One of the most chilling aspects of the Suffolk-based internet paedophile case is 
that Timothy Cox looks so normal. In fact, he seems a nice looking, ordinary guy from this pic.
As we know, he was an evil, cunning and vile abuser of children who distributed tens of thousands of indecent images of children, some of them just babies.
And I wonder about those 31 children now in care after British police smashed the paedophile ring, operating in 35 countries, being abused via the web. How long would the horrific abuse continued if they had not been rescued? How many others are suffering the same terrifying fate?
Most worryingly, of the 700 suspects identified worldwide as members of Cox’s chat room, 200 live in Britain and half of those suspects, including teachers and others in positions of trust or with access to children, have already been arrested, charged or convicted. The other 100 are under police investigation. Why were they not weeded out beforehand?
I have just checked whether all the recommendations of the 2004 Bichard report following the murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman have been met in full. Sir Richard Bichard expressed concerns in March, 2005 that there was still a “great deal to be done” in implementing his two main recommendations for the introduction of a national IT intelligence system and the barring system for those working with children were “by no means guaranteed”. He warned:
“If the national intelligence system and the barring scheme are not in place by 2007 then we will still have fallen seriously short.”
I discovered that this was indeed the case, the government has fallen very “seriously short”. We have to wait until 2010 for the database to be available at a cost of £367 million – six years after the recommendation was made. In the meantime, how many paedophiles will continue to slip the net?
So the answer to my question about how to spot a paedophile is that it is not easy as they can be found in all professions at all levels of society, even holding powerful positions in the community, according to the NSPCC.
This case was a great piece of detective work. It shows that the best way to smash these vile child internet porno chatrooms is to pretend to be one of them and catch them out at their own game. Otherwise, these ordinary looking people with secret depravities will continue to get away with it.
It is frightening how ‘normal’ they look. A guy I used to go to school with has just been done for ‘engaging in a sex act’ with three children present. Your statistics there are truly shocking.
Welcome back, Ellee. What a strong post. Evil-doers usually do look “normal” – that’s how they get away with it for so long. Horrifying to learn that it will take so long to implement the recommendations post-Soham.
On the other hand, be very careful and wary with such research — remember Pete Townsend’s frightening tale.
Ian
I don’t know about paedophiles, but when I was doing Home Office jailer duties as a police officer during the prison strike in the ’80s we were taking remand prisoners in ordinary police cells. I was struck by the amount of unlikely characters suspected of the most unbelievable offences – uncle Remus types involved in major drug smuggling and suchlike, young hip and trendies involved in child-abuse rings. I thought I had a pretty good nose for coppering but that period really opened my eyes.
PS, good to have you back, Ellee. I hope you had a lovely trip.
The simple answer to your question at the top is that you can’t tell a paedophile. That’s what makes them so scary. They can live or work anywhere.
Welcome back, Ellee.
Thanks everyone, it’s great to be back blogging again. I just wonder how these people can sleep at night after inflicting so much pain on innocent young people.
It’s true for all types of nasty people. My son was visiting his new school open evening and they had a psychology experiment.
They had a number of photos of criminals and innocent people and asked participants to determine who were the criminals – overall the guesses were no better than chance.
Ellee, it’s been a while hasn’t it? But I am feeling my way towards a return to blogging. I have been much distracted by various forms of unpleasantness of late.
Paedophiles are, as others have rightly observed impossible to distinguish from other people. Mores the pity. I wish it were otherwise.
The Police are certainly to be congratulated on the latest arrests.While I support the Police in using using entrapment procedures and close mintoring of the web, we also need strict measures in place to prevent possible abuses of power by the Police in catching paedophiles.Already we are all under suspicion as a result of the surveillance and filtering systems our governments have installed on the Internet.
These “rings” are spread throughout society from the “ordinary” worker through to judges and politicians. Its like a cancer.
Our Aboriginal communities are suffering the same fate. Interesting to note that a federal minister for aboriginal affairs in the labor party was convicted of such activity a few years ago, and recently the state minister for aboriginal affairs was convicted as well.. A link perhaps or just coincidence?
IT, how wonderful to hear from you after so long. Newmania and I were really very worried about your silence.
It’s shocking to hear how these peadophiles move about our society so freely, as Lina and Simon demonstrate in their comments.
My heart goes out to those children. God only knows what emotional suffering the may have to endure for the rest of their lives.
Incidentally, welcome back, I’ve missed your challenging posts 🙂
I think your brothers could do a lot worse that to marry Polish girls, I thought they were very pretty. Sadly, I was not in one place long enough to get to know any 😉
Ellee I agree about paedophiles and what makes it potentially worse and this goes for other kinds of crimes as well is that we suspect every person of being a paedophile or murderer. Actually of course there si a tiny chance of them being such- just take 100 and divide it by 60 million and there is the chance- but the normal looking face reinforces the idea that every stranger is a danger- which means that kids don’t play out in the road anymore and actually creates other problems like obesity- its a big issue.
Good to see you again, Istanbul Tory – I do hope that you haven’t been through too much trauma but I have an inkling that you’re being the model of stoic understatement. Whatever – best wishes to you.
Back on topic:
What is most alarming about paedophilia is its growing acceptance – that the police are now cautioning men who download child porn and that Pete Townsend appears to have been forgiven his ‘transgression’. Now, whilst in no way do I endorse the use of the word ‘nigger’ it appears ( from the treatment of Big Brother contestants) that racialism is our one remaining taboo – could this be because it is at the heart of the liberal raison detr’e rather than because it is offensive to black people ?
I posit that there are greater evils than racialism and child abuse is one of them – so to is the abuse of old people in its many forms, especially street muggings.
I completely agree with Elecro-kev and cannot read the post because the subject makes me so mad. Peadophilia is still the most taboo subject and is not discussed. No it’s not. You get a case of a neighbour who’s the mother of an abused child, abused by the childs father, and no-one wants to know. No-one wants to be ‘involved’. And if that wasn’t bad enough you get the neighbours who shout at her in the street that she’s a liar and a bitch because he’s such a nice man. The child is traumatised and left bruised and bleeding and she’s had to turn to Social Services but she’s ostracised in the community because he’s ‘such a nice man’.
And if he’d called a coloured neighbour a nigger they’d all dislike him.
E-K,the kind of men (do women also view child porn sites?) who take part in these activities are sick, it is scary to think that our sentencing is getting soft on this as an easy option to deal with the huge number of cases. I agree with your anger about the mistreatment of elderly people too, they are vulnerable and abused in many situations too. There’s certainly no comparison with these abuses and the racism you mention.
Anon, the saddest thing is for a victim who has nobody to turn to who will believe him/her, especially if the abuser is someone known to the family, which can often be the case.