ABSTRACT
Research has much to say on why children find it difficult to report abuse: for two of the major texts in this field, see Driver and Droisen (1989) and Cox et al. (2000). It is not hard for us to understand the many reasons why a child cannot name what is happening to them, does not understand that this is not ‘normal’, does not realise that other adults should be there to protect them, and cannot find the courage or the opportunity to speak out. But that leaves many questions unanswered. What was happening to the adults around that child, who may well have suspected what was going on but who did not intervene? What was happening to the adult abuser, who knew that what was happening was wrong but who did not seek help to stop? This chapter explores those two key questions. The first section is a case
study of Fred, a man who learned that a friend of his was accessing online child pornography. This case study illustrates some of the consequences which happen when an adult does decide, against many social norms, to take action and report a colleague to the police. The second section uses the case study of Ian, a paedophile with whom I corresponded as he appeared to agonise over whether or not to report himself to the police for his sexual offending. The case of Ian gives an insight into the mind of a man who knows, on some level, that what he is doing to children is destructive and abusive and yet who is too frightened of the likely consequences to seek help in stopping the abuse. (All names in this chapter are fictitious, some identifying details have been
changed and some of the material has been edited for brevity and clarity. Other than that, the material given here is presented exactly as it was written to me.)
This case resulted in a man, Tommy, being convicted of possession of many hundreds of images, some showing children as young as six or seven years old. As well as links to ‘hard-core pre-teen’ sites, Tommy had apparently also accessed pornographic web-cams and was also suspected of having sexually abused girls who were the children of women he had partnered. Tommy was discovered because, while he was staying in a colleague’s house, child pornography was discovered on his computer disks. The colleague, Fred, reported Tommy to the police and later corresponded with me, discussing the case as it took place over a period of months. The extracts below are from Fred’s correspondence with me, as he struggled to deal with the consequences of having contacted the police, and the impact this had on the university department where they both worked.
