AIBU to think there is not a paedophile on every corner

[ChaoticAngelofAnarchy]

or in every swimming pool, or every park or every newsagents, supermarket etc etc and people need to stop being so paranoid.

Yes, the other thread prompted this (so sue me...I don't really care) but I've seen this paranoia in rl and on other threads and sometimes in posts on threads that are not about this.

"Fuck me. Must try harder DM/troll/nob!!

Rofl at Spaedos!"

Apologies I didn't realise there was a moderator on the thread. There must be another Rizzo.

The children also need to know that certain types of behaviour are not acceptable from other children!! They too can be sexual predators

I'm not suggesting that CRBs are perfect - sadly I have had first hand experience of their fallibility - but they do have their place. Sadly, whilst the new policies being implemented should be an improvement - and, in some ways are an improvement - they are also causing significant problems. See the case recently of the nurse who was given a ten-year suspension because she left her 14-year old in charge of her 3 year old child. As far as I know this decision is currently going to appeal, but hopefully common sense will prevail.

FYI the original thread is now being deleted because it was started by a Troll poster already banned my MNHQ.

The generally used figures is that 1 in 10 children are abused with girls being at around 2/3 higher risk than boy. Child Sexual Abuse is really not anywhere near as rare as people believe. Some figures go as high as 1 in 4 children but they are definately paranoid, 1 in 10 is fairly well accepted.

The most likely person to sexually abuse a child in the UK is his/her natural father, followed by the step-father (this fluctuates though depending on the last stats count, it often swaps places with step-father first). I forget the rest of the order of risk but mother comes fairly high up on that list. Strangers account for a tiny fraction of sexual abuse incidents (or at least, of the reported ones) and then those incidents tend to be isolated incidents whereas abuse by trusted people like the babysitter or the big brother tend to not be an isolated incident.

Of the abuse incidents that happen almost none of the children abused will find the courage to tell on thier abuser before they reach adulthood. Agencies believe that kids who are known survivors of abuse before they are 18 account for under 10% of the kids living with it.

So paedophiles are certainly numerous (and/or very busy) but they are unlikely to be standing round the edges of the park in grubby macks where you can easily spot them. They're those nice normal happy men and women you greet at the school gates and send your kids to sleepovers with (don't worry, most paedophles wouldn't risk it to rape a child at a sleepover, thier own child is far less hazardous).

You can't spot a paedophile. Ok so some of the rather dim ones are a dead giveaway, but those are the ones that get caught early on and taken out of society. The ones that are any good at it (for want of a better expression) will work thier way through many victims. So the number of paedophiles is lower than the number of victims, but how much lower is not something I can quantify.

Paedophiles are all over the place, although not neccessarily in the form we have been conditioned by the media to fear.

thanks you for the very sensible post underacheiving- it's just saved me looking up the latest stats from our child proetction stuff and posting it....
It's hard to convince people that the vast majority of children are abused by someone in their close or extended family (maybe becasue those that are not involved in abuse find this idea so abhorent?) but it is unfortunatley true.
The chances of your child being abused by a random stranger are very slim.

< applauds Underachieving>

When I was studying Media we were led to believe that the incidents of strangers abusing or abducting a child are just as rare now as they have ever been. There were no golden 'olden days' when things were safer. The only difference is due to the increase in mass media and the internet we hear about it more often than we used to.

www.nspcc.org.uk/Inform/research/statistics/sex_offenders_statistics_wda48745.html

From the link in the third bullet point down in 1993 there were an estimated 18.5 million men in the UK over the age of 20, of those 110,000 had been convicted for a sexual offense against a child. I make that 0.54% or 1 in 200 of the male population of the UK at the time had a conviction for a sexual offense against a child. Even with a very conservative (in my opinion) estimate that 1 in 5 offenders are actually caught and prosecuted that gives us an actual total of offenders of 2.7% or 1 in 37 of the adult male population of the country. You must also remember that in 1993 these things were likely to have been swept under the carpet a lot more than they are now.

This is just a very conservative estimate of the number of men who have sexual feelings towards children who actually end up sexually abusing anyone. I seriously doubt that every man who has felt sexual feelings towards a child has actually acted on it in any way - most of them probably have perfectly fulfilling sexual relationships with women (or men). It's like saying that every man who is predominantly gay but has the occasional sexual feeling towards women will take advantage of a woman if she is too drunk to say no.

Queen- the 110,000 is ever convicted, not convicted out of current population. Therefore, you're overestimating the paedo problem in your sums.

The current UK conviction rape for rape is 5%. 95% of cases fail largely because of the difficulty in establishing evidence of lack of consent. The estimates for false reporting of crimes say that rape is the least falsely reported of all.

I haven't got figures for the sexual abuse of children as it comes under several different precise offences. But if we take the conviction rates for rape (the nearest comparable offence I can look up a stat for) into account then I'm reckoning that as many as 20% are convicted is woefully optimistic.

should say "I'm reckoning that the above posters estimation that as many as 20%" sorry, wasn't clear where I got that 20% from. It was from QueenStromba's post where she says she thinks perhaps 1 in 5 are convicted.

I've read through the paper again and the only way that the 110,000 would be an over estimate that it will include some statutory rape charges against men who were just a little bit older than the girl at the time. What they have done is made estimates based information published by the Home Office. This data is based on convictions of men born in a particular 4 week period in 1953, 1958, 1963, 1968 and 1973. For the 1953 cohort 0.7% had been convicted of a sexual offense against a child by the age of 40. This number will be an over estimate of the number of actual paedophilia convictions because, as I mentioned above, it will include a few cases of statutory rape where the offender was about the same age as the victim. Conversely, some convictions for paedophilia will be masked due to the offender being convicted of something which is considered a more serious crime because they only count the most serious crime a person has committed in the statistics. The paper also specifically states that indecent exposure and possession of indecent material are not counted in these statistics. Now unless a particular star sign is more likely to be a paedophile the 0.7% conviction rate for sexual offenses against a child is looking pretty accurate (if not a little on the conservative side).

I was going ultra conservative on my 20% there Underachieving - I wanted to use a figure that nobody would be able to argue was too high since even with my highly conservative estimates my calculations say there are a hell of a lot of active paedophiles out there.

You're mistake the conviction rate for the offending rate. The offending rate is undoubtedly higher than the conviction rate. How much higher is unquantified.

Only a small number of the children abused will ever bring this to the attention of the police, even 30 or 40 years later. Of those cases brought to the police many never reach the CPS and then of those actually prosecuted a lot will get off on lack of evidence or legal technicalities. Also contrary to popular belief even medical examinations of children who have certainly been abused often fail to produce evidence. There was a study done where pregnant girls under the age of consent were examined- most showed no signs of ever having been involved in sexual activity which could not also have been attributed to normal living. Convicting a paedophile is notoriously tricky. Childrens disclosures are very hard to obtain and when a child does disclose the current system requires that child to tell his/her story to 5-15 different people before the conviction is secured. This is even with CAMAT (video) interviews being made by police for courts.

A large part of the reason it's so hard to catch a paedophile and bring him/her to justice is that people can't accept paedophilia could ever happen within the frames of thier own lives. And so we culturally err on the side of the defendant rather than the vitim.

Add to this that 50% of survivors of a single rape (at any age) will develop PTSD, a mental health condition, as a result of the attack. 75% of survivors of multiple rape or serious sexual assault (which includes most child abuse survivors) will develop PTSD and then that PTSD is more likely again where the trauma occurred during childhood... What have you got? Easily discredited witnesses who up against an otherwise apparently respectable and normal person end up humilliated and rejected by the juries.

Paedophilia is affecting 1 in 10 of our children. Clearly this is a significant risk. If only 0.7 of the population are sexually abusive to children then each paedophile is responsible for an average of 14 victims. I'm not sure that's any more reassuring if you look at it that way.

You've misinterpreted me. My last post was defending the initial estimate of 0.54% of men having a conviction for the benefit BaggedandTagged. I'm quite confident that an estimate that 5% of the male population having sexually abused a child would be a conservative one. If that many men are abusing children then men having feelings of sexual attraction towards children is a lot more common than we would like to think (I doubt even half of the men that have these feelings actually act on it - it is probably more common than being gay). While I was at university two women out of my tight knit circle of friends caught men they know using child pornography (one walked in on her boyfriend with cock in hand and I think the other one found it on her brother's computer). A man I know well has also confided in me that he has these feelings has never used kiddie porn or thought about children when he masturbates or has sex (he is attracted to women and he has a perfectly fulfilling sex life with his girlfriend) and I know that he's not the type to act on those feelings.

Queen- didn't read the pdf on hte NSPCC website- now I have I agree with you that its 110,000 of a cohort, not ever. It was the NSPCC summary which was misleading. Apologies.

YABU - I was in a similar position to some other posters on here - nobody knew my step dad was a paedophile either. No one would believe it still. Err on the side of caution for your children's sake. My mother didn't.

Sorry to hear about your experience justcarrots29. Was it a case that your mother knew but just didn't want to admit it or did he just have everyone fooled? I really do think there has been far too much emphasis on stranger danger. Everyone who has confided in me that they were molested as a child was abused by a very close relative, normally father/step father, uncle or in one case mother. People just don't want to think that people they know would do such a thing, they much prefer to think that it's only the dodgy looking men that spend too much time hanging around near the school gates. That's not to say that you shouldn't worry about strangers. When I was about 6 and my sister was 8 (definitely not more than a year or two older) we saw what was in hindsight was a man wanking while watching us at the beach. I'm pretty sure we'd walked to the beach by ourselves that day (it was 20 odd years ago and parents did just let their kids out to play at that age although they probably didn't realise we were going that far) and fortunately he was able to restrain himself to just wanking although it might have been a different story if it was one of us on our own. We were both young enough to have never seen a penis so just thought he was changing and hadn't noticed we were there (looking back he definitely had a massive erection), we actually felt like it was our fault that we'd seen it so we never told anyone about it. He definitely wasn't the disgusting dirty old man type either, probably 30s because I remember thinking he was about my mum's age rather than about my granny's age.

Come to think of it, if Underachieving's stats on how many children are sexually abused are correct then I wonder if the main proponents of the whole stranger danger campaign were molesting their own kids and wanted to draw attention away from themselves?

And the hysteria around 'paedos'' makes matters worse IMHO.

When the world reacts like an hysterical lynch mob then fewer children will come forward.
I can very clearly recall the first time the thought ' I should tell' occurred to me and it was swiftly followed with the realisation of the tsunami of shit that would hit my family and everything i understood to be hone and family and friends.
Children are not stupid.

If society tells them that a 'paedo' is a filthy odd weirdo hanging around parks in a Mac, and the sensible reaction to finding one is to find their house and arrive with pitchforks. So a child who is being abused by maybe their father and who has a complicated relationship with them which will often still include love, is not going to be more conflicted rather than less about speaking out.

I feel I have to say here that whilst I have talked about being abused I have not and will not say by whom. But it was not my dad who was a lovely fabulous man. Just in case any miss marples are on here. I would hate anyone to think that of my dad.

Sorry. Bit gibbery but hope it makes sense

Makes perfect sense Pagster

I get all torn over these threads. My own issues make me fearful but I know I am being irrational. So it's a bit of a battle in my head. I just mentally slap myself. Often.

I would like to however, just gently suggest that if someone is really paranoid there may be good reason and demons they have not faced. I'm not talking about the general masses giving it large about paedo's. I'm talking someone with obvious issues.

Just trying to spread the word on love, compassion, understanding and overlooking crazed paranoia