Rolf is so arrogant.

@ana - Thank you: that encompasses all the times I met and/or worked with him, answering my 'wonderings'...

feetle, the crimes Rolf Harris was convicted for were carried out between 1968 and 1986.

@iam64 - I never said anything about 'things' being different 30 years ago - I merely wondered if the man himself might have changed since those days. 'Things' - if we mean sexual abuse of children - have probably changed little since 3,000 years ago. Odd that there is no Commandment to condemn it...

It may make it easier to see images but I don't think it will encourage those who are not inclined to abuse children sexually because there seems to be a natural abhorrence of it in most people,

Yes vampire, the fact csa is now acknowledged to happen across ages/classes/races etc helps those affected to speak out. I do wonder though whether the impact of the internet will enable or encourage more people to watch and sadly move on to acting on fantasies they would have in previous generations been more likely to try and contain.

It's only appearing to increase because victims are more willing to come forward and more likely to be believed.

whitewave, I think what's happening is that JS finally did us all a favour by confirming what those of us working in the area of csa have always known, that is it's much more common than society wanted to believe.

Sarah's Law:

www.nspcc.org.uk/globalassets/documents/information-service/factsheet-child-sex-offender-disclosure-scheme.pdf

Good point, whitewave. It was women who drove forward Megan's Law in the USA and Sarah's Law in the UK.

1/3rd increase over the past year - what ever is happening. Maybe there ought to be a movement with women forming the vanguard, of awareness, ways of reporting, etc. similar to neighbourhood watch

vampirequeen's story is fairly typical of the outgoing, charming, gregarious sex offender. I don't understand your post feetlebaum, that things were different 30 years ago

The fact that they're often personable and friendly is part of the problem. They fool everyone...adults and children. They're rarely the sleazy, greasy man in a dirty raincoat.

I have been unfortunate to know a few of these creatures. One was a friendly, gregarious man. The life and soul of the party. Very popular with adults and children. His niece had a speech impediment that made it very hard to understand her and left her very frustated. She was 5 when he took her for a day out to give her parents so time alone. What a nice gesture everyone thought. After that he regularly took her out. She had always been known as a 'difficult' child but her behaviour took a rapid turn for the worse. She was diagnosed with ADHD and other behaviourial issues. She went onto the SEN register at school and was eventually statemented. They put her on ritalin and other medications to calm her down.

When she was 10 another child accused him of inappropriate touching. The police got involved and discovered several cases. He was tried and sent to prison for 9 years although he only served 4. It turned out that the 'days out' and the 'treats' had been a blind so that he could have the child to himself.

His wife stood by him and argued that it was a miscarriage of justice and that the children had been lying. This caused a massive rift in the family. No one could understand why she couldn't see the truth.

When he came out of prison he accessed children again and is now back inside and his wife has finally left him. Fortunately they are a close knit family and she was welcomed back with open arms. It wasn't her fault. She was taken in just like everyone else and because he didn't touch their daughter she didn't believe the others. She thought that a paedophile would always go for the nearest available child but that isn't always true. They're much cleverer than that.

I still have trouble comprehending the Rolf Harris case. Rolf is someone I have worked with, and have chatted with on many occasions. Whereas Jimmy Savile struck me as, to put it mildly, weird, there was nothing sinister about Rolf at all. This was all thirty years ago, I now realise, so things might have changed in the meantime. It's all very sad...

It seems I can count myself lucky, as I am a man who doesn't find children sexually attractive. Or Sheep, or chickens...

The sexual abuse of children has been found in every society from the beginning of time. Many of the myths surrounding it got in the way of victims being able to speak out. For example, behavioural or emotional indicators that a child was being sexually abused that would have been considered if the child lived in a large isolated family in a remote country area, were unlikely to have been seen in a similar light if the child was from what seemed like a stable, middle class family.

I don't see the sexual abuse of children as behaviour that can be attributed to a mental health issue. I have had work involvement with many adults who had experienced dreadful sexual abuse in childhood but didn't repeat that in their own lives. I share the concerns expressed by others about the relative ease with which images of child sexual abuse can be accessed. There seems to be an inevitability that as with all addictive behaviours, there is a risk that behaviours escalate.

The only perpetrator I recall who wept and showed remorse for his offences was recently arrested for his part in the sexual abuse of a number of infants and children under the age of 5. He has abused children since he was himself under the age of 16 and is now in his 50's. He will always pose a risk.

For those sex offenders who show no sign of remorse and willingness to change, I agree with you vq

If chemical castration doesn't work then I'm afraid I'm part of the lock them up and throw away the key brigade.

I make no apologies for failure to attempt to understand these creatures or their motivation. By all means feed them, clothe them, give them the necessities for life but keep them locked up behind high walls and razor wire with no prospect of release. Even an elderly paedophile is dangerous.

Yes, I meant everywhere, even tiny island populations and tribes who have remained detached from the rest of the world. When studied, they all have sexual abuse of children in their midst. The PIE - Paedophile Incirmation Exchange, which notoriously operated in the UK last century, used this fact as rationalisation that sexual abuse was a normal phenomenon that should not be criminalised.

when thanks for the reply - but also ( you probably answered this) - when I said traditional societies - I meant societies that you find in their original culture like those in Papau New Guinea, South America etc. I do wonder whether they have stronger and accepted prohibition than we manage to have.

Yes, maybe child abuser would be more appropriate.

The term paedophilia seemed to get used more frequently by the public when it was listed as a mental disorder along with homesexuality in the DSM -Diagnostic and Statistical Manual - which has been revised several times over the decades. An unhelpful term which now bears little relation to its original meaning.

We used to use the word 'Pederast', not sure why it was dropped.

I suspect the current term was coined by pederasts themselves to make their predilections seem benign and others outside that group used the name the abusers used without knowing what it means.

Paederast also derives from the Greek and means 'lover of boys', which is of course what paedophile means. Perhaps we should forget all these Greek derived words that come from a past where they were used by the cognoscenti to signal sexual preferences and just call the whole lot 'Child abusers'

I would never suggest people 'learn child abuse from watching pictures but I do think that people can be drawn into it by the wide availability of pornography and that small group of, mainly, men, constantly tempted to look for something harder and more titillating, whether violent abuse of women or men. It is emphatically not the majority of men but I believe there are men drawn into looking at images, of which a few will go on to abuse children directly.

I may be wrong but I thought paedophile meant lover of children, as in Anglophile, Francophile etc. I mean, I thought that's what it ought to mean! I appreciate its current implication and would use it in that context.

Some rapists do that as well absent. And some child abusers denigrate their victims in the same manner. I think there are huge grey areas of similarity. They are all abusers IMO. Anyway, I wasn't comparing them, but saying I don't know why we view them in a different light.

I don't think it makes a lot of sense or is particularly helpful to compare rapists of adults with paedophiles. In most incidents of adult rape – often including the rape of present or former partners – it is less a sexual crime than a crime of violence. It is very often to do with power and control. While some paedophiles violently rape children, many more spend much time and care grooming their victims, convinced that they are creating a loving, consensual mutual relationship, presumably because they are unable, for whatever reason, to create such a relationship with an adult. Surely it is at least partly because they have convinced themselves that the "relationship" is of this sort that they cannot recognise the awfulness of what they have done. The rapist of adults, on the other hand, tends to justify their actions by denigrating the victim who "deserved" what they got, even when he or she is a stranger.