Vancouver Province
for July 16, 1999

I don’t suppose that this will be the most popular article I’ve written and that covers a lot of ground.

Society’s attitude towards mental illness has always been out of date. We congratulate ourselves on our change of attitudes but that’s because we judge ourselves by pretty tame standards.

Not so many years ago we threw epileptics into asylums – indeed it wasn’t all that long ago that the upper classes of London used to amuse themselves by going to the Bedlam Asylum on London’s south bank. It was great sport – better than the monkey house at the zoo. When I practiced law in the 60s and 70s the Supreme Court Rules about the mentally ill were called the lunacy rules and a person so adjudged under these rules was a lunatic. This word, from the same derivative as lunar, was applied even to people whose illness was understood by medicine though not by society at large.

It’s only in the last decade – no more – that we have begun to understand bi-polar disorders such as schizophrenia. Even the most gentle and liberal of people use the word schizophrenic, wrongly and hurtfully, as synonymous with two faced, or having a split personality. This isn’t political correctness we’re talking about here – to use the word schizophrenic as society does is not only as hurtful as words like "gimp" or "cripple" are to physically challenged people it’s grossly inaccurate.

Here’s the tough part, folks. Pedophilia is also a mental illness. And it is a mental illness that sometimes can be controlled if not cured – sometimes it’s incurable. It’s as often a heterosexual illness as a homosexual one. Clifford Robert Olson is a heterosexual offender. And we must wrestle with the difficulties this imposes.

No person, at some time in their lives, decides to be a pedophile. People do not wake up one morning and decide to molest young children.

We rightly regard the molestation of children as perhaps the most grave offence known to society. To deprive children of their innocence, to scar them for life is a heinous offence. But it is, for the most part, done by people who know better, often come from the best of backgrounds yet can’t stop themselves.

It’s easy to pooh pooh that last statement but as an untreated alcoholic or narcotics addict cannot resist a drink or a snort, neither can the pervert curtail his awful appetite.

This column is not a plea on behalf of pedophiles – though such a thing ought to be acceptable in a modern society – but a plea for society itself. For we are going about the problem entirely the wrong way.

Think of this for a moment. Because the child sex offender knows that if he is caught a long prison sentence awaits him to say nothing of the disgrace he brings to family and friends, not only is there no incentive for him to seek help there is a huge disincentive. The doctor must, by law report him so he knows that the call to the doctor’s office means going to jail.

As we know from the Oates case in the Cariboo, where a released offender has an entire community up in arms, the matter doesn’t end after the offender is sent to jail.

What society seems to demand in these cases is not only isolation of the offender (which is understandable) but revenge. What it gets, then, is an offender, embittered after imprisonment, who will be hounded from any community that hears of his past.

What is, then, the starting point?

First we must recognize that the safety of all children is paramount. Second we must understand to give that any meaning we must recognize pedophilia as the illness it is and treat it accordingly.

Psychiatry can do a lot by way of sorting out the curable from the incurable. Those who are incurable can only be permitted to return to society under circumstances of the strictest surveillance, electronic and otherwise and only if they are not permitted to work or indeed be present in areas where there are children. Those who are curable must be given treatment.

The net effect of dealing with pedophilia hysterically (however understandable) simply drives all pedophiles to better stratagems against detection including killing their victims.

All pedophiles are not alike any more than all schizophrenics are alike. There are those who can be cured, those who can’t; those who can be helped and those who can’t.

If we are truly interested in protecting our children we must recognize these truths and act accordingly.