But a leading UK-expert on child sex offenders said that the number of men in Jersey who are hiding their sexual attraction towards young children could be as high as 1,000.
Donald Findlater, director of research and development at the Lucy Faithful Foundation which runs the Stop It Now helpline, said UK research had shown that one to two percent of the male population could be paedophiles but most never act on their sexual urges.
He has now called for Jersey, as well as the UK, to urgently overhaul how it deals with child sexual abuse and start acting before crimes are committed.
Currently people who approach the States police to say that they think they may be attracted to young children but have not committed a crime are given information about the Stop It Now helpline.
Last month Ruth Emsley, consultant forensic psychologist at La Moye Prison, said she would support pre-emptive care for adults who are sexually attracted to children.
It came after a convicted sex offender who was found with a library of graphic child pornography images was jailed by the Royal Court for two years.
Ross James Stratford’s defence team claimed he had not received adequate support during his first stint in prison for a similar offence which led to him re-offending.
And now Mr Findlater,who has worked in various roles involved in combatting child sexual abuse for over 25 years and has advised the UK government, has said that too many resources were being ploughed into dealing with child sex offenders after they commit a crime rather than before.
‘If we are serious about tackling child sexual abuse we have to develop a strategy where people can access help and get support,’ he said.
- The Lucy Faithfull Foundation believes that child sexual abuse is preventable and that we can have a society where children are free from sexual abuse and exploitation.
- Our purpose is to safeguard children and young people from sexual abuse by preventing it and responding to it.
- Our vision is of a society where children are free from sexual abuse and exploitation.
- Our mission is to prevent abuse from happening by working in partnership with voluntary and statutory sector professionals as well as the general public.[/breakout]
‘Some people will need chemical imbalance treatment to reduce their sexual drive. The problem with the work we do at the moment is by the time we spend all of our resources dealing with the problem after it has happened we then have nothing left for pre-emptive care. We need a complete change in mindset.’
Mr Findlater said he believed that the six calls to the helpline from Jersey was surprisingly low and potentially down to Islanders being unaware that support is available.
He added that many of the people who call the hotline have had bad experiences in their childhood and many may even have been sexually abused themselves.
‘It is low if we look at it in terms of a percentage of the population,’ he said. ‘There are many men in our society who are paedophiles and they live celibate lives as the act is dissonant with their sense of self and regard for others. What is said is that one to two per cent of the population have sexual thoughts towards children.’
He added: ‘I fear that the problem is that people do not think about how we prevent these crimes, they think how we deal with them afterwards. But, at the same time we realise that not all sex offenders will come out and some will eventually act on their urges. For that we need a robust criminal justice system and that is very important. It is all about having a number of strategies.’
PRE-EMPTIVE care for people who know they are sexually attracted to children but have not committed a crime could reduce the number of child victims in Jersey, the Island’s leading forensic psychologist said.
Currently the Health service in Jersey, like the UK, does not have provisions in place to deal with people in need of help because of an unnatural attraction to minors.
But, Ruth Emsley, consultant forensic psychologist at La Moye Prison, who works with the Island’s most serious child sex offenders, said she believed that some sort of early stage treatment could help reduce the number of victims in Jersey.
Her comments came after serial child rapist and paedophile Ian Stafford Bartlett (55) was sentenced to life with a minimum of ten years for what authorities described as the worst case of sustained sexual abuse on a single victim in the Island’s history.
Shocking revelations also surfaced that Bartlett had been reported to parish hall inquires on three separate occasions for alleged sexual offences involving children.
The mother-of-two has worked at La Moye for more than 12 years. Before that she was in a similar role at Full Sutton maximum security prison in Yorkshire. Although Mrs Emsley believes that a pre-emptive pathway could be beneficial, she said that it may be very difficult to deliver.
‘Sex offending is fed by secrecy and that is what perpetuates it and also allows it to develop,’ she said.
‘What happens is that a man may start to become aroused by pictures he sees on the internet. While looking, or even afterwards, he will fantasise about those images and by getting satisfaction from those pictures it amplifies the desire for more. It snowballs. It is the secret world in their head.
‘So part of our work is to talk about those sexual fantasies. Once they share them they are not half as powerful and that in itself weakens that urge.’
Mrs Emsley says she does not think any individual is born a child sex offender, adding that their psychological issues are not ‘cut and dried’ enough to label them ‘evil’.
Asked why potential sex offenders might not come forward when they start to realise they are attracted to children, the psychologist said:
