Sex offenders to work as teachers... or not?

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Here's from the UK:

Of course, there's more. The article is quite long, so if you want to read the whole, and I believe you should before commenting on it ( ), here's the link.

My opinion is that if the man got a police caution and not a court conviction, it was probably a much less grave offence. However, no one has a right to work as a teacher and teach children. Therefore, he can and should be prevented from being a teacher, especially a P.E. teacher that sees children in less clothing and may be exposed to a lot of tempting situations if he's inclined that way. Therefore, I'm in favour of preventing him from working there.

We've recently had a similar case in Poland, except the guy who was hired as a P.E. teacher was a convicted child mollester of his own daughter and the judge gave him a paper saying he could work with children after he served his term.

There is no place for child molesters in education, healthcare or priesthood/clerical job. Same way sex offenders who molested their underlings should be banned from positions of power even in private business.

It would be good if we could forgive them unconditionally and make things like they were before and they could leave it behind. But reality is harsher than that.

 

They should be banned from work that involves vaunerable people (care worker, teacher, nurse etc)

 

This statement gives me pause as well. Accessing child porn is a criminal offense? I mean, if you're looking at porn on the internet (which is legal AFAIK) and you also happen to come upon a child porn site (possibly unwittingly, as we know there are whole lot of girls out there under 18 who certainly don't look it), this is a criminal action?

To me, it's one thing if you've been convicted of child molestation, or for taking pornographic pictures of children, but simply accessing child porn? How did they even find out about this? How can you find out that someone is "accessing child porn"? There can't possibly be government oversight of the entire porn industry. That would first require the government to know of all kiddie porn sites, and then be able to monitor everyone in the entire country to see who goes there. Also, how do you differentiate people who got to a kiddie porn site inadvertently (for example they were looking for regular porn) from regular users who got there intentionally?

The whole thing doesn't seem completely fair to me, but obviously I'm not entirely aware of how this situation works either, so I'd appreciate it if someone knows to clear it up for me. I mean, I don't even know what a "police caution" is. We don't have that term in the U.S.

 

Aldeth, accessing was possibly a bad word because you don't need any voluntary action to access a site on the internet. I have stumbled across several porn sites that open in your browser as a pop-up window when you open a non-porn site. But child porn doesn't work that way unless it's fake kiddie porn. Plus, by "accessing" they may have meant an action. The action of accessing rather than the effect of having accessed that site even by accident.

You don't give police cautions to people to who don't do anything wrong. And they wouldn't accept them, either (from the article, it seems you need to accept the caution). So perhaps he was caught browsing kid porn or something and they decided not to bring charges to the court but caution him instead.

We have police cautions in Poland but they are for misdemeanors only. They don't take down any notes but you can still refuse to be cautioned and drag it to the court if you insist. To me, it simply looks like it was a minor offence, his first one, he didn't claim to be innocent and accepted the caution, so they didn't take him to the court but let him off with that caution instead. But I'm just guessing.

 

OK, but what's the difference between receiving a caution versus being formally charged other than not having to show up in court? Do you avoid a fine or something? Basically I'm asking why someone would accept a caution if the punishment for his action was the exact same thing anyway. Furthermore, if there is a reduced punishment, how do you decide who gets cautioned and who gets a formal citation? You said no felonies receive cautions, but there must be some standard applied. Is it officer judgement? Plus, what does the judicial system get out of this? I suppose that there must be some give and take here. Do you have to perform some type of community service to get it expunged from your record or something like that?

Finally, I still don't see how you can find out if someone is accessing kiddie porn. I mean, AFAIK, there aren't magazines sitting around bookstores that have kiddie porn, as it's illegal, so you can't just go to a shopping mall and buy this stuff. The only logical way he could access kiddie porn is via the internet, and then, how would he be caught? Unless he did something stupid, like access it at his place of work, or at a public library or something. I just don't see how he would have been caught if he accessed the site from his home computer.

 

@Aldeth A caution is a slap on the wrist 'Don't do it again, or we'll come down on you like a tonne of bricks'

A buddy of mine got a caution for stealing a cactus from a garden when drunk.

 

In Poland, cautions aren't for felonies and even for any kind of crime. Misdemeanors aren't crimes. It's traffic violations, littering, drinking in public, that kind of thing. Perhaps if you do something that falls under the right paragraph in the criminal code but isn't serious enough to warrant proper prosecution, because, after all, there is some prosecutorial discretion. The give and take is probably a correction effect. First offenders getting slapped on their wrists etc. Well, like Daie puts it.

In his case, it probably means that they caught him looking for kiddie porn and watching it, but without making contact with kids or taking photos or something. Maybe he wasn't a part of any paedophile circle but a curious surfer. Who knows. At any rate, they must have found him somehow, so there must have been some traces leading to his computer from elsewhere unless he was caught red-handed.

 

@Aldeth a caution is usually for a first offence and to save money and paperwork as cynical as that sounds. He's not accused of accessing but storing images of child pornography and as such is immediately placed on the sex offender register. IMO this is not enough as an abused child I feel very strongly about any form of child abuse and think sex offenders should be castrated or neutered (in the case of a woman) and no hormone therapy to replace the natural lack.

 

We had that system in Poland before it was changed so that it would require a court verdict to declare someone an offender. The police can still caution you in very minor matters and policemen or the prosecutor can always decide not to bring charges against you but it's pretty informal. It's clear the guy had to accept the caution, so it's not like he was declared guilty by the police without his own full consent, but in Poland that was considered not enough and we now need a court verdict for a conditional halt to prosecuting a crime and the offender is brought to trial if he violates the conditions. It must be consensual and his guilt must be apparent, so as to avoid innocent people ending up declaring guilty in a short trial that doesn't meet all the expectations of a normal one that ends in a proper conviction or acquittal.

 

OK, now I get it. I think the initial problem was with terminologies. Although you or someone else has mentioned this in the past regarding misdemeanors in most European countries, in the U.S. misdemeanors ARE crimes. The things you list as misdemeanors (like a traffic violation that you get a ticket for) are referred to as a "summary offense". The difference between misdemeanor and felony is while they are both criminal offenses and crimes, felonies are worse. Misdemeanors usually involve some damage or harm coming to another person; summary offenses don't; and felonies usually involve significant harm to another individual. I suppose examples would help here.

If you get into a bar fight, you'll most likely be cited for disorderly conduct - a misdemeanor. However, if you get into a bar fight and beat up the guy bad enough that he has to go to a hospital, you'll most likely be cited for assault, which is a felony.

Or, for example possessing illegal drugs is a misdemeanor, while selling illegal drugs is a felony.

As I think more about this, I do think that the U.S. has a system like cautions, only we don't call them that. If you are guilty of a crime but are a first time offender, you can get probation. The length of probation is usually the equivalent of what the normal prison sentence is, except that you don't actually go to prison. You go home and live your life just like if you never committed the crime. Here's the catch though - if you commit another crime while on probation, you can be sentenced to prison, and whatever time you had left on your probation is added on to whatever sentence you received.

 

I think I agree with chevalier's logic in his first post. I'd add to that my opinion that child sex offenders are clearly mentally unhinged so would make useless teachers anyway, even if they were completely reformed, so no way should they be working in those jobs.

 

@Aldeth: In the Polish law, it's a "wykroczenie" (lit. misstep, a step against the norms), roughly misdemeanor, if you can't get more than a month for it (or a fine equivalent). Anything more and it's "przestępstwo", which is either "występek" (lit. the act of standing out, standing against the norms), roughly the standard crime, or "zbrodnia" if it's no less than 3 years in prison ("zbrodnia" literally translates as "crime", although felony is more accurate when comparing with the Anglo-Saxon law). This way, rape was in the middle category ("występek", crime) and not in the top category ("zbrodnia", felony), because the punishment was 1-10 years, so rape was a lower form of crime than forging money. AFAIK it's in the highest category now after the recent cracking down on sex offenders. Child molestation is in the lower category of crimes (you can get less than 3 years but it's more than a misdemeanor).

Edit:

****. Rape is still not in the highest category. It's 2-12 now. Gang rape is 3-15, which is in there (previously, it was 2-12, so it wasn't there) and especially cruel rape is 5-15. 15's come from the fact you can't get more than 15 for one crime unless you get 25 or life. At least, sex offenders against children can never get it off their record and it's much easier to ban them from work with children, even permanently. Sex offenders with perverted sex drives can be locked and/or forcibly medicated if the perversion was in relation with the crime.

[ January 13, 2006, 00:20: Message edited by: chevalier ]

 

A little more information

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4608176.stm

The minister (Kim Howells) was advised that the man in question did not represent on ongoing threat to children. Ministers are not allowed to automatically bar someone who had accepted a caution from the police, but treats each on a case-by-case basis, presumably taking advice from professional sources. Downing Street gave the example of someone viewing pornography on the internet who accidentally accessed banned images of children. They would still get a police caution.

I've no idea how possible/likely it is to "accidently" do this. After the w0nderland case, I had imagined that the people who perpetrate such hideous crimes tend to be very selctive about who they let on to their websites. Mind you, I've also heard of people getting cautions for having pictures of their own children in the bath. Who knows what constitutes a "banned" image of a child.

Darkstrider
According to the Q&A on the BBC website it is for accessing, not storing images. He denied doing so intentionally and presumably there was not enough evidence to determine otherwise.

Aldeth
It's easy enough to find out what someone has "accessed" If you go to the "temporary internet files" directory (Documents and Settings\User Name\Local Settings) it stores every gif/jpeg or other picture or movie file that appears on an internet page, as well as the URLs. You can't actually open these from this directory, but you can move them to another and open them from there.
However, I guess you'd need to be suspicious of someone to bother in the first place, though it might be standard procedure in some companies.

 

I understand that viewing hideous sites leads to seeking more and stronger stimuli but that thing borders on cautioning people for accidentally loading a site or image.

Cautioning for having pictures of own children in the bath sounds extreme. I don't advocate the idea of taking and storing such pictures but people often take and store them without a pornographic intent.

And yeah, real kiddie porn isn't something you find in google, so something is still fishy on the guy's side.

 

If a sufficient number of students thought this guy was a risk - then he should probably be removed. Other than that there doesn't seem much need - it's the students who would be affected here after all.

(and note: NOT the parent's choice. Parents tend to get a bit hysterical in these situations without knowing the facts - and it's the students who actually know this guy and are taking the risk)

 

That's what my point was, although I admit I didn't state it explicitly. I know it's certainly possible to access images of pictures you may have downloaded, but unless you had some suspicion in the first place, it would be extremely unlikely that this would be requested. Since 99% of the people don't do stuff like this, unless there's a need no one would bother to look.

I do agree that baby pictures seem a bit extreme. I know a lot of people (myself included) whose parents have pictures of them in the bath at a very young age. They are certainly not taken for any pornographic purpose, and no one is "getting off" on them. I still think however, that it is possible, although not likely to inadvertently access a child pornography site. I'm sure there's some standard porn sites that have like to child porn sites, and despite what you may think of people who view standard porn, it completely legal if you're over 18.

 

Aldeth,

How are defining "downloaded?" Just having it appear in your internet browser will save it to temp internet files. You don't need to click "save picture as" or "download". Looking at porn is generally banned in the workplace (or at least where I have worked) and I'm guessing most such sites will be blocked by the system. If he was reported for looking at porn at work, then his computer would be checked. There was a local case with an ambulance driver and a company computer which went somewhere along those lines. (Although in his case he specifically went after the kiddie porn in a single "moment of madness" which was accepted by the court)

 

Yes, I understand that your computer makes temp files as well. As I stated in my earlier post though, unless he was so stupid to attempt to access these pictures at a workplace or public location - and like you said most such sites would be blocked anyway - then there would be no reason to check. If you ARE stupid enough to look at porn (of any type) at work, then you can expect to be fired, and likely deserve whatever else happens to you.

 

Aik, don't you think parents have more experience? And are still able to assess the situation more accurately even if they get a little bit hysterical? Students know the teacher on the daily basis but they don't always know what goes on between the teacher and each single one of them. Plus, you can get in trouble if you mess with a teacher.

 

Chev: Really, in a lot of cases I'm doubtful whether a lot of parent's 'experience' counts for anything - lots of parents are ignorant. I'm specifically thinking of two cases here:
1) I'm not sure how long ago this was (it might have been quite a while, come to think of it) - there was a boy at some school in America who had AIDS. Other kid's parents found out about this and rose up a huge fuss about it - calling for the kid to be kicked out of the school in case their kids could catch it - when really the risk was pretty much zilch.

2) This case is a lot more relevant. When I was in year 8 my English teacher was acused of being a paedophile by a girl's mother, and had to stop teaching until the case had gone through court. The truth of the matter was that the girl had written fantasies about the teacher in her diary, which the mother had read (what a bitch - what kind of parents go around reading their child's diaries...?).

Two cases of irrational parents - I think if you fuse them together, you have what might happen if the parents get involved here: protests and such ruining this guy's career without them actually paying any attention to the facts of what is going on, just going off with conclusions come about by thoughtless fear.

If the students were asked - in a petition or vote or whatever - whether they have reason to suspect that this guy would be harmful to them, that would give a much better indication to this guy's actual level of threat without the ignorant hysterical parents. If they're willing to forgive him of his looking-at-child-porn, I'd say everyone else should be too - it's their risk, let them decide whether they want to take it or not.