Mob rule is a result of ear- based, prejudiced ignorance, writes Marie Keenan.
I am concerned at what I see happening in Ireland in relation to the housing of convicted sex offenders. Increasingly these men are run out of their homes, and this week in Drogheda we saw a local community prevent a man and his young family from taking possession of their new home.
Is this mob rule or understandable genuine fear on the part of a community? What can be done to remedy the situation?
Ignorance breeds contempt, and as a society we are deeply ignorant of the issues affecting sexual offending and sexual offenders. We are no longer in denial about the extent of sexual abuse, nor are we ignorant of the effects of such abuse which victims have brought to our reluctant attention.
But we act as though we know all about "paedophiles" and "perverts", and our fear-based, prejudiced ignorance tells us that they are all the same, are likely to reoffend and that nobody is safe when a sex offender is around.
Part of the blame for such popular misperception must lie with the psychological and psychiatric professions and the media. They have contributed to the creation of this monster - "the mob", referred to occasionally by Myles Na gCopaleen as "the plain people of Ireland" - by scaring decent people half to death with brutalising horror stories presented as the "norm", and descriptions of sexual offenders as men separated from all other people by psychiatric classifications that have no meaning in fact.
Well-researched studies now demonstrate the heterogeneity of sex offenders, the wide variation of risks posed and the improvements in treatment approaches that reduce offending.
Responsibility must be placed right back on the well-paid shoulders of the new power elite within the psychological, psychiatric and media professions to remedy this situation of ignorance by bringing the public well-grounded, balanced and honest information, not opinion and agenda-setting spin masquerading as knowledge.
The said professions have a lot to answer for, and we cannot walk away as though the mob has nothing to do with us. We know that misperceived ideas lead to one-dimensional perception which in turn structures reality. If the message conveyed is that everyone guilty of a sex offence is forever dangerous, we are, for our own or some other gain, setting the people of Ireland up. In this regard Fine Gael with its one-upmanship is as guilty as Sinn Féin, which is trying to capitalise on the fears and prejudices of the people in Maple Drive.
The result is a thinly veiled contempt for a man who has erred, with repercussions for his innocent partner and children.
Who is the victim here? In the Ireland of the 21st century people who have committed a sex offence cannot secure employment for fear of the mob and now they have no place to lay their troubled heads.
In all situations of oppression there are victims, perpetrators and bystanders, and I see a lot of bystanders when it comes to speaking up for someone who has done wrong, regrets this situation, pays a debt to society, lives with genuine remorse and tries to pick up the pieces of a shattered life, but is prohibited from doing so by the mob.
Bystanders, wake up! Abuses of human rights and human dignity cannot take place without your implicit agreement.
The usual Irish excuse for silence and bystanding, "We did not know", is pitifully weak when children cannot be allowed live in peace with their parents in a new home, even if at one time one parent did something bad, very bad, the reasons for which only he knows and the inner world of shame and guilt he wears like a second skin.
It may come as a surprise that many perpetrators who have committed a sexual offence feel deep remorse for the pain they have caused. Acknowledging this is in no way meant to undermine or to disqualify the pain and trauma that many victims of sexual assaults live with, too. For many of the participants in these stories of human tragedy the choice to live or die balances finely on a knife-edge. In such circumstances tolerance rather than prejudice goes a long way.
This brings us finally to the question of what future action the Department of Justice can take. In addition to the use of custodial options, how about mandated treatment and community service orders for first offences so that sex offenders can give something back to the community?
How about restorative justice programmes to encourage reparation and facing the victim? What about the use of severe sentences including life sentences for any offences committed subsequent to treatment?
In any case, the continuation of inaction and ignorance should be tolerated no longer.
Marie Keenan is a psychotherapist and a lecturer at the department of social policy and social work in University College Dublin