To be absolutely sick of excuses being made for men's disgusting sexual behaviour? Trigfer warning. Hugh Edwards sentencing.

Yes, NSPCC data found that 87,000 sexual offences against children were recorded by police in 2022/23. That's the number of offences, not number of perpetrators though which will be lower.

On images alone they found via Freedom of Information requests that police forces were bringing more than 25,000 charges a year.

But the National Crime Agency said last year they think that's the tip of the iceberg. According to their estimates "there are between 680,000 [and] 830,000 adults in the UK that pose some degree of sexual risk to children. These are extraordinary figures: roughly 10 times the prison population".

And the NCA is very clear, 80% of those arrested in relation to child sexual abuse are male. The crime data and their research suggests that 2% of the adult male population are a sexual danger to children.

So if we (as a society) want more of these men to be in prison we either have to create a lot more prison places or release many thousands of people who are already in there.

Yes!!!

Come and walk the landings with me!!

Who is going to join up??

If thats the case, there is nothing stopping you joining Police or Probation, or becoming a prison officer. Failing that, you could volunteer in one of these areas. We all have to do our bit if we are going to turn this around.

Several, of course.

Absolutely disgraceful!

Have we had a NAMALT or women do it too yet?

YANBU. I can not believe that two men can share videos of young children (7 and 11) being raped and walk away with a suspended sentence. It's an absolute disgrace.

No restrictions on him in the future as the judge thinks he's an upstanding bloke who messed up due to his mental health issue. A mental health issue that only appears when confronted with consequences. How terribly convenient.

I'm so angry.

Which is why I said anecdotally. I have dealt with several female sex offenders, some of whom had committed contact offences.

However, we need to move away from this obsession with imprisoning people as it just isn’t working.

since we are only involved in this convo, you really have no idea about if i have an obsession with imprisoning people.

As it happens i do think we should put people in prison: for violence (GBH and above, for rape, for murder, and for being a part of the child sex abuse industry)

I don't think we should be jailing people for a lot of things they are in jail for, and i do believe we need a much better and far more robust and community based method of punishment, reparations to victims of crime against property etc, and rehabilitation.

I don't believe that anyone into these kind of images will ever be safe, and i think a year to think about what they did, and then a LIFETIME on the register would be appropriate, knowing they would be out in 6 months. And i am ok for their lives to be pretty much ruined in terms of only getting shit jobs and having shit pensions afterwards.

It's massively relevant because a large majority of those in prison for these offences ie. the worst offenders, were victims themselves once upon a time. This does NOT excuse their behaviour. But it does go some way to trying to reduce the impossible numbers we are talking about here.

By tackling the source of the problem then you begin to tackle the wider effects. Yes, in an ideal world all paedophiles would be locked up and away from children, but you would have to turn our whole country into a prison to achieve that.

This is of course an incredibly emotive subject because we are talking about child victims of the worst crimes imaginable. Unfortunately "kill or castrate the fuckers" is not an actual solution.

It's not relevant? So anyone convicted of a crime should get the exact same sentence?

Say someone steals £500 from a shop. Should there be the same punishment if it's a mother struggling to feed kids, a millionaire's daughter doing it for kicks, an old lady who can't explain why she did it, a drug addict funding their habit? All the same sentence with no thought about the context or likelihood of reoffending?

I didn't mean anyone abused as a child would think that's ok. Of course not. I do mean that these things are more complicated than meets the eye.

Unfortunately there’s not enough room in prisons and we have sentencing guidelines. This sentence looks right when compared with the normal sentences for this. Former head of DPP says this and you should not give a sentence based on whether someone is a household name or not.

The bigger issue is how individuals control risky behaviour. It’s certainly something that can result from being bipolar. It’s definitely a mental health issue and prison doesn’t address this. It needs therapy and that’s now required. It’s also important to understand that losing your job and standing in society is a “sentence”. It is like losing everything. So the court has punished fairly from what I can see.

As an additional comment, we are a nation that only engages in law and sentencing when we think it’s too lenient. We don’t engage much at other times and we should. The law underpins society and its vital we understand how it works and even read up
on sentencing guidelines. Some people want 200,000 people in prisons. That’s simply not going to happen. There has to be a judgement on risk to society and managing the risk. HE is seen as a manageable risk. So that’s why it’s a suspended sentence.

Yeah it’s funny how that increase has coincided with men being recorded as women.

And no, it’s not ‘whatever’ FFS.

The poor children in those photographs.

Unlike Huw, those kids have a life sentence. If I had it my way, the victims in those photos would be given every penny and asset of Huw's. They deserve it.

@ClaudiaWinklepanda we need to examine our attitudes right from the start. This includes child rearing, acceptable behaviours, the encouragement of certain gendered behaviours including the ‘boys will be boys’ trope. We need to stop kids having unsupervised internet access and parents need to be more clued up. There needs to be more easily accessible help for those experiencing worrying sexual thoughts. We need to be less permissive about certain kinks and sexual behaviours, all too often shielded under the umbrella of consenting adults. We need regional disparities to be removed. We need investment in services and schemes that are preventative. I could go on……

Oh aye, cos women have nothing else to do with their time. We do the vast majority of child- and elderly care, wifework, community work, and most of us work full-time. We earn less and travel uphill thanks to sexism. But sure, shut up whinging and fix systemic misogyny, gals.

For those that don't know there are many dedicated 'sex offender' prisons in this country

I can think of 4 off the top of my head, but there's more

There's no dedicated prisons for any other crimes except young offenders

Yes.

"not a threat to society"

you are, i take it, familiar with the very basic economic concept of supply and demand, right?

You do know what these images are of, right? because despite the press and some posters pussy-footing around it is Child Sexual Abuse.

but "no threat" right?

Why not? If it's a crime against children but the perpetrator is in early 20s, grew up in care experiencing regular abuse themselves, it's relevant, right? Not an excuse or a get out of jail free card, but relevant.

How is it relevant? The man I know who was sexually abused as a child was in care when it happened to him. (So much for care!). He despises child abusers, and it's offensive to men and women like him when child abusers use their own childhood traumas as an "excuse".

ETA. Mitigating circumstances (childhood or adult trauma, mental health issues etc) are of course sometimes relevant for other crimes, for example drug use (sometimes turned to for self medication), TV licence non payment, etc. But there's no justification for child abuse.

It's not "whatever" at all. The overwhelming majority of sexual violence is committed by men, none of whom are receiving adequate sentences from the hugely male-dominated judiciary.

Fuck's sake, look at the bigger picture.

Mostly they’re handed out by magistrates.

If you have an issue with how magistrates are sentencing, then please apply to become one.

I take real umbrage with people ranting about how terrible magistrate decision making is when these are lay people giving up their own free time to volunteer to make our justice system function.

If you don’t like it, be part of the change. But don’t cast aspersions on those who are giving back to a community by volunteering to be the backbone of our justice system.

but not all or nearly all of them?

not good enough. Police resources are stretched for sure. I want more than some people involved in child sexual abuse being managed effectively.

I want the VAST majority of them being managed extremely robustly and effectively. And I'd be ok with a few non-violent prisoners being released to free up a few cells for them.

A tiny fraction of the number of male offenders.

But as always on these threads it's like 5,4,3,2,1 "Women do it too!"

Seldom.

But if something isn't done, this thing is going to become accepted mainstream sexuality and then what?