To think that actually, there probably is a paedophile on every corner?

[MrsToadofToadHall]

When I first became a parent, back in the 2000s, I tended to think that some other parents were quite irrational about their fears regarding paedophiles. There seemed to be quite a lot of hysteria about child abductions whipped up in the tabloids, quite a few of the mums I knew looked very suspiciously on men who worked or volunteered with children, and I tended to think that although paedophiles unfortunately existed, they were in the minority and we shouldn't raise our children to be suspicious of every man just because he was a man, nor should we limit their independence due to fear of something that was very unlikely to happen. I suppose I was a bit "cool mum" and proud of my ability to rationalise and see through hysteria

In recent years, I've come to think that I was wrong. So many famous and prominent people have been exposed as having abused children and teenagers. Although I have always supported a certain level of sex ed in schools, elements of this have gone beyond a level I'm comfortable with. It seems to me to be more acceptable to expose children to sexual/adult issues at an earlier age. As well as this, recent revelations in my own fairly small community have caused me to reconsider - a teenager who abused younger relatives, it was brought to the attention of police and SS but in the end, all that could be done was refer him for optional counselling. Three or four men have been found out as they attempted to groom very young girls, some primary aged, via social media. Friends have also confided in me regarding their own childhood abuse. I know most of these men, and while I realise that abusers don't come with a big sticker on their forehead, most of them really were spectacularly ordinary and had wives and children

Obviously I still realise that the vast majority of men are fine, but my point is, I thought paedophiles were a few lone individuals, and now it seems there are far more of them about than I ever would have realised.

Does that make sense?

YANBU, sadly.

It’s not a dig at you (from anyone as far as I can see) but pornography gives the impression of it being consensual and it needs to be picked up and corrected at every opportunity.

I don't understand where this idea comes from. The word pornography doesn't imply anything about consent, it just means images with sexual content.

I was bought up to be a people pleaser. My mother and father were proud of me being so well behaved and so easy around grown ups. I was an only child and was taught to behave 'like a grown up' from when i was v young.

Smile and kiss Uncle X. Be nice and hug Auntie Y. Be a good girl and always do as you're told and make us proud.

Then as a 12/13 year old on the Tube having my arse squeezed or having some bloke shove his erection into my back i'd be worried about reacting in case i annoyed anyone. I didn't know how to stop it in any way. I came up with lots of stratergies (like i said in my first post on here) to get away quietly or avoid the situation happening in the first place.

My DDs have been told if anyone touches them inappropriately they are to say loudly so everyone can hear GET YOUR HAND OFF MY ARSE AND MOVE AWAY and be bloody angry not apolgetic !!! And not get off the train in the middle of nowhere 8 stops too soon and end up risking getting in even more trouble like i used to!

Yanbu, I fear it's far far more prevalent than we realise.

In America I believe they have a site where they can know how many offenders live within a set radius. The numbers are often horrifying.

I hope not, though according to the other thread running here people think they’re running marketing for ASDA
The Asda thread which explains the issue with the inclusivity materials they're recommending.

@coffeeday it’s quite hard to describe.

There are certain things which are obvious - inappropriate comments, being overly tactile, overtly engineering time alone with potential victims...

But ime that’s the less experienced perpetrators that do this

The more practiced of them are more subtle and better at hiding from the less aware people.

It’s things like body language, being interested in things generally only of interest to children, certain facial expressions etc

There are some scientific studies that show that victims of such crimes are better able to spot them than those who haven’t been victims, theories as to why this is relate to micro expressions, facial tension, body odour etc

I’ve got good “gut instincts” I’m very rarely wrong when it comes to assessing if someone is trustworthy or not and I do believe that comes from my life experiences, not just csa but being around addicts and violent people in my family too.

I can tell within moments of meeting someone if we’re going to get along or not.

Certain people I’ve taken badly against over the years I’ve very much been proven right - sometimes years later. This has included paedophiles but also thieves, fraudsters, violent people, dodgy employers...

2 of my previous employers I stupidly ignored my instincts and I came to very much regret those decisions!

A shopkeeper from when I was a kid who’s shop I refused to step foot in after meeting him once (local reputation was he was “sweet” and “loved children”) was later found to be a prolific abuser, committed suicide at start of court case just as many victims were starting to come forward.

I’ve had many experiences of people coming to me about people I didn’t trust/like and saying “omg you were so right! I never would have guessed”

I’ve only 5 men in dds life that I’ve trusted to leave her alone with, I’ve been very cautious on that score.

Sleepovers had certain rules that if they weren’t met she didn’t go. They are not a necessity.

I am still even now shocked at how some parents STILL don’t educate and prepare their children in terms of personal safety.

I’ve done that with dd from a young age, she is now 19 and while a sociable, confident and friendly young woman she’s no fool either. She’s horrified at the risks some of her friends take even now!

She’s had to “rescue” less well educated friends on several occasions.

He's absolutely normal, good looking and successful all of which is meaningless

These predators aren’t doing this because they can’t attract sexual partners, it’s not about sex it’s about power, control, deviancy.

I feel this guy might be more of an opportunist

During nurse training we had a day with an expert in this area, he’d been doing the job many years.

He said in his opinion they’re all opportunists. The reason most abusers are family/friends isn’t because that’s their preference but because those are the children have access to and who’s parents are less likely to believe such a thing of a relative/friend.

It’s sadly not uncommon for those close to the abuser not to believe the victim.

My mum doesn’t believe me (abuser was my dad), neither does my sister and bro is on the fence.

I’d say that Australian article is fairly accurate actually

I think that a proportion of the population are probably paedophiles, however most children who are sexually abused are abused by family friends or relatives why do you differentiate? There’s no difference! EVERY paedophile is related to/friends with somebody - we need to get away from the myth that they are somehow “separate” from OUR society

@BarbieandKenbruce I can relate to that writers feelings absolutely. I also would be unsurprised to learn a certain amount of unsolved murder victims had been perpetrators

Something else that isn’t acknowledged is a lot of csa is very carefully done so as NOT to leave evidence - not all paedophiles rape, not because they don’t want to, but because it leaves evidence!

I spoke with the police several years ago about possibly reporting my abuse and they were honest in saying it wasn’t worth causing myself additional stress as I’d no proof. It’s literally my word against his as is extremely often the case.

and if these men were actually sentenced to jail terms the prison system couldn't cope either yes I believe this is the REAL reason they’re rarely prosecuted and minimally sentenced - because it’s SO prevalent

We socialise in groups and I always know where they are please also be aware that grooming and even actual abuse can happen even in the presence of protective adults, certainly was true for me, many instances occurred when my mum was within touching distance. It’s not just the “worst” kind of abuse that’s damaging it’s the relentlessness of the abusers “attention”, groping, stroking, manipulating a child into touching their parts can happen in an instant, I think it maybe gives them a kick to get away with it in these circumstances.

@BeefCheeks COMPLETELY Disagree with your hopefully goady post at 1655 it’s NOT sexist to acknowledge REALITY

It gives me the heebie jeebies seeing other single mums get together with a new bloke after a short time together we see it on here repeatedly! Women moving in men they’ve been dating/known less than 6 months/year!! I’ve been flamed several times for criticising such behaviour but imo I am right! It’s stupid and selfish! These women BARELY know these men and it’s not just about paedophilia - they could be “just” financially unstable/freeloaders, controlling, violent, addicts...

I really believe we need to make such behaviour socially unacceptable - and yes I apply the same views to fathers who move in new partners too quickly too!

Many of the issues step families have I read of on here and know of in real life could have been prevented/minimised had the biological parents prioritised their kids rather than their love lives!!

@witchwife I get what you’re saying but I think the reason victims related to the offender aren’t often stated as such is to protect the victims - not the perpetrator. They have a right to anonymity and if it were reported they were the daughters/granddaughters of the bastard they’d be immediately identifiable.

@toinfonityandlockdown - yes! We (girls and women especially) are socialised to “be nice” to not question or reject people.

I’ve actively resisted that with my dd. She is well mannered and polite but she’s nobody’s mug!

When I was growing up there were enough moments and situations with other people's dads, and older brothers, teachers, milkmen, people doing work on the house, driving instructors, random strangers, older VIth form boys etc for me to realise that paedophiles are pretty common.

@Graphista great post, please can you give me some tips on educating my DC?

I think it's more common than people realise.
My own experiences mean I would be very, very careful where and with whom I left my children.
What is truly chilling is cases like Vanessa George- where you leave children with people you think you can trust implicitly because they are professionals.

Quite hard to tease out the discourse. In the interwar and postwar years - with smaller families, we were still in a moralistic era that did not want to discuss or assume this happened. Kids wandered round pretty freely and often did long journeys on their own. It’s still billed as being an ‘innocent’ age. Yet, if you speak to people who were kids in this era institutional abuse was rife and lots of kids were abused by strangers while roaming as well as in their families.

With the more permissive era in the late 60s and then 70s and 80s, it became quite the thing from child psychology point of view to suggest children were also sexual beings. So this view collided with a view in which child abuse was hidden and not spoken of. Not a good mix. You also got things like PIE in the U.K. that capitalised on new liberal attitudes and tried to normalise it. Many of us growing up in the 80s were told it was a rare thing and not to be suspicious of men (Jane Clare Jones writes about it). So like lots of people here, I believed that. But Saville, exposing of institutional abuse, 50s kids talking, programmes showing Paedophiles near parks and taking pictures convinced me. Kids are another vulnerable class in society I am afraid.

It’s why some people are calling bullshit on kink shaming, reducing safeguarding, men who work for the NSPCC going to work in gimp costumes, highly sexualised drag routines, MAPs etc. It is the gateway, it is socialising people to feel bad for speaking out or uncool or a ‘Karen’.

Agree though good and early see education, with anatomy named and consent taught properly, and bloody vanilla but reciprocal sex are key. And respectful relationships but not ‘be kind’ which is the quickest way to tell girls already socialised to be nice and helpful to ignore their gut and don’t risk offending someone.

I think that a proportion of the population are probably paedophiles, however most children who are sexually abused are abused by family friends or relatives

why do you differentiate? There’s no difference! EVERY paedophile is related to/friends with somebody - we need to get away from the myth that they are somehow “separate” from OUR society

I think the point was that it's usually NOT the weirdo in the park you have to watch out for. Statistically, it's more likely to be someone the parents trust with their children and who has access to them.

I’d say that Australian article is fairly accurate actually
Which article is this?

@Graphista to be clear - I think it’s right to protect the identities of the victims! Didn’t think I needed to say that. My point is just that one consequence of this is that the public is unaware of how often abuse happens within families.

I’m a professional (I’m not going to reveal my capacity as it could be too outing) but let’s just say it is within the criminal justice system.

I have been involved with many cases of historic child abuse and child abuse images.

Although I could never voice this opinion publicly, because of my job, I really do think that we ought to consider the death penalty for child abusers.

The problem is, they can’t be cured.

The courses and “treatment” programmes that exist both inside and out of prison are geared towards “minimising risk” of committing further offences and are designed to give paedophiles “strategies” for avoiding “risky situations”. These only work if the paedophile is actually motivated not to hurt children.

The problem is paedophiles are extremely manipulative and are often quite intelligent.

They know what the offender manager (the modern term for a Probation Officer) wants to hear and may be saying all the right things while secretly still believing that there is nothing wrong with what they do.

The death penalty for child rape can easily be justified in my opinion. Arguably it is a worse crime than murder as the victim has to
live with the trauma of what has been done to them and it really does ruin lives permanently.

Now that we have left the EU (I voted remain, but every cloud has a silver lining...) bringing back the death penalty would be just as easy as having another referendum then passing legislation if the majority of the public want it.

We need not go down the American route of spending decades on death row- before we abolished it in the UK in the 1960s you got two appeals and that was it.

As for method- we had the quickest method with hanging and it would be all over in less than 15 seconds. There was no ceremony or last words, your cell was next door to the gallows you would be taken straight through- rope round neck, trapdoor opens, instant death from a broken neck.

Zero reoffending rate.

As for it being in humane and the right to life- innocent people including children die horribly from diseases like cancer all the time. 40,000 have died horribly from Coronavirus. I don’t think snapping the neck of a murderer or rapist who has abused a child to kill them instantly is that horrific TBH.

I don't understand where this idea comes from. The word pornography doesn't imply anything about consent, it just means images with sexual content.

I don’t understand why anyone would need this explaining to them. It comes from a place where victims of child sexual abuse, trafficking, rape etc, would like a very firm distinction to be drawn between having their abuse filmed and distributed without their consent & often without their knowledge, and adult performers who describe themselves as porn stars, happily and willingly turn up to a film set, receive money for consensual sexual activity and who are quite happy to be plastered all over the Internet.

Child sexual abuse impacts and ruins your life in so, so many ways and it removes every single little shred of dignity a child has. To have it acknowledged that they didn’t consent to it by refusing to call it pornography and giving it its real name of child abuse is fucking important. This isn’t about being pedantic or humouring victims or being kind. It’s about not causing any further damage.

I think one of the difficulties is that childhood experiences tend to polarise you.

If you're a vulnerable child, you are likely to have a completely different experience of the world growing up than a child who is surrounded and protected most of the time.

My experience of the world growing up was of multiple different random men abusing or trying to abuse me - from the man who ran the small local shop, to 3(!) of my male relatives, to a handful of chance encounters.

They do seem to sense easy targets unfortunately and then circle like sharks, which means some people grow up seeing the world as full of predators, and others grow up thinking it barely ever happens.

I know they are indeed on every corner. There's a very good reason why some Mums are "hysterical" because they already know.

Good on you OP for revising your percpetion and stance. There's only a few people who benefit from pretending predators are incredibly rare.

I don't understand where this idea comes from. The word pornography doesn't imply anything about consent, it just means images with sexual content

Personally, I think it's more about the end user. Watching "porn" is fine (in the main, although it does have it's own issues). Watching a child (or adult) being abused is disgusting. The two are completely different and should be termed as such.

@TheVoiceOfReasonableness I have to take issue with a few of your points. I am a Probation Officer with extensive experience of working with all sorts of sex offenders. It is quite condescending that you think we will just accept what we are told, when that is FAR from the case in my experience. We challenge, question and explore rigorously. I have not hesitated to recall people to custody when needed, or put in place other tough measures. Of course, the concept of a “cure” is out of the question, but sound risk management and harm reduction is a noble aim and all we can do.

I am not even going to entertain your death penalty comment as that is an extremely slippery slope, and in the unlikely event it was brought back, it would be highly unlikely to apply to crimes that did not result death of another.

Listen to the hunting warhead podcast and it will sadly open your eyes.

Yes, I was going to post this. The mother of one of his victims got that gut feeling when he was around her child so she always stayed close. He still managed to abuse and photograph the child without her noticing.

I think every mother has had that feeling at some point. Its there for a reason. Dont let anyone tell you you are being "hysterical".

I think the issue with having the death penalty for child sexual abuse is that you are then incentivising the offender to kill the child. This would especially be likely when an offender fears the child is about to come forward and the stakes are high enough that they have nothing to lose in ensuring the child suddenly 'goes missing'.

I shudder at the thought of how blithely oblivious I was to all this as a child. Had sleepovers almost every weekend at different friends homes, we went on sporting trips where you get "hosted" with a random family from the local team. Though on many occasions those were actually volunteers or PTA members who had nothing to do with the team. I recall the strangest trip where a friend and I found out that our host was just an older guy (possibly from the same school or the sibling of someone there? Never found out what connected him with middle school girls' sports). We basically had to go home with him and spend three nights in his house for the duration of the tournament. Our "room" was actually a freezing cold storeroom in the basement, without any heating (in Nov) and it smelled really strongly of durian or whatever foods were being stored there.

But the guy turned out to be genuinely nice and took us both out to dinner at a huge mall and we even managed a bit of shopping during a sports trip (heaven for teenage girls). He made us packed lunches for the day as well and drove us to and from the sporting grounds. I was always with my friend and none of us got any creepy vibes from him. It was actually one of the funnest trips I ever went on, although my insides curl up at the thought of DD ever being in the same situation!