Sarah's Law...

krizon

krizon

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I'm lifting this from this week's copy of 'The Week', which is quoting from Alice Miles's article in The Times:

"Even by the standards of a Home Office devoted to government by headline, this was a disgraceful performance. Officially sanctioned press reports released last week revealed that the HO was planning to bring in a 'Sarah's Law' to allow parents to find out whether paedophiles live in their street, near their playgrounds and schools. Pilot schemes for the new law - named after 8 y.o. Sarah Payne who was murdered by a convicted sex offender seven years ago - were apparently going to start in three areas later this year. The reports prompted angry criticisms from children's charities and others, who rightly pointed out that the law would drive paedophiles underground, and that it wouldn't have helped Sara Payne, since she was miles from home when she was abducted. In response, the HO quietly dropped the idea. Having spent two years telling people the law was going ahead - and allowing Sarah's mother publicly to welcome it - its backers retreated and 'in a puff of a headline', Sarah's Law was gone. 'Shame, shame, shame on them.' "

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I have considerable trouble with children's charities 'and others' who claim that such a law would drive paedophiles 'underground'. I'm sorry, but did I miss something here - perhaps the National Association of Child Molesters, the British Paedophilia Society, or weekly editions of Paedo News?

What the hell are they talking about? The nature of paedophilia IS to be secret, hidden and unknown, idiots! How can you 'drive underground' what is already there? Now here is where I get really cynical and nasty: of course, if you know where paedos live in conjunction with your child's school, etc. (and let's face it, that would be a preferred address location), you don't need the protection of a children's society, do you? Imagine the amount of counselling jobs which might be lost, of 'caring' volunteers ready with a box of Kleenex and hours and hours of time for your molested little one if you, the parent, are armed with enough information to make added awareness necessary or perhaps the suggestion that moving a released child rapist from within sight of a nursery would be a good idea? I feel that not having a Sarah's Law is a cop-out. You can obtain such details in the USA - they're not that easy for everyone to find, btw, and if it alerts enough parents to a person with an incurable lust for kids living next door, then I say good.

I find the 'angry criticism' of children's charities utterly inexplicable. We have sentimental, dreary tv ads by the NSPCC intoning that over 30,000 children are 'at risk' in the UK every year, and to give them a fiver a month to help stop the abuse, but when it comes to a sensible law which could ALERT - no more than that - parents to the possible menace in their midst (if one is actually there) - no. No, let the children's societies pick up the mess afterwards, heaven forfend they should endorse any proactivity. And as for saying that Sarah Payne was abducted miles from her home - what a nasty little weaselling out that was. They give the lie to their own promotional literature, then, by telling us that most offences occur through contact with people the kids know. And the best way to get to know kids? Is to live near them and befriend them (Ian Brady/Myra Hindley), work with them (Ian Huntley), and gain their trust (the majority of paedophiles)...
 
What the hell are they talking about? The nature of paedophilia IS to be secret, hidden and unknown, idiots! How can you 'drive underground' what is already there?
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The nature of all crime is to be secret until you're caught. This law would obviously only be able to be applied to those who have been convicted of an offence after they've completed their sentence and been released.

At the moment, there is a sex offenders register, the contents of which are only available to a select few agencies, including the police. This register is only useful if the registered sex offender co-operates with it, which they are normally compelled to do so as part of the original sentence and/or their parole terms.

The "drive underground" theory is based on the idea that if everyone on their street can discover their history it will seriously affect their ability to re-integrate into society* and will leave them with no incentive to comply with the register, or their parole terms in general, and will simply disappear.

So, as the theory goes, there is a choice - do you keep the information restricted so that the police know where these people are, or do you share the information to anyone who wants it and risk making it completely useless because the offenders that it covers have all done a runner overnight?

*I realise that many reading this will find the idea of pedophiles re-integrating into society as abhorrent, but that doesn't change the reality of the situation.
 
The control and management of paedophiles has been immensely improved by registration of sex offenders .

There would be significant risk of paedophiles disappearing from sight if a Megan's Law was brought in .

Evidence from the US has also shown vigilante action to be common as a result of such laws .

The charities that objected have been the major charities such as Barnardos which is run by the former Director General of the Prison Service Martin Narey who has knowledge from both angles.

He said


"We at Barnado's are very clear. This will put children in more danger, not less danger.

"Sex offenders can be very dangerous people. Their dangerousness is reduced by the police and the probation service keeping them under rigorous supervision.

"We at Barnado's would say make that supervision more rigorous by using satellite tracking and giving them lie detector tests.

"But one thing is for sure. If they flee supervision then they will be very dangerous indeed and that's what we can't allow. That will lead, eventually, to the loss of children's lives."


The pilot will deal with a scheme to allow people taking on new partners to check whether they are a Schedule 1 offender - ie with offences against children.
 
Now that is who needs to be tagged for life, warning alarms if they approach schools etc & if a child goes missing check where all the paeodo's are locally etc

But one thing to bear in mind is most child sexual abuse victims know their abuser.
 
Originally posted by Aldaniti@Apr 20 2007, 01:00 PM
Now that is who needs to be tagged for life, warning alarms if they approach schools etc & if a child goes missing check where all the paeodo's are locally etc

But one thing to bear in mind is most child sexual abuse victims know their abuser.
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Hence there is much to be said for a scheme to check whether your new partner is an offender as paedophiles are , according to some evidence , likely to target single women with children.
 
It's still recent news here in Somerset when a vigilante style crusade was launched in Bishop's Lydiard when they realisid the had a registered sex offender living in their village.

I copletely agree that, in general, it is not in the best interests of child safety for everyone to know who is and who is not on the List. It won't prevent more offences being committed at all - completely the reverse!

Nope, the great British Public doesn't have enough self-restraint to be able to handle this information in a sensible manner - it's much better left to being kept in the hands of the Police/Social Services/Probation Service etc to control carefully. The only flaw is that from time-to-time, they won't do their jobs properly and tragedies will follow because of it - but I would suggest fewer than if registered offenders were driven underground completely.
 
Agreed Julie - that poor Welsh paediatrician was an example of vigilantism gone mad .

There is also evidence that it also leads to a climate of hysteria and loners and oddbods get attacked too .
 
There are quite a number of American police websites where you can check, through them, for paedophiles in your area. It isn't something available to 'the public' as many people seem to have misunderstood or misread. You have to register first and be checked out for the reasons for wanting access. You don't just login any old how and see a list of names and who is where. Jeez, if the Americans have such things up and running THROUGH THE POLICE, why can't we here? I don't hear that every five minutes some convicted sex offender has been lynched in the streets of the USA. For people to assume that the system we've got here works tickety-boo - just remind yourselves next time a person like Roy Whiting strikes.

It can NOT be impossible in this day and age of surveillance at all levels and through all kinds of systems, to know where your sex offenders are. If enough prove intractable, or incurable, then maybe the time has come to accept that they will never be fit to live in society?

They don't always manage to murder their little victims to ruin their lives: the agonizingly evil Dutroux in Belgium failed to kill the last two girls from his campaign of lengthy underground imprisonment and repeated rapes. I can't believe he'll ever be let out now, of course, but he had a list as long as my arm of prior offences where he WAS, so clearly policing and ordinary recording doesn't work.

If the Home Office felt that Sarah's Law was useless, why did they spend two years of time, effort, and money on creating it? Why drag Mrs Payne through supporting it, and then pull the rug? Either it was useless from the outset and should never have been started, or it is believed to have some merit and should at least have been trialled. A shabby, probably meretricious load of nonsense.

(End of rant. Won't continue because I'll only get wound up again and lose friends.)
 
Originally posted by krizon@Apr 21 2007, 12:33 AM


If the Home Office felt that Sarah's Law was useless, why did they spend two years of time, effort, and money on creating it? Why drag Mrs Payne through supporting it, and then pull the rug? Either it was useless from the outset and should never have been started, or it is believed to have some merit and should at least have been trialled. A shabby, probably meretricious load of nonsense.
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Cheap political stunt by Reid I am afraid.
 
That's an appalling issue to have pretended to be serious about, Arders. But thanks for revealing the parlous state of the HO even more.
 
For people to assume that the system we've got here works tickety-boo - just remind yourselves next time a person like Roy Whiting strikes.
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That's the problem with trying to judge how effective a preventative solution is - there's no way of knowing how many Roy Whitings it stopped.
 
The point I was - not very effectively, it seems! - trying to make, though, Gareth, was that another preventative measure in what should be a rigorous armoury of preventative measures against such predators was aborted without the benefit of even being trialled. One could now posit how many more Roy Whitings it would prevent having access to children. But now we'll never know. And every single time a child falls victim to them, there's always someone droning on about 'lessons learned' and 'taking forward' the issue, blah, blah, bloody blah. Well, here was an opportunity to learn by taking forward an initiative. If it was found, say, after three or four years trial to be of no obvious benefit, then it could be abandoned. But to not even try it out seems defeatist.

The police lose people all the time, or fail to find them to begin with. Repeat child sex offenders don't get banged away for life as they do in many of the states in the USA. We go on and on, excusing them on the grounds of a rotten childhood or mental defectiveness. How many children need to be used to pleasure these creatures before we call 'enough!' on their behalf? Why don't we say they are beyond the pale of society, whether they are incestuous fathers or rabid repeat rapists, let alone those who also kill the children, they should not be walking among us, eyeing up the next opportunity. They should be in jail, humanely treated and given normal privileges, but in jail for all time. If their synapses can't be rewired to make them think about children asexually, then we really should not consider them as 'society'.
 
OK, but that's mostly a different argument - you don't need Sarah's Law if they're all kept in jail for life.
 
Originally posted by PDJ@Apr 20 2007, 05:52 PM
Did anyone watch Secret Life last night? Riveting viewing.
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Just watched a recording of it P. Sad. Paedophiles are a bit like vampires inasmuch as many of them start off as victims themselves and end up universally reviled.
 
Gareth, we're on another circular tour, I'm afraid. :rolleyes: It's because they're not friggin' locked up for life that we need as many checks as we can against them being able to continue their activities! The Saudis don't mess about - sodomize a boy or rape a girl and you're executed for sexual transgression, the same penalty as if you murder. You don't get 'child sex tourism' there, and paedophiles aren't released so that they can plan their next attack. I just think we don't take the crime as seriously as some countries do, even though I'm sure the West thinks that executing child rapists is a step too far. But what would societies of old have done with these people? They couldn't have them rambling in their midst, and it was long before the days of the polite treatment now received by such people, and the prospect of merely being detained for a few years, enjoying the company of other paedophiles and exchanging their court notes as a further pornographic delight. They knew they had a freak of behaviour in their midst, and got rid of it. I don't say we 'get rid' in quite such a permanent manner, but the next best thing would be quite acceptable.

If the drama HT and PDJ alludes to offers the view that it is an incurable mental fixation, then we ought to withdraw these people from freely mixing in society where they can continue to permanently damage young lives (if they don't snuff them out). But we don't, unless they end up killing the little ones. And even then, you'll always have some well-meaning idiot proclaiming (viz Hindley) that they've repented, are reformed, useful people who've taken an OU degree and ought to be given another chance. Presumably, they've never brought a brutalized child of their own back from the hospital, or buried their ruined remains?

What about paedophile teams? There was a little boy taken several years ago, while riding his bike. Three men brutalized him, apparently laughing over who'd 'go first' while the terrified child lay bound before them. I think we're getting our priorities just a bit skewed when we can say we feel sorry for a dramatized child wrecker. I can only ever put children first, all the time, and whatever 'rights' paedophiles may have are forever foregone the first time they molest. The three men, after sodomizing the young boy over a day or two, strangled him and dumped his body so far out of reach that he was skeletonized when eventually found.

No, I don't feel pity for paedophiles, no matter how victimized they've been. They too often form mutual interest groups and work in pairs or even teams. I don't believe that all of them suffered the same vileness when they were young, although it may be that their wiring is wrong. In any case, re-visiting your own pain on someone else, whether you end up as a sadistic torturer, a killer, or a child molester, or the lot, is not the right response.
 
Sigh........ if you'd bothered to read on, you would see that that was an example, not a clamour for similar action, of how some non-Western countries regard the action of sexually using a child.

I can't be bothered to talk about the issue any more, in the round or otherwise, because in my opinion we're not trying anywhere enough in this country to prevent or punish the sexual battery of children. Children have been betrayed for decades by church members, group leaders, teachers, 'care' workers, as well as family and strangers, and I don't see enough deterrence in place to daunt the earliest activities of such perversions of society.
 
But none of this has anything to do with Sarah's Law! If you wanted to start a thread about how you think all pedophiles should be locked up forever you should have done. At least then I'd have known to steer a wide berth.
 
Sighs deeply again... Gareth, have you never noted how some topics just sometimes widen out from the very first post?? Look, Sarah's Law was touted by the HO as an excellent preventative measure in alerting parents to the presence of criminals whose speciality was the abuse of children. It had the full support of someone whose child suffered a terrible fate at the hands of a CONVICTED sex offender, Sarah Payne's mother. Then 'children's charities' paddied that it wouldn't help matters and the HO tapped it on the head.

Ardross made a point that projecting the new law was another poor decision by John Reid, who doesn't seem to have the faintest idea of what to do in his position.

I argued the point that there was surely no problem in TRIALLING the Law, to see if it was indeed a useful addition to daunting paedophiles from reoffending. But now we'll never know.

Yes, I personally think that people who enact their enjoyment of raping children should be locked up forever, but that wasn't the initial or even main point, which you are quite capable of understanding, should you so choose to do. What I think the rights of child rapists are is a bye-blow to the original issue: that I think that the rights of children are to be protected by all legal means was and is clear. Do everything you can to help them. And I was one who believed the HO was sincere in its aims to this goal by announcing Sarah's Law.

I do think that withdrawing the projected law without even trialling it sends a heartening message to convicted child molesters. They can live near to all the child-hunting paradises they want to, without fear that anyone knows they do. After all, it's their right to live where they like once they've served their little sentences and yet, if they are to be believed, they're unable to control their desires.

Gareth: I have no problem envisaging men or women who are committed sexual predators, convicted of sodomy or rape, going to jail for life. I didn't say that all men (or the very few women, in the interest of equality) who are drawn to want to sexually indecently assault children (as per my own experience) should go to jail forever. They should go to jail, yes, even though our current understanding is that they will reoffend in due course upon release. They apparently have the right to live in a free society, even though authorities know they'll continue to reoffend, never being able to change what drives them. I'm sure we all want to uphold such human rights. Well, no, I don't, even if you do. I'd be happy enough with 'three strikes and you're out' for serious crimes, like the USA. Even they don't execute rapists, no matter how many times they do it. If you think that child rapists deserve an even break, that's your opinion, but it isn't mine.
 
I'm sure we all want to uphold such human rights. Well, no, I don't, even if you do. I'd be happy enough with 'three strikes and you're out' for serious crimes, like the USA. Even they don't execute rapists, no matter how many times they do it. If you think that child rapists deserve an even break, that's your opinion, but it isn't mine.
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And where in this thread have I suggested it is? Please stop jumping to conclusions about my views.
 
Kri, in the play PDJ and myself watched, the paedophile was a young man, released from prison after serving several years. He didn't want to feel the way he felt, was constantly under threat from vigilantes and in the end hung himself. It wasn't hard to feel sorry for him, he had no life. That doesn't mean we think sexually assaulting children should be made legal. In the extreme cases I wouldn't disagree with them being locked up for life. Maybe a lot of them wouldn't either (the guy in the play wanted to be sent back to prison because he was afraid of what he might do).

In discussions of this kind what I object to is the general assertion that we're dealing with animals. I have no sexual feelings towards kids and, if someone held a gun to my daughter's head and told me they would pull the trigger unless I raped her then, even taking away the stress of the situation, I would be unable to save her life. What I'm trying to say is that I can't believe that paedophiles have made some available-to-all choice as regards their feelings. Of course acting on them is a different matter. You could argue their situation was no different to someone with normal feelings who was born so ugly they would never have a relationship, the one difference being that the object of the ugly person's desires is not as defenceless.

In most cases paedophiles are sad, inadequate, pathetic wretches as opposed to the Brady/Hindley personification of evil but even in the Thomas Hamilton type cases where they carry out an act of unimaginable horror you have to wonder at how they arrived at that state of mind. Does the general perception that they are nothing more than evil animals not maybe turn them that way. A bit like old Egor in the Frankenstein movies.

If there were no paedophiles but the human race new in advance that some natural catastrophe would turn a section of the population that way what would they vote to do? Obviously the children have to be protected but killing the afflicted wouldn't be an option as you might be voting to kill yourself. My guess is they'd vote that the afflicted should be stuck on an island somewhere. I'd hazard a guess it would be called something like Sad Island rather than something along the lines of Evil b@stard Island.
 
Excellent to hear from you at length, HT! But once again, I'm not voting for a death penalty! I am anti-capital punishment in any way, shape, or form. It solves nothing and reduces those who apply it, in my own view, although I fully accept I haven't suffered the horrific loss of anyone through murder, and realize it might be very natural to wish to apply Biblically-approved vengeance if I did. However, I would never wish to see an execution, in spite of our historical relish of such events, and I would never condone one, no matter how revolting or evil the crimes. We all die some day, so merely artificially advancing someone's death is pointless.

I never regard humans as animals - animals have, for the most part, no sense of self and therefore no sense of insight. Most times, we do, unless we are functioning so very badly intellectually that we don't. That could be caused by head injury or a medical or mental condition, such as schizophrenia.

You have a great deal more insight into paedophilia than I have, since I've no idea how sad, or pathetic, they are. When I've read trial transcripts from some cases, I haven't been struck by how sad or pathetic they viewed themselves, unless they wanted to play upon sympathy from juries by saying that they'd been abused themselves as children. Given that they were not intellectually impaired, they should, I feel, have the compassion, then, to realise that one does not visit the same cruelties upon others. In some trials, they boasted of what they or their companions had done to the children and the crueller ones held out against saying where they'd left their bodies, so that their parents would never have a child to bury. Again, given that they were leading 'normal' lives - working, having families of their own in many cases, going out with mates - this points more to a perversion of perception, a sociopathy, doesn't it?

If I were a battered child, which I wasn't, why would I want to inflict the same suffering on my own children? Surely my understanding of how awful it was should bring me out in a rash of sympathy, not a desire to perpetuate the cruelty?
 
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