Vexing the vigilantes

On the comment thread of yesterday’s post about Nicole Kidman and privacy laws, someone raised this question:

How would you treat situations like 1 pedophile expulson in Murgon yesterday?

It’s a question that merits a separate post. I think convicted pedophiles who have served their time in prison are also entitled to privacy protection, albeit balanced against the community’s right to protection of children in case their predatory predilection re-emerges. The image of that poor old bastard in Queensland being hunted from town to town, because self-serving politicians and media keep disclosing his address and sooling the local halfwits onto him, is a disturbing one. The bloke has to live somewhere. I certainly agree with the maintenance of a national child sex offenders register, and an efficient system to ensure that:

(a) local police are notified when a pedophile moves into their area, so they can keep an eye on him; and

(b) a foolproof system for vetting applicants for jobs working with children, to ensure convicted (or known) pedophiles aren’t employed in high risk areas;

is long overdue. Criminological research shows that pedophiles have a much higher risk of recidivism than most other crime categories, so community concern and vigilance is entirely justified.

But I DON’T believe that the general community (including politicians and media) has a right to disclosure of pedophiles’ addresses. It simply encourages the sort of mindless, distasteful, pointless vigilante activity we’ve seen in Queensland over the last few days. As with any such question, it’s a matter of balancing competing legitimate rights and interests, and there’s room for discussion on exactly where the optimal balance lies

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About Ken Parish

Ken Parish is a legal academic, with research areas in public law (constitutional and administrative law), civil procedure and teaching & learning theory and practice. He has been a legal academic for almost 20 years. Before that he ran a legal practice in Darwin for 15 years and was a Member of the NT Legislative Assembly for almost 4 years in the early 1990s.
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Fyodor
Fyodor
2024 years ago

Disagree, Ken. Pedophiles don’t have a “higher risk of recidivism”, they have an EXTREMELY high rate of recidivism. Parents should have the right to know if a known pedophile moves on to their street. The vigilante activity you’re seeing reflects extreme anger resulting from a failure in the justice system to reflect community values. I don’t think it is in any way artificial or contrived.

Personally, I’m not so sure the “poor old bastard”, i.e. child rapist, should have the right to live anywhere other than prison.

C.L.
C.L.
2024 years ago

I was thinking a sort of half-way house situation could be organised for these characters. Trouble with that, of course, is that it could never be compulsory – unless we were saying their post-prison freedom was never going to be real freedom at all.

There should be, as you say, a lifetime dimension to their sentence, nevertheless. Namely: continued, lifelong monitoring by the authorities. If local police and others are therefore compulsorily apprised of their living arrangements and whereabouts, however, pretty soon everyone else in that community knows all about them too. And so it goes on.

One more thing: as unsophisticated as it may seem, it is understandable that working-class and poorer people – in the neighbourhoods in which a recently released child-molester would tend to live – will resent the proximity of such a person in their midst. Resent also the ‘enlightened’ views of those with the money to never have to rub shoulders with such a creature.

Granted, it really is hard to care about this. Fyodor is right: the fact is if the law truly represented community values, these men would never be released.

Alan
Alan
2024 years ago

Community values are not necessarily the same as community prejudices.

The local MP courts popularity by publishing the guy’s address. The local media promote something close to an affray. Everyone whips themselves up into a fine lather. It doesn’t solve the problem and these people have to live somewhere.

The penalties for child sexual assault should be amended to allow permanent close supervision. Local police and others can be subjected to rules about privacy. Politically motivated affrays claiming to represent community values are not a good answer.

yellowvinyl
2024 years ago

Queensland has laws which allow the Attorney-General to apply to the Supreme Court for a pedophile who has served their sentence to be indefinitely detained. I think this was introduced after Ferguson was released. Peter Dutton, the Liberal MP and Minister for Workplace Participation, called for the Government to legislate retrospectively to ensure that Ferguson could be detained under such a provision.

Beattie said today that he was considering legislating to prevent convicted pedophiles from living near schools and child care centres. I believe that Ferguson’s activities are monitored by police under existing legislation, but I’ve been unable to find the details of the legislation.

the suggestion from Terry O’Gorman (Queensland Council of Civil Liberties) that the media be prevented from publicising the whereabouts of pedophiles is an interesting one.

yellowvinyl
2024 years ago

oops, I meant to post a link to the article where some of this info comes from in today’s Courier-Mail:

http://www.couriermail.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,12131603%255E952,00.html

Jason Soon
Jason Soon
2024 years ago

i’d have no problem with continued electronic surveillance of pedophiles after release if this was part of the law and was properly and transparently enforced and formalised. but i agree with ken that under current law if pedophiles have served their term, they should not be subject to ad-hoc and messy vigilantism. the psychological pressures may inhibit adjustment for those genuinely interested in reforming

Could be something to do it
Could be something to do it
2024 years ago

One report I heard, it might have been sky News, mentioned that this fellow had 14 days to apprise the police of his new location once he had moved to that location and thereafter was required to report the police yearly.

Given that the chap moved in next door to a day-care centre and could have resided there for a fortnight quite happily under the law, I think these people protesting might have something to be unhappy about.

Peter Beattie is unhappy and uncomfortable but there is a case to answer here and some degree of public protest (yes even against a Labor government) is certainly understandable.

Could be something to it
Could be something to it
2024 years ago

Sorry for the spelling. Tried to eat, type and watch TV at the same time. (In a commercial break now! Welcome to the next century… ;)

Ken Parish
Ken Parish
2024 years ago

Could be …

I certainly agree that the system you describe sounds much looser than I would like given the demonstrable high risk of re-offending. I suggest that all convicted pedophiles should be required to notify police of any change of residence and seek approval for it ahead of time, with failure to do so amounting to a breach of parole permitting immediate re-imprisonment. Legislation should provide that convicted pedophiles are permanently on parole and subject to these conditions for the rest of their lives.

jen
jen
2024 years ago

CL
I am feeling exceedingly understanding and compassionate so I simply must reply to your post about pedophiles and money. I know of a woman and her friends who lived in a street fondly coined ‘single mother circuit’ The woman can be discounted because according to some, she has a little bit of ‘I’m alright Jack’ RWDB in her. The friends? Well one of them is Friends of the Earth and one works in a womans refuge, another is possibly the nosiest most judgemental fat cow anyone could ever meet. The street has been dubbed one of the worst in Darwin and most of the residents struggle for a quid. The point is that into this hot bed of children, money struggle and single mother supervision arrives a convicted pedophile and his face is on the front page of the NT News. We comment, and warn and believe we can deal with this character – we know exactly where to find him and life in the circuit continues.
PS
In any case, it would be a brave pedophile who would take on our wandering savages er children.

observa
observa
2024 years ago

I commented on Prof Qs post ‘Habib and proceeds of crime’ with the following:

“Interesting to compare the softly softly approach to terror suspects cf the reverse hardline approach to paedophilia suspects by the exactly the same commenters. OTOH the govt and community are expected to give an Habib or Hicks the benefit of the doubt, but woe betide any religious leader who took precisely that same attitude with similar accusations of paedophilia, particularly within the church.
So, what you have to ask yourselves is: Do you want to catch these types of miscreants in their respective acts before they become ‘persons of interest’? So Ruddock is to be pilloried for instituting the precautionary principle here, while in my state Premier Rann has blatantly and publicly interfered in the future parole chances of Von Einem. Personally I think both of them are right to treat these men with the precautionary principle and so do the vast majority of the electorate. What we are extremely sceptical about is the motives for hypocrisy by the usual suspects. Some civil rights are more equal than others eh chaps?”

Now what I was really raising was the view from the lunch room. This was very unequivocally expressed in response to my proffering the idea that Habib might deserve some civil rights consideration, particularly in light of the fact that he has not been convicted of terrorist acts, but rather more guilt by association. This went over like a lead balloon, with one comment-‘Nah, these people are like paedophiles, you can never trust them’, to which there was unanimous nodding. In other words the consensus was really that if you hang about with terrorists, we’ll treat you the same as if you hang out with paedophiles.

Now Ken’s link to the discussion of recidivism by paedophiles cf child molesters raises an interesting question as to how society should view an Habib. Is he(in their view) really a hopeless recidivist like a paedophile, or perhaps redeemable like a child molester(given that they have already judged him guilty by association of course)? I don’t think they see any such nuance and so it has the same ramifications for Habib living freely in society now, as it has for our Qld friend. Of course Keysar Trad came out promptly and stated he and the folk at the Lakemba mosque were looking forward to welcoming Habib back into their community, but that would only ostracize them further, in the minds of many.

I guess what the left or perhaps those concerned with civil rights need to understand, is that the broad community may well treat their stand on the civil rights of an Habib, as similar to standing up for the civil rights of our paedophilic friend. All I’d say is that the left need to be very sure of their motives in the case of an Habib. It would seem that some on the left might be beginning to tune in to the feelings of the lunch rooms as described here

observa
observa
2024 years ago
Fyodor
Fyodor
2024 years ago

Nice try, Observa.

Dennis Ferguson is a convicted pedophile.

Mamdouh Habib was found guilty of what crime, by which jury, in which court of law in which country? Oh, that’s right: the USA held him in illegal detention and tortured him for three years before concluding they didn’t have a case.

You really are shameless.

Paul Watson
2024 years ago

“The image of that poor old bastard in Queensland being hunted from town to town, because self-serving politicians and media keep disclosing his address and sooling the local halfwits onto him, is a disturbing one. The bloke has to live somewhere”

observa
observa
2024 years ago

Fyodor, I accept your point totally with regards Habib. However I have my doubts that many in the community do and that is why Habib now lives in a ‘secret’ location. I am merely raising the general point about guilt by association and community attitudes here. It seems to me the discussion about the treatment of suspected paedophiles is very relevant to the treatment of suspected terrorists and infringing both group’s civil liberties.

I would make the point that our laws and consequent penalties are changing in response to new emerging realities. For example we have seen how the possession of downloaded paedophilic images from the internet, will now make you guilty of a crime, a person of interest and subject to guilt by association, irrespective of engaging in any paedophilic act. Now a decade ago this crime was not even contemplated. The same could be said of terrorism. Laws to deal with terrorist activity are now on the books, which may have convicted many in the past(perhaps even an Habib, I don’t know)

I am not here to point score, but ask some more serious questions about how long term, to treat a relatively new threat of terrorist activity. Catching and subsequently convicting a terrorist in the act is obviously the simple tip of the iceberg, as it is with paedophilia. The question may be, are there any parallels to be drawn here and where is the evidence or indeed the research on the issue? We may have to get more serious about this in future if we are to learn to live with terrorism long term and not unduly persecute the innocent as Fyodor points out. Just be aware that IMO and indeed I think increasingly the pollies, the community is very hot on the precautionary principle here. Basically if it whiffs of terrorism or paedophilia, persecute it.

Mallard
2024 years ago

Feeding the community ignorance into frenzy… the wonders of the local media…
Here’s an interesting concept… what about child sex offenders who have not reoffended after 20 years, but are still technically considered a ‘Prohibited Person’? Would you want to live near one?

Fyodor
Fyodor
2024 years ago

Fair points, Observa, except that you do not make the essential distinction between a proven pedophile and an alleged terrorist. It’s a distinction our government was also unwilling to make, to their lasting shame.

By all means let us persecute perpetrators of heinous crimes, but not at the sacrifice of the rule of law, democracy or the presumption of innocence. So long as we stick by those principles the fight will be worth it.

As a final point, there is nothing new about terrorism. Governments have had to deal with terrorists for decades, if not centuries. The qualitative difference in recent times is the proliferation of WMDs but the underlying nature of terrorism, and the strategies to combat it, have not changed.

Unfortunately, the current GWOT has been used as a Trojan Horse to subvert the very democratic principles we’re trying to defend. Whose side are we on, anyway?

David Tiley
2024 years ago

Paul is coming to the defence of “the local halfwits”

observa
observa
2024 years ago

FWIW Fyodor, I know of a man who had his 2yr old daughter abducted from under the nose of his wife in a major suburban shopping mall and interfered with in a handicapped toilet. Last year when another mother screamed at a man who was leading her toddler son away by the hand in that same shopping centre, the culprit dropped the little hand and fled quickly. The desription and age of the offender could indicate perhaps both incidents were perpetrated by the same man. For the 2yr old’s father, the thought that this culprit may have been plying his trade in that shopping centre for some 15 yrs, was not a pleasant one.

That same father experienced for over a decade, the family trauma of the false accusation of incest/paedophilia by his older sister against his own father. The sister was at the time involved in a failing marriage with an increasingly paranoid schizophrenic husband who would stalk her after the breakup. With two young boys of her own to bring up, this rheumatoid arthritis sufferer from childhood herself, was in a desperate struggle to cope with life. She found a ready made emotional crutch in the arms of the women’s shelter crowd and eventually a well-intentioned ‘childhood recall therapist’, for want of a better term. A decade or so later, she would recant fully in writing and apologise to every family member for a terrible and damaging lie. She enjoys a stable life with her grown up sons and a well adjusted second marriage today. At the time her brother could understand her mistaken self deception, simply because he experienced 18 months of acute sciatica himself, as a result of a work incident. He would come to appreciate the tricks long term acute pain could play on the mind’s ability to be rational and well adjusted under such circumstances.

So Fyodor, such a man would appreciate only too acutely, the tightrope that needs to be trod between preempting and guarding aginst evil intent, while eschewing persecution of the innocent on a whim or hearsay. I of course happen to be the holder of one of the letters of apology from my sister and the 2yr old toddler is now my lovely daughter of nearly 18, in her 2nd week of a new job, after finishing YR12 and deferring Uni for a year.

Oh, and the observa will continue to bring his observations here from the smoko room from time to time Fyodor, as well as take them some of yours and others presented here. As for discerning the truth among it all, well that is often stranger than much fiction. I am ever the optimist though. As for shameless, I probably am after more than 50 years Fyodor.

Fyodor
Fyodor
2024 years ago

Observa,

Your story sheds some light on your motivations, but does little for your arguments. I apologise for being a callous bastard, but this has little to do with the prevention or persecution of terrorism.

You invoke the precautionary principle in our government’s appalling treatment of Habib without conceding at any stage that the man is neither a convicted terrorist nor, for that matter, a convicted pedophile. It’s all diversionary bullshit.

Niall
Niall
2024 years ago

Red Letter Day! I’m in total agreement with Ken Parish.

Brian Bahnisch
Brian Bahnisch
2024 years ago

Observa, I think there is a confusion of identities sometimes between the real you and the persona you adopt representing views from the smoko room. I wonder whether the smoko room mob aren’t to some extent reacting to what Habib looks like rather than what he is and does. Is their any difference between how they react to Habib and David Hicks? There is a whiff of racism in what you reported.

Brian Bahnisch
Brian Bahnisch
2024 years ago

Paul’s sarcasm doesn’t contribute much IMO. Terry O’Gorman, he of civil liberties fame, said he wouldn’t relish at all the prospect of Ferguson living next door. “I wouldn’t like it, but I’d have to live out the principle I’m now espousing”. (CM 3 Feb)

Frankly, I feel the same way about it.

As for Wendell Rosevear he doesn’t have nearly enough rooms to house all the marginalised people he helps.

David Tiley’s thought about “hunting witches and torturing scapegoats” resonates with me. My own thought was that we haven’t come far from the time when we put people in stocks and pelted them with rotten eggs, fruit etc. We really do have to do better and there is not much sign of it happening.

There is for me an unresolved question as to whether Ferguson actually is a pedophile. The link in Ken’s post seems to differentiate between a pedophile whose sexual orientation is towards children and a child-molester who is more opportunistic. The distinction seems important. Two acadaemic criminologists writing in the CM said the reconviction rate for child molesters was 15%. Janine Buckley in another article is quoted as saying that the recidivism rate for “pedophiles and sex offenders is very high, with more than 80 per cent reoffending”. She is from MAKO (Movement Against Kindred Offenders). While she has apparently telescoped both categories and I’d trust her a little less than the academics it does seem that the difference in recidivism is large enough to warrant different public policy for child molesters and pedophiles.

We know that Ferguson was jailed for 14 years for raping three young children and was recently jailed for a further 15 months in NSW for taking emloyment which could bring him into contact with children and not notifying the police about it. The residence he tried to live in in Murgon was a couple of hundred meters away from the child-care centre according to the CM, not next door as stated above.

We know that he didn’t attend rehabilitation sessions for sex offenders while doing the 14 years in Qld.

So we don’t definitively know that he’s a pedophile. Some of what Rosevear said seemed to indicate that he isn’t. His looks and mannerisms don’t help him to melt into the masses.

Yet most pedophiles and child molesters are not easily distinguishable from the rest of humanity and children are in much more danger from persons within or near the family circle than ‘stranger danger’.

So IMHO we should step back and have a good think about all this. I’ll leave you with some quotes.

“The revenge reaction just makes it worse. What you need is to nurture acceptance and honesty”
-Wendell Rosevear

“Progressively during the past decade the opportunities for sex offenders to be released on parole under the care and supervision of a community corrections officer have been withdrawn”

“The very people who need after-care the most are least likely to receive it.”

“In the guise of making the community safer, we have made it less safe.”

“What is needed now is a serious examination of post-release care for sex offenders, not more populist pandering to community fears.”
-Richard Wortley and Dr Stephen Smallbone from the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Griffith University

“If you wish to teach the people to reverence human life you must first reverence it yourself.”
-John Bright, circa 1850 (per Geoffrey Robertson on Life Matters today – not sure it’s word perfect.)

So if Dennis Ferguson, as with Anu Singh, is to be live among us we must help him to live in a manner that allows him to develop his full humanity. Nevertheless the worst forms of rape are arguably as bad or worse than murder. I don’t think any of us knows the true nature of the Ferguson case, but in terms of public policy we don’t seem to be heading in the right direction.

Ken Parish
Ken Parish
2024 years ago

Brian

I agree that the worst rapes are equivalent in severity to murder. That was certainly true of the Bilal Skas pack rapes, and of Ferguson (he raped three children). It’s also reasonable to draw a parallel between Ferguson and Singh to the extent that both are living in the community on parole, and so rationality requires that we devise regimes that maximise both community protection and rehabilitation of the offender, and also accommodate the civil rights of an offender who has served (at least most of) his term of imprisonment and has been adjudged entitled (and safe) to release.

But the differences are also important. Ferguson served 14 years imprisonment. I reckon it should have been a bit longer, but at least it’s not grossly disproportionate to the seriousness of the crime. Anu Singh was sentenced to 12 years but only served 4, for a calculated killing supposedly mitigated by the defence of “diminished responsibility”. On no reasonable view could that be called proportionate. Hence my examination of the operation of that defence, and Garner’s felt need to offer “consolation” to Joe Cingue’s parents and to celebrate Joe’s life where the criminal justice system had just ignored and trashed it, and compounded the Cinques’ suffering in the process.

BTW A couple of factors about diminished responsibility and the Singh/Cinque case I didn’t mention:

(a) The defence need only be proved on the balance of probabilities, whereas the prosecution must prove beyond reasonable doubt that the defendant committed the crime itself.

(b) The defence can adduce whatever expert psychiatric evidence it likes, but the prosecution is hamstrung. The defendant is entitled to refuse to submit herself to examination by prosecution psychiatrists, while being examined at length by the sympathetic ones she is employing to produce favourable evidence. That gives the defence a major advantage, because the defence psychiatric evidence will inevitably be more comprehensive, and the prosecution psychiatrists are forced to qualify their evidence by admitting that they didn’t have a chance to examine the offender and therefore their assessment of her mental state is less reliable than it otherwise might be.

Anu Singh took advantage of all these things. She didn’t give evidence herself, elected for a trial before a judge alone, submitted herself to examination by a battery of her own psychiatrists, and refused to submit to examination by prosecution psychiatrists.

As a result, Justice Crispin was almost forced to prefer the evidence of the defence psychiatrists as to her mental state (although he also “cherry-picked” the evidence of one of the prosecution psychs to support his conclusion of diminished responsibility, which was much more dubious in my view). This area of the criminal law is badly in need of reform IMO, as is the operation of the parole system, at least for pedophiles.

Brian Bahnisch
Brian Bahnisch
2024 years ago

Thanks, Ken, that helps a lot.

I was not aware of different standards of proof for the defence and prosecution. My lack of knowledge in these matters is one reason I don’t like making judgements on Justice Crispin, for example.

btw in the case of Anu Singh I attempted to apply ideas inspired by Derrida. In the case of Ferguson I decided they would end up being a distraction. You and other readers may be thankful!

I was going to summarise what I think about Ferguson but it’s too late tonight. I’ll just say now that if recidivism at 80% plus for pedophiles is the correct figure (and that’s only the ones we know about) then the precautionary principle must come well and truly into play. The State should be extremely careful in releasing such offenders into the community.

observa
observa
2024 years ago

Fyodor,
No need to apologise as the passage of time and the age at which my daughter’s experience occurred have left no scars whatsoever. The incident was much more traumatic for the adults involved at the time, of course. I was much more shaken by the fact that a stranger could have ignored the handicapped toilet at the end of the corridor and continued on with my daughter out of the exit at the end of it. Every parent’s worst nightmare, particularly this state where I notice the Beaumont children’s names are being mentioned in the news again. In this regard I had a wry smile to myself when the threat of terrorism was likened to the threat of paedophilia. No, this experience taught me that the two threats are quite different, although I might be less sanguine about paedophilia had the incident occurred at say 8 or 9 years of age and had some lasting repercussions. Looking back over the years, the observa household might have experienced a bad episode of ‘The Bill’, but I wouldn’t want my daughter to cross paths with a couple of charmers like the Skaf boys, or some of Osama’s disciples. OTOH I hope no script writers for ‘The Bill’ are regular visitors to Troppo, if you get my drift?

My take is that Joe Public do view terrorists a bit like paedophiles. If that jars your sensitivities then think of them as firebugs and we are living in bushfire season in a bushfire prone land. Any whiff of smoke makes people very nervous and if you’re a non-smoker caught hanging about country roads with a cigarette lighter then look out. You may well become a ‘person of interest’ and join the list of convicted firebugs.

IMO there is a general undercurrent going on at the moment, no doubt exacerbated by the more dangerous times. It is the larger issue of ‘the law’, versus the community’s sense of justice. If the community thinks the ‘law is an ass’ with regards their natural sense of justice, safety and well being, then principles of law, jurisdictional problems and technicalities, be damned! IMO, pollies of all political persuasions are responding copiously to their demands at present. With that outlook Fyodor and others are justified in their concern that the community is not seeing firebugs/paedophiles/terrorists around every corner, but let me throw about some examples to elucidate this scenario.

Fyodor takes the principled line with Habib that he’s not been found guilty of anything. Neither have Saddam, Uday or Qsay. Would Fyodor be comfortable if Habib had been locked up for 20yrs or so under a retrospective ‘Consorting with Terrorists Law’ cooked up by the Howard Govt, similar to Carr’s retrospective ‘Skaf Bros Law’ being debated here at http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=6089
Now Fyodor might have supported ditching the lofty principle of no retrospectivity of law in Australia way back in the early 70s, when it was mooted to serve up natural justice to rake in tax avoiders with their Bottom of the Harbour schemes. If he did, is he completely comfortable with Howard cooking up some retrospective laws to avoid unforseen jurisdictional or technical issues of law, in order to nail an Habib now? This is the Gitmo problem now, which could easily be resolved with a bit law-making surely? What has he to say about the interference of my Premier Rann in the Nemer case, or Von Einem’s parole prospects. Separation of powers be damned eh? If you take a strictly principled line at law then a number of things follow. Convicted and sentenced-served paedophiles, firebugs or terrorists are to be as free to go about their daily lives as the never convicted. No more ‘persons of interest’ lists for them Hicks and Habib walk free, the Skaf bros didn’t rape one of their victims, Paul Nemer would have got a fine of $200 for shooting out someone’s eye and the ATO owe a lot of businessmen, smart lawyers and accountants a lot of money with interest, etc, etc. Oh and perhaps we probably owe Saddam his country back. And you wonder why the Carrs, Howards and Ranns are ditching principles of law from time to time. As for Ms Gillard, she’s more likely to join in with the ‘fight them in the legislature’ than ‘fight them on the beaches’.

As if this wasn’t hard enough you have to deal with the jurisdictional principle, what might be termed ‘When in Rome”

observa
observa
2024 years ago

“Observa, I think there is a confusion of identities sometimes between the real you and the persona you adopt representing views from the smoko room.”
Well Brian the confusion is somewhat deliberate and you’ll have to glean from my utterings the true observa. I am of course a commenter and unlike bloggers find no particular need to be consistent. I may from time to time present particular points of view I’m not personally comfortable with (playing devil’s advocate) and of course we all get out of bed on the wrong side from time to time. However I don’t tell tales that are not true(barring faulty recall) Hence when I recount the experience of my daughter and sister, they are true.

“I wonder whether the smoko room mob aren’t to some extent reacting to what Habib looks like rather than what he is and does. Is their any difference between how they react to Habib and David Hicks? There is a whiff of racism in what you reported.”

No I don’t think there is any particular racism in their view of Habib or Hicks. In actual fact they would probably defer to the authorities wisdom that Hicks is the more dangerous of the two, given his continued detention. Having said that, there is a general PR problem for muslims and by inference Arabs, given that most terrorists emanate from their midst. However I wouldn’t judge it to be much different from a natural antithesis to say Chinese if a bunch of radical Confucians were attacking them in the same way. I can recall at a mate’s factory that an Arab Muslim was jumping about celebrating Sept11 and he shut up real quick when a very multicutural factory floor turned on him in no uncertain terms.

Brian Bahnisch
Brian Bahnisch
2024 years ago

Observa, your dual persona trick doesn’t bother me personally. I thought perhaps it may have confused another commenter who hadn’t seen it explained some time ago at Quiggin’s. You have your reasons for doing things the way you do and that’s fine.

Generally, however, in communication I like to know about the background of the other person. I gather you run a building/construction business and the smoko room means the workers on site. To have a ‘smoko room’ the enterprise must be of at least of moderate size and I’d guess the personnel would change over time.

Views emanating from wherever have value, especially if they are views that would not normally be articulated in this medium. So cheers.

Brian Bahnisch
Brian Bahnisch
2024 years ago

Ken, I still don’t know whether Ferguson is actually a pedophile. I’d assume that the rapes he was convicted for must have been serious, ie involving a considerable degree of coercion and/or violence, to get a sentence of 14 years. But I don’t know anything about them.

I gather he did the full 14 years because he didn’t participate in rehabilitation provided in prison for sex offenders. Rosevear seems to be saying that his crimes stemmed from particular problems within himself rather than a general sexual orientation towards children and that he didn’t participate in rehabilitation because he wasn’t “offered safety” (I think that was the phrase.)

A number of people have commented that he looks and behaves like an archetypal pedophile which means that he would have difficulty insinuating himself into positions of trust with both children and caring adults, which seems to be the trademark of the pedophile. So the fear would be of a trangression which is episodic and accompanied with coercion and/or violence. In any case Rosevear is definitely saying that the vigilante treatment of such people is making the community less safe.

I went back to your original post and while I agree with it I don’t think we can depend on information systems and the police to keep an eye on pedophiles. We are not safe until the offenders are fully rehabilitated. In your recent comment you state that “rationality requires that we devise regimes that maximise both community protection and rehabilitation of the offender, and also accommodate the civil rights of an offender who has served (at least most of) his term of imprisonment and has been adjudged entitled (and safe) to release.”

This is a balanced statement and covers most of the bases. We need a lot more thought on how we maximize the rehabilitation of offenders and how we know whether they are rehabilitated. Most of the discourse has been on containment of the threat and protection of the community.

I am attracted the the new Qld legislation (said to have been inspired by the release of Ferguson) which allows the state to continue to hold offenders who have served their sentence but are still judged to be a danger to the community.

Fact
Fact
2024 years ago

Can a schizophrenic be rehabilitated, cured even, and then be left to their own devices un-medicated in a community setting where by children are at risk of bearing the consequences of some paedophiles urge to relieve oneself.

Most paedophiles re-offend, this is fact, and having said this, paedophilia is an illness, an illness the ill have little control over as they are governed by compulsions they themselves will tell you, they cant always control.
There is another variety of paedophilia, certain elitists call this inter generational sex, and glorify paedophilia as being the forbidden fruits of the forest for the rich and powerful and educated~

Now, if they cant control themselves, and our legal system continuously fails society either by means of giving these people inadequate sentences, or are turning a blind eye systemic protection rackets sprawled across numerous Australian government departments i.e., DOCS, health, education, welfare, etc, which ensure certain incidents remain quiet,which is why it might come as little surprise why these offenders are in most cases, able to avoid prosecution all together, and damage or loss of reputation, should they travel in the right circles or rings of friendship. Some less than wealthy recieving as little as 18 months for raping a 2 year old, however, these perpetrators are no bodys, if they were part of an elite organisation you wouldn’t hear about it(Check Mako files).

This is why you have vigil antis beginning to take matters into their own hands, how many of you would call the police if someone raped your child?
I wouldn’t, If I was sure I could locate them, I have surveillance in my home, I would at least get a pic:-) I would drive extreme pleasure from dealing with them independently. Ironically, there are so many of us now whom feel the same, hence the recent surge in activism along these lines, targeting certain persons inconspicuously.

Society have had enough. It’s far time we turned the tables,and took the liberty of taking out the trash, doing the job our government aren’t capable or don’t wish to do themselves.
It was bound to happen, where people feel powerless, and violated and oppressed, you have certain groups exercising their perceived rite to justice.

Australia says no to child abuse.
A grubby little nation indeed!

What happened to the 200 busted last year?
Did we hear much more about it, any follow up there?

Think about it.

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2024 years ago

Pedophile vows to stop running

“Convicted pedophile Dennis Ferguson has vowed to stop running from angry mobs after twice coming under siege from neighbours in 24 hours.
South-east Queenslanders yesterday protested against Ferguson’s presence in Ipswich, only a day after he was hou…

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2024 years ago

Paedophilia, recidivism, and vigilanteism

Vigorous discussion over at Troppo Armadillo on what should be done with paedophiles after their release from gaol, after an elderly Queensland paedophile released there has