We stereotype sexual predators, and we get it wrong

Here is an article from the UK that is titled “We stereotype sexual predators, and we get it wrong” that talks about one of the most horrific cases of child sexual abuse they just had. The piece I most agreed with is the last line where it says:

but making unjustified assumptions based on gender, class, sexual orientation or public achievements allows abusers to remain free.

And of course this applies to not just sex offenders but to abusive, hurtful, toxic people period.


UK - Vanessa, Colin and Angela: they sound like inoffensive neighbours whom you might invite round for a drink. In fact, they're three of the worst paedophiles ever convicted in this country.

Sickening details of their assaults on babies and toddlers emerged at Bristol Crown Court last week, when Vanessa George, Colin Blanchard and Angela Allen admitted 38 charges of child abuse. They appear to have made contact through the internet, and engaged in a competitive form of exhibitionism which involved exchanging sadistic fantasies and pictures of children and babies being abused.

Such cases inspire revulsion and agonised soul-searching about what kind of society we have become. As in the case of the murder of the toddler James Bulger, aspects of human nature are revealed that seem scarcely credible, reinforcing anxieties about a "broken" society which is, on occasion, incapable of protecting its most vulnerable members.

When one of the perpetrators turns out to be a 39-year-old woman, the mother of two daughters who passed a criminal records bureau check to get her job at Little Ted's nursery in Plymouth, the public reaction is disbelieving as well as outraged; on Thursday the judge explicitly rejected the suggestion that Blanchard was the prime mover in the assaults, although George and Allen seem to have regarded each other as rivals for his attention. They all objectified their victims to an extraordinary degree; the infants in the pictures taken on George's mobile phone haven't been identified, leaving parents who used the nursery in the agonising position of not knowing if their children were abused. - Read the entire article here