“A portrait is emerging: a majority of convicted offenders are men who prey on children ages six to 17,” writes The Gadfly columnist ROBERT MACKLIN.
I think we can agree that active paedophilia in which adults interfere sexually with children causing trauma that can cripple them emotionally for the rest of their lives is a serious crime.
Or can we? Last week’s Four Corners program raised some engaging questions.
It gained worldwide interest in recent years, not least because some 6400 cases involving many thousands of children were exposed within the Roman Catholic priesthood.
A five-year Australian inquiry in 2017 found that “tens of thousands of children” were sexually abused in Australian institutions over decades, including churches, schools and sports clubs. And now they have descended upon our poorly regulated childcare industry. However, the issue did not fit easily into our legal system.
Indeed, Australia’s most senior Catholic, the late Cardinal George Pell, was briefly convicted before being acquitted because the High Court found the jury should have found him “not guilty” on the evidence presented.
That is, the judges disbelieved the victim, though they were not present when he gave his evidence. To the layman, that seems counter to the very essence of our legal system, since we’re told, that’s the role of a jury of the accused’s peers.
Moreover, scientific inquiry since that time has produced new information that contradicts the notion of free will, upon which the legal system also rests, particularly for those individuals blighted by the condition of paedophilia itself.
They discover, usually as teenagers, that their sexual preferences have not matured like everyone else’s. They’re stuck on the same-age boys or girls who first attracted them at the start of puberty, though some retain an interest in far younger children.
As reported by the New York Times: “People don’t choose what arouses them – they discover it,” said Dr. Fred Berlin, director of the Johns Hopkins Sex and Gender Clinic.
“No one grows up wanting to be a paedophile.”
According to James Cantor, director of the Toronto Sexuality Centre: “These [causes] are not genetic; they can be traced to specific periods of development in the womb.”
According to psychiatry’s diagnostic manual: “Over the past generation, psychologists, forensic specialists and others have studied paedophilia, a disorder characterised by ‘recurrent, intense arousing fantasies, urges or behaviours involving sexual activity with a prepubescent child’.
“These experts have interviewed patients in depth, piecing together life histories and performing a variety of psychological and anatomical measures.”
A portrait is emerging: a majority of convicted offenders are men who prey on children ages six to 17; rough estimates put the rate of paedophilic attraction at one to four per cent in both men and women. Studies suggest that a small subset of male and female paedophiles have an interest in toddlers, or even infants.
Such activities are, of course, revolting. Indeed, the former intelligence officer, Witness J, whom I disclosed was secretly jailed with paedophiles at Canberra’s Alexander Maconochie Centre, told me it was a harrowing experience, as they claimed to “love” their victims.
But since their “crime” does not fit into the system we have created to punish malefactors, perhaps it would be preferable to remove them from the capacity to traumatise their victims until a “cure” for their condition is developed.
The result – imprisonment – would be similar, but at least they should be given the chance to live a productive life behind bars.
Leave a Reply