Paedophiles need help, not blind hatred.(Features)

Byline: Sebastian Shakespeare

VEN paedophiles have rights.

EThe Supreme Court has ruled that it is a breach of offenders' human rights to be on the Sex Offenders Register for life with no chance of a review. Rapists, paedophiles and other sex offenders will be allowed to apply to have their names removed from the register 15 years after they have been released from prison.

The tabloids have reacted with typical kneejerk hyperbole ("paedos win right to get off the perv list" was one headline yesterday).

First, sex offenders and paedophilia are not synonymous. There are many types of sex crime, so it is senseless to lump them altogether.

Secondly, it is likely that very few appeals will be successful. They don't have the right to be removed from the register but the right to ask to be. A decision will be made by a senior police officer and subject to a judicial review. In other words, there will be enough checks and balances in place to ensure that justice is observed.

How would you like it if you lived next door to a paedophile? is the usual stock response. Well, for years in London unwittingly I lived next door to one. I only knew about it because a concerned ex-neighbour posted me a video documentary containing an interview with a convicted paedophile whom he recognised as our next-door neighbour. They thought I should be made aware of it.

It made me uncomfortable but the revelation didn't change my life. Admittedly I didn't have children at the time, but now that I do, I wouldn't act any differently, apart from being more vigilant.

That is the price one pays for living in a giant metropolis where one has to rub shoulders with all sorts of unsavoury characters (why can't we have an Ex-Dictators Register for the likes of Pervez Musharraf ?) Much of the hysteria whipped up against paedophilia is like the witchhunts in the Middle Ages. Remember the illiterate mob who vandalised a paediatrician's house because they confused paediatrician with paedophile? So much of our culture is now sexualised -- from advertising to television to cinema to the widespread availability of pornography on the internet -- that we seem blind to the link between that and paedophilia. The sexualisation of teen girls through clothes, make-up and music puts increasing pressure on young children, and girls in particular, to appear sexually available.

The two go hand in hand. As do compassion and humanity. It is too easy to forget that many paedophiles are themselves the victims of sex abuse. We should show them forgiveness and offer them the chance to rehabilitate themselves. Otherwise what sort of society are we? Society must shoulder the blame as much as the individual.