06/02/2012 Inside Out London

Hello and welcome to Inside Out Southwest. Stories from where you

live. Tonight, we are on patrol in

Torquay with the emergency service that is powered by prayer. The day

you are not shocked by what you see, you should stop doing it.

Also tonight, the south-west victims of internet bullying.

I got home that night and it was all over Facebook, she's a Taxi,

she is dirty, she is not washed. And can David Stafford master a

traditional craft in north Devon? This is not going to be funny. I am

really going to do it. I am Sam Smith and this is Inside

They're an alternative emergency service equipped with prayer, and

some pink flip flops. Inside Out spent the weekend in Torquay with

This is a new world tonight. Lord, we go out in your name. We are

doing work that has never been done Father, as we work to help the

different agencies in the community - the police, the council, the

We are there to get outside the four walls of the Church and put

our faith into practice. And if we can make somebody's life or their

night safer and ensure that they get home safely, albeit in an

Friday night and a new mission for Ros Ede and her team - opening the

public toilets at night for the first time. That's a good place to

put the tip box as well. The shop owners are upset because they use

the doorways of shops to pee. It is very unpleasant. Especially if

we're dealing with somebody in a doorway, you do not know what is

going on. We asked the Council if we could have the toilets open. The

pastors are linked by radio to police, doormen and the town's CCTV

operators. Since they started in 2008, they've dealt with more than

2,000 incidents. We had one woman come up and say thank you for

saving my life. Her husband had left her with two children, one of

whom is autistic, and she did not feel as if she could carry on. She

came here to finish her life, to get drunk and end it all. But she

met her team and somebody sat and talked with her. She came back and

thanked us for saving her life. We don't know the consequences of what

we do. These guys, at this time of night, they came round. Give you

coffee to keep you warm. I know they are dealing a lot with young

drunken people. Where are you going We are local people. It has been

nice and peaceful. We do have people praying for peace. How are

the toilets? They're fine. The last inspection, they were fine and that

is good news .. I can be like... I can be like a... It's early

Saturday night and the walking wounded are already arriving. Up

the street, 18-year-old Ashley is in trouble. He's been in a fight

and has hurt his knee. He's brought back to the safe place a converted

van that the pastors park on the harbourside. It's a refuge for

anyone who needs help. It's going to get more painful. I think you

should go home. If it wasn't for these guys, he would still be

sitting over there. He would be waiting for an ambulance. Thank God

these guys are here. Are you going to go home now? I am going to sit

Now you have nowhere to stay? If the temperature drops to zero, they

will take you in. It's about six degrees at the moment. John spent

last night in a car park. Now he's back on the street. The next

casualty is a girl who says she is 18. A lot of people drink too much,

don't they? It's a safe environment for them to either sober up or get

home or get an ambulance. I done it myself when I was younger. Fair

play to them, as long as they don't act too silly and start fights.

Within minutes of having said goodbye, Ashley is back. We pinch

the ears and twist his hair to see if we can get a response. But we

were getting no response. Because of that, we have called an

ambulance. I've got children and grandchildren who I would not want

to see in that position, the position some of these kids are.

It's good to have somebody out here looking after them. While one team

deals with Ashley, the other helps a young man who appears to be the

worse for drink. Last year, Torbay had the biggest rise in alcohol

related hospital admissions in the south-west. When they're very young,

yes, it distressing. The day you're not shocked by what you're seeing,

you should stop doing it. The pastors' presence seems to have

a calming effect on the streets. Since they started, Saturday night

crime in Torquay has fallen by more than 30 per cent. We are not

confrontational, we're not trying to enforce any kind of law. We are

mums and dads, grans and grandads. Thank you so much. Stay safe.

What shocks you most about what you see? Parents who don't care. Being

a parent myself, I can't understand that. How you can give birth to

your son or daughter and not care. The pastors have become well known

I'll give you some money for these. If they end up in A&E with a cut

foot, that costs, I have been told, Back at their prayer base, the

pastors receive a call for help. The young lady outside now. Just

round the corner. It is 2am and a 31 year-old man has been found in a

I'm just going to check your pockets to make sure you have a

wallet. The first thing we have done this evening is called the

Street Pastors who normally help us in this sort of situation to free

up some emergency services time. But he is too much in drink to be

of any help. If we can't get him sorted out, the police will take

matters into their own hands. Try to find out where he's been

drinking. They don't like places that continue serving alcohol to

people when they have had too much to drink. A little bit cold.

Waiting for the ambulance. He hasn't got anyone at home so we

have to call for an ambulance to take care of him. The pastors'

shift ends at 4 am. Tying up loose ends. You check yours and we will

check ours. I'm not as young as I was. Some nights, it can be quite

tiring. I think tonight was quite challenging. But we've had a lot of

good times as well. So it's been worthwhile. Ashley was treated and

eventually went home with friends. But two casualties of the night

went to hospital. The pastors will probably never know what happened

to them, but they are determined to persevere with prayer and practical

help. There's no such thing as retirement in the Bible. I've

looked for it. It doesn't happen. So as long as we're needed, we'll

Apology for the loss of subtitles for 42 seconds

If you know who is doing the bullying, you can probably do

something about it. But what if the abuse is anonymous? We've been

investigating. My name is Dawn, this is Sarah. We teach young

people on safety issues. We are here today to show you what can

happen to people who have been cyber bullied. An internet safety

workshop in Bovey Tracy. And a stark reminder of the dangers of

online abuse. Pictures of five young people whose suicides have

been linked to so-called cyber bullying. It's not like it was in

the old days when, if anybody was starting on anybody, it would be

face to face, in the classroom or the playground. Cyberbullying is

such an easy way to target somebody. I don't want to be around the

racist comments, seeing people in the town saying, there's that girl.

Jade Sarwar was cyber-bullied after being assaulted by a girl in Newton

Abbott. I got home that night and it was all over Facebook. She

called me a Taxi. And because I didn't reply, she got other people

involved. I showed my mum it. I was crying because there was stuff they

were saying that I didn't like. They were going on about, she's

dirty, she doesn't wash, the colour of her skin. Loads of people got

involved. There was 19 pages of it. Jade went to the police. The

teenagers who posted the abuse trolling as it's known ended up in

court. Magistrates said they were deeply concerned by the cyber-

bullying and gave referral orders to the five girls responsible.

first, I was nervous about going to the police. But it was a good thing

because they dealt with it straightaway and made a good job of

it. If I hadn't gone, I don't know what would have happened now.

knew who the bullies were because their postings were on Facebook,

which discourages anonymous and abusive postings. But unlike

Facebook, there are social networking sites where people are

allowed to be faceless. Sites like Little Gossip. I don't see the

point of it. Nobody posts anything nice about anybody on it. It's not

like Facebook or Twitter where there are in interaction tools. It

is spiteful and pointless really. Now studying in France, Bianca

Coughlin was in her second year at Exeter University when she

discovered she was on Little Gossip. It was referring to my reputation

and how promiscuous I had been, which I hadn't! It wasn't very

flattering. It must have seemed like a private joke to the people

who posted about their friends, but it would not be funny for parents

or an employer. In fact it did turn out to be a joke by one of her

friends. But one that didn't seem so funny when that friend tried to

delete the post. That's when she said, I can't. That's when I

realised the dangers of this site because no one has the power to

remove it. The posting was eventually removed but Little

Gossip, which operates in more than 50 countries, is still rife with

abuse posted by anonymous users. I've come to London to meet the

young entrepreneur from Taunton who created the site in 2010.

discovered a hit TV series called Gossip Girl which is based in

America. There is also a Facebook group called Gossip Girl Taunton. I

saw lots of gossip from nights before, of people going out. It was

all light hearted, funny banter. I thought it was an amazing idea.

Ted had unleashed something big. The site quickly snowballed out of

control. We had 33,000 hits in the first hour. We had more hits than

Facebook did. The servers crashed. It was impossible to police, just

myself. Ted was soon swamped with complaints. If you have 60,000

pieces of gossip and 10 per cent of them are genuinely malicious, that

is 6000 pieces of gossip which I have to try and find and delete. It

is a huge amount of work. After just four days, Ted sold the site

for, he says, $50. I didn't sell it for financial gain. I sold it to

get rid of it. Why did you not just close it down? That was a mistake

and I am sorry for that. I set up the site with good intentions and I

should have just shut it down when I knew that it was spiralling out

of control. Little Gossip goes on under its new owners. The business

that Ted ahead set up as a harmless bit of fun has turned into a global

Internet phenomenon, but one with It's the anonymity allowed on sites

like Little Gossip that experts say makes them harder to police. If you

are a victim of that online abuse, it is very difficult to get

recourse because you do not know who it is that's making those

comments. It's not just young people who are being targeted. Rate

My Teacher features praise, but also abuse about staff at schools

and colleges across the world. We spoke to a south-west teacher who

says he has been bullied on Rate My Teacher for 14 months. We've

disguised his identity. It's been a really tough time. I am leaving the

teaching profession because of it. It was almost on a daily basis that

comments were being left about me. In the end, there were over 200,

which, quite frankly, I thought appalling. I felt helpless to do

anything about it. I am sure it affected my performance in the

classroom. Action against sites like Little Gossip and Rate My

Teacher is made harder by the fact that they appear to operate out of

Getting sites closed down is virtually impossible. Many sites

are hosted, not in the UK, but in the US. Free-speech is in the US

constitution, people have a right to say what they want to say, and

from the UK perspective, we are not We tried to contact Little Gossip

to ask why they don't remove abusive comments, but our email

Jade has now come to terms with the racist abuse she suffered. It took

me a while to get over it all. About 18 months ago now. I haven't

heard anything since. But it was Jade's story shows that the courts

can bring online bullies to book, but governments appear unable or

unwilling to tackle the operators of sites which seem to tolerate the

trolls. There is a website you can go to for advice and to report

These old kilns are impressive clues to the fact that the south-

west once had a thriving pottery One man in north Devon is keeping

that tradition alive, making beautiful jugs that have buyers

interested from all round the world. This is Bideford in north Devon. A

couple of hundred years ago this place was pottery central. All down

here were potteries and the air would have been thick with the

smoke from the kilns. These days, there is just a handful of people

carrying on the tradition. One of those is just up the road there and

his name is Harry the Potter. The strains of Harry Juniper's clarinet

can often be heard floating down Rope Walk. Every day he practises

before getting down to the workshop. Harry. Good morning. This is

extraordinary. How long have you been a potter? For 64 years.

years! I started in 1948. You have got all sorts of stuff here. Small

plates, large plates, dishes. What is your favourite? I have a

reputation for making harvest jugs. These things here? Yes. They are

traditional in the area. They go back to the 17th century. My son is

throwing today and he shall demonstrate it. He is a very fine

Watching Nick working is a bit like turning the clock back five

centuries. The clay still comes from a quarry near by. And the

technique and shape remain more or less unchanged since the 1700s. The

jugs were the potter's contribution for harvest supper celebrations.

They'd take along one of these filled to the brim with the local

brew - golden cider. I love throwing. I could sit here all day.

Unfortunately, I would fill the place up in a day. But that is my

love. And he does it to the same world class standard as his father.

Proudly producing work of incredible quality and beauty.

don't see it ever becoming a thing that will die our or will not be

used or treated as something special. The classic shape is then

prepared for the artwork that will adorn it. Using a process that was

popular in Renaissance Italy, they are dipped in a thin coating of

white clay. It's into this that Harry will scratch out the designs

for which he has become world famous. At the age of 79, Harry's

one of the last potters to keep this tradition going on a

commercial basis. He trained as a fine artist and the jugs provide

him with the perfect blank canvas. This is a technique called

scraffito where I scratch through the surface into the brown. These

tools that you are using look painfully familiar. They are dental

tools. They keep their edge. I used to use bamboo at one time, but

these are much easier to use. must need a lot of confidence just

to go at it. But you have been The scraffito can take anything up

to a day so I am going to let Harry go on with it and I am going to pop

over the museum to look at some Harvest jugs were originally made

by ordinary folk, but now examples such as these fetch extraordinary

prices, tens of thousands of pounds. They weren't just made for the

locals. Some were shipped to North America along with the early

settlers. Some of Harry's finest work has won its place here. The

full bodied shape lends itself to bold design and messages, and

When I was in my native place, I was a lump of clay.

I was digged out of earth and brought from thence away.

But now I am a jug become through potter's art and skill.

And now your servant I am become There is a tradition that it has to

end with the presenter having a go on the wheel for comic effect. Show

me what I have to do. Take the ball Wet your hands. And the clay. Very

gently and firmly squeeze it into a nice round shape. Now then, put

your left hand inside and bring your fingertips right up to the top.

Now you're going to draw it up. You mustn't go too fast. It has to be

Beautiful technique. You have the potter's thumb. Gently. There you

are, very good. Thank you very much Is this always the moment of truth?

Yes, it is. Seems to have worked. Can I touch it? This is naughty

postcards, I don't think I can read any of them to a family audience.

This is one with the Queen's Foot Guards having a bit of a

celebration. A bit of a knees-up. Harry's jugs have now developed

something of a fan club. Buyers from around the world are prepared

to pay �400 a throw for the finest examples. But for Harry, it's not

just about the money. It's about something much deeper. I would say

it was a rhythm. The rhythm of music and the rhythm of working.

The rhythm of throwing pots on the wheel, pulling handles, decorating.