Obsolete

Thursday, December 11, 2014

"Nowhere to hide".

Call me a stick in the mud, but there really is something extraordinarily aggravating about the use of hashtags, in you know, real life. They're bad enough online, especially when campaigns such as #CameronMustGo are like, totally indicative of the feeling of the general public and for it to be ignored is a typical example of the old media's systemic bias. Or it could be no one cares about this particular circle jerk for a good reason. Doesn't excuse them for the ones they do, mind. Have the Chibok girls been rescued yet, incidentally?

It could be I just despise social media. All the same, when a group uses a hashtag offline and combines it with an incredibly self-aggrandising statement, such as #WeProtectChildrenOnline, good cause or otherwise, it rather sets my teeth on edge. Perhaps it's that protecting children so often means infantilising adults, or indeed, the state taking responsibility for that which should be left to parents to decide upon. We're almost a year on from the universal rollout of "on by default" filtering, and spank me silly if it's made kids safer online by as much as a fraction, the vast majority deciding they prefer the internet uncensored, thank you very much. Not that most do anything beyond going to Facebook with the odd surreptitious glance at insert your favoured porntube site here anyway.

Ministers regardless of party tend to be at their sanctimonious worst on all matters connected with child safety and the interwebs, understandable when you consider the legitimate concerns surrounding the danger posed by sexual predators online, less so when they're often responding to exaggerated and occasionally plain wrong coverage and campaigning in the media. You then also have people like the former head of Ceop, Jim Gamble, who seems to imagine he's fighting a one man campaign ala Frank Castle against the evil of paedophilia, only without the guns. Or the subtlety, for that matter.

Co-opting GCHQ fully into the battle against those particularly devious perverts who hide and exchange material via the dark nets, whether it be Tor, i2p or Freenet, is then a no-brainer. Anything that makes people forget about things like Tempora, or Optic Nerve, which must have sucked up a fair share of exactly the material David Cameron now wants GCHQ to crack down on the better. Except, as James Ball points out, GCHQ has been doing exactly this for quite some time already, and politicians have also been flagging up their work ever since the Snowden revelations.

If Cameron's speech really does signal a new offensive by the police and GCHQ against the paedophile forums on Tor, then clearly it's to be welcomed, at least up to a point. There are reasons to be doubtful however, not least that if the intelligence agencies have found a way to identify both users and where the servers of dark net sites are hosted, the decision to first go after some of the drug markets was a curious one. Operation Onymous didn't so much as seize a single child porn .onion, leading most to conclude the raids were down to sloppiness on the part of admins rather than flaws in Tor itself. It might seem counter-intuitive that admins of drug markets are less security concious than paedophiles, until you realise they've still probably got less to lose if they're exposed than paedophiles have.

The other concern is that if Tor is broken, the knowledge of how to identify users will quickly become known to other, less enlightened security agencies, with the activists whom rely on Tor for anonymity the first in the firing line. It also suggests that despite the encouraging comments from Simon Bailey, the Association of Chief Police Officers' lead on child protection, who said it was realism to admit it was impossible for the police to go after every person viewing child abuse, and that those caught who are determined not to be a risk to children should be treated as patients rather than go before a court, politicians and others are still pretending all those who do so will be brought to justice. They won't be, not only as the resources aren't there considering the numbers of people estimated to have a sexual attraction to children, but also as combined with a VPN, the use of Tor or i2p offers fairly substantial protection. Most paedophiles are caught not through being tracked down via the web but due to their cache of child abuse material being discovered by someone accessing their computer in person.

The recognition that a good percentage of those who view child abuse imagery will not themselves abuse children is at least a start. If we can help those who fear they could act on their urges by not considering every paedophile as an abuser by default, encouraging others like Eddie to come forward, we might be on the way to further preventing abuse before it happens. Despite the suggestions there isn't any help for paedophiles in this country unless they offend, I suspect if someone was to go to their GP and tell them about their problem they might well be referred either to a psychiatrist or for CBT, but that obviously also sets up the potential for precisely the exposure most paedophiles fear.

What doesn't help is the language of there "being nowhere to hide". It's both false and encourages paedophiles to seek out the exact "refuges" which do so much to perpetuate the abuse politicians so desperately want to prevent. Surely, in this post-Savile era, it's time for the debate to become more informed.

Labels: child abuse, child pornography, crime, David Cameron, GCHQ, NSPCC, paedophile hysteria, paedophilia, politics

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12/11/2014 09:58:00 pm | Permalink |

Thursday, October 16, 2014

Not a statement from John Grisham.

(This is a post about child abuse and paedophiles. I despise "trigger warnings", but considering the content on this occasion thought it should be made clear.)

The reaction to John Grisham's remarks in his Telegraph interview has been all too familiar. His argument, which it must be said is not wholly convincing in itself and certainly lacked in delivery, was there is a major difference between someone who finds themselves prosecuted for downloading a small number of indecent images of a post-pubescent child and someone who actively abuses a child. Grisham was talking in the context of America in particular jailing far too many people, including "60-year-old white guys" who "drunkenly" search out such things, relating an anecdote about an old friend from law school caught up in a "honey trap" operation by Canadian police. The Telegraph itself notes a study from the U.S. Sentencing Commission that found the average sentence for possessing child pornography had doubled since 2004, from 54 months to 95.

Jon Brown of the NSPCC, talking to the BBC, repeated the regularly heard claim that "every time these images are clicked on or downloaded it creates demand that ultimately fuels more child abuse". In the Guardian, Suzanne Ost writes that "seeking out these images can encourage the market and thus the abuse of more children to fulfil demand". Which raises the following questions: what kind of a market is there in child abuse images? Does one exist at all, and if it does, what form does it take? Does it adhere to the classical laws of supply and demand? Does it resemble the market for adult pornography, or say the one for illegal drugs?

Attempting to answer those questions is as you might expect, incredibly difficult to next to impossible. What we do know is that child pornography operated for an extremely short period of time as an above ground industry, and only then in a tiny number of countries, such as Denmark and the Netherlands, although magazines were also produced in this country as well the United States. When it comes to the internet era, less than 10 years ago research suggested a "substantial amount, if not most" of the child abuse imagery circulating could still be traced to this period, roughly between 1969 and 1987, when one of the last mail order magazines was closed.

This will have undoubtedly changed since then. There is still relatively little however to suggest there is a market for child abuse images beyond the relatively small paedophile communities established on private forums, and most notably, on the so-called "dark net(s)". Nor with the exception of the occasional professional operation, mostly based in eastern Europe, have there been what can be described as commercial producers of "new" child abuse material rather than simply distributors of that which already existed. Most of the forums and sites to be found on the dark net, of which there have been a dwindling number since the shutting down of Freedom Hosting, require registration, with the most "exclusive" even requiring that prospective members first upload child abuse images they have obtained from elsewhere before they are given access.

One of the best insights we have into the volume of child abuse material available online was provided by the Anonymous raids on Lolita City, with those behind the hacking of the site claiming it hosted over 100GB of indecent images. Anonymous first discovered Lolita City and the hosting of child pornography on Tor via the Hidden Wiki; the wiki itself claims that a month before it closed, Lolita City hosted 1.4 million images. How far the Hidden Wiki can be relied upon is obviously open to question, as with any wiki: one of its pages attempts to do nothing less than provide a "history of CP", including describing in graphic detail the abuse of children depicted in some of the videos presumably available via the sites it provides links to. The page for one of the newest established forums, up only since August, claims it already has over 110,000 registered users. For context, the BBC suggested that Black Market Reloaded had around 300,000 registered users back in December, while the FBI indictment against Ross Ulbrict, the alleged owner of the Silk Road marketplace, claims it had 957,079 registered users. The BBC also in June conducted an interview with a self-described former operator of a dark net paedophile forum, which he said had 40,000 registered users. His own cache of material amounted to "12 gigabytes".

We can't of course know how much of the hosted and exchanged material would be found to be indecent under the Protection of Children Act. There has long for instance been a demand for "non-nude" images of children, and on some of these forums they would almost certainly be hosted alongside the illegal content. Without doubt the most widely available indecent content is that categorised as Level 1, erotic posing without sexual activity. This raises the question of how erotic posing is defined, as past controversies have centred around. By the same token, the rarest is likely to be Level 5, which involves either sadism or bestiality, referred to by some paedophiles as "hurtcore", although it would presumably also comprise some of Level 4, defined as penetrative sexual activity between children and adults.

None of which answers the question of whether merely viewing an indecent image, beyond its illegality, really does encourage the abuse of more children, taking out of the equation for the moment whether doing so can encourage the viewer himself to either abuse a child or lead to the belief that sexual attraction to children is normal. Certainly, the forums hosted on Tor would soon wither if there was no new material posted, and they are without doubt used by abusers themselves to share images and videos of their crimes, and are encouraged to continue by their fellow abusers. At the same time, it is far too simplistic to claim as Brown does that "every time these images are clicked ... it creates demand". It's certainly arguable that this could be the case if some of the admins of these sites were producers of material, and also if they were charging for access to it. Very few if any are. Even those actively seeking out material through web searches or on "clear net" p2p services are unlikely to be creating further demand, mainly because the battle against abuse imagery has been so successful when it comes to the overground. The image Brown conjures up is one analogous to that of the adult pornography business, which could not survive even in its current emasculated form without consumers being willing to pay for content. It just doesn't work like that, and never really did.

Ost in her piece goes on to further describe how viewing child abuse images harms beyond the simple market and demand argument, and on this she is on far sturdier ground, also pointing out how much harder it is to stumble across such material than it once was. One wonders though whether the immediate criticism of Grisham in such condemnatory terms really helps anyone. It certainly doesn't add to our understanding of how online paedophiles are currently organised or how they operate, nor does it do anything but further stigmatise those attracted to children who have no intention of acting on their feelings. It could however push them towards others who do. Surely that's something no one wants, regardless of how paedophiles as a whole are viewed.

Labels: child abuse, child pornography, John Grisham, NSPCC, paedophile hysteria, paedophilia

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10/16/2014 11:59:00 pm | Permalink |

Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Both the Mail and Harman have PIE on their faces.

(This is 1,705 words. Just so you know.)

Never let the facts get in the way of a good story. It isn't the Daily Mail's motto, unofficial or otherwise, but it easily could be. Perhaps though, in line with the Mail's sudden shock finding that paedophilia wasn't universally viewed with the same disgust as it is now back in the 70s, when the National Council for Civil Liberties had an extremely ill-advised sort of affiliation with the Paedophile Information Exchange, it could just as well be a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

That the NCCL, now Liberty, had links with PIE has been known since, err, it had links with them. It is not a startling new discovery. Indeed, not a single aspect of the Mail's investigation and its corresponding attacks on Harriet Harman, Jack Dromey (husband of Harman) and Patricia Hewitt, all leading members of the NCCL during the period when PIE was affiliated, is based on new information. I'm certain that there have been newspaper articles pointing this out on occasion in the past, pieces which have attracted a slight amount of attention and then been forgotten about. It's not a proud period in Liberty's history by any means, and it's one which current head Shami Chakrabarti has apologised for.

This said, and despite how it sounds like an excuse and a cop out, it has to be remembered that it was a different era. As the proposed changes to the law that Harriet Harman lobbied on make clear, up until this point it had not been a specific offence to take or make indecent images of children, although to an extent this would have been covered under other laws, such as the Obscene Publications Act. As we've been rather forced to acknowledge over the past couple of years, the 70s was the in-between decade, a period where the new freedoms and excesses of the 60s continued to an extent, not least in those few European nations which legalised possession of all types of pornography, even if the production remained unlawful, just not necessarily cracked down upon. It also wasn't unusual for "mainstream" European adult magazines of the period to feature post-pubescent girls under the age of 16, not surprising when the age of consent in the country of origin often was (and in some cases remains) under 16. By contrast, and as Harman in her paper quotes, the judge in the Oz trial defined indecent as a woman taking her clothes off on the beach in front of someone else's children, or athletes wearing clothing which didn't fit properly. Harman was writing only 17 years on from the Lady Chatterley trial, and a year and six months after the Sex Pistols and Bill Grundy had their tete-a-tete. Views on what was and wasn't filth were polarised far beyond what they are today, even by the Daily Mail's maiden aunt standards.

The Mail's fundamental problem with its claims, especially against Harman, is that they've produced the evidence against her in full and it doesn't stack up. Her paper's main suggestion is that images of naked children should not be held to be indecent unless it can either be proved or inferred from the photograph that harm to the child has taken place as a result. This sounds potentially outrageous, but in actuality this isn't far off from the test the authorities now have to apply when prosecuting those who have the lowest category of child abuse images in their possession, I.e. those where the child is naked and is posing in a manner considered to be erotic (see the controversy over Klara and Eddy Belly Dancing for instance). Harman's proposed amendment would have clearly left it up to the police and CPS and in turn judge and jury to decide whether or not a specific image or images were indecent. Her main justification was that parents could be prosecuted for taking such pictures when they had no malign intentions, something it was felt was possible under a new law. About the worst allegation that can be thrown at her is she was being naive, and that paedophiles would quickly exploit such grey areas. There is no evidence she was influenced in any way by NCCL's association with PIE, and the lobbying did not lead to the law being changed in the way she proposed.

Far more questionable is the NCCL's submission to the government on the age of consent, not signed but sent when both Dromey and Hewitt were with the organisation in 1976. While the Mail seems almost as upset about the proposal that it should be 14 instead of 16 (the age of consent was raised from 13 to 16 in 1885, so has never been set in stone, and while 16 seems a good middle ground between 14 and 18 to me, other Europeans nations continue to think differently), the real problem is that while it suggests that those under 10 cannot consent in any circumstances, in cases where those between 10 and 14 have sex with an older partner it should be considered that consent "was not present, unless it is demonstrated that it was genuinely given and that the child understood the nature of the act". The law as it currently stands holds that children under 13 cannot consent in any circumstances, and if the other person involved is over 18, then the act is defined in law as rape regardless of what the child felt. The NCCL's suggestion might not have quite been a licence for abuse, as the onus would still have fell on the older partner to prove the child understood and had given consent, but it most certainly would be a substantial dilution of the protection we have in force today.

Again though, the NCCL's submission did not win government support, and there is no evidence suggesting it was influenced by PIE. The other claims against the three Labour grandees is that the NCCL's association with PIE amounted to apologia or validation, in 1975 complaining to the Press Council about coverage of the group, describing it in their annual report as a "campaigning/counselling group for adults sexually attracted to children", which seems to be before the NCCL was properly aware that PIE was more than that; and that as late as 1982 the NCCL's newsletter carried a missive from a self-confessed paedophile defending himself. Clearly, newspapers and magazines have never published letters from those whose views they vehemently disagree with. One of the founders of PIE, Tom O'Carroll, was subsequently jailed for "conspiring to corrupt public morals" (and continues to promote sexual relationships between children and adults as being entirely normal), with Hewitt later writing that "[C]onspiring to corrupt public morals is an offence incapable of definition or precise proof", the Mail finding this especially damning. Except as Harriet Harman's paper makes clear, this is almost a direct lift from Roy Jenkins, who said something remarkably similar about defining "indecency". The other allegations the Mail makes, that the NCCL's submission to the Criminal Law Commission called for the decriminalisation of incest and also claimed that "[C]hildhood sexual experiences, willingly engaged in, with an adult result in no identifiable damage", don't seem as yet to be supported by posted documents.

What though does any of this matter nearly 40 years on, and when so much has been known for so long? The obvious reason is that paedophilia is so despicable and beyond the pale that regardless of the passage of time, just the connection with a group like PIE is still to be regretted and apologised for. That the NCCL allowed anyone to affiliate and didn't at the time have a mechanism for expelling such groups isn't an adequate explanation, and indeed, it does seem as though there was a certain amount of sympathy within the NCCL towards PIE if only briefly, and then due to its stated mission as being to counsel those who found themselves sexually attracted to children. Some within the NCCL may have been more involved, as the Telegraph has reported. In part however it also seems to be about simple revenge and glee at finding three well known politically correct right-on Labour figures didn't condemn paedophiles on sight, regardless of how long ago it was, especially when the left has been so quick to pounce on the past allegiances of Tories or horror of horrors, the Mail's own history. Add in the typical Mail rage at how the BBC didn't address the topic until Ed Miliband did, and it all seems wearingly familiar. That perhaps they didn't cover it immediately as a direct consequence of being so badly burnt over Lord McAlpine doesn't seem to have entered their thinking.

It would matter more if there was even the slightest indication the three held such views at the time, which again there is no evidence that they did, let alone if they had then carried such opinions with them into the Labour party and then parliament. The fact is that they didn't, as Nick Cohen points out. While Harriet Harman has been right to express regret today, something she didn't do in her Newsnight interview last night, she has been right not to apologise, as she has nothing to apologise for. Whether perhaps Dromey or Hewitt do is more nuanced, considering their potential involvement with the age of consent submission and more besides, but again it needs to be stated that there are plenty of political figures who held opinions or which they even acted upon years ago they would now regret. Bringing Jimmy Savile into it, as the Mail attempted to, is a nonsense. They didn't validate Savile, just as the Mail and the rest of the media do not bear responsibility for failing to expose him while he was alive. Despite the criticism of the lack of response, if anything it's Patricia Hewitt's silence that seems vindicated. Reacting to the Mail just encourages it and convinces Paul Dacre that he was right. The real reason the rest of the media ignored the reports at first is there simply isn't any evidence of anything other than naivety. And if there's one thing that the Mail can't be accused of, it's precisely that.

Labels: Daily Mail, Harriet Harman, Labour, Liberty, Mail-watch, media analysis, media coverage, Paedophile Information Exchange, paedophilia, Paul Dacre, scandals

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2/25/2014 11:59:00 pm | Permalink |

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Scum-watch: Going "soft" on perverts.

If there was ever a chance that Dominic Mohan would be less overbearing compared to his predecessor when it comes to the protection of children, then that's gone out the window with today's "exclusive" claim that a "[Q]uarter of pervs go free", as alluded to on the front page. The actual article, by Brian Flynn, has to be one of the least illuminating and most lazy examples of supposed investigative journalism in quite some time:

THE Sun can today reveal how Britain's soft justice system allows hundreds of child sex fiends to escape court action.

In a special investigation, we found more than a quarter of child abusers are let off with a caution by cops.

The shock figures emerged in responses by 33 police forces to Freedom of Information demands by The Sun.

This then is a method which has been previously pioneered by the mid-market tabloids, where they submit FoI requests to the country's police forces, not all of which reply, with an article to write already in mind. Both the Express and the Mail have used this to supposedly show how many "foreigners" are either committing murders or rapes in this country, and has been dealt with in the past by 5CC. Those requests though have been much narrower in scope to this one, and also far better defined and explained. The Sun's request, presumably, as it is never properly outlined, is for the numbers of individuals who have been charged and cautioned with "sexual and physical abuse offences against kids", their best description, not mine. This understandably covers a whole multitude of sins, some, but which by no means all, are covered in this document explaining the changes which came in under the Sexual Offences Act 2003.

To start off with, only 33 forces have responded when there are 44 in total, so the statistics are by no means complete. Here though are the shock figures:

In total, 8,043 people who committed sexual and physical abuse offences against kids were charged in the year to April, while 2,764 were given a caution.

Just to illustrate that these 2,764 given a caution hardly cover the most serious offences, the paper then gives the only breakdown in actual offences in the entire piece:

Even beasts who rape under-age children can get just a ticking off. The statistics included 20 who raped girls under 16 and eight who attacked young boys.

So only 28 who admitted to rape were given a caution. For someone to only be given a caution for such a serious crime, especially against a child, there has to be significant mitigating circumstances. One of these is explained in the above document on the Sexual Offences Act 2003: since the act was passed, anyone under 12, regardless of whether they consented to sex or not, is considered to have been raped if they take part in any sexual activity involving penetration. This still applies even if the person they have sex with is 13 or below the age of consent themselves. Since it's hardly in the public interest to prosecute to the full extent of the law young children for such serious offences, a caution will often be the best option. The changes in the law were additionally not meant to be used when, for example, a 15-year-old consents to sex with a 17-year-old, unless there was abuse or exploitation involved, but this is not always the case, hence a caution will again sometimes be given. Other examples of where a caution will be considered the better option will be where the offence involved a member of the family of the victim, which the SOA expanded to include step-family members and others. The Sun also adds its own explanations as to why a caution rather than a prosecution will sometimes be best option:

Legal sources said reasons for the caution option include victims not wanting to go through a court process, perhaps if the attacker was a family member.
Evidence could also be flimsy, meaning a fiend could get off whereas under a caution guilt is assured. But one source said: "It must always be a last option."

Well, precisely, and the Sun has provided no evidence whatsoever that suggests this isn't the case. All it has done is present some out of context figures with no information whatsoever as to what offences have actually been committed, which would help us to ascertain whether a caution is a reasonable end result to the offence or not. It's also provided no comparison figures as to whether the number of cautions has actually gone up or down year on year, which would further help to show whether or not this is a change in policy and genuine further evidence of it being a mockery of Labour "being tough on crime". In short, it's a typical piece of tabloid journalism, so flimsy that as soon as you look at it in any detail you notice that it's coming apart at the seams. It's an example of doing the very bare minimum as an attempt to prove an already held hypothesis.

This is without even considering the Sun's leader column on the subject:

SHOCKING figures show one in four proven child abusers - including child rapists -- get off with a caution. That means almost 3,000 known paedophiles are on the loose - many of them likely to re-offend.

The Sun presents nothing whatsoever that justifies calling those given a caution paedophiles, and it also hasn't the slightest basis for claiming that "many of them" are likely to re-offend. This is just base scaremongering using the terms which are most likely to cause fear in both children and adults.

Raping girls under 16 - or even gang-raping a boy - goes virtually unpunished.

Except the article shows that only 28 cases of rape out of a total of 10,807 offences were concluded with a caution - we can't even tell how many cases of rape were prosecuted as the Sun doesn't provide us with those figures. That's hardly going virtually unpunished. The Sun does however have an explanation:

But there is a culture of idle incompetence at the very top - with both politicians and police chiefs. The message from on high is: Jails are full so turn a blind eye.

This is abject nonsense. The jails being full has very little to no influence whatsoever on the CPS deciding who to prosecute and who to not. The courts and judges may indeed be influenced by lack of space when it comes to passing sentence, but the CPS simply decides on the merits and circumstances of the case. The possibility of prison doesn't enter into it.

This stunning failure of justice is a crime in itself.
And innocent children pay the price.

As will innocent children and adults who believe the fearmongering which the Sun fails to even begin to back up.

Labels: abuses by tabloids, bullshit, child abuse, crime, freedom of information, paedophile hysteria, paedophilia, Scum-watch, Sun-watch

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9/23/2009 11:59:00 pm | Permalink |

Monday, November 10, 2008

In the shitter with Gary Glitter.

Paedophiles, as we know, are the incarnation of evil. Where once murderers and rapists could be satisfied that their crimes were the ones that would guarantee them the most exposure in the following morning's press, the condemnation and public fury descending firmly down onto their shoulders, these days they have to share the mantle with closeted onanists being prosecuted for downloading images of child abuse, not to mention the cuddly neighbourhood jihadists, who can be relied upon for providing something for the average person to get angry about on a slow news day.

The dream then for the tabloid press is when fame meets underage sex. In the 90s we had OJ Simpson, who despite being acquitted of murdering his wife and her friend has not worked since and is now in the slammer on a separate offence. Michael Jackson then upped the ante, but was also acquitted, with his career also stalling as a result. Gary Glitter, or Paul Gadd, as he was born, has instead broken the mould: not just was he convicted of possessing child pornography, he then took the classic, almost cliched child abuser pilgrimage to Thailand, via Cambodia, where he was swiftly convicted of sharing his bed with two children. Forced to return to the United Kingdom, he will now almost certainly be held in reserve, much like Omar Bakri Muhammad is, for when the Sun doesn't have much news and needs something to fire up its base.

It turns out then that those jokers over at the Assessment and Qualifications Alliance had set as part of GCSE music coursework the task of "composing a song that relies on tempo and/or style for its effect." The paper recommended some songs that the student could listen to for inspiration: alongside Freddie and the Dreamers, Queen, Gloria Gaynor, Dexy's Midnight Runners and Meatloaf, there's Mr Gadd himself, with "I'm the leader of the gang (I am)". Perhaps not the most astute choice in the circumstances, but not one surely that warrants such frothing outrage. It's not as if the paper had offered Glitter's song as the only example of what was required, after all; and as far as tempo and/or style goes, it's hard not to admit that Glitter knew how to use both, even if the music was far from original or that anyone would now listen to it outside of a wave of nostalgia.

You could also accept that recommending one of Glitter's songs as an example increases the possibility of him receiving extra royalties, and no one likes the idea of a unrepentant paedophile receiving funds from the general public. That though really ought to be as far as it goes. We don't ostracize the likes of Roman Polanski, despite his conviction for the sexual assault of a 13-year-old, although the fact that he was both a survivor of the Holocaust and had his first wife murdered by the Manson family does mean he's a far more sympathetic character, or boycott his films. We don't regard Nabakov as unacceptable or his novel Lolita as obscene because of its content, and we don't campaign against the use of Wagner's music, despite his anti-semitism and subsequent appropriation by the Nazis. Phil Spector, if eventually convicted of murder, seems unlikely to have his work blacklisted either. Why then does the "recommending" of Glitter's music to anyone inspire such revulsion and irrationality?

He said: “He’s a convicted paedophile jailed for sexually abusing kids. It’s completely inappropriate to recommend him as listening material.
“Boys and girls of 15 or 16 who select this song will go straight to the internet to find Glitter’s music. I dread to think what they may find searching online for him.”

Err, his music, plenty of jokes about him and information involving his convictions, perhaps? Searching for Glitter isn't suddenly going to lead to a treasure trove of category five child pornography, and besides, we're talking about 15 or 16-year-olds here. If they don't already know about Gadd and his record then they must have lived on another planet.

The Deputy Head, who asked not to be named in case his daughter is penalised in the exam, added: “A national exam board should have the basic common sense not to recommend past works of a paedophile to teenagers.”

There goes Polanski then. Like with homosexuality, we don't know for obvious reasons how many past authors or artists we now treasure may have been sexually attracted to children: allegations have been made for example against J.M. Barrie, although nothing has ever been proved in that case, as well as Lewis Carroll. Why though should what someone did ever affect what they also produced, or rule it out as suitable material to be studied? Why for instance should Chris Langham be ostracised or ridiculed from ever acting again because of his conviction for possession of child pornography? It's as if we've decided abitrarily what offences are unforgivable, or rather, some in the media have, and those that have made mistakes have no possibility of making amends.

But Dr Michele Elliot – director of children’s charity Kidscape – insisted the papers be reissued.
She said: “AQA need to get Glitter off there. It sends totally the wrong message to paedophiles’ victims. Thousands of children take this exam. If they buy his song it could be a nice earner for him.
“One way to show we dislike his abuse of children is to cut off the money he lives on. It’s in the hands of AQA to do that.”

The idea that kids are going to go out there and instantly buy his stuff because a GCSE paper recommends they do is nonsense. Our history teacher recommended we read Mein Kampf, which we respectively declined to do. What they might do is go and search and see if they can get the song for free from somewhere, or even more likely, go and search YouTube for it. Failing that, they might ask their parents if they have compilation CDs with some of his stuff on it. How also is presenting one of Glitter's songs as an example for how to construct their own sending "totally the wrong message to paedophiles' victims"?

Anti-child abuse campaigners Shy Keenan and Sara Payne called use of Glitter’s song “disgusting”.
They said in a statement: “This stonking great child molester should crawl back under the rock he came from, not be celebrated for his music. We’ll campaign to have any reference to him taken out.”

No one's celebrating his music; it's being used as an example for one piece of coursework. Do you people have problems with comprehension?

You'd be forgiven then for thinking that listening to one of Glitter's songs would be enough for the average child to be overcome by the paedo-waves, turning them more susceptible in just 3 minutes. The reaction and the Sun's part in it any event swiftly resulted, predictably, in AQA removing the song from the paper, something that will doubtless cost them a ridiculous amount of money to erase a non-mistake because a few jumped-up self-righteous morons imagine that we'd be better off if we could throw some people and some of their work straight down the memory hole. Remember, this isn't the British Isles, it's the paedoph-isles. Or something.

Labels: Gary Glitter, invented scandals, media hysteria, paedophile hysteria, paedophilia, Scum-watch, Sun-watch

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11/10/2008 10:14:00 pm | Permalink |

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

What you won't be reading in the Sun tomorrow.

"Calm down dears, I'm only a flaming hypocrite."

29,000 EVIL PAEDO-PERVS have been deleted from the social networking site MurdochSpace, after the site was trawled JUST TWO MONTHS after a similar purge led to the removal of 7,000 profiles of other child sex vermin.

Disgracefully, MurdochSpace REFUSED to comment on the huge number of shrub rocketeers using the website, or to discuss whether more innocents had been contacted through the site by the scourge of modern life. In a statement, its so-called security officer, Heinrich Wigwam, said: "We're pleased that we've been able to remove the profiles of so many registered perverts, it's just a shame that we're not able to do the same to them in real life. They ought to be strung up from the nearest lamppost, or alternatively, made to watch the Fox News Channel. We now hope that the other pitiful social networking sites, such as Fleshbook and Grebo follow our example and provide a safe haven for such vile degenerates, so that the Sun can run huge exposes on how your kids are only safe on MurdochSpace."

Asked for her views on the matter, Rebekah Wade was sanguine. "It's a shame we can't run a huge scaremongering article on how social networking sites are full of predatory nonces slavering at the bit to molest our precious youngsters, but at least we can report on how that evil thespian Chris Langham had such disgusting material that it made a juror cry. Let's just hope he didn't obtain it from MurdochSpace." When questioned on what she thought about Rupert Murdoch in effect making it easier for child sex fiends to stalk their prey by not putting up appropriate barriers on his hugely profitable network, the Sun editor, described by Courteney Cox as powerful, strong and with a dress sense to rival Boy George, was unequivocal. "The man is clearly no longer up to his job. As an established friend of paedophiles everywhere, having made children less safe by continuing to demand a Sarah's law that will drive them further underground, I believe I have the expertise to make MurdochSpace a safer place. My plan is to name and shame every one of them, and let God sort them out when the vigilante hordes descend on their doorsteps to tear them limb from limb. What could possibly go wrong?".

Wendi Deng is gorgeous.

Labels: mockery, MurdochSpace, MySpace, paedophilia, paedophilia hysteria, Rebekah Wade, Rupert Murdoch

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7/25/2007 06:53:00 pm | Permalink |

Monday, March 12, 2007

Scum-watch: We need Sarah's law. And the comments prove it.

Is Rebekah Wade reflecting the concerns of society or is she exploiting the population's most base fears? That's the conundrum I always mull over when reading the latest hysterical report on why we need Sarah's law and now. Is the campaign motivated out of sales, genuine belief there's a problem that's being underreported or out of some own demon from Wade's past which she's getting her galley slaves to constantly write about?

This isn't to trivialise child abuse. It is a serious problem, but as one of the more sensible commenters on the report mentions, it's far more likely to occur within a close circle of family and friends than from a random stranger. The next question that has to be asked is whether "exposing" these "monsters" is actually scaring the public or making them more secure. It's not one that I have an answer to. I do however remember the hysteria created by Wade's previous campaign at the News of the Screws, which inspired the kind of mob justice, especially in protests in Portsmouth, that you more associate with fiction than with modern Britain.

Today's report focuses on court rooms across the country and the sex offenders passing through, with the courts only being monitored for three eight-hour days. As you might expect, there's the usual variety of people who've downloaded child pornography, as well as those who are actual abusers. There's also a few anomalies which I don't think have any right to be presented in such a sensationalist manner. This, however, is the Sun. It's the only way it knows.

Here's the introduction, complete with scarily-staged (correction: it seems to have been photoshopped now I look at it) photograph of the stereotypical image of a paedophile: someone most likely with a body odour problem, wearing dark clothes, hat, glasses and unshaven, stalking a playground while a child swings, oblivious to the danger that's right in front of her. The reality, as painted by the actual cases in the courts, is often very different.

PAEDOPHILES and child sex offenders are the scourge of modern life. There have always been perverts preying on children, but the arrival of the internet has opened up new channels of depravity for sick individuals.
As well as those who physically assault youngsters from a position of trust and those who lure kids into danger, many download obscene images of children – ensuring all too real abuse.

Every day our justice system is battling to catch and punish these vermin. Often the sheer number of cases is such that only the most shocking make the Press.

We watched courts around the country for three eight-hour days last week to get a 24-hour snapshot of life in Paedo UK.

Below we outline just some of the cases.

Of the 12 cases the Sun presents, 5 of them involved actual abuse. Of those, only 3 involved assaults/abuse/rape with children which falls strictly under the definition of paedophilia, and one was a case 20 years old. The other two involved teenagers likely to be pubescent. This of course doesn't downgrade the crime, and this might seem pedantic, but labeling anyone who has sex with girls under the age of consent as a paedophile is lazy at best and at worst is ignoring the facts of the case.

For instance, one of the cases highlighted is of a 20-year-old soldier who invited a 14-year-old girl back to his house and had sex with her. The sex was presumably consensual, as it doesn't state otherwise. The sentence handed down was a 12-month jail term suspended for two years, a course for sex offenders for two years, and placement on the sex offenders register. The Sun doesn't go into the case in full, and the judge is quoted as saying that he took advantage of the girl. It's worth wondering why the case has come to court, as similar cases are often not pursued, which might mean there are other factors involved, but such a sentence for what was presumably consensual sexual activity, especially as the judge describes the man as highly immature seems harsh, and the Sun's exposure of the case is more so. He broke the law, but in the apparent circumstances does his exposure serve any purpose? Does the sentence serve any purpose when the judge concludes that the soldier is not a predatory paedophile?

I can't pretend to answer the questions raised. Most of the sentences passed however seem to me about right - neither too harsh or too lenient. The cases from Belfast and Newcastle are the most troubling; in those I think the sentences are definitely on the lenient side, especially as both had previous. This suggests though that the judges are on the whole getting it right.

The Sun's leader is particularly venomous:

IT’S like turning over a stone and watching the creepy-crawlies rush out from underneath.
And there are two especially frightening things about the paedophiles we uncover today.

First, the sheer number of them. These are just the vermin who happened to appear in court during our 24-hour watch.

12 cases over 3 days all across the country doesn't seem particularly excessive in my mind, but I might be being too relaxed or casual about the whole thing. After all, I'm a young adult male. I'm about the least likely person to be the victim of a sex crime. Is that affecting my judgment or not?

Second, how many of them have normal, responsible jobs — bus driver, soldier, foster carer and even a policeman. They cloak their evil with respectability.
These people are our enemy and they are a silent, secret enemy.

The Sun can’t be in every court in the land, every day, to haul these wretches into the limelight.

Are they our enemy or are they damaged individuals themselves? Are they predatory or have they themselves been preyed upon at some time? Instead of calling them the enemy, shouldn't we be recognising that they are just like everyone else going through the court system? Isn't calling them the enemy giving them a war-like status when they are certainly not soldiers and who can't be merely brushed aside using weapons? Isn't demonising them rather than trying to understand their urges and developing strategies from that part of the very problem?

We need a law that forces the authorities to turn a spotlight on the perverts in our midst.

A law that means the name and address of every paedophile is known to local parents whose children might become their victims.

We need Sarah’s Law. And soon.

Sarah's Law may have helped in only 3 of the cases, and that is by no means certain. The other problems involved with a naming law are the vigilante aspect, and the fact that it may further encourage potential predators to go even more underground, or simply go AWOL. While American states name sex offenders on websites, there is by no means the same moral panic there as there is here, thanks partly to the lack of populist mass-sale country-wide tabloids, and evidence suggests that those convicted who subsequently disappear instead of "signing on" the register are far more numerous to those who go missing here.

If we perhaps needed any more evidence of the potential for vigilantism, we can look at the comments on the Sun article. Of course, such a subject is always go to raise passions, and what people say online is often bravado in situations like this, but it's still an indicator for the type of feeling aroused by articles such as these.

I know what sort of punishment I and many others would dish out to these *******. It would last much longer than 12 months and they certainly could not be around a child again. But we live in a pathetic country whose pathetic laws do nothing but protect the guilty.

i would cut all the bits from them .that way they can never hurt another child fof the rest of there life ,even thats to good for them .bring back the death buy hanging or let them loose wiyh 50 mums debby

How can we expect anything to be done when the so called back bone of this country cannot even given these sick and twisted individuals a sentence worth while! These inhumanly animals should never be allowed to walk the streets! I think hanging should be brought back they do not deserve to breathe the same air as us!!!

Crime now, but let the special interest groups have their way, and child molesters will be a protected class of persons. What was considered anti-social in years past is now front and center as "normal" behaviour. The Sun does well to highlight the plight of the victimized. This abhorant perversion shuold always spark a heartfelt moral outrage among civilized people. Let us not forget that certain sub-cultures practice underage sex on a regular basis. They should not be exempted from child protection laws simply because they fled a barbaric country. If they want to live in a civilized country, then they should adjust to civilized laws, not bring their tribal mumbo jumbo with them.

None of the men featured appear to be from an ethnic minority, and it's perhaps worth mentioning here the efforts of the BNP in trying to suggest that Asian men in Keighley were responsible for the grooming of teenage girls, when the truth was much more complicated.

JUDGES get your act together and punish these amoeba's properly, never mind 6months and 2 yrs sentences, get them down for life! They're ruined countless kids lives!!! And a good dose of bromide in their tea!

Not the greatest justification here for a Sarah's law based on Megan's law:

Here in the usa we have a web site that you can go on, You can put in your address and it will fetch up a page with a local map showing all the addresses of pedo's in you area,You then click on each address and it will show you a picture of the scumbucket along with what his of her actual crime was. Now you would think with this that our kids would be safe but no..These things still get to grab our kids just the same and if they don't register their new addresses as they move around(what they are not supposed to do without police permission by the way)the police have no way of tracking them.Maybe we should start thinking about chipping these things(I cant call them people)or maybe putting those ankle braclets on them for the rest of their life,Better still put them in jail for longer periods,I don't three months, six months, or one year is good enough This is our children were taking about here and has anyone stopped to think of the life sentence these poor little things get to serve for 10min of a pedos fun.

The Sun's website, supposedly dedicated to seeking "justice for you", may well have the opposite effect. Its modus operandi, which seems to be to lock up ever more people for even longer, is the exact thing that is helping to drive re-offending rates up. Its demanding of "Sarah's law" could make children even more vulnerable. It distorts Lord Phillips' nuanced speech into suggesting that he wants killers released early. Oh, and in wonderfully good taste, it celebrates a woman who may well have hounded her husband's "killer" (he caused a pile-up through driving on the wrong side of the road) to death. It appears that Sun justice is in fact no justice.

Labels: paedophilia, paedophilia hysteria, Sarah's law, Scum-watch, Sun justice, Sun-watch

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3/12/2007 06:09:00 pm | Permalink |

Monday, February 12, 2007

Scum-watch: Ignoring their own role in perpetuating misery.

The mother of the victim of paedophile Craig Sweeney today gives a moving interview to the Sun about how they're still living in agony, and how the system seems to have failed them, especially in how counselling took months to get. It should go without saying that such difficulties are completely unacceptable, and that more needs to be done for those who find themselves the victims of such traumatic and devastating crimes.

The main ire though is based on the Sun's story last week on how Sweeney might be getting a place in a "quiet wing". As ever, the reality may not be quite that painted by the Sun, as a spokesman for Wakefield jail makes clear at the end of the article:

Last night the Prison Service said: “HMP Wakefield is conducting a scoping exercise on whether a quiet wing in the prison is viable. No decisions have been made.”

Wakefield is also far from being a safe haven for its notorious inmates, as reports from the weekend made clear:

Bath snatch paedophile Peter Voisey has been beaten up in jail. The 35-year-old pervert, who kidnapped and raped a six-year-old girl after snatching her from the bath in her Tyneside home, was punched in the face by a Pakistani inmate after calling him a "terrorist".

His attacker, who is not a sex offender, said to him: "In my country you'd be hanged for what you did."

The Sun article also of course doesn't happen to mention their own role in making sure that Sweeney wasn't given a potentially harsher sentence. While Sweeney was given life, and may well remain inside for the full 18 years (or longer, if he's judged to still be a risk to the public) that the sentence set down, the judge followed the sentencing formula devised by the government which gives a discount for pleading guilty and then also sets a minimum term which has to be served before parole will be considered. Using the formula, this meant that Sweeney could potentially be free within 6 years, although to say that's unlikely would be the same kind of understatement akin to suggesting Hitler was only slightly naughty.

It was the Sun's outrage, picked up by John Reid, new in the Home Secretary hot-seat, that meant that the attorney general was unable to send the sentence to the appeal court to consider as unduly lenient. They are as much to blame as anyone else for the continuing misery of Sweeney's victims' family. As before, they're betraying the very victims of crime that they so pledge to fight for.

Labels: Craig Sweeney, paedophilia, Scum-watch, Sun-watch, Wakefield prison

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2/12/2007 06:33:00 pm | Permalink |

Tuesday, February 06, 2007

Someone save us from these idiots.

Unity has already said a lot of excellent stuff on this subject, but this is possibly the most ignorant and idiotic scheme this government could have come up with. As you might have guessed, it's to do with sex offenders and paedophiles:

Sex offenders could be forced to register their e-mail addresses and chatroom names, the government says.

Home Secretary John Reid said he may make paedophiles put online identity details on the Sex Offenders Register.

Mechanisms would be set up to "flag up" approaches by them to sites popular among youngsters, he told the BBC.

As if the case yesterday of the three men who were given indeterminate sentences for plotting online wasn't worrying enough (yes, they needed to be dealt with, but the sentences given for talking about kidnapping, rape and murder when no offences other than possessing child pornography took place and when the men had not even met were out of all proportion with other comparable cases) then this comes along. Surely Reid and his advisers realise that you can get a new email address and change your alias on a myriad of sites within a matter of minutes?

Apparently not.

He told the BBC: "If we did that we would then be able to set up mechanisms that would flag up anyone using those addresses or those identities to make approaches and contacts through some of the very popular internet spaces which are used by kids."

Right. Say for instance a paedophile used the alias "lensman" (I've stole this from the film Hard Candy) in chatrooms, was convicted of a sex offence and was put on the register. Under Reid's plans "lensman" would therefore be potentially flagged, probably through NetNanny type programmes or voluntary ISP schemes, and as a result would either be blocked or a warning would be flashed up. Not only would this not stop "lensman" from changing his alias, but others who used this alias would then be potentially flagged as being untrustworthy at best. Most internet aliases used are far from original, and potentially hundreds, if not thousands of users across the world can use the same one. "lensman" is an example of this. Browsing just a couple of user sites, we come across different lensmans. Here's one on MySpace. A different one on Last.fm. Another from YouTube.

Online paedophiles also usually use names that are likely to appeal to those who they're targeting. As a result, children themselves could come under suspicion or have their own use of the internet limited. This may be an attempt to make the internet "safer", but it's also one which potentially cripples it.

It's a scheme that is so utterly unworkable that you have to hope that some of the more technologically savvy among the Westminster village point out just how ridiculous this is. It doesn't help however when you have so-called "experts" talking rubbish:

Child internet safety expert John Carr, of children's charity NCH, said: "This is a very welcome move.

"It will mean that we can extend the Sex Offenders Register regime into cyberspace and that will be a great comfort to many people."

It may be a comfort, but it's a false one. It's full of more holes than Wolfowitz's socks.

Prof Allyson MacVean, director of the John Grieve Centre for Policing and Community Safety at London's Metropolitan University, said police should be able to search sex offenders' homes and computers.

"Internet addresses are so easy to make up and it doesn't give any sense of who the person is or where their location is," she told the BBC.

She said this was why the police needed access to sex offenders' computers without needing to apply for a warrant.

Now we're mixing up sex offenders and paedophiles again. Believe it or not, there's a difference between the two. If the police are so concerned about some predatory paedophiles using the internet, then they should be banned from using the internet altogether at their homes. This would be easy enough to do with the help of BT. It wouldn't stop them using internet cafes, the houses of friends or libraries, but it would be something of a reassurance.

Update: To be slightly clearer, blocking broadband is easy. BT could have a list of numbers where broadband shouldn't ever be enabled. Blocking dial-up and the numerous numbers of different ISPs would be more difficult. Offenders could try and get a new number in order to get around this, and we'd have to depend on BT's bureaucracy to stop it. It could also be got around by using a mobile phone as a modem, as Vodafone I think are offering now, if at extortionate prices, or simply by using a mobile phone for the internet, although the technology doesn't come close to that provided by PCs. Lastly, those banned from the internet could attempt to steal a nearby person's unsecured wireless connection, if one was available.

None of this is to take the civil liberties arguments into blocking the use of the internet entirely, and whether such banning would constitute punishment after a sentence has been served into consideration.

End Update.

It's already far too easy to smear someone as a paedophile. This scheme would not just make it easier, it would also mean that it would be next to impossible to prove your innocence if you're unfortunate enough to share your internet alias with one of these modern day witches.

I'll leave the final words to Unity:

The entire proposal is a complete shambles and clearly advanced and put forward by people who haven’t got the first fucking clue how the internet really works.

Labels: idiots, John Reid, moral panics, paedophilia

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2/06/2007 07:03:00 pm | Permalink |

Monday, January 29, 2007

Scum-watch: They're still outting "paedophiles".

I'm slightly hesitant about making this post, as the very last thing I want to do is in any way defend either sex offenders or paedophiles. That aside, the Scum, edited by Rebekah Wade, the same woman who masterminded the highly counter-productive News of the Screw paedo-name and shame campaign is once again up to her old tricks.

Normally, this wouldn't be something to be concerned about, and the cases involved are to say the least, potentially worth exposing. The biggest concern as always is that vigilante action will be launched, not just against those have been outted, but against those whose identity may be mistaken in the heat of the moment. Nonetheless, I think the Sun is going too far in at least the second case I'm about to highlight. Others will likely vehemently disagree.

To begin with, the nom de plume of the outter is simply "the Investigator". It's quite true that I'm also anonymous, but the one thing I'm not doing is ruining people's lives for things that they have done years ago. This is exactly what the "Investigator" is doing.

The first article by the Investigator was in last Monday's Sun, with a follow-up the next day, and a leader comment, probably written by the ginger ninja herself.

A BUS driver who picks up kids from school is a convicted paedophile — whose bosses KNEW of his sordid past when he was hired.

David Skinner, 52, was jailed for 18 months for molesting little girls.

Yet he has been allowed to drive a route around Margate and Ramsgate in Kent during which queues of trusting schoolchildren clamber on his bus.

The pervert was yesterday suspended by transport giants Stagecoach following a Sun investigation. But he was working for the SAME company when he was caged for indecent assault and gross indecency.

Open and shut case then right? A convicted child molester shouldn't be working with children, full stop. However:

Balding Skinner — seen by The Sun chatting to kids — was jailed in 1992. It is understood he molested three children aged between six and nine while babysitting.

So we're going back 14 years. He was jailed for 18 months and served 9. He was given his job back, and has been doing school bus runs, but the Sun doesn't say for how long or how often he's being doing them.

And that's it. Well, apart from some hearsay evidence from a a driver source:

One driver called single Skinner “repulsive”. He added: “Some of the drivers who were around when he was convicted knew of his past and were disgusted when he was allowed back on school routes. But when it was raised they were told he would be allowed to stay.

“Drivers get to know kids from school runs and often also pick them up when they go out on the town late at night.

“They know which ones are under-age because they’ve seen them in their uniforms.

“Once, Skinner and another driver were discussing the youngsters all dressed up and he admitted it was tempting to see them like that.”

In all the time he's since been working for the various bus companies, there doesn't appear to have been anything to suggest that he shouldn't been working at all with children. It's obvious that most of those convicted of sexual offences in connection with children are immediately barred from working with them, and that advice is generally given to companies as to who should and shouldn't be doing work such as school runs, but either that wasn't given, was ignored or made clear that he didn't pose a threat, or at least in their evaluation.

The Sun suggests that the manager who cleared Skinner to work the school runs has since left the company, and Stagecoach responded to the Sun's expose by suspending Skinner.

The problem I have with this is more than over the suspension, which seems the right move, certainly from school runs at least, is that he's been doing his job quietly all those years, has seemingly moved on and reformed, and now after all this time he's had been named in a national newspaper as a paedophile for a crime committed over a decade ago. Some will argue that parents always deserve to know of any conviction of an adult working in any way with their child, and I agree that I don't think Skinner should have been doing school runs. It's just that this could have been done without subjecting him to vilification for a conviction in his past. Of course, this isn't how tabloid journalism works. There has to be a story, otherwise the time and money spent investigating is wasted. Yet it would have been far better to inform Stagecoach, make sure that Skinner no longer does school runs, and leave it at that. Instead he's had his life turned upside down. It's true that he may well have ruined the lives of those he abused, one of which the Sun quotes the following day as being terribly upset when she discovered that he was driving buses round. Does that however years later justify destroying his, not to mention potentially subjecting him to reprisals?

Today's expose is far more controversial than that of Skinner's.

A RAT-FACED paedophile is driving a school bus — after being cleared by council officials.
Convicted child molester Nicholas Emms, 35, drives pupils aged nine to 13 to and from school each day.

He is the second paedophile school bus driver to be exposed by The Sun in a week.

Again, if he's been convicted of similar offences to Skinner then he shouldn't be working with children. The plot here though is far thicker than that of his:

But the pervert, who indecently assaulted a girl under 14, claimed: “I’m not a danger. I’ve been cleared for school runs.”
Emms was sentenced to two years’ probation at Worcester Crown Court in 1989.

We're going even further back, and while under 14 is ambiguous , it may well be that the girl was 13. In 1989 Emms would have been either 17 or 18. Going back again to Wikipedia's quoting of the diagnosis of a paedophile:

The APA 's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 4th edition, Text Revision gives the following as its "Diagnostic criteria for 302.2 Pedophilia":^[27]

Over a period of at least 6 months, recurrent, intense sexually arousing fantasies, sexual urges, or behaviors involving sexual activity with a prepubescent child or children (generally age 13 years or younger).
The person has acted on these urges, or the sexual urges or fantasies cause marked distress or interpersonal difficulty.
The person is at least age 16 years and at least 5 years older than the child or children in Criterion A.

We also don't know the circumstances surrounding the indecent assault. They may have been boyfriend and girlfriend, it could have involved anything. It has to be said that Emms doesn't help his case with the following:

He said the conviction happened when he was a teenager, adding: “Everybody was having a laugh in those days.”

Emms is now 35, is married with a wife and has his own kids, has apparently not re-offended in any way, and has been cleared by the council to drive a bus on the school run.

Is exposing him in the public interest? Perhaps, but only just. It can be argued that the parents will now tell their children to be extra-careful around the bus driver, stay together in groups and don't stay on alone, but apart from that it seems that it would have been far better to let sleeping dogs lie. What has been achieved from "outting" him, apart from scaring parents, making children afraid of adults when there is no need to be anything other than cautious (it's also worth remembering that children are much more likely to be abused by someone known to them, usually within their friends and family) and again, bringing up the distant past of a man whose circumstances were hugely different then? He is also now open to potential vigilante justice.

The debate around child protection is going to be fraught. There's always a balance to be struck, and the Sun may well have done the right thing in naming Skinner. The reason though why we now have the sex offenders' register, organisations like MAPPA and the criminal records bureau is to take the potential for both injustice and justice out of the hands of those who don't know the full facts, and who might act in ways they might later regret. The only thing I can see that might have been gained from the Sun's expose today of Emms is that it might sell a few more copies and may make the "Investigator" feel happier with his work than he would of had he been subbing. The Sun may feel justified in its work, but the balance that it's striking is one that needs to be closely monitored.

I also don't have children. If I was a parent I might feel very different. Comments, name-calling on my naivety, etc, are more than welcome.

Labels: naming and shaming, paedophilia, Scum-watch, Sun-watch, the Investigator

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1/29/2007 06:38:00 pm | Permalink |

Friday, January 26, 2007

Scum-watch: It had to be a dirty paedo pervert, didn't it?

The Scum is having a field day with John Reid. Gone from praising his illiberal rabble-rousing rhetoric, it's turned on him with all the typical tabloid viciousness of building someone up to then tear them down.

JOHN Reid was dealt a new hammer blow yesterday when a PAEDOPHILE was freed because of his failure to build prisons.

It just had to be. To quote an idiot, you couldn't make it up.

Paedophile Williams — who had more than 180 sickening images on his computer — was let off with a six-month sentence and suspended for two years. He was also placed on supervision.

Married Williams, 46, of Blaenau Ffestiniog, was ordered to be placed on the sex offenders’ register for seven years. He was caught after his wife called in police. The revelation that a paedophile is among those escaping justice makes any hopes Reid might have of succeeding Prime Minister Tony Blair seem ludicrous — without taking account of the crime figures released yesterday.

What I'm about to say a lot will probably disagree with, but Williams is not technically a paedophile. A pervert, yes, but a paedophile, no. A lot like sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken, looking at sexually explicit photographs of children does not make you a paedophile. If we want to get really pedantic about it, then Wikipedia reproduces the diagnostic criteria for psychiatrists:

The APA's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 4th edition, Text Revision gives the following as its "Diagnostic criteria for 302.2 Pedophilia":[27]

* Over a period of at least 6 months, recurrent, intense sexually arousing fantasies, sexual urges, or behaviors involving sexual activity with a prepubescent child or children (generally age 13 years or younger).
* The person has acted on these urges, or the sexual urges or fantasies cause marked distress or interpersonal difficulty.
* The person is at least age 16 years and at least 5 years older than the child or children in Criterion A.

So it's not clear that Williams would be a paedophile, unless we're also now considering thought crime when it comes down to labelling people. The Scum also doesn't bother to mention the mitigating circumstances which were involved in his case: that he pleaded guilty, and that the case had taken a long time to come to court, through no fault of his own. It's not as if he was entirely let off or freed - his sentence has just been suspended, and he's been put under supervision and has to sign the sex offenders' register for 7 years. The head of the NSPCC therefore obviously didn't bother even to look into the background of the case before she opened her mouth:

It is unacceptable that people who have committed crimes against children are not jailed simply because prisons are too full if the severity of the crime requires a prison sentence."

Unless we go along with the assumption that those who view child pornography are as a result going to want "new" material and that this will drive abusers on, i.e. supply and demand, an argument that is shaky to say the least, then Williams wasn't committing a "crime against children". Rod Liddle, in one of his rarer lucid moments in the aftermath of the Pete Townshend arrest, wrote a decent piece questioning the underlying assumptions all around the viewing of child pornography. I'd personally say that the sentence Williams received is about right. Others will more than likely vehemently disagree. In Keith Morris's case on the other hand, he would be a paedophile, or if we're being really pedantic and the child was older than 13, an ephebophile. He has been released, I assume with a tag, when otherwise he would have been held on remand. Anyway, I've been sidetracked. On to the Scum's hilarious piece for looking for Reid's brain:

JOHN Reid skulked off to his office yesterday as The Sun stepped up the hunt for his missing brain.

He looked blank as he emerged from his smart Westminster town house.

I said: “Good morning, Mr Reid. The Sun and our readers are desperately trying to find your brain — can you give us a clue?”

He stared at the floor and shuffled to a Jaguar.

I asked: “Can you recall the last time you used it?” — but he sped off.

...

Finally, Tim went to the last place likely to know anything — the Home Office. Staff wanted to help — but said they were “not fit for the purpose”.

Oh my aching sides. But guess what? The Scum have found the prison ship!

THE Sun yesterday found a prison ship John Reid could use to ease the jails crisis — the SAME ONE the Government sold just six months ago.

HMP Weare is still moored at the same Channel port as it was when the Home Office got rid of it for just £2.5million in August.

Mr Reid repeatedly told The Sun that the Weare had been sold off and could not be bought back — while his aides even said it was being lined up for the scrapyard.

For just £2.5million? Seems like a shrewd deal considering its sea-worthiness certificate had ran out, that it had no fresh air and that the ship itself was in the wrong area for a prison.

But last night it was revealed the vessel has undergone a huge refit and could be bought back — but at THREE times the amount the Home Office got for it.

The Sun stepped in after disclosing the scale of John Reid’s failure to deal with the prisons overcrowding fiasco.

Within a few hours we discovered the Weare, which was opened in 1997 and closed in 2005, is still moored at Portland, Dorset.

It had been completely refurbished by its new owners, Sea Trucks Group, a Nigerian-based firm specialising in supporting the offshore oil industry.

Sea Trucks have spent a small fortune upgrading the vessel to provide accommodation for up to 1,000 people such as oil rig workers.

Exactly, as would the Home Office have had to spend a small fortune to keep it going. It instead decided that it wasn't worth the money, and also explained that it could be shut because a new private prison had opened in Peterborough. Instead of spending £10 million buying the thing back the money would be better spent on an actual new prison, or on refurbishing extra places that already exist. None of this matters though, it's just something to bash Reid about with.

“As I understand it, when it was used as a jail it only had the least dangerous prisoners so that the security measures did not need to be the very highest.”

At the height of its use the Weare — built in the 1970s and used to accommodate soldiers in the Falklands — held 400 low-risk inmates.

The Sun here doesn't bother to inform its readers of extra details other than it held "low-risk" inmates - it was a Category C prison, one security level above an open prison. Elsewhere, it's time to "name and shame" some more people involved in the Home Office, whether they're actually responsible for the chaos or not:

NINE top civil servants are responsible for day-to-day running of the Home Office.

They are meant to ensure prisons, probation, immigration and other services meet ministers’ targets.

Sorry to break it to you lot, but if the Home Office’s current shambles is the best you can do, you need your heads examined.

Obviously. Now that they've been insulted by the UK's best-selling newspaper, they're just bound to look themselves in the mirror and think: God - am I really this shit? On then to the Scum's leader:

THE fiasco that is the Home Office gets more ludicrous by the minute.

It is now clear that John Reid is not the only one whose brain is missing in this benighted government department.

There are 73,359 public servants serving under the Home Secretary and his clutch of ministers and senior mandarins.

Not one of them has managed to find an answer to the problem of a prison network littered with signs declaring: “Sorry, No Vacancies”.

While officials and ministers shrugged, it took The Sun just two hours to find a jail ship floating on England’s south coast.

It is empty but spruced up and ready to take 1,000 criminals.

Laughably, it is the same ship decommissioned by Charles Clarke when he had his turn at making a mess of the Home Office.

If you presented this as the script of a Carry On film it would be rejected as too ridiculous.

Yes, and this sprucing up wouldn't have involved removing any of the normal features of a prison by any chance, would it? I'm sure the workers for Sea Trucks would have loved having their doors locked from outside without being able to get out, or other workers spying on them through the hatches for looking in. It was decommissioned because it wasn't worth spending the money on fixing it up; the money is now not worth spending on buying it back.

But you would have to be an idiot not to know our jails were heading for disaster.
# Convicts and suspects have been crammed into police cells, taking hard-pressed officers off the beat.
# Courts have been told by John Reid to cut the numbers being sent to jail.

You'd also have to be an idiot to think that having a prison population of 80,000 is sustainable, even in the short term. This isn't a very popular view however though in the Scum.

Which helps explain why yesterday’s crime figures showed robberies rising, and big increases in vandalism and drug offences.

Yep - in overcrowded prisons those inside are even more like to come out and re-offend. The Scum just wants more places built, without thinking about how prison for minor offences, especially for vandalism and drug offences simply doesn't work, especially without treatment programmes in the latter case, which are hopelessly oversubscribed and underfunded.

At the centre of this mess the Prime Minister, The Chancellor and all four Labour Home Secretaries are unable to answer a few simple questions:

Why weren’t extra prison places built years ago?

Most likely because they hoped that judges would take notice of their pleas for only serious and violent offenders to be jailed, but instead they've taken more notice of the media and political climate to get ever tougher on crime. Who is this climate driven by? You guessed it.

Who is to blame for this monumental error?

The last few home secretaries, Michael Howard for starting the "prison works!" crap in the beginning, the tabloids, led by this very newspaper, and some judges themselves.

What about using old army camps in Scotland and Northern Ireland, as well as England?

Because the money would be better spent on new prisons proper rather than doing up dingy and potentially unfit for human habitation army facilities, not to mention angering and not consulting those who live in the area.

How about that floating jail that has been staring them in the face?

Which err, doesn't belong to the government anymore, would cost way too much to buy back and wasn't worth refurbishing in the first place. Apart from that, great idea!

And why does a crisis have to be a catastrophe before this government gets its brains into gear?

But then, we were almost forgetting. Some of their brains are missing.

Probably because they would rather continue with the idiocy of banging up 80,000 or more rather than face annoying the Sun by going "soft". The current situation is still probably better than further riling the Wade and Murdoch banshee.

Labels: John Reid, paedophilia, prison overcrowding, Scum-watch, Sun-watch

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1/26/2007 08:48:00 pm | Permalink |

Obsolete

Thursday, December 11, 2014

"Nowhere to hide".

Thursday, October 16, 2014

Not a statement from John Grisham.

Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Both the Mail and Harman have PIE on their faces.

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Scum-watch: Going "soft" on perverts.

Monday, November 10, 2008

In the shitter with Gary Glitter.

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

What you won't be reading in the Sun tomorrow.

Monday, March 12, 2007

Scum-watch: We need Sarah's law. And the comments prove it.

Monday, February 12, 2007

Scum-watch: Ignoring their own role in perpetuating misery.

Tuesday, February 06, 2007

Someone save us from these idiots.

Monday, January 29, 2007

Scum-watch: They're still outting "paedophiles".

Friday, January 26, 2007

Scum-watch: It had to be a dirty paedo pervert, didn't it?

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