26.07.2000

No scapegoating

Paedophiles and the tabloid press

Britain is a relatively safe country in which to live. The main cause of death for the young is road traffic accidents. About 80 children are murdered every year - most by their parents or close family members. But for the tabloid press it is the tiny minority of child deaths that occur at the hands of strangers, usually violent paedophiles, that merits most attention. The murder of eight-year-old Sarah Payne last week has re-ignited the campaign of hysterical hatred directed against sex offenders and child molesters.

As communists know only too well, people can be inspired or driven to unite in a common cause. Too often in class society this occurs in a negative way, and it is another state or nation which is the object of this sentiment, in the patriotic fervour encouraged during wars. At other times the focus of collective animosity is an 'enemy within' - a group of strangers or 'deviants' living within the community.

The hostility shown towards recent target groups such as asylum-seekers, travellers, gypsies and 'dole cheats' is, however, minor compared with the current orgy of vilification directed against paedophiles. This is a minority it is totally acceptable to despise, and the emotion is reinforced by parents' natural instinct to defend the most precious thing they have: their children.

As always, the tabloid press articulates and focuses popular opinion. The lust for revenge on the killer of Sarah Payne and his kind can be given free rein. When this child first went missing, the tabloids published every detail of the search for her, knowing how much such stories increase the sales of papers by appealing to readers' voyeurism and sentimentality. When the body was discovered, the tabloids competed to be the most ferocious in demanding the most extreme punishment for her killer, even though it had not yet been established that she died at the hands of a sex murderer. The Mirror won this battle, stating on its front page: "I want whoever killed little Sarah to spend his life dodging razor blades in his food, needing an armed guard when he takes a shower and fearing his throat being slashed every night. Hanging these bastards really is too good for them" (July 18).

This irresponsible call for prisoners to assault each other was hardly needed: it reflects the reality of prison culture. There is a hierarchy of status among inmates, with armed robbers at the top, enjoying the most respect from their fellow prisoners, and sex offenders at the bottom. Those who are inside for murdering or abusing children are the most despised of all, and other inmates already feel it is their duty to attack them. They are generally kept apart from the majority of prisoners at their own request under rule 43, which allows for segregation of prisoners for their own protection. Conditions in segregated blocks is more austere than on the main wings, and too often paedophiles have little to do other than build up networks of contacts, learn from each other how to obtain access to children and gain their trust, and exchange stories - each has the legal right to see the evidence given by his own victims, and this material is often swapped around as pornography.

It is perhaps surprising that only about 16% of offenders against children commit another such offence after being released from this environment. But, given the horrible nature of the crimes perpetuated by the minority of predatory paedophiles, it is understandable that people object to such men being released at the end of their sentence, and local communities protest wherever attempts are made to house them. With this in mind, and using the outrage over the murder of Sarah Payne as an excuse, the News of the World trumped the Mirror story of five days earlier by initiating a campaign to "name and shame" sex offenders, publishing the names, place of residence, photos and details of offences of 49 people (July 23).

The paper claimed this was only the start and that it would identify 110,000 paedophiles. As this would take 40 years at the rate of 49 per week, it seems likely that the editors hope to benefit from being able to complain to their readers that the "Sarah campaign" was stopped by legal or press council action. The News of the World hypocritically claims that it is not its intention to encourage vigilante attacks on the people it has exposed. But already a family in Manchester has been attacked by a 300-strong mob who thought a man in a neck brace was Peter Smith, one of the 49 whose pictures appeared in the paper. Of course, Smith himself is now fully recovered from the wrestling injury which necessitated the neck brace he was wearing when the photo was taken, nine years ago. It is fairly common for lynch mobs seeking sex offenders to attack the wrong victim, leaving innocent people homeless, injured or dead.

The News of the World claims, probably truthfully, to have massive popular backing for its stunt. But it has been widely condemned by children's charities, organisations working with ex-offenders and the police. Tony Butler, a spokesman for the Association of Chief Police Officers, made the point that sex offenders who fear vigilante attacks often move out of an area and change their identity. The police who were keeping track of them in accordance with the provisions of the sex offenders register, and any organisations trying to help them control their destructive urges, lose touch with them and the danger of reoffending increases. The actions of the News of the World could therefore increase the risk to children.

The paper was also correctly accused of hypocrisy, in condemning the destructive sexual perversions of the minority while seeking to sell papers to titillate its readers. Six of the paper's 88 pages were devoted to the 'name and shame' campaign, 20 to sport, and there were 14 whole-page ads. Of the remaining 48 pages, over a third were completely devoted to typical NOTW sex stories, including a large picture in the centre pages of a 16-year-old girl, naked from the abdomen up, provocatively unzipping her jeans.

The paper is also guilty of conflating serious assaults on children with relatively minor sexual crimes, encouraging readers to regard all 49 as equally despicable and all as fair game for attack. Among them were some who had sexually assaulted children, but also one who was fined for possessing indecent pictures, one who possessed child porn on a computer, and a woman whose 'crime' was to have a child by her 14-year-old lover.

People need to be clear in their minds what they are trying to do - protect children from harm or vent their rage against people they perceive as a potential threat to them. As the NOTW itself conceded, the best way parents can protect their children from abuse is not by hounding paedophiles, but by following NSPCC guidelines. There are additional measures the state could take to protect children - for example, from traffic accidents - but the government is unwilling to spend the necessary money.

The best way to decrease the number of children murdered is to combat alienation. About 10% of all murders are of children by parents, and the number of children killed by parents is over 10 times greater than the five or six each year murdered by strangers. In the latest case - that of Robert Mochrie, who murdered his wife and four children before hanging himself - the murderer was a businessman who seems to have cracked up under pressure of business failure and debt. But many parents who kill their children are driven to breaking point by the stress of poverty and isolation. An increase in welfare provision for families in crisis might help, but communists, it should be stressed, demand a whole range of highly relevant measures which empower people, not make them mere objects subject to the benign administrations of the bureaucratic state - a minimum £300 weekly wage, housing as a right, substantive women's equality, and a massive extension of democracy into every sphere of life - including prisons.

We believe in rehabilitation, not punishment. Of course, sex offenders also have to be dealt with in a way that maximises the protection of children and the public in general. But contrary to what the NOTW and other rabble rousers claim, the two objectives are not incompatible, and the actions of the paper manifestly fails to achieve either aim.

Some men are dangerous, due to uncontrollable violent and/or destructive sexual urges. These people are mentally ill and should be treated, if necessary, in secure psychiatric units. But they should be held in humane and therapeutic conditions, with no implications of punishment. Often these severely damaged individuals know they are subject to violent outbursts and seek help to fight them, and sometimes this help is not available. Michael Stone, who murdered Lin and Megan Russell in July 1996, had asked only days before the murder to be admitted to a psychiatric hospital. He was turned away because cutbacks meant that no beds were available.

Among the individuals who commit non-violent sexual offences, 70% of abusers of (usually their own) children were themselves abused in childhood. Contrary to the claims of the NOTW, people can and do change if given the right environment.

We also advocate high-quality, state-funded childcare provision, so that especially during the long summer school holiday parents have a choice of safe and stimulating environments for their children.

Communists advocate proletarian justice, but we are not in favour of the scapegoating of anyone, including paedophiles (if by that is meant those who abuse, rather than love, children). Our goal is a just and truly human society in which people have the best chance to develop fully as sane human beings, liberated from the distorting influences of capitalism and the commodification of everything, including social relations.