Ethel Quayle and Max Taylor: Locking them up and throwing away the key isn't the answer
Roy Whiting's crime was vile. Here's what we must do to stop others
Digg
del.icio.us
Facebook
Reddit
Google
Stumble Upon
Fark
Newsvine
YahooBuzz
Bebo
Twitter
Independent Minds
The death of Sarah Payne brought to the fore concerns about adult sexual interest in children and how we can better protect them. It also raised more specific concerns about the adequacy of the judicial and penal system in dealing with people who pose an extreme danger to minors. Roy Whiting was a known sex offender against children and to that extent, his repeat offence is a terrible lesson.
But framing a fair and effective policy is complicated by the unpalatable fact there are many people whose sexual orientation is toward children, but who do not commit a sexual offence. Sex offenders against children are a very heterogeneous group, with differing personal characteristics, life experiences, criminal history and reasons for offending. That is why it is so difficult to find a single way of dealing with the problem. As far as we know, there is no single psychological "profile" that accurately accounts for all child molesters.
For most adults with a sexual interest in children, their interests and behaviour tend to remain at the level of fantasy. One of the lessons we have learnt in conducting the COPINE studies – investigating the use of pornography on the internet – is that very many people engage in sexual fantasies about children. If the internet is the measure of a "market" in child pornography, consider that one US commercial website showing children involved in sexual acts recorded millions of hits and reaped $1.4m (£960,000) before it was closed down. The signs are that thousands of people are engaging in "abuse at a distance". The growth of that activity may well set the scene for a worrying "normalisation" of sexual interest in children.
Thankfully, the offender who kills a child is very rare. We know, however, that the barriers that hinder people changing from one kind of offender to another can change over time, depending on an array of factors related to opportunity, the extent and nature of deviant ways of thinking, emotional state and whether they are engaged with a community that validates and normalises adult sexual interest in children.
However understandable the revulsion we all felt at Sarah's death, it needs to be put into context. It isn't enough to focus on the "sick" or "deviant" desires of offenders or potential offenders. We need to look at the context in which they live and whether we are doing as much as we could to ensure that people who are at risk of offending are able to live in a way that diminishes, rather than enhances the likelihood that they will act out a particular desire.
What distinguishes Whiting from the vast majority of other paedophiles is that he also murdered a child as part of a sexual assault. Unfortunately, the best predictor of reoffending is a past history of committing such offences. So what went wrong in the handling of Whiting's case? He was classified as "high risk" and not "paedophile" because his assessors did not consider his primary sexual interest to be children. We need to look again at how these classifications are made.
The assessment of dangerousness in sex offenders against children will never be perfect, but it does need continual review. At the same time, we need to remember that risk levels of an offender can change and that individuals cannot fairly be assessed and punished on the basis of a group average for reoffending. Policies should allow for the reintegration of offenders into society, and not assume that all those who commit offences are indefinitely at a high risk of reoffending. If we go down that road, we remove any incentive to offenders to change their behaviour.
Efforts are made in prison and in the probation system to offer offenders opportunity to engage in treatment programmes. Whiting appears to have been offered a place on one such scheme, but refused to attend. This raises the question of what should happen if someone is coming to the end of a prison sentence and is assessed as still dangerous. As things stand, they cannot be further detained, but once released into the community, there is very little control over their behaviour.
The current situation offers only a black and white distinction – in prison or in the community. Terms of release do not take into account whether the offender has made efforts to change behaviour or not. If behaviour has not changed, we put them back into the community where social service support is already overstretched. Proposals to make release contingent on the offender making progress at rehabilitation address half the problem. But what then?
Experience suggests that for many offenders the level of sexual interest in children will never change. The goals of therapy are therefore to provide offenders with the skills to regulate their feelings, and engage in more appropriate behaviour. Another difficulty is that when an individual has participated in such a programme, its effects can only be assessed when they are out of prison, where there are opportunities to reoffend. The sex offenders register offers police the opportunity to monitor and exercise some supervision over offenders, but that is no substitute for more effective monitoring and surveillance. For this reason we believe that the emphasis in the tabloid press on access to the register is partial and overstated.
Many people feel that offenders should be imprisoned because they may pose a risk. Such a policy would mean that people who would not necessarily reoffend remain in prison, because we lack the capacity to make adequate discrimination between offenders.
Sarah Payne's death will undoubtedly harden attitudes towards those who commit sexual assaults on children, and will force a reassessment of the balance between protection of society and protection of children. If protection of children is our only priority, then there seems little alternative to prolonged and sometimes permanent incarceration for most offenders. But surely we want to give people the opportunity to change and the motivation to do so.
We also need to think about new strategies. We have not really explored early-intervention techniques with those who regard themselves as potential offenders. One area of particular concern is the number of adolescents who collect child pornography, a pastime made more accessible by the proliferation of the internet.
One thing that comes across from talking to offenders is a sense of hopelessness. They live with a desperate tension between who they are and who they are allowed to be. Of course, society has a strong duty of care towards children, but we can't neglect the broader context. Offenders are portrayed as scum and scapegoats while "normal" people collude in actively sexualising children – in advertising, popular imagery and fashion. The broader social responsibility cannot simply be off-loaded on to professionals when something goes wrong or channelled into screaming abuse at offenders.
Dr Ethel Quayle and Professor Max Taylor run the COPINE Project at University College, Cork, on the use of child pornography on the internet
View all comments that have been posted about this article.
Offensive or abusive comments will be removed and your IP logged and may be used to prevent further submission. In submitting a comment to the site, you agree to be bound by the Independent Minds Terms of Service.
- Print Article
- Email Article
-
Click here for copyright permissions
Copyright 2009 Independent News and Media Limited
Comments
The majority of downloading of child porngoraphy is not from profitable sources and there is NOT a story of abuse behind every image. (Remember, the recent 'full body scanner' trial at manchester airport was stopped due to complications with 'indecent images' while children walked through.)
While we may not like the idea that such images are in circulation, we must remember that in many cases they do NOT represent a contribution to the abuse of these children. (The children are subject to abuse due to the original distribution of the images, this level of abuse then remains constant regardless of how many downloads of a particular image there are). If paedophiles use these images in private, and are not redistributing them, then this simply represents a way for them to express their sexuality without actually directly contributing to the abuse of a child.
Expression of sexuality is about as close to a human need as something can be without actually being one, yet we are taking every inch of a paedophile's sexuality away from them, then making a charge of a 'serious crime' when they are inevitably driven to pornography. Again, while we may not like this, we must remember that fantasising over children is nothing more than a thought crime, and there is no way of proving who will or will not go on to act on these thoughts in reality. While arresting everybody indiscriminantly is obviously an effective way to protect children, it is somewhat like curing your lawn of a moss problem by detonating a bomb on it, instead of using weed killer. We must face up to the fact that rape, and murder, of children will always happen, but it is our duty to look after the welfare of EVERYBODY, not just children.
It is not problematic to normalise a sexual interest in children. IMHO, removing the secrecy and stigma from this attraction would be an effective way of *protecting* children, as the information would be more likely to come out in the open.
Comparing sexual abuse images of children to airport body scans only serves to befuddle the discussion.
And what does it mean that that there is not abuse behind some of the images? If an adult takes a picture of a young person with the design to use and distribute it as pornography that is certainly an abuse of the child?s trust. Should that count as less of an abuse if there no physical scars? One of the aspects of being a child is the inability to second guess other peoples motives. Very often images are produced by someone within the family, adding spite to insult.
But the above is simply a silly discussion about the definition of child pornography. We mostly hear about abuse images from news stories about arrests. The images found with pedophiles are actually seldom airport body scans, instead police authorities reports an increase in violent and highly abusive material. Add to this, a French scientific study which showed that on file sharing networks (p2p) 3 % of the millions of queries executed every week, was for child pornography, with most search words showing a direct interest in images of 12year olds and younger.
Ask yourself this question; if there is an image of you, being sexually molested, would you want that to be readily available at the local library? That is in effect what you writing. Doe as the fact that the image is readily available not contribute to your abuse? I would think so
Fantasizing about children may very well be a thought crime, but collecting documentation of sexual abuse isnīt!!!
Furthermore, we can indeed say something worthwhile about who will commit a crime against a child in the future, since we know for a fact that at least 1/3 of collectors commit pedophile acts. But if you look at it from another angle CEOPS reports that 100% of offenders of sexual abuse towards children also possess child pornography. So there is nothing indiscriminate about it.
One very effective way of reducing acts of child molestation is the reduction of the availability of child pornography. That has nothing to do with the social stigma of a pedophile.
Firstly, I should probably say, with respect to the images you THOUGHT I was talking about, of course, I agree with you entirely.
However, in general, I rest my case. The general public have NO IDEA just how inclusive the definitions of "child pornography" are. This has everything to do with the social stigma of paedophiles, because the police use images that really are to all intents and purposes entirely non-abusive to make sex-offence convictions, then publish their results as if by finding somebody with these images they have uncovered some dangerous pervert, aren't we brilliant, see how effective we are... etc. IMHO it is more about finding and convicting every possible paedophile, than actually rooting out people who are actually a danger to children.
What you might not realise is that there are many images that most people would never in their wildest dreams label as 'indecent' are in fact labelled as such, and are regularly used to make convictions.
Images of fully clothed children in legitimate settings may be counted as indecent, if a police officer deems it to be sufficiently sexually suggestive. (Needless to say, it doesn't need to be terribly sexually suggestive for a police officer to deem it so.) Images of everyday scenes on that you can see at the swimming pool or on the street may be counted as indecent. Indecent images need not involve any contact, or even a second person in the photo. The same images may be counted as indecent in one scenario (i.e. in the hands of a paedophile) but perfectly OK in another (i.e. in the hands of a non paedophile). Images that APPEAR to be of children under 18 but in fact aren't, so called 'pseudo photographs', are also counted as indecent. Legal photographs which have been cropped to feature the genital areas (even when clothed) are counted as indecent.
What is more, the intent of the photographer is irrevlevent. If a parent takes a legitimate photo of their child e.g. in swimming trunks at the beach, then for example shares it with a friend via the internet - that friend could be charged with making indecent images of children if it were found on their computer by the police. The image may be an image the child took themselves, or an image taken by a friend. Of course, it is unlikely they would press a charge unless the computer belonged to a suspected paedophile. But it does go to show, no abuse of a child actually has to be behind so called 'child pornography'.
This is why I am NOT muddying the waters by including things such as the airport scans. In fact, I was trying to get across just how non-abusive images can be to cause problems. The images at manchester airport were never saved so could never have gotten out of the airport, yet the fact that the image appeared even momentarily was enough to raise concerns of legality). The definition of 'indecent images' has been stretched so thin that virtually any photo of a child that isn't as squeaky clean as can be is basically grounds for a charge, if the police want it to be.
In reports, the police rarely qualify what they mean by child porngoraphy, and only ever make a point of doing so when the images found are at level 2 or above. A SINGLE level 1 image is sufficient for the police to offer a caution with 5 years on the sex offenders register, this is in fact very commonly done. They also commonly use the phrase "making indecent images of children", which sounds like the offender has actually been taking pictures, when in fact it effectively means possession. They can get away with calling downloading of an image 'making', as a new file is created on a computer.
Finally, I will actually repeat something I think is important:
"Doe as the fact that the image is readily available not contribute to your abuse? I would think so"
Yes, absolutely. The fact that it is *made available* that creates the abuse. However, the abuse doesn't worsen as each new person downloads the image. 1000 people could make the donload, or 0 people could make the download, the abuse is of the same level in each case. (Expect maybe special circumstances where images are used to publically shame children, or to blackmail them). However, in ordinary circumstances, while we may not like the thought of it, the fact is that each person who downloads child pornography does not contribute to the abuse of the child. As long as what happens happens in private, then no harm has actually been done.
We may compare it to embarassing photographs taken by the paparazzi, or even pornographic photos of celebrities leaked to the public. Such actions surely also represent abuse, yet it would only be the photographers, or the person who made the leak in the first place who would be prosecuted - it would not be made illegal simpyl to possess them.
It's easy to forget that sexuality can be a powerful driving force, and in general we take every last inch of a paedophile's sexuality away from them. With lack of any other way with which to express their sexuality, I don't think it's surprising that some paedophiles seek out child pornography. Obviously it is not ideal that people are documenting abuse, and yes, I believe this should lead to some sort of prosecution. But in the circumstances, I don't think it's reasonable to prosecute to extent that we do, purely on the basis that they have downloaded child pornography. Certainly not at level 1.