After five years is when his sentence is reviewed not when he’s going to be released. Unless it can be shown that he is utterly reformed and no longer a danger to the public, it is highly unlikely that he will be released particularly after the hysteria the case has generated. There is a chance that he may never be released.

But these are not very convenient facts for a Home Secretary with an arse to cover, tabloid editors with shit to shovel, and a political party shit scared of being beaten and having no depth to which it won’t sink.

I’m not questioning the sentences (as such) but the discrepancy between the two.

It seems to me that in both cases, these people have significantly overstepped the mark where they are significant dangers to the public. If prison is going to be used to protect the public then the difference between these sentences seems to make no sense.

Mike Power: that you are the most likely person to abuse your children is exactly the point. This press mania over ‘paedophiles’ is a manufactured issue preying on people’s deep fears. The UK is the second safest country wrt child abductions in the world after Japan (which generally has a far lower crime rate). I think the yearly figure is 6 or 7 children per year in the UK. In a population of 60 million, that is an extremely low rate. Children are more likely to burn to death trapped in a car or building or get some hideous childhood illness like cancer or that condition where the skin falls off – those are the things people should be worrying about, not ‘paedophiles’. Yet people’s perception is the converse, and this is because their opinion has been formed by media bullshit. I often hear parents waffling on about child abuse and have to remind them that they are the people most likely to commit it.

Secondly, most cases of child sexual abuse are not committed by people suffering from paedophilia, they are committed by opportunists. In contrast to what the media might suggest, paedophilia is a psychiatric condition – a compulsive sexual attraction to children. Lots of people (such as Marc Dutroux) abuse children merely because they are there and vulnerable, without themselves suffering from paedophilia.

Doughnut, if your point had any relevance I’d respond to it. I will point out a matter of fact though. It’s true that a child is more likely to be abused by a relative (54% of the perpetrators are related to the victim, and 46% are unrelated to the victim) but that includes siblings, uncles,aunts, nephews, grandparents etc and of course, step-parents. So you’re not quite right about the risk to my children (quite apart from the fact that they are all now bigger than me).

Justin: You’re right that the word has no positive connotation etc etc. I just prefer not to use a word chosen by perpetrators themselves to put a positive spin on their activities. It’s also now used as a catch-all word to include the activities of men who rape 9 month old babies aa well as those who just like wanking to images of babies being raped. It’s a word which is also pretty meaningless when it comes to describing either behaviour.

Get out of the way spam blocker, I’m coming through. Do you hear me? I’m coming through.

Mike, I have to say that I’m sympathetic to your point and will try it on for size. Being a massive fan of Orwell’s ‘Politics and the English Language’ and currently rattling through Steven Poole’s Unspeak, I’m all for calling a spade a spade.

That said, as one of the commenters said on that CiF piece (I can’t claim the invite to read it BTW, that was from Redpesto), ‘paedophile’ is a word utterly devoid of any ‘positive connotation’ in this day and age. And I might be doing them a disservice but I doubt the majority of the British public are aware of the term’s history and etymology.