Comments on: The Paedoph Isles

By: Backword Dave

Backword Dave — Thu, 17 Mar 2005 11:48:00 +0000

Well, it’s not utterly baseless, because paedophiles really do exist — mostly in the form of priests in orphanages perhaps.

Can I just say that if you’re a child, you’re far more likely to be molested by a former pop star who’s had plastic surgery and changed his skin colour in the US of A than you are on these islands. Proof, if proof were needed, of the safety we enjoy in good old Blighty!

By: Rob

Rob — Thu, 17 Mar 2005 07:39:00 +0000

I don’t want to be excessively boring and statisticky, but variation both over time and police force in police recording practices – which have never covered all the alleged crimes reported to them anyway – make this horribly inaccurate. But it is nice to know that, as I have always suspected, all that paedophilia stuff is just another utterly baseless moral panic (not inconsistent with earlier point, because, although horribly inaccurate, this is the best evidence we have).

By: john b

john b — Thu, 17 Mar 2005 05:37:00 +0000

There are fewer children, but not by the same proportion (the number of children aged 0-14 has fallen by 15% since 1976, which is the earliest year national/ Statistics has available in any convenient form. For a website with so much useful data, the NSO interface is very, very badly designed).

The figures are done by the year the crime is reported, not the year it takes place - so the 1973 figures are actually *lower* than they really should be.

By: dave heasman

dave heasman — Thu, 17 Mar 2005 05:20:00 +0000

"sexual offences against children are running at less than two-thirds of their 1973 peak,"

There are fewer children, better-supervised. And fewer unwanted, neglected, ignored children, too. I assume the 1973 figures are constantly revised as the revelations about childrens' residential homes, and all those Catholic priests, emerge?