Gillian Cross, author of The Demon Headmaster, agreed with (children's laureate) Anthony Browne, telling the Bookseller that anything that could be done to stop child abuse was worth it. "I understand entirely why people are enraged about the whole child abuse suspicion frenzy, which is particularly hard on men. It is nevertheless true that many children are abused. Theirs is the real suffering, and if checking can help to prevent that, I'm not opposed to it," Cross said.
Authors opposing the check include Philip Pullman, Anne Fine, Michael Morpurgo, Quentin Blake and Anthony Horowitz.
My feeling is that many people of an older generation genuinely have no idea about what goes on, because when we were growing up it was simply never spoken of.