Re: The hidden offenders - Philippa Ibbotson ... Fraud and Violinist
- From: Webmanager_CritEst <webmanager@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2008 13:20:29 -0700 (PDT)
On Sep 3, 9:18 pm, Webmanager_CritEst <webmana...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
The hidden offenders
Many paedophiles claim their crime is restricted to 'only' viewing
internet images. But new research shatters that myth
* Philippa Ibbotson
* The Guardian,
* Wednesday September 3 2008
Gary Glitter arrives at Heathrow last month.
A couple of weeks ago, Gary Glitter (real name Paul Francis Gadd) was
deported from Vietnam after serving a two-and-half year prison
sentence for sexually abusing young girls. He had fled Britain nine
years earlier, after a two-month sentence for the possession of more
than 4,000 images of child pornography.
Despite the length and breadth of his subsequent off ending career,
the apparent ineffectiveness of his brief first sentence hardly rated
a mention. Yet just days after his deportation, Scotland Yard issued a
stark warning. The escalating problem of child abuse is a far greater
threat to society than previously assumed, it said, with "huge"
numbers of paedophiles now scouring the internet.
Since 1998, internet crime involving the sexual exploitation of
children has risen by more than 400%. So too has the increase in
downloading, possessing and trading/distributing child pornography.
Ever more sophisticated technologies have facilitated illegal online
activities, while making it easier for users to avoid detection. As a
result, illegal material can move faster and in significantly greater
quantities than ever before. And it is a highly profitable business:
commercial child pornography was estimated two years ago to be a $20bn
industry worldwide.
Yet it is not only the quantity that is disturbing. There is also the
increasingly extreme nature of the material itself, as reported in the
Internet Watch Foundation's (IWF) study earlier this year. It is
estimated, for example, that 10% of the child victims used in such
crimes are under two years old, a further 80% are under 10. Detectives
for the Child Exploitation Online Protection centre are uncovering
growing evidence that paedophiles are concentrating more and more on
pre- verbal victims. Child pornography, as Ernie Allen, president of
the National Centre for Missing & Exploited Children in the US, said
recently, has become "a global crisis".
Child sex offenders are usually habitual fantasists. They are prone to
distorted thinking: dissembling and deceit go with the territory. And
it seems they are particularly skilled at disowning and evading
responsibility, a trait prevalent among sexual abusers generally.
Partly as a result of this, less is known about online child
pornographers and their treatment than almost any other group of
offenders. And even less is known about the correlation between the
use of pornography and hands-on offences. So despite some recognised
advances in policing and containment recently, this lack of empirical
knowledge is thwarting the professionals who seek to tackle the
problem. The damage, meanwhile, continues to escalate.
In an attempt to gain some insight, psychologists conducted a study
two years ago at the Federal Correctional Institution in America.
Michael L Bourke and Andres E Hernandez compared two groups of men
taking part in a voluntary treatment programme for sex off enders at a
medium security prison. All 155 had been sentenced for the possession,
distribution or receipt of child-abuse images. Only 40 of these men
were known to have committed any hands-on sexual offences previously,
averaging 1.88 victims each. The remaining men claimed never to have
committed any such offences: their activities, they said, had been
restricted to the viewing of images.
But after participating in an 18-month intensive therapeutic
programme, a very different picture emerged. It was a picture that not
only belied the normal, law-abiding lives depicted by most of these
men prior to their arrest, but one that also contrasted starkly with
the frequent assertion that child pornography off enders are "only"
involved with images.
Shock findings
After the treatment it emerged that the number of men admitting to
hands-on sexual abuse increased from 40 to 131. Their average number
of disclosed victims rose to 13.56 (8.7 for the 115 men who had
previously denied any offences). Overall, the number of admitted
contact sexual offences increases by 2,369%.
Far from being innocent or sexually "curious" bystanders whose
interest was reserved to internet images, the vast majority of these
men emerged as hands on offenders with longstanding sexual interest.
Not only were they significantly likely to have sexually abused more
than one child, they were also likely to have experimented with both
genders, and a variety of age groups.
The remaining 24 men were offered a lie detector test; some of them
refused. Only two of these men passed, both of whom admitted that with
continued opportunity and online access they would have been in danger
of molesting a child. Perhaps this should not surprise us. Among other
things, online communities provide marginalised individuals with a
feeling of solidarity, while at the same time maintaining the illusion
of anonymity. Fertile grounds, you might think, for the awakening of
any dormant or repressed sexual fantasies. Indeed, perhaps the act of
repression creates its own vulnerability, rendering such individuals
more susceptible to external triggers.
It would be rash to infer from these findings that the internet causes
contact sexual crimes. But the research puts paid to the notion that
the desire to view images is easily distinguishable from the desire to
act them out. And they also corroborate what prior research has shown.
The manifestations of deviant sexual arousal are seldom limited to
fantasy. It is opportunity more than anything that dictates how many
internet off enders also rape and molest children.
What is beyond doubt is the insidious harm caused. Child abuse images
both dehumanise children and desensitise offenders, and child/adult
sexuality is normalised in the process. Yet it seems likely that such
a highly profitable business will not suffer exposure easily, nor
welcome close scrutiny. The above survey was among the first of its
kind in the US, and doubtless proved discomfiting to many. It has yet
to be published. Those experts who have seen it say privately that it
could have enormous implications, both for law enforcement and public
safety.
What is becoming apparent is that the internet has opened the way for
new types of off ending. The real issue is not whether viewing these
images will make someone a paedophile - a label liable to vast
misunderstandings. The real danger is that those who do so will be
encouraged to re offend - and that the proliferation of online child
abuse images will increase, dramatically, the incidence of child
abuse.
As the IWF has stated, there is urgent need for " a coordinated global
attack on these websites ". This is undoubtedly so. But as Bourke and
Hernandez' report shows, our lack of awareness in this area is very
dangerous. Particularly, it seems, when it comes to our knowledge of
sex off enders. If nothing else, Glitter's case shows that his initial
prison sentence achieved little apart from delaying the next
onslaught. Clearly a more enlightened approach towards the treatment
of victims and off enders is not only long overdue but vital.
This dark underbelly of society has fed on our ignorance for too long.
And it is only through addressing why these things happen, as well as
how to stop them, that we might shrink its appetite. This untold
damage needs telling.
· Philippa Ibbotson is a professional musician and freelance writer.
****
What Philippa fails to report, is the refusal of the FBI to publish
the Hernandez work (only one piece of 'evidence', of course - and
hardly 'new') as being totally unrepresentative, as stated by
Hernandez himself, in public.
Does not stop Philippa getting a quick commission though, eh?
WMwww.critest.com
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/sep/03/childprotection
WM
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