Paedophiles: can they be rehabilitated?

"When it comes to viewing child abuse images online you can't separate out watchers from 'doers' - they're all paedophiles," says Dr Graham Hill.

He was speaking in response to comments by Chief Constable Simon Bailey about not being able to jail all paedophiles.

Dr Hill, a criminologist, agrees with Chief Constable Bailey that "you can't arrest your way out of the problem".

But Dr Hill says viewing pictures of child abuse can directly lead to more abuse.

BBC Advice has help and information if you, or someone you know, has been affected by child abuse.

A former police officer and founder of behaviour analysis at the UK's Child Exploitation Online Protection centre (CEOP), Dr Hill has plenty of experience in the behaviour of sex offenders.

"[Child abuse] is a problem that is becoming more and more prevalent as police and society become more aware of child abuse and how it works," he says.

"The issue really is that looking at images doesn't tell you anything about the risk that person represents.

"When you look at people who are looking at these images they're doing that because they have a sexual interest in children.

"It's not a case of 'lock these people up because that will cure it' because it will never cure it.

"You've got to find a way of containing it and that's the problem, because the sex offender treatment programmes don't contain it very well".

Some organisations like the Lucy Faithfull Foundation argue that paedophiles who have viewed indecent images online, but gone no further, can be rehabilitated.

The charity runs the Stop It Now! programme designed to help treat paedophiles.

Tom Squire oversees it and says some paedophiles can be rehabilitated.

"We support the police in arresting individuals and absolutely think the most dangerous people should be targeted and locked up in prison.

"But the scale of the problem, the numbers of people doing this mean we can't only arrest people, we just don't have the time and police resources to do that.

"The evidence is that there is a group of people doing this who can change their behaviour if they get the right advice, information and support around themselves."

But Dr Hill argues rehabilitation doesn't work and merely puts a lid on paedophile's dangerous sexual desires.

"At the end of the day, if you have a sexual interest in children and you're presented with a certain opportunity you're highly likely to act on it.

"When an indecent image is viewed you're actually viewing a crime scene.

"The more they [paedophiles] look at, the more they want to look and it becomes quite an addictive part of their personality.

"You can have offenders whose collections run into thousands of images.

"They can condition themselves to look at these images and it becomes an addictive cycle that can be really hard to break."

Police forces "cannot cope" with the "huge" rise in reports, Chief Constable Simon Bailey, of the National Police Chief's Council, told the BBC.

Figures show the number of child abuse reports is up by 80% in three years.

Education

"Clearly you can't lock up everybody that's looking at indecent images of children," says Dr Hill.

"You need to educate children and parents to understand how offenders target and manipulate children - once they know that they can start to protect their children.

"What we know about people that sexually abuse children is that they look for children who are available and vulnerable and if you can reduce the availability and vulnerability of those children you will significantly reduce the chances of them being a victim of sexual abuse."

Training

"For professionals like police officers, social workers and the judiciary it's about training," says Dr Hill.

"It's about them understanding that sex offenders are brilliant at manipulating people.

"Once we understand that we understand the way they work we can start to put prevention into place that actually works.

"If you are looking at indecent images of children over a sustained period of time you have a sexual interest in children and therefore you are a risk to children both in the real world and in the online environment.

"You can't differentiate between the two."

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