Sep 28 2008 By Jeannette Oldham

DANGEROUS sex offenders are being allowed out of a secure Midland hospital on day trips – because health chiefs are worried about breaching their human rights.

Scores of convicted rapists and paedophiles held under the Mental Health Act at Brooklands Hospital in Marston Green, Solihull, are being taken on ‘supervised’ shopping and cinema trips and even visits to McDonalds.

It is understood the patients are allowed out of their secure psychiatric unit for several hours or entire days in a bid to reintroduce them to community life.

We revealed last week how staff at Brooklands Hospital fear it is dangerously understaffed after a series of patient escapes.

The unit houses up to 100 patients, including around 50 sex offenders.

A source said: “We have to take them out for their human rights – and they can go pretty much where they want.

Hospital

‘‘A lot choose to go food and clothes shopping in nearby Chelmsley Wood shopping centre. And they like having lunch out, either at McDonalds or wherever.

“They can also go to the cinema but we make an assessment on what they see.

‘‘And they can buy what they like – some of them do buy DVDs with kids in them. We take everything back to the hospital and then decide if they can keep them. If not, things go back to the shop and the men get a refund.

“They’re always supervised by two either two or three staff, depending on what’s stipulated on their care plan.

“I know some staff have had difficult moments.

“With the child sex offenders you know straight away. They’ll be staring at a particular child as they walk past and we have to take them aside and try and talk to them. We try to calm them down and if they do then we’ll carry on with the trip. Other times you have to take them straight back to the unit.

‘‘There was one man who was going out every week but it had to be stopped because he admitted he’d have a child away if he could.

‘‘And some of the patients are considered so dangerous they’re not even allowed outside in the gardens.’’

The public is unaware of the trips, the source added.

‘‘We take them out in a hospital vehicle or they go on the bus with the public,’’ they said. ‘‘Local people in Chelmsley Wood have probably got used to the sight of two men with a patient. There’s always been a mental hospital at Brooklands so people probably know they’re patients – but I don’t think they’d like it if they knew they were sex offenders.

“The whole unit has been re-branded as a secure hospital for people with learning disabilities. There are people there who have done nothing wrong, but have, say, severe autism or Down’s Syndrome or brain damage. And they have to mix with the sex offenders.”

Michelle Elliott, director of children’s charity Kidscape, attacked the day-trips and said: “If there are dangerous sex offenders being allowed out then the community has a right to know.

‘‘And the supervision if they are allowed out has to be incredibly stringent, but I don’t think people in the community would feel comfortable with this.

‘‘The reality and sad part of all of this is that these people cannot be cured. They have to be contained and if they’re going out into the community they will continue to be a risk to children unless they are supervised 24/7.

“My concern is that people would have to be aware of the dangers and actually able to physically restrain them. It’s absurd to have a neighbourhood situation in which people with these kind of perverted sexual urges have actually absconded.”

But a hospital trust spokesman defended the day-trips and said: “Care programmes for our patients include an element of community involvement. In all cases, appropriate arrangements are in place.

‘‘We take our responsibilities on these matters extremely seriously.”

And a Department of Health spokesman said: “Taking patients out of units on supervised trips is a normal part of rehabilitation and as such is the responsibility of the clinican in whose care the patient is in.

“These visits can be to maintain family contact and can even be for educational purposes such as going to college.

‘‘The important point to bear in mind is these outside visits are subject to risk assessment.”

The controversial Danish People's Party member of the European Parliament Mogens Camre spoke at the DPP's annual meeting Sunday, calling to expel Islam from Europe.

"Islam cannot be integrated. Islam will dominate Europe. And Islam is incompatible with our values. Therefore Islam will be thrown out of Europe. This little land is ours, we forged it ourselves. And we will govern it ourselves and decide ourselves who will live in it and how they will behave. And we will fight until Denmark is again free," said Camre, to loud applause.

Last year a similar statement by DPP member Merethe Egeberg Holm caused a commotion, when she said "Out with all Muslims in Europe and in with Jews instead!" That was her last speech as after last year's meeting, she was expelled from the party.

Camre met with harsh criticism for his statement. Kamal Qureshi (Socialist People's Party) compared the DPP politicians to Danish Nazi head Jonni Hansen. He also hit out at his colleagues in parliament, whom he thinks are keeping too quiet. Both the reigning party and the opposition should distance themselves from the statements.

By Steven Thomma | McClatchy Newspapers

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Five weeks before election day, the tide may be turning toward Barack Obama.

Several things still could swing the contest back toward John McCain, most notably the remaining debates. But as of now, forces are coming together to help Obama just as the long campaign enters the final stretch.

Among the key developments in recent days:

• His performance in Friday night's debate helped assure some nervous voters that he is experienced enough to be commander-in-chief, a critical threshold for the young, first term senator to meet;
• The continuing focus on the economy plays to his political advantage. The Wall Street crisis and proposed bailout guarantees intense attention by voters, and the remaining debates will overwhelmingly focus on it and domestic issues;
• The initial burst of Republican enthusiasm over Sarah Palin may be dampened by shaky performances in TV interviews and skepticism, if not outright hostility, from some conservative columnists.

Nationally, Obama now leads McCain.

A Gallup daily tracking poll Sunday showed Obama opening a 50-42 lead just a week after being locked in a tie. "Obama has gained steadily," Gallup said.

Pollster Scott Rasmussen Sunday reported Obama holding a 50-44 lead nationally and gaining ground in many battleground states. In Ohio, for example, he found McCain's 4 point lead a week ago shrinking to 1 point. "State polling conducted this week generally followed the national trend and confirmed a trend favoring Obama," Rasmussen said.

This doesn't mean it's over.

Obama has opened up similar leads before, after his convention in August and after his overseas trip in July. Each time, he lost that lead and even fell behind.

He showed in the Democratic primaries against Hillary Clinton that he's a weak closer. And both his relative inexperience and race still present challenges for a Democrat who arguably should have a sharp advantage in a year when the Republican president is unpopular and the country is very unhappy with the status quo.

But some fundamentals may be changing late in the campaign that could help him hold and perhaps even build his lead.

For one, the debate may have started to settle the question of whether Obama could be commander-in-chief, a critical test.

One survey of poll watchers for CBS News, for example, found a jump in the ranks of people who believed Obama was prepared to be president. More people still thought McCain prepared, by a margin of 18 percentage points — but a majority for the first time in that poll said the same of Obama.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-SC, a close McCain adviser, conceded that Obama looked good in the debate.

"Senator Obama did well. Senator Obama helped himself, according to the polls," Graham said on Fox News Sunday. He added, however, that McCain still had the edge on who was seen as more prepared. "There's an 18-point difference between who is best able to do the job. We'll take that," Graham said.

Perhaps. But Obama did gain in an area that has been perhaps his most glaring political weakness.

And attention is likely to remain on the economy right up to the election.

Polls show voters prefer Obama over McCain to handle the economy, and at least one Republican strategist thought the Wall Street mess would also help Obama.

"If John McCain loses this election a month from now ...we're going to look back at this last week and see that this is where the campaign changed," Alex Castellanos said on CNN's Late Edition program Sunday.

Finally, Palin's performances in three TV interviews are raising questions among some conservatives, who are using words like atrocious and dreadful to describe her answers.

"Palin filibusters. She repeats words, filling space with deadwood. Cut the verbiage and there's not much content there," conservative writer Kathleen Parker said this week.

Parker called Palin an "attractive, earnest, confident candidate" but also one who is "clearly out of her league."

"I thought Palin was dreadful," National Review editor Rich Lowry said after seeing her interview with CBS. "She had better be better prepared for next week or she risks damaging her political brand forevermore."

Palin still draws huge crowds among the faithful. And she has a high profile chance to regroup when she debates Joe Biden Oct. 2.

"They" are whites who say Obama is unqualified when they really mean he's black.

"They" are blacks who say all whites are bigots.

At Debate, Biden Told: Ignore Palin

As Senator Biden prepares to face off against Governor Palin on Thursday night in the campaign's lone vice presidential debate, Democratic strategists have a few words of advice for the lawmaker of Delaware: Ignore the Alaskan.

Mr. Biden's 35 years in the Senate dwarf Ms. Palin's single month of experience on the national stage, but Democrats are worried that his penchant for verbal missteps and his occasionally aggressive style could be a liability as he faces only the second woman to serve as a major party nominee for the vice presidency.

"His goal is to ignore Palin and focus on connecting with voters sitting in their living rooms by making clear he is indeed one of them — an uncommon, common man," a Democratic strategist who served as an aide to Vice President Gore during the 2000 campaign, Christopher Lehane, said.

The two running mates will meet in St. Louis this week for what is perhaps the most eagerly anticipated vice presidential match-up in recent memory, and the debate is fraught with risk for both candidates.

After winning rave reviews for her debut speech at the Republican National Convention early in the month, Ms. Palin has struggled as she has come under increased scrutiny from the press. Polls have shown voter concerns about her readiness for the job, and she has been widely derided in recent days for the nearly incomprehensible response she offered when CBS's Katie Couric asked her to explain her claim that Alaska's proximity to Russia and Canada gave her foreign policy experience.

Those stumbles have raised the stakes for Thursday's debate, but Democrats are offering another reason why Mr. Biden should avoid trying to exploit Ms. Palin's lack of experience — he may not need to.

"Let the facts, the records, and the ideas speak for themselves, and more than likely Governor Palin will expose herself as unqualified for the job," a Democratic consultant, Daniel Gerstein, said. "If he has the right tone, there's no way he can lose this debate."

Mr. Biden needs only to look to Senator Clinton's Senate race in 2000 against Rick Lazio to see the perils of a male appearing overly confrontational with a female candidate. During their debate, Mr. Lazio walked over to Mrs. Clinton's podium to ask her to a sign a pledge against accepting so-called soft money campaign contributions. The move backfired, as the Republican congressman looked as if he were physically intimidating the then-first lady.

"Debating with a woman is entirely different than anything you will ever do," a Democratic consultant who worked for President Clinton's re-election bid in 1996, Hank Sheinkopf, said. He said Mr. Biden needed to avoid doing anything that would appear "glowering" or "menacing" and would engender sympathy for Ms. Palin.

In a television interview yesterday, President Clinton also advised Mr. Biden against going after Ms. Palin directly. Doing so, he said, would likely appeal only to voters already supporting Senator Obama. "I don't think he has to whack her, or should," Mr. Clinton said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "Everybody that really is upset about Sarah Palin because she's too conservative or too Alaska or too this, that, or the other thing, they're already for the Obama-Biden ticket."

Both parties have already begun the traditional pre-debate efforts to lower expectations for their candidates and raise the bar for their opponents. Mr. Obama's campaign manager, David Plouffe, told reporters on a conference call Saturday that Ms. Palin was "a terrific debater," judging from tapes of her performances during campaigns in Alaska.

"She has performed very, very well," Mr. Plouffe said. "She's obviously a skilled speaker, so you know we'll expect that she'll give a great performance next Thursday."

Republicans have highlighted Mr. Biden's frequent gaffes, but have also touted his years in Washington as preparation for the debate. One GOP aide said Mr. Biden has "spent his entire career debating in the Senate and building a reputation as one of the best."

A close friend and adviser to Mr. McCain, Senator Graham of South Carolina, said criticism of Ms. Palin in the last week had been exaggerated, but he acknowledged that she had work to do on Thursday.

"She's going to have to show she's a valuable part of this team, that she's capable of the job, that she shares John's philosophy," he said on "Fox News Sunday."

BY BETH REINHARD

breinhard@MiamiHerald.com

Aglow International is holding a convention in Washington, DC, hoping to energize women for the upcoming election.

One of the founders of Aglow, Jane Hansen Hoyt, hopes attendees will leave the convention -- called "A Voice for the Times: Calling Women to Transform their Nation" -- with a better idea of their role this election season.
 
"Our desire is to make women really aware of the issues of today and to excite them about the possibility of the coming election," she explains. "You know, women comprise 54 percent of the voting population."
 
Hoyt believes more women have become aware of the need to go to the polls. "I think women are incredibly excited about the fact that the glass ceiling has been broken," she contends, a reference to the GOP vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin. "There's been a sense related to women that there is a ceiling over them [that restricts] how far they can actually move, how far they will be free."
 
Women, according to Hoyt, are being called more and more into the political arena and government positions. This election is "pivotal," she adds, saying evangelical women need to raise their voices during this critical time.