What Should We Do With Sex Offenders?
The conviction of Oliver O’Grady earlier this week for possession of images of child abuse highlights the difficulties we face in dealing with sex offenders. O’Grady served jail time in California for child abuse, then moved to Amsterdam and then came back to Dublin. He was living in a hostel where vulnerable families also lived. As he had no convictions in this country it is unlikely he was under any supervision by the Gardai.
Every year up to a hundred sex offenders are released from Irish prisons. Some of them will have completed a treatment programme while in custody, others will have refused to participate. Some will have been placed on the Sex Offenders Register on conviction, requiring them to report their whereabouts to the Gardai on release. Some will have been given a Supervision Order for a period of time after their release when they must work with the probation services and the Gardai.
There are many opinions about what should be done with sex offenders. This includes locking them up for life, introducing a Megan’s Law which would allow everyone to know the addresses of sex offenders living in the community or putting an electronic tag on all released offenders. At One in Four we take a different view. Fewer than 5% of sex offenders are ever convicted for their crimes. This means that a lot of dangerous people are operating freely in our families and communities and would never be subject to the measures above, even if they were introduced. How do we deal with them?
The One in Four Phoenix Programme provides an 18 month treatment programme for sex offenders. Most of the men on this programme have abused children within their own families but have never been convicted of an offence. Many of their victims do not want to see their fathers or brothers go to jail so refuse to make a statement to the Gardai. They just want the abuse to stop and to protect other children. We automatically refer all the sex offenders to the HSE child protection services and the focus becomes how to manage them safely in the community.
Not all sex offenders are the same and do not pose the same level of risk. We believe that good treatment programmes can work with most offenders as long as the family, the HSE, the Gardai and the treatment programme work together. This view is supported by international research in Canada, Australia and New Zealand. However, there is a small group of high risk offenders who will never change and who will always remain a danger to children. High-risk offenders should be given long sentences and life-time supervision orders. And the resources must be put in place to ensure that they can be rigorously monitored.
