When i was working weekends before i had no choice but to take my children to work .

I thought being in an area that we knew and shopping centre where we all knew eachother and looked out for each other was enough to make sure my boys where protected I WAS WRONG

they had to go to the bathroom in the centre and i have told them on many occasions not to go alone .one of my child had said to the other ill be there soon and went to look at a shop along the way

the other one went and locked himself in a cubicle

he felt as though someone was looking at him and looked up and saw a man there standing on the other toilet looking at him they where the only ones in the toilet also ,, he was saying things to him and even tryed to reach down to him ,, he remembered what i have been telling him that if someone comes near him and trys to touch him to yell and scream if he has the chance to and he did he yelled out pedaphile and the man ran,, he was tooo scared to come out of that toilet for an hour i sent security to go look for him where he was found shaking with fear

now what if my  boy was just standing up to go to the toilet what would of happened then ,,,,,,

i had told centre management of this also ( they already knew that there where a few of them arround this shopping centre waiting for children to go to the toilet alone ),, they said there was nothing they could do but report it , why where we not told as parents of this .......

and they had no power to evict them from a shopping centre either ,,the only thing they offered was that a security guard will excort them to the toilet and back each time

now i tell you how on earth could i have stayed at this job knowing that it indangoured my children while trying to earn a buck to pay my rent .

i warned all my customers of this and was shocked to learn that no one was awear of this ,, i voiced my oppion everytime ... my son was lucky but who knows how many more may not have been or are still neieve of this and they are waiting for a innocent child to be alone

I think we have a right to know where they are , for our childrens safety , did they have the right to take away the innocents of our child when they did this to them ,,,,,

my son already has ocd and  anxiotys and with what happened it got worse he wouldnt even go to the toilet at his own school ,, this made him ill its taken years to help him get though this and he wasnt even touched

how fair is this to do this to a child what right do the pedaphiles have to give our children soo much fear and yet they can go sleep at night while we have to try to help our loved ones through this ..

how many more shopping centres know of this and the poor innocent children thaty didnt get away ..

why are we not warned ? where is the duety of care

if they are not waitng arround schools be warned shopping centre toilets are one of the places where they hang arround

Thanks for a thought provoking article. I think it is such a tough subject and like many things, there is never going to be a single solution. I guess my thoughts are that I am mostly against such a list being publicly available. Not because I have any feelings of compassion towards an offender. I feel that a convicted paedophile should not be in a position to reoffend. However, the sequence for a person (and lets not make the mistake of thinking male only here) getting to the stage of physically assaulting a child can take quite a long time. In that process, they will move through stages of looking at images, perhaps exposing themselves from a distance and moving on to "grooming" a child - approaching, befriending and then later assaulting. So, at what stage would someone appear on a list? The chances are that they would have gone a long way down the process, possibly offended a number of times and then finally been convicted. At many points prior to that, they could be on the cusp and then assault a child and they wouldn't have been on any list.

To use an analogy, the police have records where they can check whether someone is known to have an infectious disease, such as Hepatitis or HIV. If I dealt in a first aid situation where there was blood, would I check the record and then only use precautions if I knew the person had a disease? No, of course not. I would deal with all contact as if that person DID have a disease. With my kids, I operate a similar system. If I could check a list, would I be comfortable leaving them with someone purely because they didn't appear on it? No, again I would be as careful as I could be that they were protected in every situation.

Now, I know this is over-simplifying the argument. If someone is a convicted paedophile, they should never, ever have contact with children. Unfortunately, we have to accept that, probably in our lifetimes, that is not going to happen. So, we have to do the best we can. Certainly in the Uk, there are procedures in place where a person has to undergo checks before they are in a position of trust. Again I have to agree that mistakes can be made. There is a risk in anything we do when we let kids out of the home (although, as stated by others here, many offenders are family members) and it is our jobs as parents to try and minimise them. I don't think that risks can ever completely removed or else we would just be wrapping our kids in cotton wool and teaching them that we don't trust them. I have never been subject to abuse so again stand to be corrected, but I agree with Wendigo in that we must try and instill in our kids that they should be able to tell us anthing, but before that, explain to them exactly what is acceptable behaviour by others and what isn't, and what to do if something is wrong. We then have to listen to them when they tell us, maybe in a round-about way that they don't want to do something or go somewhere with a person. Kids aren't stupid. I remember as a 7 yr old that we all knew that the deputy head would take any opportunity given to touch the girls' bottoms in class. We would avoid him but probably none of us ever mentioned it to our parents.

Lastly, as can be seen here, feelings run so high about this, that with the best will in the world, I don't believe that if we new a paedophile lived up the road, we would just clamly walk past and petition someone to get them moved. We would tell everyone we knew. Someone would eventually do something, be it cause damage or something more physical. We might find one day that the person had had their house torched, with them in it. Completely conceivable. What then if we discovered that it wasn't that person, but someone who looked like them/ had the same name/ had moved in when the person moved out. Just last year, an elderly couple living near me (and in a nice, residential area) were seriously injured and nearly died throwing themselves out of a window following petrol being poured through their letterbox and the house set on fire. Guess what? The attack was aimed at their neighbour, but the person got the wrong house. OK, it wasn't to do with paedophilia, but it could so easily have been.

I have no sympathy for abusers, but every ounce of me says that the potential for more innocent victims outweighs a desire for a list which might lend a false sense of security and may not actually protect children. A national newspaper recently threatened to reveal the name of 110,000 "confirmed" paedophiles living in the UK. Thats a lot of people, and only the ones that the newspaper could find out about. At the moment, those on the Sex Offenders Register have a requirement to register their names and addresses with the police and notify any changes within 14 days. If the authorities are struggling to monitor all these people, imagine how much harder their jobs would be if these people went to ground, didn't abide by their conditions of residence and moved where they fancied. Not only would the list then have no value at all (it would probably be badly out of date) but not even the authorities would know where the offenders were. I was recently told of a study where it has been found that an abducted child is likely to be sexually assaulted within 20 minutes of being taken. Knowing who the local offenders are and where they are quickly would be of huge importance in getting that child back, and fast. I know this argues against the first part of my post in that we can't know who they all are, but these techniques have been used time and again, sometimes in catching the offender too late but certainly in one case I know, getting back two young teenage girls.

 You could argue that if the locals knew of the paedophile, they would keep watch, but I still feel that, even with a list, they wouldn't know, as the offender would just get more devious and offend out of area, or move without telling anyone. 

So, I don't think that a list offers a solution. I personally believe that it may cause more problems than it solves and would lead to more fear rather than less. I do believe in other solutions - longer jail times being a key one, more resources to properly monitor offenders being another, and a parent doing their damndest to protect their child. Every one of you here I know does everything they can to keep their child safe. I'm just not convinced that a list adds any help.

Apologies for my long post, but I guess I also have strong feelings about this. Good on you for provoking such a strong argument and being open to accept differing opinions.

just wanted to add my 2c worth... regardless if someone was wrongly convicted or a single offence i really don't understand why people like that should be aloud back into society i'm 25 years old and i might be a little nieave on the topic because i've only been a parent for a short time but i don't think we need a list at all.  i think we need a more accurate judicial system so as not to convict the wrong people in the first place and once they are convicted that they be put away for their whole life because that's what they do to their victims. how can a judge even put a time limit on how long these people are not able to have contact with children 5yrs 10yrs that is no where near what the victim serves just because their prision looks like a normal life. child abuse is worse than muder because the victim is still alive to suffer for the rest of their life because of it... i'm proud to say that i'm a pasionate parent writing in the moment who will stop at nothing to protect her children... these people who commit these crimes don't deserve to be in our society! peroid!!!

id love to sign it. i am a survivor also and am very scared that something may happen to my child and i wont be able to do anything i dont leave my son with anyone and am very protective of who i can leave him with. i wish that no one would ever have to have this kind of worry but sadly our world is not so.

I wanted to add my petition to this article. I didn't realise I hadn't done it

Cheers

OB

Very awe inspiring and yes this is what minti is all about... Sharing and learning from one another.... And in doing so..We can re-evaluate our live and our parenting efforts... Learn to decifer for ourselves what is right and wrong...

good on you OzBinky for being open minded and sharing your beliefs and your experiences...

And yes I do believe we need a way to regulate where paedifiles are located we just have to be careful in how its done....

I lived next door to one for 7 years and did not know until the police arrested him for it. He had served some time in gaol for the same thing years before.  I didnt have a clue he was like it either. Something like this may have helped me and the people and families he hurt

1.  The excuse that people may try to use such a database to track down and harm convicted paedophiles is insipid, when people (such as potential employers) can have police checks done on people and gain far more information about a person than what such a database would provide.

2.  The sad part is that such a database would only protect children from part of the problem.  Most active paedophiles have never been convicted, and getting such a conviction is extremely difficult.  This is something that seriously needs to be worked on.

3.  The best thing that we can do to protect our children is to break the silence.  The first and foremost defence any child abuser has, is the fear of the child that if they talk about it, bad things will happen.  If we teach our children that no matter how bad things may seem, no matter how scared they may be, they must talk about their problems to as many trusted adults as they can find that will listen - and keep talking as loud and as often as they can - until they feel safe.  As adults, we must listen to children - and not just our own - and if we hear a child telling us of any kind of abuse we must report it.  So next time a little kid sitting behind you on a bus starts "harassing" you, listen to what they have to say.  By doing so, you may save a child's life.

4. Support organizations that support children.  In Australia, NAPCAN is the leading organization in the fight to prevent child abuse.  In Australia and the USA, BACA Inc. is an organization that supports the children that are survivors of abuse.  I support both of these organizations in every little way I can.  There are many other related organizations out there, a web search for "child abuse" or "child protection" will give you thousands of listings.  Check them out and see if there is something that you can do to help.

Thinking worst case can help too... that is not letting your guard down anywhere. While listings may help ensure that your family doesn't make close friends with dangerous people, it can not help protect you from those who roam about.. can it?

Sometimes paedophiles are drawn to certain places where we are often tempted to let our guard down. Dave Crampton reports in the magazine "Christianity Today" how churches have more than their share of paedophiles compared to the rest of society. One statistic I think said it was up 6% and that paedophiles and child abuse sex offenders are often drawn to churches because of the access they have to children. Not just in children's ministry but in the "friendships" built up in environments that are different in nature even to schools and other places predators may be found.