Kieran McCartan

The construction of community understandings of sexual violence: rethinking public, practitioner and policy discourses

Abstract This article explores current societal framings and understandings of sexual violence, particularly child sexual abuse. The article starts by explaining how societal perceptions of child sexual abuse are formed through implicit and explicit theories, followed by a brief examination of media, professional and public understandings of child sexual abuse. This is then compared to research-based knowledge on sexual violence and child sexual abuse in particular. A public health approach is presented as a critical way of engaging communities, publics and society in an informed discourse about child sexual abuse, with a view to increasing both understanding and engagement. Finally, the article will posit the hypothesis that with recent news stories, such as the Jimmy Savile case in the UK and the Penn State case in the USA, organisations and individuals are beginning to ask for more information, trying to ask harder questions and this presents a unique opportunity to fully engage with the emerging public health approach of change.

Multi-Disciplinary Definitions and Understandings of ‘Paedophilia’

Despite the current high-profile concern over paedophiles and paedophilic activity, there is no easily accessible or widely accepted multi-disciplinary definition of paedophilia. Commentators have pointed to a general contemporary misunderstanding surrounding the subject of paedophilia, and to the tensions between strong beliefs and facts in both societal and correctional contexts. We suggest that the current situation — societal, clinical and legal — can be problematic for both offenders and practitioners who are currently charged with, and involved in the risk treatment and/or management of paedophiles. This article attempts to begin to address these issues by looking at conceptions of paedophilia from a multi-disciplinary viewpoint. We examine understandings from clinical and legal sources, and present this analysis in a historical and cultural context. In drawing these divergent conceptions together, we highlight various contradictions and discrepancies. We suggest that these inconsistencies present significant problems in terms of professional engagement with paedophilia and paedophiles, and as a result illustrate the need to engage in more detailed debate regarding what constitutes ‘the problem’.

Sex offender (re)integration into the community: realities and challenges

Special issue of the journal based on ESRC Knowledge Exchange Network, Sex Offender Public Disclosure-learning from the UK pilots and international research. Co-investigator, ESRC 2012-2013, available at: http://www.esrc.ac.uk/my-esrc/grants/ES.J010251.1/read

Changing Course: From a Victim/Offender Duality to a Public Health Perspective

Research suggests that only a more comprehensive multilevel approach to sexual violence prevention will integrate existing efforts to incarcerate offenders and provide services to victims into broader strategies to educate communities and change the very circumstances that allow sexual abuse to be perpetrated. With the growing interest in focusing prevention efforts on preventing the perpetration of sexual abuse, the chapter examines what is known about the prevalence of perpetration as well as the risk factors for perpetration for individuals as well as families and communities. An increasing number of prevention initiatives, nationally as well as internationally, are using this research. The chapter discusses both evidence-based and promising practices to reflect these programs and policies. The discussion closes by questioning whether a change is needed in the way the public understands and categorizes sexual violence, moving from a reactive victim/offender paradigm toward a more proactive and comprehensive public health prevention paradigm, in particular, how a public health prevention approach to sexual violence can be used to educate, protect, and change society to decrease the levels of sexual violence.

Public Views About Reintegrating Child Sex Offenders via Circles of Support and Accountability (COSA): A Qualitative Analysis

ABSTRACT Circles of Support and Accountability (COSA) have recently become part of the criminal justice landscape. However, little has been documented on public views about COSA. The existing research on this topic is entirely quantitative, providing no insight into the reasons behind public support for COSA. This study addresses this gap by analyzing comments made on four online forums following the announcement of Australia’s first COSA program. Findings suggest that community education should focus on a number of key messages about COSA to harness public support for this program. Recommendations are made about the content and delivery of these messages.

Reframing the Sex Offender Register and Disclosure: From Monitoring and Control to Desistance and Prevention

Sexual harm is a high-profile issue, both nationally and internationally, with the number of perpetrators entering and being managed by the Criminal Justice System continually increasing. These increases in the sexual offender population are the result of a ‘perfect storm’ of disclosures, reporting, recording, sentencing, and community management. The ever increasing sex offender population places additional pressure on existing risk management services (i.e., Police, Probation, Prison, etc.) already under financial, political, and practical strain. Such strain ultimately means that sex offender risk management becomes about bureaucracy, cost saving, risk aversion, and an audit culture rather than innovation and adaption. This chapter will consider the implications of this growing offender population and its impact on the current risk management system, posing the questions: Are we looking at this from the correct perspective and are we getting the most out of the existing system?

Managing sex offenders in the UK: Challenges for policy and practice

The community management of sex offenders has attracted much media and political interest in recent times, not least due to high-profile failures in risk management (Kitzinger, 2004; Thomas, 2013), as well as issues both historic (e.g., Welsh care home scandal, the Jimmy Savile case) and contemporary (e.g., the Ian Wakins case) with the policing of sexual offenders. This has resulted in increased policy concern with sex offenders, and practice developments at both the individual practice level and in multi-agency working (see Kemshall and Wood, 2009). Community supervision and management of sex offenders, particularly those considered ‘high risk’ was given added impetus in the 1990s and into the twenty-first century by the ‘discovery’ of the predatory paedophile (Kitzinger, 1999; Silverman and Wilson, 2002) and fuelled by the infamous case of Sydney Cooke,1 and various studies that established the extent of sexual offending both nationally and internationally (e.g., Grub in 1998). Whilst the accuracy of prevalence studies can be debated (Matravers, 2003), there are research estimates that 1 in 6 children will be the victim of sexual offending (Cawson et al., 2000); with 18,915 children under 16 being the victim of sexual abuse in England and Wales in 2012–2013, approximately 35% of all sexual crimes in this period (Office for National Statistics, 2013). Ministry of Justice (MoJ, 2013a, pp. 6–7) figures state that ‘[b]ased on aggregated data from the “Crime Survey for England and Wales” 2009–2012, on average, 2.5% of females and 0.4% of males said that they had been a victim of a sexual offences (including attempts) in the previous 12 months’, and in 2011–2012, police recorded a total of 53,700 sexual offences across England and Wales.

Police officer attitudes to the practicalities of the sex offenders’ register, ViSOR and Child Sexual Abuse Disclosure Scheme in England and Wales

ABSTRACT This paper examines police officer understandings of and attitudes to the sex offenders’ register, Violent and Sex Offenders’ Register (ViSOR) and Child Sexual Offender Disclosure Scheme (CSODS) in England and Wales – an under-researched area in the management of sexual offenders in the UK. This research is an adaptation of an American study utilising a mixed-methods approach, combining an online questionnaire survey (N = 227) with a series of semi-structured interviews (N = 27). The study found that police officers, irrespective of role, were generally supportive of the register, ViSOR and CSODS in principle, but they thought that logistics, practicalities, infrastructure, multi-agency collaboration and public understandings had problematic impacts on the scheme in practice. The participants believed that greater investment was needed in terms of time and resource to make the register, ViSOR and CSODS easier to use and access and thus fit for purpose.

Sexual Harm, Public Education and Risk Management

This chapter will highlight research and practice internationally on ways to educate the public regarding sex abuse and how successful they have been. The chapter will cover issues including the relationship between experts and the public, public criminology, media narratives as well as engagement and political positions, and debates, on this topic. It will highlight the ways in which society has tried to engage with the topic of sexual harm (including bystander intervention, government programmes and grassroots drives, such as Reclaim the Night) and assess how successful they have been academically, socially and politically. The chapter will end with a discussion of the current state of research and evaluation on this topic and where we might go next.

Strength-based approaches to online child sexual abuse: using self-management strategies to enhance desistance behaviour in users of child sexual exploitation material

Purpose: Increasing numbers of convictions for the use of Child Sexual Exploitation Material (CSEM) call for enhanced measures to prevent this type of offending. Strength-based approaches such as the Good-Lives-Model have made significant contributions to the management of child sex offenders. Design/methodology/approach: The present study explored the application of these models on the rehabilitation and desistance behaviour of CSEM users, based on a thematic analysis of the self-managed desistance strategies employed by n = 26 offenders. Findings: The findings confirmed the value of strength-based approaches in understanding self-management strategies used to enhance desistance behaviour in CSEM users. Research limitations/implications: The empirical and theoretical findings were then combined into a conceptual framework aimed to enhance preventative efforts and interventions targeted at undetected CSEM users. Practical implications: Social implications: Originality/value: This paper provides the first conceptual and empirical model of prevention and desistance behaviour specific to CSEM offending.