Family Support for Victims of Paedophiles - that's who! Ah yes - paedophiles - I've read about them in the news. They're child molesters aren't they? NO, THEY ARE NOT ORDINARY CHILD MOLESTERS!

When "Why?" (confusion) turns into "Why?" (pain), then turns into "Why"? (anger) there is a very real risk of taking the law into your own hands.

You are not above the law. That's very important to understand. The alleged abuser has every right to protect him/herself - don't forget that a person has the right to presumed innocent until proven guilty, and it's a long way between a child's disclosure, the police investigation, charges being laid, the committal process, the trial and sentencing. You place your children at risk by not seeking help and advice in how to handle the mix of feelings that the betrayal of someone you loved can evoke. And there is no betrayal than that of sexually abusing a child over a long period of time.

As parents of children who have been sexually abused by paedophiles try and come to grips with the roller-coaster ride of emotional ups and downs, there is the very real concern that they might go into "overload" if they continue to try and grapple with the problem on their own. Give us a call. Even if you are interstate it's only a $3 in the evening and it could damage your case if the abuser obtains a restraining order against you: because you can rest assured that the paedophile will try his very best to make you break that order - it's part of the way the way a paedophile operates!

That's why the phone service is in place. It isn't INSTEAD OF, it's AS WELL AS all the other help that is available within the community in which you live. When you ring, you will be talking with people who understand this particular phenomenon - paedophile activity is not your average hit and run child molestation. When a paedophile seeks out your child and infiltrates your family they are in it for the long haul.

You will have all sorts of questions, not the least of which is doubt as to whether or not your child is telling the truth when the sexual abuse appears to have been happening over a long period ... maybe months .... or more often than not, even years. The professional papers which the Australian Institute of Criminology kindly allowed us to reproduce on Pedorid, explains many of these questions, because it is these very questions which are of concern to juries when coming to a decision as to whether a case against a pedophile has been proven beyond "reasonable doubt": how can a child both love and hate the abuser at the same time?

It is very common to find defence lawyers argue that a child "consented" and that, over a long period of time was even "complicit" in allowing the abuse to continue by remaining silent.....but now I'm getting into another area of FSVP's involvement and concern - LOBBYING. What FSVP in the Australian Capital Territory placed on record in its submission to the ACT Law Reform Committee was the need to place the rights of children on record in plain English to all juries. At the moment the rights of children to protection are "assumed" to such a degree that those very rights no longer exist. Paedophiles know the law - they have to - they break it consistently from the moment their deviant fantasies become reality and they sexually abuse their first victim.

The law is not dynamic in the area of child sexual abuse and those with the ability to educate and to encourage public aware are not doing so.

Lobbying on the issue of child sexual abuse and against paedophiles, is a bit like being a Union Delegate with a Log of Claims! Not all will be successful and many will be seen to be unrealistic!

Lobbying for recognition of a problem. Lobbying for changes. All the hard slog hours put into a lengthy submission such as ours avail us nothing if we don't have public support.

This web site has been placed on the Internet as a means of encouraging public awareness and engaging public support for better child protection. We may have the best laws in Australia here in the Australian Capital Territory, but we have the lowest rate of convictions for paedophiles. Cases which were considered "Dead Certs" ended with the alleged abuser being given a Not Guilty verdict and allowed back into our community. So, whom do we lobby and why and where and when.

"When" - that's easy - you just don't pick a time - you just keep on fighting to be heard on the issue of child rights and child sexual abuse.

"Why" - that' easy too because the laws simply are not enough to secure convictions. When a man who has a history of unpaid parking fines can be sent to jail, and a man who has a history of sexually abusing young children is released on a not guilty verdict, then we clearly have something wrong with our system of justice.

Again, multiple victims/class action, enabling co-counsel to assist the Deputy Crown Prosecutor (generally overloaded with cases)...there are many areas where improvements can be made without treading on anyone's toes or without assailing anyone's rights.

"Where" - locally and nationally. Each State and Territory has its own laws but if those laws are in conflict with Commonwealth law, then commonwealth law takes precedence. In other words, simply put, the law of the land over-rides any inconsistency which might appear in the law of a State or Territory. In many areas of law and order, especially and most recently the Gun Laws, consensus and agreement is encouraged at the highest level. So, why, in the area of child protection is there such a major problem? Every State and Territory should be encouraging an all out offensive against child pornography and child paedophiles.

Lobbying for change in some areas is especially difficult.

Isn't that a bit drastic? I thought so too, when I first wrote it, but then I remembered that what we are fighting FOR is child rights and what we are fighting AGAINST is the crime that is Paedophile Activity as well as raising Australian communities out of their apathy and denial.

How did you feel when Bell received his sentence as the paedophile he was proven to be? Did you think that the System works when put to the test? How wrong you are and how easily you can be lulled into believing that the fight against paedophile activity can be won by placing one perpetrator behind bars. You may rest assured that for every paedophile serving time in prison, there are hundreds, if not thousands, who are at this very minute either searching for their next victim, assaulting the existing one, or are in the process of covering their tracks the previous child victim having lost its sexual appeal and possible disclosure being imminent.

How many children must suffer the indignity of sexual abuse at the hands of adults whilst those in positions of power can only come up with lowering the age of consent to 12! This does not come anywhere close to solving the problem, and neither does establishing CRIMTRAC when the data already collected can be corrupted by that from Western Australia because of that State's refusal to co-operate in co-ordinating an offensive against paedophile activity which stretches across the country.

You can duplicate this over and over again, but the result is the same - word spreads faster, discussion is broader and the Government might be able to encourage Australian communities everywhere to understand that what we are facing is a crime wave of unprecedented evil and unparalleled size.

I fail to see why the country's greatest resource - it's people - are constantly sold short. This crime of Paedophile Activity has not sprung up overnight: it has evolved over many decades and, encouraged by the boom years of the 1980s and fast-moving technology together with ever-diminishing distance because of the Internet, still remains (generally) unrecognised and unchecked.

We, the Australian people, are being asked to accept multiculturalism, gay and lesbian rights, women's rights and lots more - so why not the rights of paedophiles to molest our children free from the fear of punishment through the courts? Ridiculous, you say? It's not nearly as improbable as you think it is. For as long as Australians close their eyes and ears to what is going on because it is "distasteful" to think that young children are being sought out for planned sexual abuse, their families carefully groomed and their trust gained and violated within the span of a decade (more or less, depending on how deep in denial the family is in regard to the matter of sex education which affects the length of time it takes for a child to disclose the abuse), only to find that having gone through the gruelling process of disclosure, police investigation and trial, that a jury releases the accused abuser back into our community on "technicalities" and laws which sever and dismember the known and, often, predictable behaviour patterns of paedophiles and place on the Statutes the two most directly opposite yet most clearly related crimes - "Possession of Pornography" and the "Act of sexually abusing a minor" - what chance do families and children have of being protected? All the interconnecting information which explains the careful infiltration of the family, the opportunity carefully sought, where the motive began already with the possession of pornography - all these are ignored or deemed "inadmissible evidence" WHY? Why are Australians allowing this kind of thing to keep on keeping on? Is this our Australian tradition - apathy? I don't believe it is.

We need to get more than Stranger Danger into our schools and our community health clinics. We need to be able to get out to the far corners of this wonderful land of ours a paedophilia public awareness campaign that people can relate to. Who better to put such a campaign together than those who have been the secondary victims of the crime of Paedophile Activity - the families.