Convicted Sex Offender

The cause of a man’s death?

2011-12-06T16:30:00.001Z

The death of a homeless man in Dublin city centre is being blamed on last night's cold weather by local representatives.

The body, believed to be a 30-year-old man who was originally from Latvia, was discovered in the garden area of Dominick Street flats this morning.

Local Independent Councillor Christy Burke said the man was one of three Latvians who had been living there with sleeping bags and cardboard boxes for a number of months.

"Every year someone dies of hypothermia in Dublin city," Cllr Burke said.

Did the cold weather kill him, or his homelessness, or a political economy that left him living on the streets while thousands of housing units lie vacant?

Man's death caused by homelessness

What a victim’s mother had to say to the offender ….

2011-12-04T15:21:00.002Z

"You could have been such a better person, a better father, a better man, but you chose to be a coward and give in to your sexual perversions," said [the offender’s ex-wife and mother of the victim] who said she first learned of the abuse in 2002. "The damage you have caused will last our lifetime."

A fair comment I think.

Source here

Hateful trolls after women journalists, commentators and columnists

2011-11-06T22:43:00.000Z

Today's Guardian newspaper contains an interesting but scary article on the extent and viciousness of hate comments and emails directed at women journalists, commentators and columnists.

The last three paragraphs comprise a quote from psychotherapist and writer Susie Orbach:

"If you set women up as sexual objects which society has, no matter what we are doing, that makes women into objects rather than human beings and what you create is a situation in which women who then stand up and make arguments about things, terrify these men who have no access to real women and so they beat them up in the terms in which they've been offered by society, which has nothing to do with the content of what they are saying. Women are supposed to be sexual objects, we're still not supposed to be thinking, feeling, complex human beings. It is due to the continual representation of women as just beauties, the attempt to reduce women to a surface on which we project sexuality. So we're not real people.

"The deeper question is the disenfranchisement of men who find themselves in such depraved circumstances that all they can do is expel the fury that's inside of them on to women. The reaction these men are having shows they are very, very threatened by something and that threat is to their masculinity.

"With sexual violence, what the victim is receiving is the self-hatred of the individual who is expressing that pain and upset that is inside of them in a very explosive manner. Rape is different to the threat of rape but nevertheless it's a very, very serious and threatening experience."

I wonder how much the idea of the "disenfranchisement" of people can be used to help us understand the outpouring of hate we see everywhere on blogs and comments everywhere on the web?

Opera Users Are Clever

2011-08-02T22:28:00.000+01:00

It is official. I always knew it. Opera users are much more clever then Firefox and Chrome users never mind Internet Explorer users. We have know for years that IE users are 'borderline deficient' in their IQ. Now we got research to prove it!

The study from Aptiquant, producers of
"easy to use psychometric assessment" tools, concluded that:

The results suggested that Internet Explorer surfers had an average IQ in the low eighties. Chrome, Firefox and Safari rated over 100, while minority browsers Opera and Camino had an "exceptionally higher" score of over 120.

Source BBC

Geee am I glad I have been using Opera for the last 8 years! Bad enough being a sex offender without being labelled as stupid as well.

You can download Opera from here.

It runs on everything including your mobile. For years it has been on the cutting edge of browser design back to the days when it was the only browser with a download manager and pop up blocker - features that you so take for granted now most users are not even aware that they exist. Most of the 'modern' features that you enjoy on your current browser were pioneered by Opera and it has features such as 'save session' and built in email client that I can't live without. Don't expect it to be like your current browser, take a little time to get into its way of doing things and you will not want to go back.

The Golden Rule

2011-05-31T16:33:00.001+01:00

del.icio.us Tags: morality,self injury,self-injury,ethics

... do to others as you would have them do to you.

Is this a 'good' rule to follow?

I have spent most of my life hating myself - starting from the age of 14 - violently physically injuring myself, deliberately behaving to injure my career prospects, causing myself financial injury and provoking others to hate, hurt and deride me. That is how I have mostly wanted others to "do onto me". It has given me a sense of satisfaction and completeness.

Still I don't think I am right to behave in this way. Is the golden rule really an acceptable basis for moral or ethical behaviour?

What is my part in the story …

2011-04-29T01:29:00.004+01:00

Quote I read to day:

“The philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, who has written powerfully about the loss of virtue in postmodernity, put starkly the necessity of narrative in building character: "I can only answer the question, 'What am I to do?' if I can answer the prior question, 'Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?'"

There is a very deep rooted story about myself that I was taught by my mother. It is not a pretty one and I come out of it very badly. It makes me very angry at myself and I have to punish myself for who I am in it. One, but only one, way I have done that is by quite violently physically injuring myself and I have been doing that since I was 13 or 14 years old. Beating myself up is what I have to do as part of that story.

Of course telling you that is telling you how weird I am and inviting you to despise me; it is part of my acting out. That tells me I am feeling low and in a dangerous place.

But the story most people know about me and one that I hear about or read about at least a couple of times a day is that of the sex offender monster in our midst. What am I supposed to do as part of that story? What is my role and how should I behave?

Technorati Tags: personal reflection

Rape Survivors Testimony

2011-03-05T23:07:00.001Z

del.icio.us Tags: PBS,TV,programme,rape,victim,survivor,documentary,testimony,USA

A programme from PBS in the USA documenting the story of a female rape survivor.

It is an untypical story in that the offender is usually some one known by the victim, but it is a harrowing and truthful story and in many other ways I suspect it is typical

Almost one and half hours long but worth watching.

From TEXAS, a take on the dangers of SEXTING …

2011-02-19T00:22:00.001Z

Nude or semi-nude photos taken of a 14 year old girl distributed via mobile phone got nationwide attention three or four years ago here in Ireland.

A national search was mounted by the Garda to find the girl in the photos. She was found but thankfully her identity, as far as I know, never found its way into the national media.

The phenomenon of 'sexting' - of sending sexually explicit photos or just sexually explicit text messages between teenage boys and girls - is widespread in the USA and I assume here in Ireland too. This short video comes from Texas, USA and looks at the consequences of 'sexting' in that jurisdiction.

del.icio.us Tags: teen,teenager,sexting,mobile phone,Ireland,child porn,child pornography,Texas,USA

Man attacked woman within 13 hours of release

2011-02-18T15:56:00.001Z

Technorati Tags: sex offender,Ireland,Dublin,recidivist,rape,rapist,RTE,Trevor Byrne

del.icio.us Tags: sex offender,Ireland,Dublin,rape,rapist,RTE,Trevor Byrne,recidivist

From RTE News: Man attacked woman within 13 hours of release

A 32-year-old convicted rapist who attacked a woman within 13 hours of being freed from prison is to be sentenced next month.

Trevor Byrne of O'Devanny Gardens off the North Circular Road attacked and tried to rob a 24-year-old French woman after following her and forcing his way into her home in Phibsboro in September 2009.

What do you say? It is tragic and if it was not for the horrific impact of the his actions of his victims the stupidity of his compulsion would be almost funny.

From a selfish point of view I feel I that I need stories like this the same way I need a kick in the head. I suspect most convicted sex offenders living in the community feel the same.

Child Sexual Abuse Survivors are Victims of Multiple Offenders

2010-11-18T00:02:00.001Z

Headlined in today's Irish Times as an 'astonishing' finding taken from the Rape Crisis Network Ireland (RCNI) Annual Statistics Report for 2009 (full report in .pdf available for download here) is that more than two thirds of the survivors of childhood sexual abuse that attended RCNI centres for counselling in that year had been abused by more than one person.

I find this a very disturbing figure and can barely imagine the impact and trauma this had on the small children who was abused in this way along with the continuing legacy it leaves in the life of the adult they grew up to be. In fact I don't want to think about it because it is too painful.

Statistics are necessary to for us to examine any phenomenon but their apparently simple quantification of reality often obscures the truth of the qualitative experience they represent. Sometimes though they can have the opposite effect and their simple starkness cuts razor sharp to open you to the experience they represent. Tonight that is the effect they are having on me and as a convicted sex offender it is a very discomforting feeling.

However putting my feelings to one side for the moment I am not sure how well these figures quantify the experience of children sexually abused in this country. They certainly ask me to think about the numbers of children suffering sexual abuse by multiple offenders. But they may over represent them in numerical terms – though not in terms of the suffering involved.

The figures in this report refer to those presenting themselves for counselling at Rape Crisis Centres in Ireland. It may be that those suffering more sustained and vicious types of abuse in childhood are more likely in adulthood to attend Rape Crisis Centres or perhaps any form of counselling than those who are victims of less sustained forms of abuse. I write this because I simply don't know. Even if they are numerically over represented the idea of many children being subject to this treatment is rightly shocking. We just have to be careful with the way we use the statistics.

Finally half (49.9%) of survivors of childhood sexual abuse attending RCNI centres where abused by family members and 3.1% by strangers.

Today’s outrage …

2010-11-12T00:33:00.002Z

Technorati Tags: pedophile. peadophile,phillip greaves,book,amazon,controversy,guide

Today's outrage was that Amazon.com offered for sale a book entitled: The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure, a self published by Phillip R Greaves. If ever a book title was designed to provoke outrage this was it. A quick search on the book's title using our most well known search engine produced pages of tweet, blog and discussion board comments many along the lines of “I want to get this sick bastard and smash his brains out”. Right now it is hard to find facts about Greaves using online search as everything about him is buried under pages of this sort of comment.

So what is the book about? According to Yahoo News's reproduction of Sky news quoting Fox News the book's blurb says:

"This is my attempt to make pedophile situations safer for those juveniles that find themselves involved in them, by establishing certian [sic] rules for these adults to follow," …

It went on: "I hope to achieve this by appealing to the better nature of pedosexuals, with hope that their doing so will result in less hatred and perhaps liter [sic] sentences should they ever be caught."

A blog on CNN.com states:

“The author of "The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure: A Child-Lover's Code of Conduct" said he published the controversial tome to address what he considers unfair portrayals of pedophiles in the media.

"True pedophiles love children and would never hurt them," Phillip R. Greaves II said in a phone interview with CNN on Wednesday.

When asked if the self-published e-book was a "how-to manual," he said, "there are certain parts that are advisory," which set out lines that should not be crossed. "Penetration is out. You can't do that with a child, but kissing and fondling I don't think is that big of a problem," he said.”

Initially Amazon seemed to be willing to hold a line on keeping the book available on its site. Sky news reported:

“In response to the criticism …. the online retailer said in a statement: "Amazon believes it is censorship not to sell certain books simply because we or others believe their message is objectionable."

"Amazon does not support or promote hatred or criminal acts, however, we do support the right of every individual to make their own purchasing decisions."

The inevitable Facebook page campaigning for a boycott of Amazon rapidly appeared and some time last night (the 10 / 11th November) Amazon removed the book from sale.

Other self-published books by Greaves remain on sale there and on BarnesandNoble.com. All the titles on Amazon get a one star rating from user reviews but these reviews seem to all be written post the furore following publication of the Pedophile's Guide. It seems the Pedophile's Guide has got people looking at his books and - judging by the user reviews - even buying them, perhaps so they can enjoy the satisfaction of being outraged at them. Mind you, Greaves does give the reader who wants to feel self righteous and superior plenty of material to satisfy them given his interesting grammar and his lack of awareness that his word processor has a spell check.

But I wonder has anyone other than Greaves himself actually read the Pedophile's Guide before commenting on it. Remember: 'don't judge the book by the cover'. My guess is that if we could read the book most of us would find it was not worth reading and by the same token not worth the outrage either.

I don't know whether Greaves was being clever or idiotic in choosing the title of his book; was he wanting to provoke the outrage or was he too dumb to see it coming. Intentionally or not it was designed to whip up delicious feelings of outrage, anger and self righteousness against the monsters all right thinking people in society must hate. And I am one of those monsters.

I should write something but .....

2010-10-31T22:46:00.000Z

I should write something.

A grey sea full of ideas and feelings smashing into each other swells up in my mind. I want to write to put a shape on them before their waves crash through my skull.

But I am too tired and far too anxious and frightened.

Child Porn Sentencing in Ireland Getting Tougher?

2010-10-19T22:01:00.001+01:00

In an article written by John Downes in last Sunday's Tribune it was claimed that judges in Irish courts are getting tougher in their sentencing for child porn offences (see Judges get tough with child pornography sentences).

Two-thirds of individuals convicted of possessing child pornography over the last year received jail sentences, according to a Sunday Tribune analysis.

An examination of 12 major cases reported in the media since June 2007 has revealed that in eight instances, custodial sentences ranging from one month to three years were handed down by the courts.

An examination of 12 'major' cases is compared to an analysis of sentencing carried out as part of a study of study of child pornography by Ian O'Donnell and Claire Milner both then of UCD's Institute of Criminology
(see: Child Pornography – Crime, computers and society )

However a study of 12 'major' cases reported in the media is likely to be biased towards more serious cases in comparion to the more comprehensive study carried out by O'Donnell and Milner covering cases sentenced between 2000 and 2004. The bias in the survey alone is likely to account for some of the difference in the severity of the sentencing.

Indeed Downes gives some details in his article of 6 of the 12 cases he examined as part of his analysis and in 2 of them the possession of child pornography was ancillary to the committing of more serious offences. In other words the prison sentence was not primarily for possessing child pornography but for other offences the accused had committed.

In the case of Paul Collins the accused was found guilty of having unlawful carnal knowledge with a 16 year old girl as well as possessing sexually explicit images of her - that is he was sentenced for having sex with an underage girl and of taking photos of her constituting the manufacture (not just possession) of child pornography.

Anthony Nagle has sex with a 15 year old girl after feeding her 24 bottles of alcopops and videotaped the act. He was found guilty of possessing child pornography but also of producing it and of the sexual exploitation of a child.

In reading an articles about convictions for child pornography where those found guilty are also found guilty of other more serious offences (at least more serious as the law judges them in terms of the severity of the sentences available to judges) I see there is a tendency to headline the conviction for possession of child pornography. I see this not only in Ireland but in cases reported in the UK and USA as well and even where very serious offences of rape and sexual assault are also involved. I am not sure why this is.

What the news media can say about sex offenders

2010-10-19T13:57:00.000+01:00

In today's Irish Times, Legal Affairs Editor Carol Coulter writes this piece: Man seeks apology over paper's claim of relationship

The article concerns Barry Watters who is serving a sentence for possession of child pornography (see: Guilty plea to child porn possession) and who has brought a case against the Star on Sunday newspaper under the Defamation Act 2009 where a claimant can seek a court order to publish a correction in a newspaper without claiming damages.

According to the Irish Time's article the Star on Sunday story was:

entitled “Larry’s Secret Shower Buddy” which, according to an affidavit filed on behalf of Watters, “purports to be an exposé of a relationship quite clearly presented as being sexual in nature between our client and Mr Larry Murphy, a recently released and extremely high profile convict.”

While evidence was presented to the court that Watters had had no relationship with Murphy The Star on Sunday's defence does not rest on addressing whether Watter's had a relationship with Larry Murphy or not but rather simply on whether it damaged Watter's reputation.

Judge Joseph Matthews said the plaintiff had been associated with a sensational name, described as “the beast of Baltinglass”. Mr McCullough [counsel for the Star] said it did not matter whether the alleged relationship was with a person with a good or a bad reputation.

Asked whether he was saying allegations concerning a relationship with Murphy could have no relevance given what had gone before, Mr McCullough said: “Yes. Defamation is not about particular facts and whether they are precisely true. The question becomes – is his reputation any worse as a result of the publication? He is a social pariah.”

I am a convicted sex offender. I know my reputation is as low as anyone's can be and that I am a social pariah, evidence of that is about me everyday. Arguably my reputation is so low that cannot be damaged any further. However, while I am not surprised, I find it bizarre that journalists can think it is OK because of that to make up fictitious stories about me and publish them as fact to entertain potential readers.

Whatever about the law on defamation, I cannot see that spreading untruths about sex offenders, or anyone else, can be in the public interest.

Technorati Tags: sex offender,defamation,courts,ireland,irish times,star on sunday,carol coulter,barry watters,larry murphy,media,news,newpapers,news media

Banned from Church by Government

2010-07-30T21:16:00.000+01:00

What I read about myself today …..

2010-03-02T00:08:00.001Z

What I read about myself today …..

Wary of predators -- and politicians

“Since June 2005, I have had some kind of contact -- telephone conversation, face-to-face meeting, e-mail exchange, letter exchange -- with about 5,000 convicted criminals or their relatives, counselors and friends. (The number might be closer to 6,000, but I stopped keeping count a couple of years ago.) ….

The men and women who called here had been convicted of all kinds of crimes: armed robbery, aggravated assault, forging checks, possession with intent to distribute heroin -- and mostly the latter. Tired of prison, they wanted to find work not prohibited by law. It's hard to say how many were earnest, but most certainly seemed to be when they first contacted me.
And I was willing to help them, to the extent that I could.
But I haven't been so willing to help sex offenders. “

N.Y. attorney general forces ISPs to curb Usenet access

2008-06-11T23:20:00.005+01:00

see here from cNet News:

N.Y. attorney general forces ISPs to curb Usenet access

This story is getting widespread publicity across the USA news media, for example from the LA Times:

Three Internet providers to block child porn sites

Some see it as a major step forwards in the eradication of child pornography in the Internet:

Online child pornography may become a thing of the past, thanks to New York State's Attorney General. (see WETM)

However some ISPs are shutting down access to Usenet entirely. Usenet, once a major backbone of the Internet (before the Web took over) comprises thousands of newsgroups allowing information sharing and debate on every topic under the sun. 88 of these were found to be used to post child porn, but rather than target these, such is the hysteria over child porn that users of some ISPs are going to be denied access to a whole region of the Internet. This is rather like shutting down the whole World Wide Web because some web sites host child porn, or shutting down access to all instant messaging software because in some cases it is used to exchange information about child porn.

Teenagers producing child pornography of themselves?

2008-06-11T10:52:00.004+01:00

Read here:

Naked photos, e-mail get teens in trouble

Passing notes in study hall or getting your best friend to ask a boy if he likes you or, you know, LIKES you, is so last century. Nowadays, teenagers are snapping naked pictures of themselves on their cell phones and sending them to their boyfriends and girlfriends. ...

Many of these pictures are falling into the wrong hands -- or worse, everyone's hands, via the Internet -- and leading to criminal charges. ....

The images are complicating the work of investigators whose job is to find exploited children. Authorities trying to identify youngsters in naked photos are increasingly discovering that the teens themselves took the shots, said John Shehan, a director at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

St Andrews porter caught downloanding child porn

2008-06-10T17:39:00.005+01:00

In recent times police agencies and child protection groups have been anxious to educate the public about the true nature of child pornography. Among other things they have tried to encourage the news media to replace the term 'child pornography' with 'images of child abuse'; the point being that the term child pornography may convey the idea of children happily posing possibly naked for a photographer while what is in fact involved are graphic images of often violent child rape and other forms of abuse.

I notice that the BBC have taken to referring to child abuse images where they would have spoken of 'child pornography' in the past.

Child protection lobbyists have also been insistent on the idea that every child pornography image is an image of child sexual abuse and every image has a real victim and that those who are viewing this material are as guilty as the people who perpetrated the abuse in the first place. However there is a problem promoting this idea where various forms of 'virtual' child pornography are concerned.

I think it is very understandable that child protection agencies should want to educate our society about the particularly vicious nature of some child pornography and about the harm that any child pornography does. Remember that when Operation Amethyst took place in Ireland six years ago that some newspaper columnists were openly wondering whether the simple possession of child pornography should be a crime at all.

But at the same time painting every case of possession of child pornography /child sexual abuse images as the worst case is not truthful and being truthful is essential to framing good child protection measures and to holding offenders accountable for what they have done.

While this may make us uncomfortable at times there are grey areas when it comes to all sexual offending including child pornography. The case of the Saint Andrews golf club porter illustrates some (though not all) of these.

According to the Scottish Daily Record:

Cops found 58 indecent images of young girls, aged between 12 and 14, in erotic poses, wearing only swimsuits or underwear. ...

Tasker ... pleaded guilty to two counts of possession of indecent photographs of kids and taking them, or permitting them to be taken or made.

The court heard Tasker, who lost his job and is now a delivery driver, downloaded the images from "teen model" websites in October 2005.

Jim Robertson, prosecuting, said: "Mr Tasker admitted accessing these sites and it is important to stress these are paid sites. They allow for a preview before payment and the accused did not pay."

He said the pictures were all category-one, the lowest level, on the Copine Scale used to determine the severity of such cases.

Douglas Williams, defending, said: "No images of children naked or undressed were downloaded.

From this report it seems that Mr Tasker downloaded preview photographs of 'child models' (for an idea of what these child modeling sites are about read the Wikipedia article here) from a pay per view site or sites, many of which openly operate on the web and which are legal within the jurisdictions (often the USA, sometimes European countries - though I am not an expert on the geographical or other distribution of these sites) where they are sited. These sites may carry notices to the effect that you will not find child pornography on the site and that they are in conformity with the law. I also understand that on the type of site Mr Tasker was accessing the child and teen models all pose with full parental consent.

While these sites ostensibly exist to promote the legitimate modeling careers anybody with two functioning brain cells will see that they have another agenda. They do vary in how risqué they are and some I think (I am not an expert) are very tame and would avoid any complaint of being indecent. But even for the most tame sites you would have a hard time convincing most people that they are there for any other purpose but the sexual gratification in one way or another of the people you use them.

Mr Tasker was charged not only with possessing the images but with "taking them, or permitting them to be taken or made".This is a technical point under UK law. In downloading the images under UK law he made or took a new digital copy of the image on presumably the hard drive of his computer. The charge of making or taking an image does not refer to the common sense understanding of the term of taking a photograph or of making a new pornographic image of a child. The equivalent charge here in Ireland would simply be of knowingly possessing the images.

My guess is that the images Mr Tasker had in his possession would not be illegal under Irish legislation and probably not illegal in most European countries. Their illegality in the UK depends on the courts interpretation of the term 'indecent' image and under federal legislation in the USA it depends on the courts interpretation of the term 'lascivious exhibition' of the genitalia which does not have to involve nudity - in other words, federal courts in the USA have decided that genitalia can be lasciviously exposed through clothing. Deciding what is 'indecent' (in the case of the UK (or 'lascivious' (in the case of the USA) can be tricky.

I would think that most men in the UK accessing these sort of sites are not aware that what they are doing is illegal. Their image of child pornography taken from statements of child protection groups and the police is of brutal rape scenes and bestiality which does not square with the sort of site they are looking at. The sites are operating openly, the children are modeling with parental consent, there is no nudity involved, and they have all the appearances of operating quite legally and in fact probably are operating quite legally. And we are living in culture where the Playboy brand name is being targeted at preteens so what is a normal and healthy manner for a young teenager to present herself?

If we are to combat child pornography we have to be truthful about it. That means recognising that is comes in many different forms and shades off in a grey scale into the kinds of images that are widely used in advertising clothes and other products to children and teenagers. We have to recognise that there are difficulties and honest differences in approaches to legally defining and delimiting child pornography. And if you want to help the likes of Mr Tasker to recognise that what they are looking at is child pornography then our public debate about child pornography / child sexual abuse images makes clear that not all child pornography involves children being raped and indeed that some of it does not involve even images of real children.

Our discussion of child pornography and child sexual abuse in general has to become more nuanced. People (men mostly) have to learn that you do not have to be a mad paedophile beast to commit a sexual offense, that the line you cross when you do is much more delicate and less obvious than much public discourse about beasts and perverts would have you believe and if you are not to cross it you need to be aware of that.

First a look, then a touch too far

2008-06-10T10:37:00.006+01:00

Read it here:

First a look, then a touch too far

I find the bombardment of articles that I come across with the theme that anyone who has accessed child pornography is a child predator, or that anyone who has committed a sexual offense is bound to re offend utterly demoralising. Each one says to me that I should not bother, that even though I have never had any motivation to have sexual contact with a child I am bound to do it, that there is no hope for my not re-offending and that indeed I am bound to commit more and more serious offenses in the future.

That is what many people want to think of me and of other sex offenders. They actually do not want rehabilitation for us. They are much more comfortable with the idea that we are some sort of wild animals who are bound to sink to lower and lower depths of depravity.

There have been many times that I have come to believe that I have actually committed offenses that I have never had the remotest inclination towards, when in the end only some thin string of sanity has kept me connected with what I have done and with what I have not in fact done.

According to this report:

People in the internet child protection field have had a working assumption that 20 to 30 per cent of those who viewed child porn images also committed what are known as contact offences - physically abusing children.

I am still trying to find scientific research to back up these figures. What I find is that something between 20 to 36 per cent of those caught in sting operations in the USA and probably other jurisdictions that use similar techniques to catch those trading in images of child sexual abuse are found to have a history of contact abuse of children. However the results of police sting operations do not constitute scientific research and it is most unlikely that those caught are representative of the entire population of those accessing child pornography.

These operations are designed to catch those who are uploading and trading in images of abuse. From my experience of the way people participate in the internet generally and from my (albeit limited) experience of the world of child pornography, most people accessing child pornography do not upload images - they are what are disparagingly called 'lurkers' in most web based forums. And in referring to the prevalence of lurkers I am not writing specifically about child porn forums here, but internet based forums generally.

Police investigations like Operation Amethyst in Ireland and Operation Ore in the U.K. revealed a different profile of child porn users and one that I suspect is much more common. The results of these investigations have never been fully published but it is clear that very few cases of contact sexual abuse were found. I remember finding three reported cases of contact sexual abuse following on from Operation Amethyst out of approximately 50 prosecutions that were brought.

The numbers of images offenders were prosecuted for having in their possession varied from one image to hundreds of thousands of images. And many offenders were prosecuted for having 'lower level' or 'level one' images (that is images of naked or semi naked children in passive poses rather than children being engaged in explicit sexual activity).

Police world wide have expressed concern over the seemingly increasing proliferation of child abuse images circulating on the internet and the apparent increasing severity of these images. These claims, while they need to be taken very seriously, still cannot be taken at face value.

At an intuitive level I think that probably the methods used to circulate images of child sexual abuse have developed and become more sophisticated.

For example peer to peer networking methods were not about in my day and they are a very obvious way for those dabbling in child porn to access the material they are looking for and I expect they are widely used for this. Some U.S. child porn investigators have expressed frustration at the lack of resources they have to follow up on the huge numbers of leads they have stemming from their observation of these peer to peer networks.

However despite the fact that peer to peer networks are such an obvious method of distributing these images I read of relatively few prosecutions for child pornography offenses that involve their use. Much more commonly I read about cases involving sting operations involving the penetration of chat rooms and other forums used by those interested in trading such images. Many of these sites do seem to ask users to upload images in order to receive something in return. Partly this is to get rid of despised lurkers and partly I assume it is to create a sense of security among users - the police are not likely to upload illegal images. But the outcome is that the images circulating in these places are likely to be more serious and are more likely to involve new images - that is images of recent and current sexual abuse of children.

However the people participating in this activity are likely to be more 'serious' in their pursuit of images of child abuse than the general population accessing child pornography.

In many ways it makes sense for police forces dealing with limited resources to concentrate their activities in those areas where they are most likely to catch the most serious offenders and to help identify children who are currently being abused. But the results of their investigations will not be representative of the total population of those accessing child pornography.

The figures circulated by police forces that 20 - 30 something percent of people who access child pornography have had contact sexual abuse with children is at least a function of the type of investigations that police forces have engaged in as it is of the numbers and types of images stored in hard drives and other digital storage media about the world and of the activities of the people who put them there.

But controversial US research suggests the figure could be much higher.

The study was conducted by Andres Hernandez and Michael Bourke, two psychologists who work in the US prison system and who conducted long interviews with 155 men convicted of child pornography offences.

The men were encouraged, as part of their treatment, to outline their sexual histories, assured that their revelations would be anonymous and not lead to new charges.

At the start, about 25 per cent of the men were known molesters and the rest assumed to have only viewed images of child pornography.

The interviews changed all that. It emerged that 131 men - 85 per cent of them - had abused a child and that the number of victims was much higher than had been identified at sentencing; a 20-fold increase to 1777.

"Many internet child pornography offenders may be undetected child molesters," the authors concluded.

The researchers are highly respected. Hernandez has regularly been called before US Congress to testify about the online child abuse problem. Nonetheless, the study was pulled by US prison administrators, concerned that the narrow sample of offenders could have skewed the research.

The results of this study have rapidly rippled about the world and many have accepted its results as fact. It certainly satisfies many peoples emotional reactions to those convicted of accessing child pornography. But people overlook the fact that it was not lightly pulled by those who sponsored it who were clearly, and I assume with good reason, concerned about how generalizable the results were. In fact as the results have been leaked what they feared might happen has happened. The results of a study with dubious validity have quickly been seized upon by many as 'scientific fact' and are now feeding into public debate and policy making.

The fact is that while we know something about those who are currently being caught accessing images of child sexual abuse using the methods currently being used in police investigations we really know very little about how typical these are of the general population accessing child porn.

Dozens arrested in child porn sting

2008-06-10T00:36:00.005+01:00

Read here:

Dozens arrested in child porn sting

I hope to get back writing about Operation Centurion but for now I will make do with this quote from this article:

Many of those arrested have readily confessed, to a greater extent than people do for other crimes. "A lot of people say: 'I know what you are here for.' They are obviously waiting for the knock on the door one day," said one police investigator.

I know I was waiting for it. Like many others I was not glad that it came from the police but I was glad it came.

In my late twenties I realised that I was a mess and that I had some serious mental health problems. The most obvious of these to me was my self injury which at times was very violent and stemmed from an almost unspeakable hatred of myself which I can still feel from time to time. I overtly began to self injure in my early teens. I have not self injured for about three years now.

At that time I was also aware that I had a compulsive or addictive relationship with my sexuality and that started in my preteen years.

Neither of these are symptoms of a happy childhood adulthood

A combination of ignorance as to where I could get help (and in fact there probably was no help available anyway) and pervasive feelings of shame about myself (I just was ashamed of myself - I learned very early on in childhood that I was some one to be ashamed of) meant that I would never be able to reach out for help until I reached some sort of crisis.

I believe that many men who access child pornography / child abuse images are, like me, locked into a hellish existence and a large part of them welcomes the knock at the door when the police arrive.

Ex policeman accused of possessing child porn murdered in Wales

2008-06-09T22:58:00.004+01:00

See the story here:

Murdered ex-PC 'driven from home'

These stories frighten me. No doubt many think it is right that I should be frightened and that frightening me is a good thing. I am frightened not only for myself but also for my children as I am aware of say the threats made to Robert Murat's child living in England after he was announced to be a suspect in the disappearance of Madeline McCann.

At the end of last summer I got a taxi home from the city centre with my then 10 year old son. I had taken him to the cinema - yes folks, there I was sitting in a cinema full of children. No doubt some of you are squirming already believing that as a convicted sex offender the only reason I was really there was to attack a child.

As we were getting out of the taxi the taxi driver pointing to the house where I live began to ask me if I knew anything about the paedophile that lived there. He then made these series of confused statements about how this paedophile 'had' and at the same time 'had not' been 'messing' with his own kids and then how he 'had' and 'had not' been 'fiddling' with children in the area. What he was saying was very confused and he was clearly confused about what I was supposed to have done. But it was not hard to see how these vague and confused stories about me are developing.

My youngest child attends play school. Recently (and maybe I will return to this in a future post if I have time) I learned that a mother of one of the children at the play school is spreading the story locally that I have 'my eye' on her daughter.

I have no way of defending myself against these stories. The problem is that they are growing. Those neighbours living in the same cul de sac as I do and who know me well are content to let their children play with mine and, yes, even come into my house - I know many will find that shocking. For others though a vague memory remains of some sort of sexual offense that I committed the facts of which have long since vanished. Instead the facts are being replaced with a stereotype of what sex offenders are. And as this stereotype is ramped up so the rumours about me spread.

Oh, by the way, I have never had any improper sexual contact with a minor.

Gardai plan house calls in sex offender crackdown

2008-05-24T22:59:00.015+01:00

From today's Irish Independent:

Gardai plan house calls in sex offender crackdown

I got a call from the Gardaí yesterday morning. Neither I nor my wife were in so it was taken by my 13 year old daughter, not pleasant for her. I presume they will be back in the next few days.

I know this newspaper headline will sound good and proper to most people. And I like the headline use of 'crackdown' - as if all of us sex offenders have been getting away with 'it' (whatever that might be) and need to be whipped back into shape.

But it is not as straight forward as that. It is in the interests of child protection that those involved in the rehabilitation of sex offenders seek to see us playing a productive role in the community, in meaningful employment, involved in a network of friends and so on. Some one convicted of a sexual offense who is leading a purposeful life and is supported by a family and friendship network which is aware of his past and on the look out for danger signs such as becoming engaged in dangerous behaviour, or simply becoming depressed and self destructive, is less likely to re-offend. He has got something positive to live for and he has people about him who are realistically hopeful for his rehabilitation and ready to catch any danger signs.

Best practice sex offender 'treatment' programmes, such as those offered by the Granada Institute outside Dublin, seek to involve the offender's family and friendship network in his rehabilitation.

Having the police call in open daylight to your front door though can send out the wrong messages to your family and neighbours. It says: "This is a dangerous person who we need to police for you - beware!".

Most sex offenders, once caught, are not going to re-offend anyway (if you are from Ireland, stop and think what proportion of sex offending cases that you have read about involved an already convicted sex offender?). And generally if the sex offender has been through a programme which has involved his social network, these are well able to police him.

I know policing is a difficult task. Sex offenders and the offenses we have committed vary enormously. Different sex offenders may require different policing regimes. A blanket approach to policing all sex offenders the same way or too much of the wrong sort of policing of sex offenders may isolate them from the support networks that in times of stress keep them on the straight and narrow. Instead of supporting their rehabilitation it may encourage their re-offending.

Child Porn, nudity, art and photography

2008-05-24T19:17:00.001+01:00

On the Bill Henson story:

Art, not porn

Nappy ads in pedophile fear

2008-05-24T19:01:00.003+01:00

From Australia:

A parliamentary inquiry is examining whether it is appropriate to have unclad babies in commercials after it was revealed they are the subject of regular complaints to the Advertising Standards Bureau.

Bureau chief executive Alison Abernethy said images of babies in advertisements for nappies, baby wipes and bath products disturbed some people.

"The nappy advertisements top the complaints in the category about sexualisation of children," she said.

Read about it here:

Nappy ads in pedophile fear

Child Porn, nudity, art and photography

2008-05-23T23:18:00.013+01:00

This story concerns Bill Henson, an internationally renowned Australian find art photographer.

A selection of Bill Henson's work, due to go on exhibition at the Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery in Sydney, has been seized by Australian police with the intention of charging Henson under the New South Wales Child Protection Act. The photographs seized are being considered as child pornography.

The story is receiving widespread coverage in the Australian news media.

Politicians it seems seems have weighed in to condemn the work.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd this morning slammed the pictures of naked children as "revolting".

"I don't understand why we can't allow kids just to have their childhood and just enjoy their childhood. I really have a problem with this," Mr Rudd told the Nine Network this morning.

and from the New South Wales Premier:

NSW Premier Morris Iemma also weighed in from China, condemning the exhibition.

"I find it offensive and disgusting. I don't understand why parents would agree to allow their kids to be photographed like this," Mr Iemma said.

Child protection groups have also had something to say:

"He [Henson] has a tendency to depict children naked and that is porn," said child protection campaigner Hetty Johnston of Bravehearts.

What I find most interesting is that Henson apparently has been doing this sort of work for years without any fuss. Here is a comment on an exhibition of his at the Australian National Gallery in 2005. Take a look at the photographs in the background. Why the sudden fuss?

It also provides a focus for debate on the relationships between art, pornography, nudity and children. I do not think there is any simple way of formulating this.

I pity Bill Henson though if he ends up being convicted of producing and distributing child pornography and joins me as a convicted sex offender. No doubt that event would lead to a reassessment of his work and its entire withdrawal from any publically funded galleries or programmes and probably most private galleries as well.

You can read some of the Australian coverage here:

Artist Bill Henson faces child porn art investigation

Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery pics of children dumped

Gallery raided as Bill Henson child porn art removed

No doubt we will be reading more about this.

Man killed ‘was mistaken for a paedophile'

2008-05-20T21:53:00.002+01:00

Man killed ‘was mistaken for a paedophile'

A HARPENDEN man murdered his innocent victim after invading his flat thinking he was a paedophile

So if the victim had been a convicted sex offender he would not have been innocent? Does that mean that the murderer would have been less guilty or that the victim would not have been innocent of his own murder, perhaps in some way guilty of his own murder.

Paedophile killer's jail term cut

2008-05-19T22:31:00.006+01:00

Paedophile killer's jail term cut

I am too aware that what appears in the news (even from, as in this case, such a respected institution as the BBC) is often incomplete and often factually inaccurate. I have learned to read the news to find out what is in the news and not necessarily what 'really' happened in the world. So I am reading this article from that point of view.

What this article seems to say is that John Brooks, who was already in prison for manslaughter, kills another prisoner and the judge says that :

the murder was not so out of the ordinary as to justify a 25-year tariff

Hmmm ...

John Brooks is a recidivist murderer. Recidivist murderers are a pretty rare breed. Murderers' recidivism rate is even lower than for sex offenders'. (Sex offenders and murderers are the only categories of criminal the majority of whom do not re-offend) . With murderers, as with sex offenders, among the minority who do re-offend are some of the most dangerous people going. All of that makes John Brooks' second murder out of the ordinary - a very unusual event.

Ah, but you see the person he murdered second time around was a sex offender, so I guess that makes it not too bad, not too out of the ordinary. No doubt many will say he was even doing the rest of society a favour.

Now I have long been aware that, as a convicted sex offender, I have practically little or not protection from the law against anyone who would like to assault me for example. Maybe that is as it should be?

Sex offenders can be turned says expert

2008-05-19T22:12:00.004+01:00

Sex offenders can be turned says expert

The news for me this article from New Zealand are the responses of the readers.

This guy's in cuckoo land - a .22 is the only cure!

Dont believe the hype people. The only answer that guarantees the safety of children is to isolate these offenders from society for life (or as #1, shoot them, but I dont think we as a society really want to go there, and there is also the issue of wrongful convictions which do happen). I dislike being lied to by experts of this sort who are only too willing to put the lives of other on the line to support their own ideologies.

I guess this means that if the experts and the people who have done the research tell us something that does not fit with the mythology surrounding sexual offending we are just going to call them liars. Our prejudices will decide what the 'facts' really are. But then I suppose that is how all decisions about what is 'truth' are made?

The Giro Starts Today

2008-05-10T13:28:00.002+01:00

The Giro starts today - entertainment for the next three week!

Triumphalist demonstration after rape verdict

2008-05-10T10:08:00.008+01:00

Triumphalist demonstration after rape verdict

The man is found not guilty of raping and sexually abusing his daughter.According to the television report and according to the report:

Relatives and supporters of the 39-year-old accused Dublin man shouted and applauded after the court registrar noted the final 'not guilty' verdict against him.

While the accused is legally entitled to be considered and treated as innocent of these charges, many will suspect that he 'really' did do it.

The accuser, his daughter, is left with her name tarnished for bringing false accusations against her father.

If it is the case that while the evidence against the accused was not sufficient for the jury to convict him of him raping her he really did do it, then the hurt done to the accuser must be magnified many, many times.

In cases like this, where the accused is found not guilty, nobody comes out of it well.

Irrespective of whether the daughter did or did not experience rape and other sexual abuse from the hands of her father, whatever happened in this family that she felt the need to being these accusations against her father must have been something dreadfully painful and anger provoking.

I find it frightening that as human beings we can do this sort of thing to one another.

Child sex pest killed himself to avoid prison

2008-05-09T19:54:00.004+01:00

Child sex pest killed himself to avoid prison

When you become a sex offender you no longer can do any recognizable right.

If you stay alive you are a living offense to others and if you kill yourself you are only doing it to avoid punishment.

What am I supposed to do?

Maybe that is the right way for it to be, I do not know anymore.

Child sex pest killed himself to avoid prison

2008-05-08T03:25:00.002+01:00

What am I supposed to do? If I stay alive I am the scum of the earth who should be put down. If I kill myself it is because I wanted to escape prison or other punishment. Should I kill myself. I really wish I knew what to do.

Child sex pest killed himself to avoid prison

We have a right to know

2008-05-04T01:14:00.000+01:00

The dangers of pedophilia are real. We all know the level of recidivism among pedophiles is high and that predators can go to extreme lengths to gain anonymity. (see here)

"We will give anybody a second shot except for a sex offender."

2008-05-03T00:09:00.002+01:00

"Every once in a while someone will slip through the cracks," said Pat Hollman, a case worker at the St. Vincent DePaul shelter (in Hartford, Connecticut, USA) , which houses women and children as well as men. "We will give anybody a second shot except for a sex offender." (see here)

Sex offenders in church /synagogue

2008-04-01T22:18:00.003+01:00

Following my post some time ago (quite some time ago) on whether I should be allowed to attend church it seems that the English Jewish community is working towards banning sex offenders from their community (see Stanmore bans child sex offender from shul).

Now I am not going to go into the issues about whether this realistically does anything to make children from synagogue attending Jewish families any safer. But the immediate impact of reading this on me is to question where can I go to get the kind of support and accountability that I need to be a decent human being if I cannot turn to my faith community?

I know that as a consequence of my offense combined with the 'mental health' problems that I grapple with (most obviously what people call 'depression' and quite vicious self injury, both of which have been there since my early teens) I am becoming increasingly isolated. This is not a good place for anyone to be, never mind some one convicted of a sex offense but it is where most of the community that surrounds me wants me to be even if it increases the risk of my recidivism.

I sense that most people want me to fail. If I was to re-offend many around me would have the opportunity to engage in a smug self-righteousness, "there I told you so, those perverts are all the same, they never change", and in a perverse way feel good about themselves. Of course, they would make some clichéd comments about how terrible it was for the victims of my offending behaviour but I wonder how sincere they would be. In many ways the existence of sex offenders - the unacknowledged majority of sex offenders - who do not re-offend causes some people more disquiet than those who do re-offend.

Stats released after public outcry over rapist's escape - Antrim Today

2008-03-18T14:52:00.002Z

Stats released after public outcry over rapist's escape

Stats released after public outcry over rapist's escape - Antrim Today

I am trying to grasp what the news is here. How should I interpret the fact that there are 22, comprising 18 low risk and 4 medium risk, people registered as sex offenders living in the Antrim borough area. Is this good or bad, something I should be worried about or should I be relieved that there is not more and that there are no high risk offenders?

Data published like this without context against a general back ground of vague hysteria about sex offenders can only increase anxiety and deepen the hysteria.

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Banned sex offender numbers rise

2008-03-17T21:51:00.001Z

"We are committed to ensuring we have the toughest ever vetting and barring system for all those working with, or seeking to work with, children and vulnerable adults."

BBC NEWS | Politics | Banned sex offender numbers rise

Good talking from the UK's Schools' Secretary, Ed Balls. And who could disagree with him. Who wants to take a risk that their children could be the victim of an already convicted sex offender?

I have never worked with children in either a paid or voluntary capacity, indeed I have never shown any such interest although I have had many classical opportunities to do so (church youth groups, Sunday school and so on). I expect that if I was some one who did have an interest in sexually abusing children I would at some stage have availed of these opportunities, but I did not. Nevertheless I do not expect to be allowed ever to work with children.

However while these might be sensible precautions they do little in fact to decrease the incidence of child sexual abuse, indeed in many cases they may induce a false sense of security among parents. It is very common for example to see calls for a tightening of vetting procedures following the conviction of a teacher or sports coach for sexual abuse. But the problem is that over 95% of reported sexual offenses are committed by people with no known history of child sexual abuse.

Devoting large resources to the supervision, policing and punishment of convicted sex offenders may sound good and some of it undoubtedly is but it what does it do about protecting children from the much larger numbers who have never 'come to the attention' of the police before but who will go on to commit the vast majority of sexual offenses against children in the coming year?

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"some offenders have a high incidence of re-offending"

2008-03-17T19:27:00.001Z

"some offenders have a high incidence of re-offending"

This article concerns an attempt by a convicted sex offender in Plainfield, Indiana, USA, to overturn a town law forbidding sex offenders access to town parks in order that he might bring his son to the park.

According to the report the judge as part of his 'summing up' of his decision to uphold the town law stated that:

"some offenders have a high incidence of re-offending"

see here:

Judge upholds Plainfield sex offender ban | IndyStar.com

This is one I have read a number of times before in different places.

What on earth does that mean? As far as I take some sensible meaning from it, it simply says that some offenders re-offend. But it is couched in dramatic and pseudo scientific language with some vague dramatic effect that sex offenders are all dangerous.

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Monitored sex offenders 'missing' o rthe Story of a Successful Sex Offender Monitoring System

2008-03-16T23:04:00.001Z

BBC NEWS | Scotland | Monitored sex offenders 'missing'

This story has appeared in a number of news outlets over the last few days started by the it 'emerging' that a former Scottish police officer, now a convicted sex offender has been missing to the Scottish police for the last two years. By missing I presume the police mean that he has not been living we he is supposed to be according to their records.

Another example of the story is here:

http://www.deesidepiper.co.uk/latest-scottish-news/Sex-offender-figures-unveiled.3882049.jp

By putting the emphasis on the emphasis on the 27 missing offenders the tenor of the article is that, wow there are lots of dangerous sex offenders (or 'peadophile predators', since the words are often used synonymously) out there. Now as a registered sex offender I know that there are many reasons why someone 'goes absent' from the sex offenders register. Simple forgetfulness is one, or just being fed up with constantly keeping the police informed of where you are sleeping is another. Or it may be simply that some one stayed out late, or slept overnight at a friends house when the police called to see him.

Naturally if a sex offender is not present when the police call they will want to contact him as soon as possible but that does not mean that he has suddenly become dangerous. Even going missing for two years does not necessarily mean that an offender has become more at risk of re-offending although it does send out a strong warning signal and the police reasonably want to get in touch with this guy.

If we read through the article we find the police saying much as I have written above. Some of these missing offenders will turn up within a matter of hours. The number of 'seriously' missing offenders is somewhat less than 27.

But there are 3,500 people registered as sex offenders in Scotland. Less than 27, that is something in the region of half a percent (one out of every 200) is missing. That sounds like a system that is not perfect but is working as well as any system could be expected to work, certainly it is much better than the many US systems which much more demanding on offenders but often only manage sixty per cent compliance among offenders. This is a largely successful system.

Another aspect to the type of system that they operate in Scotland is that it works largely because convicted sex offenders largely willingly comply with it - contrary to what I guess are most peoples views of all of us as completely irresponsible devious manipulative predators. The Scottish, Irish, or English police simply do not have the resources to operate a system that does not work without the co-operation of most offenders.

And what about the offenders who do go missing long term ? Well now the police know who is missing and they can target them, and the numbers are small enough that resources can be devoted to tracking them down.

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Should I bel allowed to attend a church?

2007-03-12T22:45:00.000Z

Should convicted sex offenders be allowed to be part of the Christian church and to attend worship services?
There have been a couple of stories in the last few days on this topic covered in the US press. Here is one of them.

Pilgrim Church weighs whether to allow sex offender to attend services

The madness of child porn collectors

2006-11-28T22:51:00.000Z

From the BBC
Scientist jailed over child porn

and then from CNEWS.com in Canada
University of Lethbridge astrophysicist jailed for 500,000 child-porn images

Robin Phillips, British astrophysicist working in the University of Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada has been sentenced to 15 months in an English jail after he was caught taking indecent ’upskirt’ photos of children in Trafalgar Square, London. He was later found to have 500,000 child pornographic images on his computer. This amounts to one of the largest collections of child pornography ever found in Britain.

He was sentenced to 15 months in prison by Southwark Crown Court.

This story reminds me of the compulsive and addictive nature of pornography for many men. With 500,000 images he would have to spend 4 hours a day every day for over a year to be able to view each one for 10 seconds. Even within the craziness of deriving satisfaction form child pornography he had no rational need to keep 500,000 of these images.

CNEWS reports that :

“Phillips and his wife have given up their residence in Alberta.

Due to media attention in both Britain and Canada, Phillips's wife has taken their eight-year-old and 10-month-old children to live in Germany. “

Why do so many communities feel the need to drive out the families of sex offenders. They have already suffered enormously from the actions of the offender without doing this to them.

26-11-2006 Recidivism Rates Among SOs

2006-11-26T22:56:00.000Z

“According to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, only about 5 to 15 percent of all sex offenders who make it through probation reoffend.” see How Do Police Track Sex Offenders Once Off Probation?

This might surprise many people as it is commonly believed that the majority of sex offenders re-offend. Yet the facts consistently show that sex offenders are one of the few categories of offenders where the majority due not re-offend.

This data is widely available to those who want to access it so why is it that it ignored in favour of popular prejudice. Many people simply do not want to believe the truth on this matter, even if it means that public policy to protect children and society in general is framed on the basis of ignorance.

Bishop Casey cleared of sex abuse charges??

2006-08-29T23:31:00.000+01:00

Bishop Casey cleared of sex abuse charges

The headline in tonight’s Breaking News is misleading (see http://www.breakingnews.ie/2006/08/29/story274415.html) .

Legally of course Bishop Casey is innocent having not been successfully prosecuted in a court of law for the offences that he was accused of. The Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) has decided not to press charges but that does not mean he has been ‘cleared’.

As it is against the DPP’s policy to give reasons for its decisions - and I can think of many good reasons why this should be its policy - it surely will not comment any further on this case. The DPP will often make decisions not to prosecute on the basis that sufficient evidence is not available to secure a conviction. We can speculate that this is why it has not proceeded with a prosecution in Bishop Casey’s case.

The fact that the kind of evidence needed to secure a conviction is not available does not mean that the person in innocent or is ‘cleared’ of the charges. They may well emerge innocent in law but this has not been shown in fact to the public. Bishop Eamonn Casey always showed himself to be confident that a prosecution would not arise from the police investigation. No doubt many, probably a substantial majority of the Irish population, sincerely believe that he is innocent but once the doubt has been planted there will be those who will question this.

Cases like this leave the Roman Church (or any other organisation that deals with the care of children of vulnerable adults) with a problem. Can they return to employment people against whom allegations of sexual abuse have been made but who have never been publically or openly cleared of these allegations, even if many believe that they are innocent?

It is likely that the kind of allegations made against Bishop Casey and the fact that these merited a police investigation would fall into the realm of the ‘soft’ intelligence that the Irish Society for the Protection of Children are campaigning to become part of the disclosure that accompanies any application by someone to work with children or vulnerable adults. If this procedure was in place then this would probably bar Bishop Casey from any public ministry in the Roman Church.

It might well have been better for Bishop Casey and others who have found themselves in his situation if their cases had gone on public trial and the evidence against them was publically refuted.

Other reports on this:

RTE News: “No prosecution for Dr Eamonn Casey”
http://www.rte.ie/news/2006/0829/caseye.html

BBC News: “Ex-bishop will not be prosecuted”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/5296296.stm

Catholic World News: “Irish bishop cleared of sex-abuse charges”
http://www.cwnews.com/news/viewstory.cfm?recnum=46146