Female paedophilia vastly underreported - up to 64,000 female paedophiles in the UK

[SomeGuy]

www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/oct/04/uk-female-child-sex-offenders

'Child sex abuse by women is significantly more widespread than previously realised, with experts estimating that there could be up to 64,000 female offenders in Britain.

Researchers from the Lucy Faithfull Foundation (LFF), a child protection charity that deals with British female sex offenders, said its studies confirmed that a "fair proportion" of child abusers were women. Donald Findlater, director of research and development, said results indicated that up to 20% of a conservative estimate of 320,000 suspected UK paedophiles were women.

Findlater said: "There was some suggestion it was only blokes that sexually abused children. Over time those arguments have fallen aside and people have had to wake up to the fact that actually, sadly, there is a fair proportion of women abusing as well."

Steve Lowe, director of Phoenix Forensic Consultants, which treats and assesses child sex abusers, said the true number of female paedophiles has remained hidden for too long.

"As a society, we find women sex offenders difficult to acknowledge. But those of us who work with paedophiles have seen evidence that women are capable of terrible crimes against children ? just as bad as men." He said some female abusers remained hidden because they appeared before the family courts, where their cases were not publicised because of reporting restrictions.'

To put this in to context, recall policies like that of British Airways, which considers all men to be paedophiles, and bans children from sitting next to male strangers.

Why the hell are you defending people who sold child pornography? They paid the child pornography suppliers.

I'm not, I'm describing the shambolic and incompetent prosecution of British alleged purchasers of child pornography.

And I'm not clicking on blind link to an image from a child porn case. Describe it.

It's a picture of a text banner ad without any explicit content.

The slide here: [http://www.pcpro.co.uk/gallery/features/74690/operation-ore-exposed]] used by the British police, is headed

"First they are into an adult site"

and has a screenshot of a single page from landslide.com (not the homepage, as claimed), which is a text-only banner ad reading "CHILD PORN" below which it says "Adult Classifieds" and below that links reading "Exit" and "Enter"

followed by the text

"And choose to go to a child site!"

Quite plainly this should never have been submitted into evidence in any court case - but it was.

As for Pete Townshend, I am aware that he admitted to possession of these images, but no evidence exists that he did actually access them. If he did - it certainly wasn't from a Landslide secured-site.

It may well be that he was advised to use the 'research' defence by his lawyers and to admit things to 'get off lightly', rather than go through a major court case in which ridiculous exhibits like the banner ad above would be submitted.

Just listened to the radio 4 programme.

Very sad and I found pretty hard to listen to.

Are you saying that evidence of having paid money to an adult porn site led to people pleading guilty to viewing and storing images of abused children when they hadn't?

Without doubt.

The British police were told by the US that Landslide was a child porn network. They worked on the basis that everyone who had used it was accessing child porn. This was reported in the media but was completely rubbish.

Suspects would have been told that the police had evidence they had paid to subscribe to child porn, that the police had a smoking gun, and that they would throw the book at them.

Of course people would have pleaded guilty or accepted cautions in those circumstances.

No, he was very contrite. He accessed the images deliberately and was caught.

No he wasn't caught. There was no evidence that Townshend accessed child porn. None. That's not to say he didn't. But there wasn't any evidence that he did.

why would they "of course" have pleaded guilty under those circumstances, if they weren't guilty?

you don't lightly admit to something like abusing children, to save yourself from having to fight the case.

I can't imagine any circumstance that would make me admit to looking at child porn.

Maybe someone threatening to kill me, or take away my children.

But otherwise, I'd fight such an accusation tooth and nail.

Of all the causes in the world you could choose to fight, that of someone who has admitted to looking at child porn seems an odd one to take up

well, if there are flaws in the way the investigations are done, these should be public. It is very comforting for us to believe that yet another child porn viewer has been prosecuted, and not ask questions.
I don't find the points put forward terribly convincing, thats all.

why would they "of course" have pleaded guilty under those circumstances, if they weren't guilty?

People plead guilty to things they haven't done all the time.

Any lawyer will advise his client to plead guilty for a reduced sentence if it looks certain that he will be convicted.

The combination of paedophile hysteria and techno-illiteracy is quite sufficient for that.

you don't lightly admit to something like abusing children, to save yourself from having to fight the case.

Not abusing children. Looking at illegal images. There is a difference.

Not quite, lots of people accepted police cautions, and if you had the police had your door threatening a prosecution, taking away your computers (perhaps your livelihood), your children, your job, and your family, then you definitely would think twice.

Things are not as simple as "I didn't do it, justice will prevail".

well, if there are flaws in the way the investigations are done, these should be public.

They have been made public.

Here's a report in The Telegraph: www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/5587354/Has-Operation-Ore-left-a-scar-on-British-justice.h tml

There's a much fuller explanation here of how the Landslide system actually worked and the UK operation in particular.

There have been plenty of articles in the UK media about Operation Ore problems, mostly following on from this story in PC Pro from 2005.

Surely the whole point of reporting figures (whether estimated or not) about female sex abusers, is...that children need to be better protected? I simply do not understand why yet again this conversation is going down the route of 'is it men, is it women, who's the worst?'. That seems an utterly infantile (pardon the expression) way to approach this serious matter - particularly coming from people on this thread who themselves have been abused in the past, by both men and women. I seriously hope none of you is involved in child protection because if you approached decision-making in this way you would achieve nothing for those children.

Pete Townshend admitted to downloading child porn, he just said he did it for research purposes. So please stop with this nonsense about there being "no evidence" SG.

There was no evidence. His 14 PCs were searched and there were no illegal images on there. And while he did pay to use a Landslide website, it was not an illegal site.

There were no grounds to go after him and to leak his name to the press.

Townshend did say that he had accessed 'child porn' sites, but which sites, and whether they actually contained illegal images (as distinct from say 'barely legal' type sites using young-looking models, or naturist sites), and whether Townshend actually looked at any illegal images is completely unknown, because there were no images found on his PCs, and no record of him ever accessing any content that was illegal.

I think there has been a concerted propaganda effort by the paedophile apologists to undermine Operation Ore convictions. They've even managed to get newspapers to publish their propaganda. It's sickening.

Nope, this is sickening: www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/no-evidence-against-man-in-child-porn-inquiry-who-killed-himself -509120.html

'The credibility of a major investigation into child pornography came under renewed scrutiny yesterday after an inquest into the death of a naval officer who was suspended by the Royal Navy despite a lack of evidence against him.

The Navy suspended Commodore David White, commander of British forces in Gibraltar, after police placed him under investigation over allegations that he bought pornographic images from a website in the US. Within 24 hours he was found dead at the bottom of the swimming pool at his home in Mount Barbary.

The inquest into his death heard that computer equipment and a camera memory chip belonging to Commodore White had yielded no evidence that he downloaded child pornography, and a letter was written by Ministry of Defence police to Naval Command on 5 January this year indicating that there were "no substantive criminal offences" to warrant pressing charges. But the Second Sea Lord, Sir James Burnell-Nugent, feared that the media would report the case and on 7 January removed him from his post anyway.'

And this:
www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/My-hell-over-false-child.865079.jp

"A Yorkshire doctor wrongly accused of buying child pornography told yesterday of his "18 months of sheer hell", which led to the loss of his job, before he was cleared.
Paul Grout was a senior accidents specialist at Hull Royal Infirmary, and was hailed as a hero for his work in helping victims of the Selby rail disaster until an "identity thief" hacked into his computer and used his name to order indecent pictures of children.
That led to Dr Grout, 46, being caught in an international crackdown on child porn and hauled before the courts, charged with incitement to distribute indecent pictures, before a judge threw the case against him out earlier this year, saying it "stank of unfairness".

Police invaded his house "like stormtroopers", according to his wife, Susan, in October 2002. What followed was "18 months of sheer hell". Until then, Dr Grout was a hero. He had a lot of experience as a volunteer on North Sea rescue helicopters and was the first doctor flown to the scene of the Selby train crash in February 2001.
But his life was shattered when police called at his hospital office and took him away for questioning as part of Operation Ore ? a crackdown on people who buy pictures of child abuse, which began with an American FBI raid on a pornography distributor.
The Grouts' home was searched, and nothing incriminating was found there, or on any computer the doctor used, at home or at work. But, on the basis of the FBI information, he was charged with incitement to distribute indecent pictures.
When the case reached Hull Crown Court in April, the prosecution divulged details of dates and times involved, and Dr Grout was able to produce evidence that on some occasions, at least, he could not possibly have been the computer user concerned"

I expect other people who perhaps didn't have the credibility of a senior consultant were taken less seriously.

Calling criticism of inappopriate police action "paedophile apologism" is just another symptom of paedophile hysteria.

Just because someone's been accused by a police service that doesn't know the difference between a database and an army base doesn't mean they must be a paedophile.

Townsend said he had accessed child pornography. Child pornography is illegal. Why are you finding it so difficult to grasp what he did?

Whether Townshend actually broke any laws is difficult to say, because we don't know what images he saw because none were found on his computers, we don't know whether they were legally speaking "indecent", because we don't even know what they are, and whether, if they were indecent, those involved were under 16 (since changed to 18) or not.

The morality of what he stated he did is one question, the legality quite another, but the issue is that he shouldn't have been investigated because there was no evidence that he had accessed a child porn site.

The police could very well knock on people's doors at random without evidence, and say "we're going to take your PCs away, we think you've accessed child porn", and undoubtedly some of them will confess to it there and then because some of them will turn out to have it on their PCs, but that wouldn't be legal or fair would it?

That was what they did to Townshend. Yes he did confess to something, but they had no grounds to investigate him in the first place.

You seem to have some massive agenda someguy. Hugely sceptical as it happens

People are breathlysed, stopped and searched, arrested on suspicion of, all the time. Police often act and investigate without hard evidence. That is how they get the hard evidence.

Accessing a site known to be a portal to child pornography sites seems like a reasonable grounds for further investigation to me.

Townshend said that he had paid to access child pornography. He confessed. I am not sure why the police or courts or anyone should be looking for reasons to refuse his confession. He is sane, as far as I know.

I also do not believe that people confess to child pornography charges for the reasons stated above - I would never confess to something like that if I hadn't done it.

"Not abusing children. Looking at illegal images. There is a difference...
Not quite, lots of people accepted police cautions, and if you had the police had your door threatening a prosecution, taking away your computers (perhaps your livelihood), your children, your job, and your family, then you definitely would think twice."

Thing is accepting a caution for this will also likely result in being socially ostracised, losing family job etc. I am sure it would show on CRB. So why would anyone admit to it if they hadn;t done it. Doesn't seem very likely to me.

Maybe the suicides were due to the people suspected realising they were about to be found out and not being able to face the consequences.

Anyhoo, I don;t want to get dragged into all this. I am baffled by the ongoing strident drive from certain quarters on this site to hone in on things which are random, off topic, and extremely likely to (understandably) get people worked up. It is a bit pathetic really but despite my best efforts I have been drawn in again.

MrsMH I agree with you, but it's hard not to rise to this stuff.

On that note I will leave this to people who are more experienced and better at arguing this stuff than me

Night all.

I can't believe you've persuaded yourself that people who used their credit cards that paid to access a web portal where child porn could be viewed were being treated unfairly because the police investigated them.

It was not a web portal. It was a payment gateway. The sites were all hosted and owned by third parties - the vast majority of which were legal.

They might as well subpoena Playboy for their subscribers list on the grounds that they might also be subscribing to child porn.

Or better yet, contact Playboy's credit card merchant.

SomeGuy - is this issue somehow personal to you? Sorry - have to ask

Actually - not sorry

Anyhoo, I don;t want to get dragged into all this. I am baffled by the ongoing strident drive from certain quarters on this site to hone in on things which are random, off topic, and extremely likely to (understandably) get people worked up. It is a bit pathetic really but despite my best efforts I have been drawn in again.

I agree with you, it was bizarre of dittany to bring up 'Operation Ore', a police operation with the scantest of relevance to the OP, and one about which there's been well-publicised criticism.

Baffling indeed.