Mental Help Net - 2 - News - The paedophile threat: We... -
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Published on: 2/10/2002
Last Visited: 10/30/2002
So it is vital to identify potential paedophiles and cut into the cycle of behaviour before it begins, insists Dr Eileen Vizard, consultant child psychiatrist and director of the NSPCC's Young Abusers Project in north-London .
Here they see very young children who, Vizard fears, may well become abusers.She sees children as young as five with highly sexualised behaviour who may go on to carry out sexual assaults on other children.Older children come with disturbing levels of sexual talk and arousal, and may be trying to have sex with other chil dren.Once into their teens, these children may begin to fantasise about sadistic acts and abducting younger children to abuse.
Vizard says angrily: 'Without exception these children are victims of appalling childhoods, most often sexual abuse and often physical and emotional abuse too, and nobody has been there to help or protect them.'
So the Young Abusers Project uses therapeutic methods that focus on the way they are behaving - but also gives them an opportunity to explore their own traumas.
Vizard, seeing children change and stop their sexualised behaviour, is convinced that more funding for projects like these would cut the future cost of dealing with the childrens' behaviour.
So are these initiatives, which put precious resources into working with child sex offenders, the best way?Or, in the wake of the report showing acute lack of resources for child protection agencies, isn't this where the money should be spent?
It is a difficult argument, but increasingly those working with child sex offenders are convinced that we must support the work being done that acknowledges the humanity rather than the evil of these men - even those abusers whose crimes against children are unbearable to contemplate .
Primitive rage as a response is understandable and has a comforting absolutism about it.