Should child abusers have signs outside their house?

[bounty hunter]

A council is considering placing signs outside the houses of convicted child abusers, letting the public know where they live.  Is this a good idea?

[loulou]

Brilliant idea having a sign saying "paedo lives here" then we can just watch loads of chavs thinking it's an excuse to smash windows. Not very nice for the neighbour who's trying to create the right ambience while trying to sell their house is it.

[Forth Bridges]

How about putting them all on an island with spiecal treatment

[loulou]

Nearly as good as my idea of putting prisoners from overcrowded prisons onto ships in the middle of the ocean.

[oldspice]

Child abusers need specialised treatment and supervision in the community. Most child abusers have been abused themselves and, although I am not excusing their behaviour, branding them in this way is taking society back hundreds of years. Treatment, supervision and understanding will go a long way.

[bounty hunter]

What treatment? 

[oldspice]

Chemical treatment to dampen their urges and counselling.

[paulham]

DDT?

[bounty hunter]

I think lots of people have an innapropriate sexual urge and most choose not to act upon it because it's just fantasy and they are content with mature relationships.  Child abusers, whether or not they were victims themselves are committing evil acts.  The concept of choice cannot be eliminated from this discussion.

[smurfboy]

I think s

A council is considering placing signs outside the houses of convicted child abusers, letting the public know where they live.  Is this a good idea?

And which council would this be? The Bountyville county council?

I'm against all these Sarah's Law style measures. For every parent who used the information to be vigilant, there would be ten who'd use it to be a vigilante.

[bounty hunter]

No, it was on the news the other night

[oldspice]

I think lots of people have an innapropriate sexual urge and most choose not to act upon it because it's just fantasy and they are content with mature relationships.  Child abusers, whether or not they were victims themselves are committing evil acts.  The concept of choice cannot be eliminated from this discussion.

I am certainly not defending child abuse. Far from it. I am just suggesting that rational responses to the problem are far more effective than hysterical branding. That sort of approach just forces the abusers underground.  Child abuse is certainly evil, and the abuser who was once abused had an evil act enforced on them. Some of them are conditioned from an early age and it is very difficult to undo that conditioning. It takes experts to do so and many abusers never stop offending. It is much better to have the abusers under the supervision and care of experts than have them scuttle off to who knows where. 

I admit, it is difficult to find suitable places to house these people. A case locally found that one such abuser had been housed in a bail hostel a few hundred yards walk from three schools. We have hundreds of miles of remote Fnland on our doorstep where there are no houses for over three miles.  However, it was judged that it was safer to keep him where he could easily be seen and monitored.

[bounty hunter]

What annoys me is how appropriate behaviour with children is looked upon suspiciously, almost soley in this country.  When I was in France I took photos of a fountain, in the middle of Bayeux.  A little girl happened to be playing in the view.  Her mother said nothing and smiled. It was a nice picture.  When I was in Sweden, I took photos of little girls with flowers in their hair on Midsummer's eve.  Everyone was doing it and seemed perfectly natural. 

When I showed the photos around at work, at least three people commented that it was inappropriate for me to have taken photos of little girls.  WHY!!!??

[smurfboy]

The problem is the lines between being careful and being over-protective and judgmental are easily blurred. I remember when I was very little being in the park and my sister and I were playing in a pool with tadpoling nets. My sister (who was only about three) had wandered away from me, and an old man whose dog was splashing about in the water came over to her asking if she wanted to stroke the dog. My dad was over like a shot asking him to leave her alone. The old man looked crestfallen and my dad felt awful afterwards, but at the end of the day his first instinct was to make sure his child was okay.

[bounty hunter]

That's an excellent point Smurfboy and a good example.  My main point though is that we are over-suspicious of children fondness in this country.  I was working at an exhibition in Birmingham a couple of weeks ago, where there were thousands of children, mainly 12-15 but also youunger ones.  At one point I was guarding a tank and one guy asked me if I could move the children away so he could take a photo.  When I asked him 'why?', he said he didn't want to be accused of 'paedophilia'.  I said I would personally defend him in court if he got accused of such and told him not to get swept away with paedophobia.  This makes me really angry.