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?

Thelnebriati · Today 19:51
I'm surprised the experts think the reoffending rates are low, they seem to focus on 15% reoffending within 5 years of release. But as time goes on the risk of reoffending rises to 40%. Which does not feel low to me.

ISK why but it feels like the risk is being minimised, in a similar way to how the risk of being raped by a stranger is often minimised.

''Follow-up studies, however, typically find sexual recidivism rates of 10%-15% after five years, 20% after 10 years, and 30%-40% after 20 years. The observed rates underestimate the actual rates because not all offences are detected...''
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12839896/

Without meaning to imply that a paedophile ‘s offences are comparable to general addictions in the harm they create, if you look at the relapse rate of general addictions, they are high. And even after a great many years of abstinence a former addict has to be very careful, and never be complacent.

Maybe being a paedophile is not exactly the same as being an addict, but it must be similar if there are cravings and impulses.

If you look up ‘sex addiction’ as a more general term but one which also includes harming children, one site ‘Recovery Village’ said 5% recover.
www.therecoveryvillage.com/process-addiction/sex-addiction/sexual-addiction-statistics/

EmbarrassingHadrosaurus · Today 21:13
Thank you for the research paper.
Full paper for download (free): www.researchgate.net/publication/6683030_Sexual_Offender_Recidivism_Risk_What_We_Know_and_What_We_Need_to_Know

I have not been able to read it carefully yet as I am reading on my telephone, but I noticed one paragraph where it said that the highest predictor for recidivism is a sexual interest in children.

This made me wonder if the figures we are hearing about regarding relapses are the average relapse rates for all sorts of sex crimes taken together?

If so, we here on this thread are particularly concerned about those affecting children.

Do we know the relapse rate over time for child sexual abusers from this paper?

Exactly. People like Ian don’t just drop from the sky. He had parents, friends, work colleagues and a wife.

What if someone listened and realised that this was like their husband or friend and now they could send them somewhere to get help?

There are also huge differences in the kind of child sex offence, as a previous poster pointed out.

Predatory, sadistic abusers are very different from those who abuse anyone available regardless of type, and from those who have a specific attraction to children who they try to groom into relationship with them.

All equally disgusting. All dangerous in different ways. All likely to need very different handling.

"Just about all of the offenders I’ve ever met don’t want to offend again, and most sexual offenders do not reoffend. They want to be useful members of society. However, released sexual offenders face many barriers to this: stigma, ostracism, lack of work, housing, friends, family, human connection. For the minority of sex offenders who do reoffend, it is exactly these types of problems that make it more likely that they may do so." (from the article quoted not the programme)

But - not meaning to state the obvious but there are really good reasons for "ostracising" sex offenders. To reduce one's own risk of being offended against, and to try to keep your own vulnerable elderly relatives/children etc away from them as far as possible.

If people treating them as dangerous makes them more likely to be dangerous (and that's a big if and sounds once again like listening to their own justifications) well super sorry but what are we supposed to do?

the idea that it could be possible to admit being a paedophile and not be considered a criminal - well, you won't be locked up for telling a copper that you are attracted to children, I presume? It's not a crime.

I take issue with the idea that we should all be nicer/more at ease with people who feel like that, if someone told me they repeatedly envisaged raping women, or stabbing people in the neck, I'd be fucking scared of them and "ostracise" them (for lack of a better word) too.

There's an episode of House where a young man asks him for something to dampen his sex drive, because of his unacceptable desires. It's very funny (not about pedophillia).

There have been various attempts over the last 50 years to persuade society that paedophiles are really not that bad (no MAPS) , they are also victims or even that children benefit from sexual relationships with adults; The Kentler Experiment reference earlier in the thread.
I'm sure I'm not alone in thinking its to necessary hold the line and take a zero tolerance approach to any attempt to elicit sympathy for paedophiles because it feels like yet another example of boundary pushing and because there is plenty of evidence that the so called "experts" in paedophilia either can't be trusted because they are clueless but don't know it or they are predators themselves.

Understanding that some people have sexual urges which are unacceptable to act on does not equal sympathy. Being in a situation where you have a thought or urge you cannot discuss can heighten focus on that urge - giving a place to be open about what you feel is a way to reduce the liklihood of acting on that urge.
Treatment program have a no tolerance approach to any action or increased risk of acting on these. The focus is on their clients no offending in any way, not being commiserated with.
Calling all the professionals doing to this work in order to stop offending against children is ignorant in the extreme.

Being unwilling to give the individual a space to be open about what they feel does not mean I do not understand that these people have urges they have not acted on yet.

I'm unwilling to support an experiment in which the kpi is a number of children abused which is only re-evaluated when the number rises above 0.

’But - not meaning to state the obvious but there are really good reasons for "ostracising" sex offenders. To reduce one's own risk of being offended against, and to try to keep your own vulnerable elderly relatives/children etc away from them as far as possible.’

I think everyone wants to be as far away from them as possible. It’s a visceral reaction. There’s a strong sense of repulsion towards them and particularly towards paedophiles. There have been several threads on here over the years about FILs or BILs or uncles being convicted of possessing downloaded images of child abuse and their wives and sons downplaying the seriousness of it or believing that it’s all some misunderstanding. I think it echoes what the psychologist was saying about the offender in the programme. To acknowledge that their loved one is a paedophile and therefore needs to be kept away from children/supervised around them is so abhorrent to them that they just deny it in the face of all evidence. They can’t be married to/related to a paedophile so there must have been some mistake.

There is an organisation called Stop it Now UK and Ireland. For people experiencing sexually harmful urges. Every abuser makes a choice to abuse.

So, I don't fall for the it was something I strayed into/I was going through a bad time excuse or I didn't hurt my victim crap. It's cognitive dissonance to excuse the crime and justify it to themselves and others.

I'm a survivor of abuse and whilst controversial. I do think it is a deviant and abhorrent sexual orientation for the majority of them. Conversion Therapy never worked on gay people (not suggesting being gay is a sexual deviance - used to highlight the Conversion Therapy point) so why would it work on peado's, but that is how we currently treat it. We need a whole new approach.

If you were asked to given an opinion on whether there should be any research/investigation, would you agree or disagree to it?

This would depend on what type of research you’re suggesting. It’s not a blanket yes/no binary answer for me. Whilst research is obviously important in most fields, research on sexual offenders/paedophiles is notoriously problematic. For one, the offenders themselves are typically manipulative, misrepresent their motivation or genuinely lack insight.

But surely a key point is the lack of accurate data on interventions vs recidivism rates given that recidivism equates to being caught. This leaves a huge gap for perhaps a significant number of cases where the repeat offenders are not caught or not caught early. Thus a lack of data on what, if anything, really works and what doesn’t. The increased recidivism rates over time could be an artefact of increased activity or increased sense of omnipotence.

However, the question here seems to be whether portraying “Ian” as a victim or in a sympathetic light encourage even one listener with similar compulsions to seek help? I’m sceptical. I think portraying the damage done by these compulsions as more realistic and offers the same chances of that happening.

There was a programme I volunteered with for several years called ‘circles of support and accountability’ which organised a group of volunteers (5/6 people) to work with child sex offenders following their release from prison to help them not reoffend. We would meet the offender once a week and talk through things like finding a job, housing, establishing healthy adult support networks, and look out for any red flags that they might be at risk of reoffending. I believe there was a certain amount of evidence that this reduced reoffending rates.

I read about some similar to that aseriesofstillimages. Did you feel that it was making a difference?

"However, the question here seems to be whether portraying “Ian” as a victim or in a sympathetic light encourage even one listener with similar compulsions to seek help?"

I don't think there's any benefit in portraying him as a victim. I don't think that's advisable at all.
Personal responsibility is always yours, no matter what you are wrestling with. We all have impulses we struggle with. Some of them are socially acceptable, others are not.

Maybe we need to put the emphasis on control and consent with our youngsters. We all feel impulsive, about all sorts of things- stealing, cheating, touching, saying unwelcome stuff. Wouldn't it be great if we taught kids to restrain themselves until they were with someone that appreciates their behaviour? It would reduce all kinds of anti social behaviour, from leering and groping, to racism, theft and littering.

Maybe that's what we've lost- self restraint!

We would meet the offender once a week and talk through things like finding a job, housing, establishing healthy adult support networks, and look out for any red flags that they might be at risk of reoffending.

A few years back I had an interesting conversation with a chap who was wearing a T-shirt for an organisation for ex-offenders. (We were seated near across from each other on a broken down train.) He did something like that where all of the mentors were ex-offenders. He was fascinating about it. He worked as a building contractor and this was something he did in his own time..

It was really hard to know - it felt like you were at least giving someone a slightly more stable life, which has been shown to reduce risk of reoffending, but as the programme was voluntary these were likely to be offenders who were relatively committed to not reoffending anyway.

The one where I felt like we’d made the most difference was a really mixed up young man - I think he was 19 when we started working with him, and was only 17 when he offended. He’d been in and out of care for years, was gay but hadn’t yet come to terms with it, partly as having grown up in a very anti-gay religious family (prior to care). A number of us in the volunteer group were gay or bi (a couple of whom had professional experience of working with troubled youngsters), so we were well placed to support him in coming to terms with his sexuality.

one thing I didn’t know before I did the volunteer training which really struck me was the stats about the very high proportion among those who commit sexual offences against children who are themselves young people or even children (teenagers). We tend to have this perception it’s predominantly middle aged men.

I think these programmes can be really helpful, and they tend to rely on volunteers, both because of the lack of public funding and resources, but also to some extent the power of the offender knowing that people are there helping them through choice, not just being paid to. The groups I worked in we were all volunteers doing it alongside day jobs, apart from the facilitator who was a professional employed by the charity.

I’m assuming in the case of the guy you met on the train it was a programme for offenders who weren’t sex offenders? I don’t think they’d allow ex sex offenders to volunteer in a programme like this, as there’s evidence to show that having contact with other ex sex offenders can increase the risk of reoffending.

I’m assuming in the case of the guy you met on the train it was a programme for offenders who weren’t sex offenders?

It didn't occur to me to ask but I'm sure you're right. He was mostly talking about the sort of people who got into fights all the time or had started off TWOCing with some breaking and entering and property damage before it escalated into higher levels of drug involvement and the sort of offences that attracted serious custodial sentences. He spoke about them all as men or young men so now I think about it a bit more I suppose that makes sense as well.

It was a well-designed T-shirt and one of the reasons we got talking was because it actually contained an invitation that was something like, "Talk to me". I assumed that it was mostly to encourage young men to talk to him.

’as the programme was voluntary these were likely to be offenders who were relatively committed to not reoffending anyway.’

I understand what you mean. It’s hard to measure how effective something like that is.

It’s surprising that so many are young adults or teenagers. That makes trying to reduce their rate of reoffending even more important. They’re going to be around for the next 50+ years.

Some experts think reoffending is low

many believe that the offenders become smarter and learn form each other

I do believe that there needs to be support for paedophiles if they are wanting to deal with their feelings but this needs to be so carefully managed, it can not more normalised in anyway, group work would have to have robust facilitators to stop manipulation (a huge challenge)

longer sentences, very very strict conditions (it’s shocking how lax some MAPPA conditions are) all should be wearing electronic tags if there has been physical offending

i work on forensic MH they are by far the most tricky to work with and I don’t believe they change I used to until experience and listening to far more experienced colleagues of mine changed my mind

i am all for chemical castration too it’s not the solution though there isn’t one (apart from life imprisonment)

I kept seeing the word 'compulsions' cropping up throughout the thread and I wondered where it has come from.

Is this an assumption or in some way established or believed or hypothesised as a result of professional study or what? Or is it from a predisposition to explain or excuse but not to exercise moral judgement or condemn?

Suppose it isn't a compulsion but simply something a person wants to do and chooses to do.

I quoted the programme notes that uses the word.

www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4613872-pedophile-activist-on-bbc-radio-4-behind-the-crime?page=3&reply=119326703

I quoted the programme notes and I saw it there as well. I forgot to mention that - it was a couple of days ago. Drat... But it was a question in my mind then and the question applies to the use of the word there as much as to the posters who used it in the thread.

That’s really interesting, I can imagine it potentially being quite an effective approach - hearing from someone who’s been down that path and can tell these young people from their own experience that it won’t ultimately take them to a good place, and that there are other options. I wish there was more funding for this sort of initiative.