night and see young girls wearing hardly any clothes on their way to a nightclub, while others are being sick on the pavement from binge-drinking. They take their values from some rubbish TV show or wannabe celebrities.”  Smith’s father was absent since she was three, and she met Wyman in a club at a time when her mother was perennially ill.

Today Wyman is remarried with young children. In occasional interviews he refers to his “love affair” with Smith when she was 14 as a “midlife crisis.”

Writer Victoria Coren of The Observer wrote, “It’s not OK for a 48-year-old man to sleep with a 14-year-old, whoever he is. It’s not “a love affair.”

Smith says teenage girls today are caught up in a highly sexualized culture and its expectations.

“The girls I talk to are under pressure to be a certain way,” said Smith. “They think they should be having sex, living a certain life.”

Smith rediscovered her faith in 2005 and says “God is the only man in my life now.  The great thing about the Church is that you can go back. It’s never too late,” she said.

Sources:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1266664/Mandy-Smith-I-DID-sleep-Bill-Wyman-I-14–man-life-God.html#ixzz0lemZCzQJ

http://christiantelegraph.com/issue9556.html

http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/apr/10042004.html

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