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The Southland Times
January 20, 2003
Looking into a deviant's mind
Editorial
Usually we feel we understand what went on in the
criminal's head.
We reject the actions of the fraudster, the thief, the drinking driver, the
murderer, as wrong, harmful and deserving punishment but to a large extent
they do not need to explain themselves to us.
Reprehensible though their deeds were, we can at least on some level
understand the temptation.
Not so with paedophiles. In the eyes of many, these people stand in the dock
as sub-human, even monstrous, not only because of the extravagant cruelty of
the harm they inflict, shocking though it is, but also because the rest of us
cannot understand what drives them.
Their deeds appall us but their motivation confounds us. Even amid the
twisted values of prison communities, they are held as the lowest of the low.
Everything about them screams the corruption of innocence, the dismemberment
of childhood. In their cases the question how could you is not rhetorical. We
simply do not understand.
Yet, increasingly, we need to try, at least to the extent that we can better
confront the nature of the problem, which has grown to a scale that it
demands attention.
David John Gay has become the 10th Southland man to be convicted in the past
year of sexually abusing children. Barry Allan Ryder faces the prospect of
preventive detention after admitting in Christchurch
a raft of new charges of enticing schoolboys for sexual purposes.
Readers are no doubt as sick and dispirited of reading about such offences as
reporters are of covering them, yet flinching from this most discomforting of
problems merely makes it easier for the offenders to continue untroubled.
Unhappily, the number of criminals does not equate to the number of crimes.
Paedophiles often prey on multiple victims and, even when caught and treated,
have the highest rate of recidivism apart from flashers. The archetype of the
dirty old man is also surely fading; not only younger men, but women and even
youths are being caught.
As the risks become better known, the protective instincts of society kick
in, understandably, though in ways not always appropriate. Many now believe
the conviction of Peter Ellis in the Christchurch
civic creche case was, at best, unsafe.
Dr John Edgar was emphatically acquitted of eight charges of indecency
against Hamilton
children, though only after a nightmare of recriminations and reproach. More
than that, though, the climate of suspicion is making it harder for men to
enter teaching ranks or, for that matter, to show such innocent displays of
affection as gathering a child into their lap.
Scientific attempts to understand the sexual wiring of paedophiles, including
work by New Zealander Dr John Money, continues. To date, it is easier to find
research that is interesting than to find much that is truly helpful.
An article in Saturday's edition by venereologist Dr Thomas Stuttaford,
concurs with the views of a Southland psychologist specialising in helping
sexual abuse in suggesting that the abusers' commonplace claims to have been
sexually abused as children should invite some scepticism. While many must
obviously be true, many others simply do not stand up to scrutiny.
Given the rates of reoffending, it seems penalties have minimal deterrent
effect. This is not a type of offending that should invoke the three strikes
and you're out approach. Two strikes is plenty.
Furthermore, Auckland lawyer and
anti-pornography campaigner Denise Ritchie is right to characterise New Zealand's
laws in relation to child pornography as weak. Enforcement officials in this
country have scored major successes in catching offenders, though the
penalties have been insufficient.
Those who access child pornography are effectively commissioning more
offences against the victim children.
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