Parents in four
areas of England will be able to check whether new partners or other
people with significant access to their children are sex offenders
under a pilot scheme launched on Monday 15 Sep 08.
The initiative allows police and probation
services to disclose some information to families about people who
have unsupervised contact with their children.
But the scheme, which will operate in
Cambridgeshire, Hampshire, Cleveland and Warwickshire, does not go
as far as the so-called "Megan's Law" in the United States which
allows local identification of sex offenders./ CONT...
MAPPA deal with the management of sexual and violent offenders
convicted by a court of a relevant offence, or those whose behaviour
poses a significant risk of harm to the public. After a
comprehensive risk assessment, a system comprising three levels is
used to make sure that those offenders who may pose the highest
risk, receive the greatest degree of scrutiny and oversight.
"You have to be a parent, carer or a
guardian and you would go to the police or the authorities and say
you have concern about somebody who had unsupervised direct access
to your children," Home Office minister Vernon Coaker told BBC
radio.
"It may well be a babysitter, it may be a
new boyfriend, it may be somebody who lives next door but it has to
be somebody who has that unsupervised access."
When the proposals were announced last year,
Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said nine out of 10 cases of child sex
abuse were committed by someone known to the child.
The move has been welcomed by Sara Payne,
whose 8-year-old daughter Sarah was abducted and murdered by a
convicted paedophile in 2000 and who has since campaigned for the
whereabouts of convicted sex offenders to be made public.
"This is a giant step towards truth and
honesty when dealing with sex offenders and all we need now is for
local communities up and down the UK to help make this work," Payne
said.
However,
probation officers and charities have expressed concern that the
measures could lead to vigilante attacks, forcing paedophiles
underground.
They also warn that predatory paedophiles
take time to groom victim's families, picking on the most vulnerable
who are unlikely to risk any new relationship by making such
check-ups.
"They are not going to check on potential
partners if it means the relationship might be disrupted," Harry
Fletcher of probation staff union Napo told the Guardian.
Coaker said there would be safeguards in the
system to ensure information was kept confidential.
"The police will be taking steps to verify
all applications to ensure they are genuine," said Dr Vic Tuck, the
Development Manager of the Warwickshire Safeguarding Children Board.
"We will ensure that any disclosure of
information is made only to those people in a position to directly
protect children from harm."
The trial will run for 12 months, after
which its success will be evaluated.
"The whole point of this is to pilot these
processes, to test them to see whether they make a difference to
child protection," Coaker said.
As a Parent or Carer what can you do?
Although Paedophiles can be extremely skilled in disguising their
true motives there are a number of things you can do as a parent or
carer to protect children.
The very first thing is to 'talk' and 'listen' to your children.
Taking some time out on a regular basis to talk and listen to your
children is one of the most important preventative measures you can
take. Children who feel they can talk and be listened to are far
less likely to be susceptible to a paedophile's grooming tactics.
Encourage discussions with your children about personal safety
and especially
the difference between safe and unsafe secrets. Personal safety for
your children is a skill learned just like any other, for example
crossing the road or learning the school fire drill.
Stranger Danger Myths
The myth of "Stranger Danger" is a phrase we have all grown up
with and subscribed to. In the UK in the
Public Service Advert for Charlie the talking cat ran from 1973,
and taught children about the dangers of going with strangers.
Charley the cat was voiced by late DJ and
TV personality, Kenny Everett.
Well intentioned adults use the "Stranger Danger" misguided
message and the media often use it as a slogan.
Myth: Most child sex offenders
target children who are unknown to them and are located in public
places.
25% of children and young people surveyed said they had met up in
the offline world with someone with whom they had made initial
contact online. (based on a partial sample of 6000 respondents)
source: CEOPS
Bullying has taken on a whole new concept
with the advent of the digital age and almost 35% of children in a
recent survey said they had been subjected to cyber bullying.
In January 2007 it
was revealed that a number of British nationals who had been
convicted of crimes abroad, including 29 for child sex offences, had
not had their information added to the UK Police National Computer.
This posed a potential risk to children as information about these
crimes was not accessible to employers to be taken into account in
recruitment decisions. source:
Briefing from the NSPCC, February 2007
Nearly a third of young people have received unwanted sexual
comment online or by text.
Just 7% of parents know their child has been
subjected to such material. 4.2 million websites
contain indecent images 100,000 websites contain indecent
images of children
Megans Law was signed by President Bill Clinton in 1997 and has
since been adopted in some form by all 50 US states. It arose from
the rape and murder of seven-year-old Megan Kanka. She was killed by
Jesse Timmendequas, a known child molester with two previous
convictions for sexual offences.
