Our newest writer on this blog yesterday drew my attention to
this article at the BBC. The document discusses "Sarah's Law" a new piece of legislation permitting parents to check the background of those people who have unsupervised access to their children just in case they are paedophiles. The piece gives five scenarios the scheme could cover, and there's a rather disturbing common theme throughout. I've since discovered that the five scenarios given actually appear in various different articles on the issue on different sites, therefore it's uncertain as to who is to blame exactly.
One of the characters we get to hear about is a male sports coach offering informal football training. It tells us that parents can find information about him due to "rumours about the man doing the rounds". Obviously checks based on rumours aren't especially desirable but the piece is well balanced and does warn of the danger off vigilantism.
We also read about an "odd-looking" neighbour. Again this potential paedophile is male as well as "shifty, reclusive" and "always rude", though at least the piece informs us that no check are likely to be performed on this particular character due to the lack of evidence of risk.
A second neighbour "playing with children" is another possible paedophile discussed. We hear how neighbours are suspicious about the "individual" and their intentions towards local children and one is given the impression we're finally at least seeing a gender neutral scenario or perhaps even a female sex offender discussed. However this all change in the final paragraph where it's revealed that the character in question is an offender though perhaps not thought to be a risk because "he is co-operating with monitoring arrangements".
The two remaining characters supposedly representing likely scenarios are both "new boyfriends" . It' essentially the same scenario twice, the only difference being the source of the concern. One is where a mother wants to know more about someone she is dating, whereas in the second case the relationship is more developed and the concern instead comes from the grandparents.
In total we've got five possible paedophiles (or even actual paedophiles in some cases), every single one of them is a man. The scenarios manage to be perfectly gender neutral in terms of the possible victims of these sex offenders so why demonise all men in this way?
Last year the BBC produced an article asking "
are there women paedophiles?" . It comes to the conclusion that there are indeed plenty of female paedophiles though notes how they often go undetected. It states that "society's different attitude to women offenders is reflected in the language of the media reporting it" and the writer goes on to say that "that victims suffered a peculiar sense of isolation and stigma because this form of abuse was not so widely recognised."
To be honest I couldn't' have put it much better myself. By ignoring female paedophiles whoever came up with these five scenarios is not only unfairly stigmatising men, but it's making it easier for female child abusers and mean their victims feel less able to come forward. Despite the lack of effort in detecting such abusers and the reluctance in victims coming forward, research still puts the percentage of female paedophiles at
up to 20%. Therefore we should certainly have seen one female abuser featured for the sake of accuracy yet we didn't even see a single gender neutral scenario thus thoroughly reinforcing the myth that only men sexually abuse children.
The misandry doesn't stop at pretending there aren't' any female paedophiles either. There is vast dishonesty in the identify of the parties concerned about potential paedophiles too. Every single scenario in the piece either features a parent who's gender is undisclosed worried about a random neighbour/coach, or a mother/grandparent worried about a boyfriend. Nothing wrong with that you might think, but lets consider the reality of the situation and the options open to the parties involved.
If a mother is so worried about a potential new partner that he might be a paedophile then it's pretty obvious there isn't any level of trust in the relationship and she's surely going to find someone else rather than instigate a police investigation? On the other hand a father cannot put a stop to his ex wife's new relationship and he actually faces far more barriers in terms of contact with the child than almost any other male on the planet. Therefore fathers are the one's mostly likely to make use of Sarah's law, and they'd be quite right to do so given that one of the most dangerous environment for a child is with their mother and her latest boyfriend.
Some readers may well be sceptical of the above assertions, but they're not just random likely suggestions based on probabilities - the
actual evidence from the four Sarah's Law trials shows these fathers to be the main users of Sarah's Law, with mothers not even mentioned as one of the smaller groups making requests.
So the question is who exactly is responsible for such dishonest writing? The earliest trace of the article I can find is actually a BBC piece from 2008 by Dominic Casciani, I've contacted him and he informs me the piece was based upon Home Office publicity material and this really is very worrying indeed. It's not the BBC pretending that there are no female paedophiles, they're merely giving coverage to the sexist lies manufactured at the Home Office.
How can we possibly protect victims of female paedophiles if we refuse to acknowledge their existence? Lets hope the new coalition government put an end to such sexism and starts protecting all children rather than just those with the "correct" type of abuser.
by John Kimble
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