Fear of Pedophilia

This story on the Mail's web site caught my eye. When fear of Pedophiles means that Adult men cannot even enjoy a walk in the park without a risk of being stopped and questioned, the response to Pedophilia is gone way past sensible precautions and deep into the realms of hysteria.

Not surprisingly, every incident where a child is harmed or abused is given blanket coverage. While this level of coverage is fully justified by the public interest that surrounds such cases, it does tend to give an exagerated impression of how much risk children are actually under.

In fact children being abused by strangers is incredibly rare. Virtually all cases of child abuse concern a parent or other trusted adult, not a stanger in the park. There is no reason to believe that there are suddenly more Pedophiles around now than there were when we were kids. The law takes them much more seriously now so I am sure more are being arrested, but that doesn't mean more exists or that the danger is any greater.

The majority of pedophile stories involve people collecting and distributing indecent images of children. While of course I would not want to justify such activity, there is still a LONG gap between looking at images of child abuse and actually taking part. Where there are probably more people looking at such images today thanks to their increased availability via the internet, there is no reason to assume this translates to more actual child abusers in circulation.