Pedophile Activist on BBC Radio 4 Behind The Crime

[BitMuch]

A convicted pedophile describes his crimes against girls with great self-pity, says his victims did not have negative reactions and if they had he would have stopped before he got caught and argues to reduce stigma for pedophiles. The presenters psychologists Sally Tilt and Dr Kerensa Hocken do not challenge him and repeatedly call for viewers to sympathise with what they call his 'compulsion', comparing his 'attraction' to our desire to eat unhealthy food. Is this the next target for 'just be kind you judgy bigot' propaganda?

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001b43m

It was produced in partnership with the Prison Radio Association. Does that mean this episode is being played to prisoners?

Those defending the programme - and I did hear it - I must say my first thought when I heard it was the SOTP story as investigated by the Mail on Sunday and which goes back years. In that programme, it was revealed that sex offenders were basically swapping tips and learning how to appear contrite and go on to reoffend.

Who knows with the individual concerned but I personally didn't think they did a good enough job at the start. The reason I think that is because of the ways in which offenders learn to cover their tracks. I think it needed more context - but that's because of the failures in treatment programmes.

I do think more needs to be done to understand sex offenders. But it seems it's never done well and the digging done by the MoS showed that we are right to be cautious about what we are being told.

One of the key messages for me is the need to control what exposure to sexuality children have.
Sex is a really powerful reinforcement of behaviour, a feedback loop. Getting aroused by 'the wrong thing' in your earliest experiences cause so many problems.

I was given inappropriate reading as a youngish teen (groomed by an older guy) and it's stayed with me forever. I hate that my sexuality was formed by his fantasies.

We need to protect our kids from early sexualisation.

It seems to me the extent of research for "understanding" sexual offenders including paedophiles is having psychologists interview them and then try to draw conclusions from what they say, including guessing at how much is outright lies and how much is lies the offender has been telling themselves so long they actually believe it.

What's interesting is it really isn't difficult to find out what these men really think - there are crowds of "MAPs" on twitter apparently not breaking guidelines, quite happy to share their justifications about how it's all fine. Similarly with rapists, go to punternet and find out how they actually feel about women, rather than the words they know they're supposed to say if caught.

It's pretty easy to work out what counsellors want to here, and a bit of ego massaging "what I really needed was someone like you to help me" when they get caught doesn't hurt either.

• want to hear...

I agree we do need to understand this behaviour in order to tackle it.

How do professionals working in this area, or any area with people who are expert manipulators and perpetrators of appalling crimes, protect themselves? Not just from the emotional drain and trauma of listening to the crimes, but of having their perspective towards the crimes themselves shifted? "Rape, torture, child abuse is bad but sexual exposure really isn't up there is it? We shouldn't get wound up about it as there is much much worse"? And when you then bring the discussion into the public sphere you find yourself out of synch with the public who rightly point out that sexual exposure to a child IS bad.

The full programme notes read more like they're in line with what ToppCat reports. I'll need to wait until they provide a transcript to comment unless I use some automated captions with it.

But, it sounds like a very difficult topic, and it looks like it will need some careful listening.

[As forensic psychologists 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 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.

Or alternatively...

In today's episode we learn from Ian how he justifies his crimes and the efforts he went to to try and reduce his sentence. He has not be convicted of any further sex offences for the last ten years.

cause harm through shameful acts that cause disgust to society

Only harm was feelings of disgust by society? No mention of his victims?

As with others; I'm done with being kind.

Fuck centring men's feelings over those of children.

If they can manage not to sexually assault large, beefy men, they can manage not to sexually assault children.

I've worked with people who have literally no impulse control; who will rub themselves uncontrollably and indiscriminately against people and objects. That's something else.

If someone is able to not assault one person but chooses to assault another who is vulnerable or unable to give consent, then they are able to exercise impulse control. And are thus entirely responsible for their actions.

Your last paragraph makes total sense to me. This isn't about compulsion it is the usual power and control.

Lack of impulse control/spur of the moment compulsions seems an odd argument for people who may spend months or years getting themselves into positions where they have access to children, where their victims and often their families are carefully groomed.

They are indeed responsible for their actions; but that does not preclude attempts to curb that behaviour, either by incarceration or by trying to prevent it happening by looking at why it happens.

I agree that those working in this field can get manipulated, and even desensitised, but that is an argument for proper supervision, or rotating duties that take them into other roles as well. I think the same applies to social workers in children's services - they need to take on other social work roles at times to maintain their perspective.

Thank you for mentioning this OP. I just happened to hear a little but will listen properly later.

I was a bit troubled to hear what I thought was a sweeping statement about the causes of paedophilia, in that the psychologist said they thought people were just born that way.

I know from things I have read, including testimonies from paedophiles, that certainly some have an arrested development at a young age, and very often some sort of trauma adversity that froze them at that age. There must be a range of complex factors driving their paedophilia. Let us hope enough will be learnt to try to intervene much earlier.

I was trying to find an article about it I once read on this board. I couldn’t came across this most extraordinary information: that Germans in the earlier part of the 20th Century were brought up following a book by a child care theorist with very unpleasant form of cold, brutal fathering. Some think this may have influenced Nazism. German society was also as a rule very governed by strict societal rules about the family.

After the war, in the 1950s and 60s, people
began to look for reasons and came to think a reason for Nazism was repressed sexuality. A certain academic began to combine ideas about this repression, and children - the last taboo.

There were actually experiments where children were made to be naked and stroke each other. He was an academic in sexual studies (?) o high standing, who had had a vicious father himself, set up fostering of children taken from ‘bad’ families and put to live with paedophiles. It is almost unbelievable! Here is the article:

^Letter from Berlin
The German Experiment That Placed Foster Children with Pedophiles^

With the approval of the government, a renowned sexologist ran a dangerous program. How could this happen?
Rachel AvivJuly 19, 2021

www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/07/26/the-german-experiment-that-placed-foster-children-with-pedophiles

Only harm was feelings of disgust by society? No mention of his victims?

I've explained that I've not 'listened' to the programme and don't feel that I can comment until I have. Have you listened to it and come away with a very different impression than that given in the notes or Toppcat's report?

I listened to this last night before reading this. One thing that struck me is that Ian said that he knew he'd get arrested that day. He said that was because he needed help and he believed that was the only way he could get it. I thought it was far more likely though that he knew he was going to offend - his impulse was so strong - and couldn't help himself offending and also that his fantasy involved being shamed by being caught. If he really wanted help, he would have to know there were other avenues he could go down.

They mentioned the police went to his home - presumably they would have searched the place for computer files? There was no mention of whether anything was found - that would have been quite telling either way.

It is run by sneering, sanctimonious wokesters. How anyone can claim the BBC is impartial and not burst out laughing I don't know. The only reason for its existence, so far as I can see, is to promote high culture. That was the original goal. In other words, to give us a break from Love Island and The Sun. Instead, it is now a kind of propaganda unit for woke activists. They are obsessed with diversity, almost to the point of hysteria. I'm all for having more female and gay and disabled and asian presenters, etc. But that shouldn't be the priority. The priority should be intelligent, high-brow content. If the best presenter happens to be a gay, disabled black woman, then great, that's a bonus.

They now seem utterly incapable of producing anything good. The focus is always on inclusivity and diversity, and to hell with quality. If they make a Radio 4 documentary about, say, Jane Austen, they can't just make it about her novels. It has to be about her attitude to slavery. I'm utterly sick of the BBC. There are only four things now worth the licence fee: University Challenge, QI, In Our Time (on Radio 4) and Rutherford and Fry (also on Radio 4). But I'm sure they will get around to ruining them as well.

I agree with @ToppCat

I am commenting on your report of the programme notes. It is telling of itself that they suggest societal disgust is the only harm; that it didn't occur to the writer of the note that there were children who were victims of this abusive behaviour

There is such wilful ignorance here of what these psychologists do and what they’re looking to achieve. They are working to lower the risk of reoffending which is essential because the vast majority of those convicted are going to be released into the community at some point. Would you like them to sit there and tell the offenders what awful people they are or do you want them to actually do their job.

I can't speak for anyone else but my issue is not with the nature of the psychologists job but with the way the BBC presented the information. The show was split between clips of an interview between Ian and the psychologists and their commentary on the interview, the overall impression was that of "poor Ian" and I felt there were questions raised which the psychologists did not attempt to answer in their commentary.

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.

FlorettaB · Today 11:38
There is such wilful ignorance here of what these psychologists do and what they’re looking to achieve. They are working to lower the risk of reoffending which is essential because the vast majority of those convicted are going to be released into the community at some point. Would you like them to sit there and tell the offenders what awful people they are or do you want them to actually do their job.

Re: Would you like them to sit there and tell the offenders what awful people they are or do you want them to actually do their job.

As part of this, did they ask him what he now realised the effects of his behaviour on the children has been? That would be part of the job too, I should think, even if it is done in a non accusatory way.

I did not hear, but other posters seem to be saying there was an absence of mentioning this.

Given anyone who has been the victim of csa could have been listening, I think it would have been important to get him to admit unequivocally that he had caused harm.

Wouldn’t he need to understand this and understand himself in order to have a chance of not reoffending?

I suppose it’s difficult because I don’t think peadophilia should be destigmatised, but I can also recognise that the stigma associated with paedophilia might stop some people seeking help/intervention to prevent them offending. Not sure what the answer is there.

I believe that there is some research that suggests that the urge towards sexual attraction to children/minors begins in the adolescent years and is a result of a range of complicated factors including childhood abuse.

Not much is known about it because researchers are afraid to research it for fear of being seen as sympathetic.

I'd fully support young men, recognising inappropriate urges, being able to seek help.

I'd fully support young men, recognising inappropriate urges, being able to seek help.

And if people disagree with this I'd like to know what they propose as an alternative solution bearing in mind I'm talking about young men/boys (below 18).

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.

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.

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.