Tougher punishment needed for child sex crimes
Should child sex offenders be named and shamed, and their locations placed on a public register after they are released from prison? Raping or otherwise sexually assaulting a child is a crime so vile it challenges the capacity of lawmakers and the judicial system to design adequate and effective punishments and deterrents.
The task is all the more difficult because such atrocities understandably elicit profound emotional responses, including despair, rage and a searing desire for retribution.
So, it is particularly important to base associated policy and law on evidence. Law and order is one of the issues that will determine the outcome of the November state election, and both sides are seeking to present themselves as unswervingly tough on crime. The ALP, for example, has been adding thousands of recruits to the police force, while the Liberal-led opposition advocates stricter penalties for serious crimes and a public register of child sex offenders.
Public awareness of the issue has been rightly raised by the four-year Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, and by other public inquiries. It is in the spotlight in Victoria this week because of the conviction of a former policeman who abused his granddaughter. He also encouraged another man to rape an eight-year-old.
Although penalties range up to 25 years in prison, he was sentenced to only four, prompting calls for harsher sentencing laws, including from Victims of Crime Commissioner Greg Davies, who served in the police force for many years. The man remains anonymous because his name has been suppressed to conceal the identity of his victim. The sentence does indeed seem unduly lenient.
When coupled with anonymity, it appears to be an insufficient deterrent. Some nations offer chemical treatments – in prison and after release – to reduce offenders’ libido, something that perhaps should be considered for trial here.
Victorian Opposition Leader Matthew Guy’s promise to publish a public register of child sex offenders is ostensibly attractive. Each state and territory has a register of sex offenders, but access is limited to law-enforcement agencies. This is the case in most nations. The US, though, has had a public register for the past 20 years.
The evidence is that it has not reduced the amount of child sex abuse or recidivism, and that it has even been counter-productive – it can lead to the identification of survivors, spawn vigilante criminality, create a false sense of security in the community and intensify sociopathic and psychopathic tendencies of potential re-offenders.
The focus has been on extreme cases, often involving abduction. The broader, tragic truth is that of the estimated one in six Australian women and one in 20 men who were sexually abused in childhood, more than 80 per cent were victims in their own home of men who were either relatives or friends of the family. Reducing this hidden horror is the toughest task in combating sexual crimes against children. Harsher sentences are a valid part of that.
Evidence shows public registers of offenders can add to the suffering of families in which inter-family abuse has happened, and can cut the already paltry reporting rates of these crimes. Any move to introduce such a register must proceed with caution.