THE actor and UNICEF representative Roger Moore yesterday gave details of an incident in his own childhood which had made him aware of the enormity of child sexual abuse.
Mr Moore alluded earlier this week to an incident from his past he had been unable to even mention for years afterwards. Yesterday he recounted the incident, which, though comparatively trivial, he admitted, had given him a small insight into the suffering of abused children.
The event happened when he was eight, and a cub scout. "My friend and I had pitched our tent on Wimbledon Common," he said. "A man there, who I would call a member of the `raincoat brigade', told me I had nice knees. Later he made a comment about a different part of my an anatomy I knew what he meant."
I rolled over off the log I was sitting on and went off fishing for tiddlers. When we came back he had eaten all our sandwiches, Moore told journalists. "Perhaps that is what he was after in the first place . . . It was nothing very serious, but it was eight years later, when I was 16, before I could mention it to my mother."
In the proceedings proper of the congress, Moore warned a session on the media treatment of children that the line between children and adults, "between sexually ready and way too young", had become blurred.
He mentioned a British newspaper which showed its outrage at the recruitment of a 12 year old girl as a model for "adult" work, including fashion, by publishing a large picture of the girl on its front page with the headline "Who on earth would allow a child of 12 to pose like this?"
A Swedish human rights activist and journalist, Mr Thomas Hammaarberg, said UNICEF should review the image of children in many of its press releases and publications. The image of children as perpetually victims was harmful, and did not further the cause of children's rights.
The overwhelming demand across the congress's various sessions yesterday was for international joint action against those who traffic in children for sexual purposes. Numerous speakers stressed that police forces and government departments must work together to stop paedophiles and others who exploit children.
Mr Ray Wyre, a British psychologist and criminologist, said:"Why should a teacher dismissed from schools in England be teaching in Bangkok? Or another man who was dismissed for his activities turn up again as a teacher in New Zealand? We must have procedures that work across the world."
. Irish representatives at the congress were prominent again yesterday, with Ms Muireann O Briain acting as rapporteur for the session on law reform and Mr Patrick Hennessy of the European Commission on the panel for the sex tourism session. Irish representatives include Senator Mary Henry; the Minister for Children, Mr Austin Currie; Mr Eoin Ryan TD, Mr Chris Flood TD and Ms Breda Moynihan Cronin TD; and Ms Mary Banotti MEP.