Alfred Goldberg

system, where non-sexualised images, e.g. from clothes ads or even from nudist beaches get the green light, erotic posing counts as amber, and material focusing on genitals or actual acts of child abuse gets the red light. “We train the patient to move only in the green area,” Ahlers told the paper. “Amber means: Caution! Potential danger for children and for myself! Risky behaviour on the verge of problematic behaviour!” There is an interesting philosophical dilemma here, considering one observation reported in Bering’s book that sexual abuse of children appears to have diminished in places where child pornography was briefly legally available. The case for punishing people found with such material on their computers is, of course, that children are harmed during the production of the images, often with the financial support of the end-user. If, however, the known paedophiles who have sought professional help were to be given computer-animated material, which was produced without harming any children at all, should that still be illegal? Even child-like robots have recently been proposed as a therapy help for paedophiles. Hard scientific data would be needed to establish whether any such tool can in fact contribute to child protection. The current demonisation of people with this particular orientation makes it practically impossible to get this kind of data. Even under less hostile conditions, all research and treatment attempts will rely on those individuals willing to participate. There may be a hard core who would remain inaccessible under any circumstances. In the UK, recent changes to the law championed by the mass-market newspapers served to ostracise paedophiles even further and make their resocialisation virtually impossible. Changes in the opposite direction would be needed and, given the current media frenzy, that would be a suicide mission unlikely to be undertaken by any government. The road to a rational, evidence-based policy offering people with paraphilias help instead of blanket condemnation based on a presumption of guilt will be a long one.