One in ten men have carried out sex offences against children

Who do people think are committing them?

My money is on a much smaller minority of men perpetrating the majority of sexual crimes through serial offending.

Ofc they are not in the current stats. My point was about the inference that a criminal conviction implies being morally inept. That's an incredibly socially biased view: lots of young men from deprived communities end up with convictions for petty crime in their teens/20s. The great majority settle down and lead normal lives.

Conversely, if the stats in the Times article are even anywhere in the correct ballpark, most men who commit sexual offences against children are never convicted.

I was sexually abused as a child by a female babysitter. Never met an elf though.

The text reads in a way that people are imagining that 1 in 10 men have admitted to having a sexual relationship with a child, when they themselves were an adult, but I bet the questions that led to those statistics were worded quite differently. For example, me and my now husband formed a relationship when he was 19 and I was 17. So I'm assuming he'd fall into the 1 in 10 category, but certainly isn't a child abuser! Infact, at the age of 17, I'd had multiple sexual experiences and partners (mostly with boys and men older than myself, as they had cars and seemed way cooler than the 16-17 year olds I knew), none of those relationships/encounters were at all abusive or coersive. I was my husband's first girlfriend, when he was 19 and I was 17, there was never any control or coercion. I'm not saying there isn't a problem with child sex offences in this country, obviously there are, and it's absolutely horrific to think of the poor vulnerable children who have been exploited, had their innocence taken away, and been subjected to horrendous crimes against them. BUT, I'm not sure this "survey" and corresponding articles have laid this information out in a truthful manner. This actually is more damaging, as it's almost normalising and excusing real child abuse for the problem that it is, by making people feel like "oh it's actually quite normal for grown men to be attracted to young children, the statistics prove that", because that really isn't the case. Child abuse and peadophilia are NOT normal, and shouldn't ever be minimised, by making it seem like it's something that "just happens", and acceptable in any circumstances. A 18/19 year old lad having consentual sex with his 17 year old girlfriend for the first time is NOT child abuse. Muddying the waters like this is just taking up valuable time and resources that should be directed at the actual problem, and supporting real victims of real abuse.

We already know that sex offences are prolific.

Who do people think are committing them?

Elves?

Doesn’t anyone else find it suspect that the only suggested solution to this apparent child-perve pandemic, is to get rid of encryption?

There are so many solutions I can think of which would work better. For example, how about not letting people get off the sex offenders register once on it? Proper custodial sentences for those caught with child abuse images? More restrictions on pornography online? Not letting people trans out of punishment? Etc, etc.

Drink driving does, don't know the stats about it though. There are others like dangerous driving.

Also, the suffragette movement was over 100 years ago so it's unlikely they will take up any of these percentages.

its not clear from the article how they are defining children, ie age ranges, because as it stands the headline suggests 10% of men have committed paedophilic crimes, which is horrific. Are we talking one off catcalling or systematic and reoccurring abuse?

to be clear, none of it is good, and I don’t wish to imply that harassment of teenagers by sleazebags can be disregarded as less impactful than SA of pre-pubescents. But if I’m going to be horrified about a topic as important as this, I’d like the full facts.

Traffic offences don't count as a conviction I don't think so even then, nope.

I didn't say all of them were morally inept, just that there are a lot of morally inept people out there.

I think the statistic I find most eye opening and tragic for all involved is that a third of all child sexual abuse is committed by other children. They are mostly mirroring something done to them by others. It's fucking heartbreaking.

"There are over 11 million people in the UK with a criminal record.3 Research4 shows that 1 in 3 men have a criminal record. Of those men with a criminal record, just over half of these had been convicted on only one occasion, and 85% were convicted before they were 30 years old."

Source https://www.ucas.com/file/189506/download?token=NOONtzwa

"Data from the Ministry of Justice shows that 27% of working-age adults have a criminal conviction. This increases to 33% when just looking at men.:

Source https://www.personnelchecks.co.uk/latest-news/criminal-record-checks-increasing

Just a couple of examples. It's quite frightening to think about but not all convictions are violent of course.

I grew up in the vice area of my city, I used to get offered money by kerb crawlers at 8 am on my way to school in full school uniform. Shockingly one was the father of a classmate, he got a bloody shock when I made a point of walking out of school with her one day when he was picking her up.

Even more shocked when I was approached at 9 months pregnant. Apparently some men have a fetish for heavily pregnant women.

Might be true if we are including traffic offences but it's a bit of a reach to assume everyone who has ever committed an offence is morally inept. Are we including the Suffragettes and gay men pre-1967 in that?

Agree - this all seems a bit vague, and I can't find the actual report.

I'd also say that, when you are set up and funded to find evidence of child sexual exploitation, as ChildLight (sponsoring organisation) is, you are unlikely to find low prevalence.

This is not to deny that paedophilia is a huge problem, but I think we should be wary of clickbait stats.

The other thing, is the definition of ‘child’ - if they are 18 and they got off with a 15 year old who was part of their friendship group does that count in the stats?

I thought the same as you and then I thought maybe not, maybe they do think it is normal so aren't ashamed or maybe some are and some aren't.

What? Sorry, I don't buy this for a second. Source please.

The fact remains that not all men are attracted to young girls, for a start off some will be attracted to males, some are attracted to more mature women. I don't think Macron went off with his teacher because he thought she was grateful for any attention. As I discovered all too graphically when preparing court files some are attracted to animals. Some days I couldn't eat my lunch after what I'd been looking at.

Sweeping generalisations are very rarely true.

I really don't get your logic here

The logic is that the majority of men would not want to engage in a survey asking them about private stuff. Of the minority of men who would be up for responding to such a survey, there will be a higher concentration of perverts than the general population.

The lack of context about this research is a huge issue with this article. It's basically meaningless without some info on the definitions used and questions asked.

Great click bait though.

"For example, if at any point the survey said something like “we will be asking some questions of an intimate and sexual nature, do you agree to continue?” the less pervy men would bail at that point."

@TeenEyeroll I really don't get your logic here at all if anything I think it is more likely that men who have done these things would either bail or lie.

How were the respondents selected for the survey? I find these statistics improbable. I can imagine that if there was any element of self-selection, at any point, it would bias pervier men who jump at any opportunity to think and talk about what gets them off.

For example, if at any point the survey said something like “we will be asking some questions of an intimate and sexual nature, do you agree to continue?” the less pervy men would bail at that point.

I am concerned that this is being used as leverage to get us to agree to outlawing private and encrypted communications and to allow the State to snoop on us - using child protection to scare us into relinquishing our rights to privacy.

I would not be surprised.

The 'lock them up and throw away the key' argument is often expressed on Mumsnet.

The central problem with this is that child sex abuse and rape are not rare. This is hard to acknowledge but true. Even the system we have now is completely overloaded.