Our obsession with paedophilia is more dangerous than Gary Glitter’s return

David Short

Absolutely right.

And look what happens to 'kids' who abuse adults, or even kill them.

The boy who murdered his headmaster in London, far from being hounded by the press, is given a new identity and official protection.

Britain is really a very stupid country now, dominated not by the Government any more, but by despotic Town Halls.

And as Liddle says, there doesn't seem any way to stop it.

If the Tories were not guaranteed of a shoo-in next election, they could put the emasculation of the Town Halls in their manifesto.

It would still get extra votes.

Venturer

I am sympathetic to the argument that this is too much box-ticking 'safety' as a reaction to exaggerated fears.

However, though evidence is hard to come by, it does seem that active paedophiles do repeat there crimes persistently with horrible consequences for their victims.

I think you would find peoples reactions and solutions would be similar for a persistent frequent rapist who targeted adults, or indeed for a persistent frequent serial murderer. Lock them up or kill them, or if they must be free, keep and eye on them.

The register may be drawn too widely; that said it does appear that paedophiles make extraordinary efforts to get themselves into positions with contact with and authority over children. Also children are accessible and vulnerable in particular institutions and ocassions (schools, clubs, children's homes, etc.) in a way that is not true usually true of adults. Measures to keep paedophiles out of these institutions do seem reasonable.

So while I agree that there is pressure-group motivated hype, and an excessive fear and bureaucracy, proportionate measures to control proven offenders are essential.

Lets not through the baby out with the bathwater.

Fergus Pickering

I suppose it might be one in six. An old man took out his willy for me to fondle when I was a wolf cub (it's the uniforms). Flashers flashed galy at my sister on her way to school and at my wife (The same flashers? They do get about)o her way back to Saint Hilda's Collge in Oxford. I suppose she was ober age so that doesn'tcount. A flasher used to hang about outside my daughters' primary school. They were a bit pissed off that they never saw him but would the fear of seeing the flasher (assuming they were afraid; they didn't look very afraid to me), count as abuse. A homosexual schoolmaster used to take showers with us boys with his glasses ON. Aaaargh!

Kim Plumtree

"Hello! Hello! (I'm Back Again)" was 1973, not 1972.

Verity

There's something slimy and unhealthy about the obessession by British officialdom - and my, how "officialdom" has grown since I was a child - with paedophiles. It's sunk to Belgian depths.

Parents have always warned their children not to "talk to strange men", and "if any strange man tries to talk to you, run to an adult - or a policeman - and tell them."

By such, we all managed to come through our childhood unmolested.

Tootletrab

Not long ago, I visited England from Australia to stay with my daughter and her family. One Sunday morning we went to watch my 1 year old grandson playing football. I took out my camcorder.

My daughter told me off. No filming unless all the other parents are convinced you're not some kind of pervert.

What is the world coming to?

Ray

I am always reminded that one of my favourite movies of all time is Giuseppe Tornatore's classic "Cinema Paradiso" - the story of young orphan boy who strikes up an amusing, symbiotic friendship with the projectionist in his village's local fleapit, and which instills in him a love of the moving image that will one day propel him to become Italy's greatest film director. I challenge anyone to watch it without having eyes filled with tears by the end.

And yet can anyone imagine such an enchanting film ever being made in New Labour Britain, much less with sponsorship from the Lottery? Vulnerable little boy; grubby old man; dark projection room. Sharp intake of breath and a quick call to Childline, more like.

Like Rod says, how sad that in our obsession with paedophilia (the modern equivalent to seventeenth century witchcraft in which any single man risks being damned as a witch) we have completely lost the plot as far as remembering how positive and inspirational a sincere and innocent friendship between an adult and a child can be.

Ray

Incidentally, did Coffeehousers know that the Government is now compelling local authorities to recruit 'Sudden Child Death Co-ordinators' on thirty grand a year, and whose job it is to trawl through hospital records, police files and social workers' case notes to look for any suspicious trends in infant mortality figures. I kid you not.

Leaving aside the point that isn't this what we already pay local coroners to do, surely it misses the whole point: namely, that unfortunate mites like Victoria Climbie didn't die because no one could observe what was happening; but rather because officialdom was so wrapped up in its own political correctness that it failed to question whether beating a little girl and keeping her tied up in a cold bathroom whilst covered in her own excrement was really an integral part of the customs of some strange African tribe that institutionally racist local authorities ought not to meddle in.

Hysteria

difficult one this - I agree with Rod's general argument - but Verity - "we all managed to come through our childhood unmolested." - is simply not the case.

Venturer sums it up pretty well I reckon.

I was involved in swim clubs for many years as the new rules were being implemented - and yes - there really are parents out there who at least put themselves in a position to be accused of "doing bad stuf".

Oh - and don't forget the issue of protecting the parents from malicious kids - I was very close to at least two examples of this.

Wanderwide

Although the current obsession with paedophilia is, in part, another manifestation of the tendency of the British to "compound for sins they are inclin'd to, by damning those they have no mind to", it is much more serious than that.

All sorts of people have jumped aboard the child-protection bandwagon for all sorts of motives, by no means all of which have much to do with protecting children. These include: protecting the backs of officials; making money; advancing careers; and gaining cheap publicity and popularity. However, attempts to question the cost-effectiveness of this multi-million pound industry tend to be met with a smoke-screen of pious platitudes and moral indignation.

If the British public and press were really concerned to promote the welfare of children, they would insist that some of the precious resources now being squandered on measures such as CRB disclosures in Britain should be used instead to save the lives of those who are still dying of hunger and disease in the developing world.

But the ever-growing demands of the child-protection industry and the hysteria fanned by some section of the press are not only costing the lives of children overseas: they may also be contributory factors in the deaths of some children in Britain. A sad instance was that of two-year-old Abigail Rae, whose drowning might well have been prevented if a man who saw her wandering alone had not been deterred from approaching her by fear of being taken for a paedophile.

The trouble is that the definition of what constitutes "child-abuse" has now become so broad that our linguistic currency has been debased, and we have no terms left with which to differentiate such atrocities as the rape, torture and murder of children from lesser forms of inappropriate or unacceptable behaviour towards them. And this, in turn, is preventing us from undertaking a calm and objective determination of spending priorities in accordance with the reality, gravity and urgency of the risk to the lives and welfare of children, wherever they may be.

This year Civitas published "Licensed to Hug", an interesting report on some of these issues. Rod Liddle is to be congratulated for his contribution to this growing debate.

Augustus

I think Rod Liddle is to be commended for raising this issue in the way he does. Most crimes, it appears to me, are crimes against the vulnerable, although it is true, children are obviously particularly vulnerable. There does seem, however, in recent years a disproportionate emphasis on paedophilia in relation to thers as the ultimate hate crime. This may have something to do with sexual openess in modern society towards normal heterosexuality and increasingly towards homosexuality. Thus, we are left with one of the least normal sexual actions of mankind, that of sexual attraction to children, which is then elevated to the equal of mass murder, even if no actual murder has taken place.

I once had the opportunity of asking a psychiatrist at a party about this phenomenon (not the social obsession, but the perversity itself). This was long before the internet and all the unsavoury consequences of that in connection with child pornography. He said that he knew of instances where grown men who had never contemplated any sexual relations with children, and who had certainly never wanted to harm or traumatize children, had succumbed to arousal when, at a gathering or party, a child had sat on their lap and moved up and down in an innocent fashion, but that their brain had interpreted that motion as sexual pleasure.
These people had asked him if he thought they were perverted, and if so, could he help them.
Apparently, he told them that unless such thoughts continued with any frequency they need not worry. This was forty years ago, I wonder what offialdom would say to those people today?
Probably want to string them up as well.

Baldy

Rod Liddle, at least, is "on the right track", but still has far to go.

Take a closer look and you will find that paedophiles don't represent half the risk to children that the Child Abuse Industry does.

jac

I really think people who feel we have unhealthy obsession with paedophiles should wake up to reality. Children have been the victims of predatory adults for centuries and it is only relatively recently that the rest of our - frankly cowardly - society has begun to even discuss the subject.

Quite what do people object to in the policing of this crime? In fact, it is particularly difficult to control.

Children in care (in my epxerience) are particularly at risk because child abusers are drawn to jobs that are poorly paid and difficult. But also because those who could protect children - doctors, social workers etc so often turn the other cheek.

The fact is, like people who want to commit robberies, these criminals have spent years perfecting the art of getting what they want and usually with the assistance of innocently complicit adults who the criminal spends much time cultivating as a means to accessing their children.

Far from society at large being over hysterical, the reality is, most people are utterly ignorant of the nature of this crime and how it takes place. There is no general sense of how to protect your children. We are far more careful of our personal possessions as far as I am aware.

With regard to people taking photographs at public events eg end of term plays etc. I am sick and tired of people and their intrusive cameras. I really don't see why anyone should feel they have a right to film my children. In the past we all survived quite happily without taping every millisecond of our lives - or our children's lives for that matter. I think it is very odd that anyone should see why parents wouldnot like their children included in someone else's family album, by accident or design. Children used to have a private existence, but now it seems to be up for grabs for anyone who comes along wit hthe latest camcorder. In fact, I constantly have to tell men in parks not to film my children. It's happened on at least a dozen occasions in out London park. Why?

All we used to have was a society where the child was left to cry in the dark. I cannot understand why anyone would want to block all opportunities to prevent child abuse - it seems perverse.

Bruno

Probably the most astute and bravest of articles I've read on this topic. Rod hits the nail on the head. It seems that the child protection charities have created something which now has its own self-perpetuating momentum here, something which it is fair to describe as a 'child abuse industry', and which is damaging society AND our children.

The EU funds the NSPCC to the tune of millions of pounds, the NSPCC has to manufacture new forms of 'child abuse' and constantly has to press for new laws in order to justify its own existence and the well paid salaries of its staff.

Despite what the tabloids would have you believe, which are themselves trying to make financial profit from something as terrible as child abuse, Britain now has the strictest child protection and 'anti-paedo’ laws in the entire world. Yet in survey after survey, British children are confirmed to be amongst the most bullied, the unhappiest, the most obese, the most violent and the most likely to commit suicide and self-harm. This should tell us that paedophilia, damaging and terrible though it may be, is actually not the greatest threat to our children.

Unfortunately, as Rod says, there is no practical solution to the problem on the horizon. The only answer I can suggest is that more figures in the media are brave enough not only to question the child abuse industry, but also to shame and reveal the motivations of the perpetrators. Not only is the motive behind all of this largely financial gain and comfortable lifestyles, it is also, lets be frank, red in tooth and claw female sexual jealousy. Real paedophilia (i.e. the sexual preference for pre-pubescent children) has been shamelessly exploited and the definition extended to include such things as looking at photos of 25 year old topless women in school uniform (‘virtual child porn‘).

Recently, a video was released by the most prominent global child abuse charity -'ECAPT', intending to highlight its campaign to stop third world child prostitution. A noble goal, but watch the video and observe how images of 12 year old prostitutes are followed by what appears to be simply a man trying to pick up a 16 year old girl in a night club for sex. The stated aim of charities like ECAPT is to have a world-wide age of consent set at 18. But anyone who thinks this is so that young girls of 14 will be better protected from sexual abuse is quite deluded. In fact its not really even about protecting 16 or 17 year old 'children'. Its about making the husbands and lovers of the middle-aged women who lead these charities to be afraid of even approaching a 21 year old in a nightclub or hotel bar lest she might turn out to be 'underage'. Perhaps we need to petition for a new law against - ‘the exploitation of the rightful concern for the protection of children, for the psychological, sexual, financial or political benefit of adults’.

And to those idiots who think that this hounding of Gary Glitter is all about protecting the innocence of children - I wonder what the average 9 year old is thinking when she sees headlines such as ‘kill the pedo’ every morning on her parent’s newspapers lying around the home?