Pedophile Activist on BBC Radio 4 Behind The Crime

Ian’s story is one of a compulsion that started early in childhood

Many/most do.

They are children and young people when they first offend.

What do we do about this?

I haven't heard the programme - I'm not particularly inclined to and I'm not on iPlayer but I've seen the programme notes which struck me as unusually long and explanatory, comprising seven paragraphs about the content (three of which begin with 'Ian's' or 'Ian'), plus additional information about the programme. In full:
Title: " 'Ian' "
[The Seven paras]:
"Sally Tilt and Dr Kerensa Hocken are forensic psychologists who work in prisons.

Their role is to help people who have committed crimes to look at the harm they’ve caused to other people, understand why, and work out how to make changes to prevent further harm after they’ve been released.

In Behind the Crime, they take the time to understand someone whose crimes have led to harm and in some cases, imprisonment.

In this final episode they talk to Ian*, who pleaded guilty to the offence of indecent exposure. Ian received a non-custodial sentence, was placed on the register of sex offenders and was ordered to attend a sex offender treatment programme.

Ian’s story is one of a compulsion that started early in childhood and continued into his adult years. By talking through the key moments in Ian’s life and upbringing, we can start to understand how he, and others, reach the point where they cause harm through shameful acts that cause disgust to society.

Ian's conviction led to him seeking further help to curb his compulsions, and he has successfully learned how to live safely. His behaviour has been under control for over ten years, and his successful treatment may have prevented further, far more serious harm happening in the future.

Ian engaged with a specialist charity called StopSO, which offers treatment to perpetrators and offers support for survivors of sexual offending. www.stopso.org.uk"

[Additional information]:
"*Ian’s name has been changed to protect his identity.
A warning that some people may find this programme distressing.
For details of organisations that can provide help and support, visit bbc.co.uk/actionline
Producer: Andrew Wilkie
Editor: Hugh Levinson
Behind the Crime is a co-production between BBC Long Form Audio and the Prison Radio Association."
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001b43m

100% agree with this post.

If people were able to admit they have a disorder like paedophilia without e.g. getting their house burned down, their lives threatened, then they could get help which would mean they are less likely to offend further down the line.

I think this is a convenient excuse. If we're keeping a distinction between paedophiles and child abusers then it would be more accurate to say child abusers are more likely get their houses burned down when they are caught because any admission at that point would be confessing a crime.

'hard of thinking' - attack the arguments, not the people making them. Lest someone think you don't actually have a good argument yourself.

www.healthcareers.nhs.uk/explore-roles/psychological-therapies/roles/forensic-psychologist

This whole movement has been a long-game to lower societal boundaries and shift the Overton window to make paedophilia acceptable.

I’m so used to intelligent woman posting on here that I wasn’t prepared for so many responses from the hard of thinking.

Some paedophiles will develop / realize their attraction to children when they are still children themselves and going through puberty, so anything from age 10 upwards really. Do we condem an 11 or 12 year old who hasn't done anything wrong because he has a psychological disorder? Or do we try and help him so that he never offends?

Yep. Exactly this.

Like all this MAP bullshit - no you are a paedo!

👏🏼👏🏼

👍

Does anyone know if there is a transcript?

This is not a sexual orientation, it's a
desire or compulsion to abuse
There is no need to be understanding, only to keep safeguarding as free
From loopholes as possible

Some people learned a great deal from Savile

Quite

If people were able to admit they have a disorder like paedophilia without e.g. getting their house burned down, their lives threatened, then they could get help which would mean they are less likely to offend further down the line.

The psychology of paedophilia is poorly understood because obviously people are reluctant to come forward and say "yes, I have a sexual attraction to children".

There are theories that it is innate (i.e. you are born with it) and / or that it is formed through childhood experiences or childhood abuse.

Some paedophiles will develop / realize their attraction to children when they are still children themselves and going through puberty, so anything from age 10 upwards really. Do we condem an 11 or 12 year old who hasn't done anything wrong because he has a psychological disorder? Or do we try and help him so that he never offends?

I think it's important to keep the disorder of paedophilia separate in your mind from child sexual offenders. Being a paedophile is not in and of itself a crime.

I'd rather have a world where there are infinitely fewer victims of CSA because we can identify those who have paedophilia and help them, instead of waiting for a child to be hurt just so we can throw someone in prison.

I actually agree I don’t think paedophilia can be ‘cured’ but I would like to see more research and interventions aimed at reducing offending.

Genuine question, but when has removing the taboo from something, ever led to it being reduced?

The day I listen to pedos on what we should do to reduce offending, is the day I put foxes in charge of keeping chickens safe 🙄

How about we listen to victims?

Removing the taboo has little guarantee of stopping those who say it will stop them offending. It's an experiment with children's lives at stake. The offender will lose nothing if this experiment goes wrong.
Removing the taboo also opens the flood gates for all this who don't offend because of the taboo. Again the worst affected will be the children of the failed experiment.

This is not a risk anyone should be willing to take to enable a potential offender find comfort.

Ian talking about reporting to the police station as he’s on the sex offenders’ register for life

What does that mean to be on the sex offenders’ register?

It’s a very shameful thing because I have to keep going into the police station in a public area and saying, “I’m here to report.” It’s just in the open, reception desk, people hanging about. I mean I’m feeling awful anyway and I’m very worried because it’s been in the local paper, all the neighbours know, all the friends know, everybody knows what I’ve been up to.

Can I ask you a bit about that Ian because I and Kerensa speak to people quite regularly who have done something in their past that they regret and caused harm to another person and very serious harm. The public reaction to somebody who’s committed a sexual offence seems to carry an extra stigma than somebody who’s committed a very, very serious say violent offence and I wonder if you’ve pieced together any of what that’s about?

The fact that it’s a child, that’s something that’s really hard to live with actually is that it’s harmful and I don’t think of myself as a nasty person who wants to cause harm. I’ve always tried to do it in a way that wasn’t going to be frightening or whatever and now I’m confronted with, I can’t duck this anymore, what I did was horrible, it hurt people and I’ve got to live with that for the rest of my life. I can’t go and apologise to these victims, I can’t make their lives any better, I can’t help them in any way. There’s nothing I can do about that.

Remember that this is a conversation for the radio. It’s not how they’d conduct a risk assessment- type report for a parole board or any other professional meeting.

They talk about how the man exposed himself while walking past people. All his crimes are described as non-contact.

23:05

One of the things that Ian said was that he didn’t notice any adverse reaction from the victims but I suppose there’s a question of how we can be sure of that.

I think there is. I think part of our ability to do harm is our capacity to turn away from harm, to not notice it. To switch off from it. Somehow he’s able to switch off and this is a real contrast to Cameron’s story that we heard in the previous episode they talk to all sorts of offenders In that story he wanted to hurt somebody, almost enjoyed the feeling of doing that, whereas in Ian’s story the aim wasn’t to hurt somebody so in order to carry on doing what he wanted to do he had to switch off to that possibility.

He had to believe that it wasn’t having an adverse effect.

Because otherwise he couldn’t continue to do it. The fact that we can call these ‘non contact’ crimes, there is an assumption perhaps that there isn’t an impact on the person involved and of course we know that the reality of that is far from the case.

Sometimes it’s not always the person directly that has seen the offence but the person that they tell, so maybe in this case worried parents. Imagine how upset that they would be and worried that maybe something might happen to their child or somebody actually might try to touch them or take them away.

So while Ian has never actually touched your child that’s not to say there won’t have been an impact on all the many people that have been the victims of his offence.

Obviously bollocks that the BBC or this programme are in favour of paedophiles (having had paedophiles working in a big corporation doesn't mean they're in favour of them - you might as well say BT or Nike are in favour of paedophiles since statistically they'll have had them on their staff).

Sounded like they tried to get as many disclaimers into the first part of the show as possible to explain, which was quite useful - they did explain for example why they weren't going to jump in and say to him "but you're a disgusting man who should be executed don't you agree" kind of things.

But I still feel they were too credulous, they can't be surely when they work with these people for a job, but I can only remember them commentating critically once (speculating that he'd ignored negative/upset reactions), when there was so much they could have been cynical about.

I was surprised they mentioned sex education like that would fix sex crimes, which indicated they believed he was genuinely confused about whether what he was doing was right or wrong. NO child born in the last hundred years would think "oh maybe being a flasher is a valid hobby".

I don't know if I missed it but they didn't explain what his crimes actually were, just that he turned up (somewhere) and flashed - I only know he was flashing at children because it was discussed earlier in the show. I think it's a real failure not to be blunt in the programme about what exactly he'd done and what he was convicted of, that's basic journalism.

There is definitely a push by paedophiles to normalise adult/child sexual relationships so it's hardly surprising that people would question the motives of a program which was entirely sympathetic to the experience of a child sex offender.

I am worried by the just born that way idea for this reason. It seems a short step away from ‘we just want to be who we are’.

In that article about Germany I posted earlier, ok that was the late 60s and 70s but there were people quite openly trying to lower the age of consent. We had the PIE. Aren’t there present day advocates too? This means there is definitely an idea out there among some that this is normal.

From that article I posted earlier:

Suddenly, it seemed as if all relationship structures could—and must—be reconfigured, if there was any hope of producing a generation less damaged than the previous one. In the late sixties, educators in more than thirty German cities and towns began establishing experimental day-care centers, where children were encouraged to be naked and to explore one another’s bodies. “There is no question that they were trying (in a desperate sort of neo-Rousseauian authoritarian antiauthoritarianism) to remake German/human nature,” Herzog writes.

Kentler inserted himself into a movement that was urgently working to undo the sexual legacy of Fascism but struggling to differentiate among various taboos. In 1976, the magazine Das Blatt argued that forbidden sexual desire, such as that for children, was the “revolutionary event that turns our everyday life on its head, that lets feelings break out and that shatters the basis of our thinking.” A few years later, Germany’s newly established Green Party, which brought together antiwar protesters, environmental activists, and veterans of the student movement, tried to address the “oppression of children’s sexuality.” Members of the Party advocated abolishing the age of consent for sex between children and adults.