We should be as concerned about harsh physical abuse of children as we are about sexual abuse, according to Mr Tony Morrison, a consultant working with sex offenders.
Mr Morrison was speaking at a conference of the National Organisation for the Treatment of Offenders in Dublin City University. He told The Irish Times there was an important connection between early childhood experience of physical abuse and later aggression and sexually abusive behaviour. "Physical abuse is easily as important as sexual abuse in this," he said.
An important child protection goal should be a total ban on the corporal punishment of children. Since Sweden introduced such a ban there had been a decrease in the number of teenagers charged with rape and in the number of children in long-term care. "Only one child in Sweden has been killed at the hands of its parents during this time, out of a population of eight million," he said. "In the UK the pro-rata equivalent over the same period has been 150 children's deaths at the hands of their parents. We should be as concerned with harsh physical abuse as we are now with child sex abuse."
The organisation's chairman, Mr Roger Kennington, stressed the need to work with sex offenders to protect potential victims.
While good treatment reduces recidivism, even the best treatment will not work with some offenders, so we also need good risk management plans, he said.
He denounced the hypocrisy of certain newspapers who "publish pictures of young girls just days after their 16th birthday for middle-aged men to slobber over, and, at the same time, run campaigns allegedly aimed at protecting the young from sexual exploitation".
Ms Olive Travers, senior clinical psychologist with the North Western Health Board, who runs the only health board-sponsored treatment programme for sex offenders, said such programmes were needed in the other health board areas.
The programme was set up in 1986, following an increase in the number of referrals to the board relating to child sex abuse. It has recently started to work with the Probation and Welfare Service in relation to adolescent perpetrators of sexual abuse.
A 10-year follow-up of 100 men who had attended the programme indicated a 3 per cent reoffending rate, she said.
While treatment for offenders within prison was necessary, she pointed out that the majority of offenders never go to prison, and there was a great need for treatment for them in the community.