News

Yvonne Roberts hopes the recent BBC series on paedophiles will act as a catalyst for legal and social reform.

Halfway through the first of three documentaries in the BBC 2 series, The Hunt for Britain's Paedophiles, I switched the TV off. On screen were two pairs of feet - one belonging to a six-year-old girl, the other to her father who was being filmed while he raped her. I couldn't bear to watch - but the image has not gone away.

Television today rarely produces series which act as a catalyst for social change. Decades ago, it highlighted the plight of the homeless and the cruelty rampant in mental institutions. The result was public protest - and reform.

Bob Long, producer and director of The Hunt, says that he made it, "in order to raise the debate". Hopefully, this admirable series will be repeated. Certainly, it forces us to question the poverty of resources invested in detection and consider what is required to deter those who may offend.

The series, which ended last week, followed a team of 15 detectives from the Paedophile Unit at New Scotland Yard over two years. Paedophiles thrive on the gullibility of children and adults. Those who watched - audience figures reached three million - were given a necessary if harrowing education which detailed the damage done by paedophiles who spout claptrap about "love" while displaying an unbounded capacity to deceive.

For instance, 80-year-old Wilfred Thelman insisted that he was much too old to offend. Police seized a video of him preparing a 10-year-old girl for buggery. In the final programme, 41-year-old Mark Hanson was arrested on suspicion of indecently assaulting a boy. Abused as a child, he claimed that he was not interested in buggery, "only masturbation and oral sex" with boys aged 12. "I like their... whole way of life. I don't want to grow up." Subsequently, the police found a video of Hanson buggering a six-year-old.

Hanson later committed suicide. A detective expressed no regret. Bob Long says we need to "create an environment in which paedophiles are unlikely to offend in the first place". What that requires, among a multitude of measures, is to stop using sexual images of young children to sell products, the strengthening of the rights of children and long-term evidence that treatment can and does control behaviour.

It is salutary that following the first episode 250 people rang the BBC to object, making it the second most complained about programme in TV history. What a misdirection of ire!