- guardian.co.uk, Sunday December 16 2001 01.46 GMT
If, as seems increasingly likely, paedophilia is a lifelong condition impervious to normal rehabilitation, then we need to address radical ways in which those likely to offend can be constrained. Longer prison sentences, an all-too-easy answer, mean that offenders are out of the way, but do not prevent outrages being committed upon release. Indeterminate sentences, with release only when there is no further prospect of offending, now appear to be one of the only means to help curb this menace. And reform of the Mental Health Act, already being amended to permit incarceration of those at risk of committing violent crime, should now be countenanced too.
There has been talk of both remedies, but no action, since Sarah's death. There has also been talk of more funds to combat paedophilia. But in prisons alone, 1,020 offenders were allocated last year to a treatment programme offering 786 places. And that is nugatory alongside the number of paedophiles in the entire population. Latest research from the Home Office shows that at least 110,000 men in Britain have a conviction for an offence against a child. If politicians are as keen as they claim to curb this cancer, then the Government should introduce an emergency Bill featuring indeterminate sentences and a power to 'section' paedophiles who demonstrate a likelihood of further offending.
It also needs to address how released paedophiles can be monitored so that terrified communities do not fear that children are being imperilled by criminals 'dumped' among them by do-gooders from elsewhere. This is at the heart of the 'Sarah's Law' dilemma. If parliamentary time can be found for an ill-considered Bill on terrorism, much of which is now abandoned, it can be made for a Bill on child protection.
But as well as changing the law,we also have to consider more aggressively why we endorse the commercial sexualisation of children. And we need to address why we all too often prefer the comfort of denial when it comes to the huge scale of sexual abuse within families.
The only fitting memorial to Sarah Payne is effective action that prevents other children suffering the unspeakable nightmare that filled her last hours on earth. We owe her that.
