I like Phoebe. Thinking she's talented and finding her attractive, two different things and I think both. I was never really a huge fan of Hope just a fan of Phoebe she had something special about her and very likeable. I've spoken to her over her personal myspace and she really is a sweetheart, I was not expecting a reply.

It took me a while to read through your post trollface but i do get most of it.

Im just basing my lack of understanding of Peadophiles in general because somebody finding immaturity in someone is baffling as its the exact opposite of my personal preference.

But i will always be of the opinion that the younger a girl is below the age of 16 the more sinister it is.

Oh, I agree. It's not something I can comprehend in that way. But, again, I can't really comprehend why people find blokes attractive, but they do (and God bless 'em for it).


Oh, yeah, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that going out and having sex with under 16s is a good thing, but I think there's a strange idea in our society that finding a girl attractive on her 16th birthday is fine, but the day before that makes you a pervert who should be castrated before you rape again. This is just plainly nonsense, and leads to things like those ridiculous and creepy sites that count down the time until child actresses are "legal". There's not a hard and fast dividing line between being a child and being an adult. 16 is just where British law has defined that line as being, as far as sex goes, to ensure that people are protected as much as possible from physical and emotional harm.

Exactly, the only way to ensure no child comes to physical harm is by wiping them all out, but it seems to be a worsening problem.

I'm not sure that wiping all children out is really the solution.

I'm not sure what you mean about it becoming a worsening problem, though. There is the sexualisation of children, but there always has been. "Thank 'eaven For Little Girls", The Minipops, etc. I think in some ways it's worse (there seems to be less delineation between children's clothes and adult's clothes, for example), but in some ways it's better, not least with child protection laws being much better than they used to be and harsher sentences for those convicted of paedophilic activity.

That is a fair point - the law is fairly arbitrary and does not appear to be based on any particular principle of child protection or child development.

The legality of sexual relations at any particular age has changed and indeed when I was studying mediaeval history for running a writing workshop, I discovered that one character was on her third husband at the age of about 18 - she had first married about 12, then again at 14 and then some time betwen 15 and 17. It was risky being her husband, both politically and on the field of battle. all 3 of her husbands, despite their love for her and marriage to her, would be 'paedophiles' in modern terms, yet in their own era, there was nothing wrong at all with their behaviour. All of them were heavyweight political figures of their time and in the public eye - so it makes you ask - 'if marriage was legal at 12 then, why not now?'

OK so roles have changed and education is more widespread, BUT the woman in question was herself educated and funded a school, so we are not talking about a pram-faced baby-machine - we are talking about an exceptional woman of her era (who eventually produced a royal Prince from her 'under-age' shagging).

the starting point for the law was that people only had sex inside of a marriage and so if you were too young to marry, you were too young to lawfully have sex.

centuries later, the marriage age eventually went up to 16 and along with it, the capacity to 'consent' to sex.

clearly most people (me included) believe that children need protecting from predatory adults, but where the lines should be drawn does not appear to have been based on what is good for a young person or it seems with changing norms of behaviour. young people are having a lot of 'bad sex' it seems according to a very recent report - not linking it to relationships and careless as to STIs, so adding a criminal dimension to what appears 'natural' (if unwise) behaviour brings the law into disrepute (in the same way as it has been with criminalising homosexuality).

In my work I often used to deal with people accused of sexual offences, as well with as protecting children and victims. I have seen both sides of the situation.

Sometimes the offences I dealt with appeared to lack seriousness - I remember dealing with somebody who ended up as a registered sex offender - from recollection he had let his 15 year old girlfriend jerk him off when he was 18. where was the public interest in that prosecution and that person being labelled a 'paedophile'? IMO it makes the label less serious to have that kind of situation included.

16 does seem rather later than physical development would suggest and unless education can reduce the increasing levels of sexual activity under that age, it does seem an error to have an age gap between the reality and the legality. even when I was at school (almost 30 years ago), at least 2 girls from my class got pregnant under-age, so it's not exactly a new problem.

of course the expression 'jail bait' has been around a while...

What would make sense would be a Law Commission to review medical and psychological evidence with an open mind on the issue, with a brief to seek to protect the young from exploitation, but also avoid unnecessary criminalisation.

I meant wiping the peadophiles out, sorry if i didnt word it too well.

It just seems whenever you turn the news on theses days there will be a story about one.

there was much more of it about in the 1700s and 1800s - when the rural poor started to migrate to towns and cities, they were a massive resource to be exploited - women would sell their daughters, no matter how young. It was seeing this in the 1800s that changed the law to a more strict regime - somebody like Shaftsbury or Wilberforce or somebody of that ilk went out from Parliament and found it
so easy to buy children that they were outraged and campaigned for a change in the law.

prostitution was rife, even in the late 1800s - when Jack the Ripper was murdering in the 1880s, there were 100s of 1000s of women 'on the game' - sometimes only part-time, but whenever they were hard up, they would shag for the rent money etc. as I said, they were selling their children into the sex trade too.

paedophilia in the sense of adults sexually abusing young children is probably less common than in many previous eras, but the internet allows those who want to do so to find others of similar minds, which is worrying.

a family friend was murdered by unknown paedophile(s) and I am still looking forward to hearing some day that the --- has/have been caught and banged up on rule 43 for life.

I may have an open mind about whether the present age of consent makes sense, but dealing with child molesters was often revolting. you just had to be 'professional' and keep your feelings about it to yourself.

I don't think somebody fancying Phoebe brings those kind of reactions.

Maybe, but it's a mistake to think that what you see on the news is the be-all and end-all of a situation. The news can be very sensationalist about these things and very often makes a problem out to be much worse than it actually is. If you listened to the news, for example, you'd believe that violent crime amongst youths was increasing at a dangerously fast level, but the actual statistics show that it's dropping. But that doesn't make a story that sells papers.

Don't forget, the news' job isn't to inform us of the truth about the world, it's to get ratings or sell newspapers.

Other posters have obviously got more knowledge of this subject than I have.

My opinion of how Peadophiles cant be cured i suppose does seem a bit narrow minded.

an example - in the 1960s, Myra Hindley and Ian Brady were far worse than 2000s Huntley and Carr

yet in the 60s, kids were allowed to go out without their parents fretting all the time.

we do need to keep a sense of proportion.

a friend of mine is a counsellor who has worked with child sex-abuse victims, she spent a hell of a lot of time counselling people who had been sexually abused by a teacher.

he'd done it to tens if not hundreds of kids throughout the 1970s and was convicted in about 1998.

good safe procedures or police preventing crime isn't a story.

Why? isnt the principle the same?

It's not a question of "curing" anyone. As I said, I believe that it's hard-wired into people (in the same way that you don't choose to be straight or gay), or is caused by trauma early in life, often sexual abuse itself. What it is that needs to be prevented is the harm of children themselves. I honestly wouldn't care if every single adult in the world was a paedophile, as long as they never actually acted on those feelings in any way. That's the issue. A paedophile in prison is still a paedophile, just one that's not going to hurt any children.

If you do want to know more about the subject, I can thoroughly recommend Capturing the Friedmans. It doesn't have any answers in it (because there's really no such thing), and it doesn't present the issues as either pro or anti, but what it does is, in an unbiased a manner as possible, say "here are the facts". Or, rather, it says "here is what this person says the facts are, and here is what this person says the facts are, and here is what this other person says the facts are. They can't all be true - what do you think?"

It's an absolutely fascinating look into all sides of the subject - how it affects the victims, how it affects the victims families, how it affects the perpetrators, how it affects the perpetrator's families, how it affects the community in which it happens, and how the media and the police can handle the situation both well and very poorly. You won't come away with any answers, but you'll come away with some bloody interesting questions.

The thing is, as with all such subjects, it's easy to make rash judgements and see things in black and white, but the truth is a lot more complex, fuzzy and grey than that in real life.

And, on a personal note, can I just say how nice and refreshing it is to talk to someone who seems more than prepared to challenge and question his own opinions and preconceived notions when presented with new evidence and new perspectives on a subject? It's a thing that's sadly quite rare, it seems, and it's a credit to you that you do behave like this. It's a quality that should serve you well in life. So, good for you.

Damn, that sounded patronising, didn't it?

nah not at all, i do try and think rationally most of the time but thats probably because most of my mates at college are so hot-headed, especially where the female members of college are concerned.

I cant agree with every single adult in the world being a peadophile being ok.

I mean do they think about sex more than the average person and if so even if they have got the will power to ignore their feelings, they are still out and about in general society.

I understand that there's a visceral gut-reaction to the subject, and I can completely sympathise. TheSpoon says that he's worked with paedophiles and sat on his own feelings doing so. No matter how much I can intellectualise about the subject, I'm not sure I could do that like he did, because there is that gut instinct, and it's so strong.

But, you have to think about it in real terms. Assume there's a guy walking along the street. He spots a little girl, thinks "mmm, nice" to himself, then promptly continues on with his day. The girl doesn't know, nobody else knows, and the guy doesn't act on that feeling in any way. You have to ask yourself who is actually harmed in that situation.

Now, of course, that's not really the kind of thing that you'd usually think of as this subject, and it is an incredibly banal example, but on a purely intellectual level, unless actual harm is done I can't find myself condemning that hypothetical man. As I say, I realise that that's an extreme example, but that's what I was getting at when I said that I wouldn't have a problem with a world full of paedophiles who don't act on their feelings in any way whatsoever.

What goes on inside your head is one thing, but it's actions that cause harm, not thoughts.

It would depend if the girl found out which theres a 99.9% chance she wouldnt, some people would still think she is being violated by some guy looking at her in that way, obviously it happens all the time with people spotting someone in the street and fancying them, but surely the mindset is different, would a peadophile just think "hmm, nice".

Did you see a programme a while back, i cant remember what it was called, i think an actor called Matthew Mcfaydden was in it playing a reformed peadophile, he trawled funfairs looking for girls to talk to.

Depends on the person in question, doesn't it? The point is that it's not true to say that all paedophiles are horrible predators that should be strung up by their naughty bits but are, just like all the rest of us, a wide range of people, some of whom are horrible, and some of whom are just trying the best they can - as I say, some volunteer to be castrated so that they won't have the same sexual drive that they do - or maybe even won't have any. I think it's definitely a mistake to assume that all paedophiles want to hurt children.

I hate comparing these two things because they're noting alike, but it can be helpful to illustrate a point, so here we go. In today's society, it's seen as relatively acceptable to be gay. It's not 100% accepted by 100% of people, but it's not altogether unusual to have celebrities, TV characters, etc. who are gay without it passing comment. With people like Captain Jack on Torchwood there are even positive gay action hero role models. And, yet, discovering your gay can still be a very scary and traumatic time for people. To this day there are people who commit suicide because they can't come to terms with their sexuality, and there are countless more who hide in the closet, because they fear not being accepted.

Now, think how many thousands of times more taboo paedophilia is in today's society. I find it hard to believe that it's an easy thing to come to terms with for anybody. Yes, there will be people out there who simply don't care, or who even deliberately want to hurt children. But, again, it's a mistake to just lump everyone in to that same group.

I mentioned Capturing The Friedmans above. I watched that and, while I hardly came away liking Arnold Friedman, I didn't come away thinking that he was a complete monster, either. He was, just like the rest of us, a human being.


Can't say I did, but it did sound like an interesting take on the subject. Here is an article about the issues around the programme. It's an interesting read.

Can I just say this thread has turned into quite a thoughtful conversation, even if I am unsure of how relevant it is.

Ah yeah... Phoebe is the best - she is talented and given some time to get into her groove and mature, I'm sure she can do so well. I wish her and Hope all the best.