Alfie Patten And Chantelle Steadman: Gordon Brown Asks, Spice Girls To Blame And Jade Goody
ALFIE Patten, 13, claims to have fathered his inamorata Chantelle Steadman’s baby daughter, Maisie Roxanne in Eastbourne, Sussex. But Alfie might not be the daddy.
A DNA test will sort out the daddy from the boys, that gaggle of lads who claim to have squired the fragrant Chantelle, 15.
The papers have their latest story on Broken Britain, the grotesque world in which little girls have babies with little boys. And not just any babies, but healthy ones. On with the story. And eyes down for Tabloid Bingo:
Yesterday, Alfie was seen leaving his mother’s £395,000 house in Hailsham with an offensive jumper hood pulled over his head. He was driven from the four-bedroom home by his sister Jayde.
Hoody! Tick.
Property prices! Tick. (The value of the property is a vital ingredient in this story.)
Meanwhile, his father Dennis, 45, who has taken to wearing a red rubber devil mask, arrived minutes later. Newsagent Sithiravel Geevarajah told how he barred Alfie and Chantelle from his shop on the estate.
“At the beginning they were so naughty I banned them about three to four times from the shop, but then they were OK.”
I’ll do it with yer for a sherbet dip dab.
Dennis Patten was captured by photographers waving a placard saying, “No comment – ring Max”, referring to Mr Clifford.
Belfast Telegraph: “Why Alfie, Chantelle and PR gurus are a sad parable of modern times”, says Sharon Owens:
Witness the tragic figure of Jade Goody, the ultimate underclass pin-up. Poor Jade was possibly the most under-educated girl in Britain when she turned her car-crash life into a million pound industry…
At least I’m hopeful that Jade’s two sons will have a better upbringing than that poor wee mite Maisie Roxanne will. Only a few days old and already the subject of a DNA test and a bidding war.
Tick!
Alfie apparently agreed to take the test after two other boys – Richard Goodsell, 16, and Tyler Barker, 14 – claimed they could have parented Maisie.
Could have…
Since then six other teenagers have come forward claiming they could be the baby’s father, according to the Daily Star newspaper.
“Britain’s best selling quality newspaper” gets it news from the Daily Star. Crisis. What crisis?
This is the big chance, surely for all teenage boys to dismiss the insult of being a virgin or gay by saying that they too have serviced the, allegedly, amenable Chantelle.
Says Chantelle:
“Alfie’s the only boy I’ve been with.”
The rest were, allegedly, adolescents.
The 13-year-old who apparently fathered a baby was at the centre of a fresh scandal last night, amid claims he is the victim of a con.
Serious doubts that Alfie Patten is the dad of nine-day-old Maisie Roxanne were raised by a close friend of schoolgirl mum Chantelle Stedman’s parents.
Clive Sim, 39…
“…says Chantelle confessed to her half-sister Jodie O’Neill, 17, that Penny had told her to insist she had lost her virginity to little Alfie. And that Penny, a 38-year-old mother-of-six, had even accused another lad of being Maisie’s father…
Engineer Clive, of Lancing, West Sussex, said: “Penny told Chantelle to keep quiet about other boys because they wouldn’t get any money. They know that Alfie being the dad makes a better story. I think there’s a big scam going on here.”
Can Alfie be fixed up with Shannon Matthews? (Tick.)
Aberdeen Press and Journal: “Whatever happened to childhood and innocence?”
Nicola Barry, aged 11-ish, says:
THERE is something grotesque about the photograph which keeps appearing of the 13-year-old boy who fathered a child at 12. Seeing him sitting, cradling his baby on his lap, as if trying to persuade the world he is old enough to be a dad, made me feel, literally, sick to the stomach.
Literally.
Alfie Patten, who is just 4ft and looks even younger than his age, was photographed at his girlfriend Chantelle’s, bedside, after she gave birth to Maisie Roxanne in Eastbourne.
Short 12-year-old pulls older girl! The lad’s a hero to his peers.
To many people, the sight of 13-year-old Alfie, his 15-year-old girlfriend and their new baby is the modern-day equivalent of a Frankenstein experiment gone badly wrong.
Sperm meets egg. Baby arrives nine months later. What went wrong?
And it is wrong, let’s be clear about that.
Clear!
In stories with a legal element, the rule of thumb is that no child under 16 can be named or pictured. So, how come it happened with Alfie, in circumstances which were bound to create a national, if not international, uproar?
Yeah, in India the teenage mums and dads will be appalled.
I will tell you why – because the families have been flaunting the story for money, with the boy’s father employing PR guru Max Clifford.
Fair enough, some might say. Not in this case, it isn’t.
But Jade Goody does it for the money. Jade Goody does it for her kids. So why not Alfie and Chantelle? (Tick.)
The Spice Girls started it. For them, sexuality was all. The group’s embodiment of so-called Girl Power was hypocrisy at its worst, a con- trick which made a lot of girls believe that making themselves sexually available equalled being liberated.
Sex began with Victoria Beckham? Oh, the irony.
Independent: “Social workers fear media frenzy will damage Alfie’s family”
Child protection officers at East Sussex County Council have written to the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) to complain about harassment of the teenagers. The PCC is already investigating whether or not The Sun and The People broke rules by making payments to the Patten family. News organisations may only do so if there is a “demonstrable public interest” in a story. Both papers will argue that such a public interest is evidenced by wider fears about a “broken society”.
QED:
The Independent understands that The Sun initially offered the families between £10,000 and £15,000, soon raising that to about £32,000. Max Clifford, Alfie’s agent, refused to confirm the sum, or reports that Alfie would open his DNA test results, expected on Monday, live on television. Channel 4’s Cutting Edge programme has already secured rights for a documentary about the boy, and at least 15 production companies have enquired about his availability.
Psst! Wanna see pictures of kids having baybees?
Janet Street Porter: “It’s older fathers who need morality lessons”
Increasingly, middle-aged macho man decides to breed with his new partner as a way of validating his masculinity.
Or of just wanting a child. But yeah, go on…
Robin Gibb, 59, has just fathered little Snow Robin with his 33-year-old housekeeper, and his wife puts on a brave face. High-profile older dads proliferate. John Humphrys discusses the moral climate on Radio 4, but when he became a father at 55 it passed with little comment. Des O’Connor fathered a child at 72, Jonathan Dimbleby at 62, John Simpson at 61, David Jason at 61 and Rod Stewart at 60. Woody Allen married his former babysitter, 35 years his junior, and adopted two children in his mid-60s.
And no-one, not in acres of news print, said a word. Right, Janet. Good job you’re around:
All these men are intelligent and comfortably off. Is that why we secretly think they make more acceptable parents than Chantelle and Alfie?
Dunno. Why not ask them what they secretly think? Of course, then it would’t not be a secret and you would not be privy to it. So forget it. Just write on and fill in the blanks later.
Daily Mail: “Alfie’s parents must be punished”
Alison Pearson peeks through the keyhole:
There is an outrageous treble-standard at work here. If a 15-year-old boy got a 12-year-old girl pregnant he could well face a charge of statutory rape (a girl below the age of 13 is not deemed mature enough to consent to sex). But somehow it’s all right for Chantelle Steadman to have sex with a 12-year-old boy, and for both sets of parents to turn a blind eye.
So lock up mum. Lock her up now for being a teenager who had sex and no abortion.
The Sun: “Parents not told Alfie was dad-to-be”
THE parents of Alfie and Chantelle have blasted a family doctor who failed to tell them for six weeks that the 13-year-old was going to be a dad. Chantelle, 15, only told her mum she was pregnant after 18 weeks.
Here’s your public interest angle: Doctors In Teen Baby Shame Horror!
But the GP confirmed it to her at 12 weeks — leaving the teenagers to face the prospect of parenthood alone for six weeks.
The scum. Let’s get him struck off. Sing the campaign.
The Scotsman: “Emma Cowing: Primary sex education is a bad idea? Tell that to these children”
Emma Cowing wonders:
Yet when Alfie Patten, who last week burst forth as Britain’s newest celebrity when it was revealed he had fathered a child with Chantelle Steadman, 15, and was photographed with his daughter, Maisie, looking disturbingly like a nine-year-old cuddling his new sister, was asked by an interviewer how he would cope “financially”, he looked confused for a moment, cradled his newborn’s head, then replied: “What’s financially?”
Gordon Brown, that question to you? “Financially means building good debt…”
Sex education in this country must be radically overhauled and started earlier. In my view we need to go further, to social education. In the hope that they may think twice, we should teach children about the many social implications of having a baby, how it will affect them emotionally, domestically, and, of course, financially.
Domestically? Can we skip the English lesson and just get on with the sex, miss?
Posted: 18th, February 2009 | In: Key Posts, Reviews Comments (16) | TrackBack | Permalink
