Experts warn there is no cure for paedophiles ‘predatory ways’

Victims groups are calling for urgent moves to keep serial paedophiles such as child-killer Michael Guider locked up as experts warn there is no “cure” for their predatory ways.

Victims groups are calling for urgent moves to keep serial paedophiles such as child-killer Michael Guider locked up as experts warn there is no “cure” for their predatory ways.

“Given the chance to reoffend they will,’’ criminal psychologist Tim Watson-Munro said on Wednesday of child sex offenders.

The state is seeking a one-year Continuing Detention Order for Guider but Bravehearts founder Hetty Johnston has called on the NSW Government to extend CDOs to include life in jail. The longest they can extend a sentence currently is five years.

Michael Guider killed nine-year-old Sydney girl Samantha Knight. Picture: Supplied

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So-called chemical castration only works for a minority of paedophiles and most stop taking the anti-libidinal drugs when they are released from jail. Not even the prison system’s sex offender courses CUBIT (Custody based Intensive Treatment) have been shown to stop recidivism.

Former babysitter and gardener Guider, 69, has done every course behind bars from poetry writing and small engine repairs to CUBIT but still poses a risk of reoffending against children, according to the State of NSW which is seeking to keep him locked up when his sentence ends on June 6.

Guider is a self-confessed paedophile who was serving a sentence for 68 sex offences against 14 girls and boys when he confessed to the manslaughter of Bondi schoolgirl Samantha Knight who disappeared aged nine in 1986.

He said he had given her the tranquilliser Normison so he could abuse her but she died of an overdose.

The courts have repeatedly been told that paedophiles cannot be “cured”.

Former Bega Cheese boss Maurice Van Ryn, 63, who is serving at least 14 years and six months for sexually assaulting 10 girls and boys, has been diagnosed with pedophilic disorder. “There is no cure for this disorder,” neuropsychologist Dr Donald Rowe told the District Court when Van Ryn was sentenced.

Convicted paedophile Maurice Van Ryn.

Ms Johnston said she toyed with the idea of an island community where child sex offenders could be kept away from children under strict security but in the meantime, judges should be able to jail paedophiles for life.

“I think continuing detention orders for life are the answer if they are properly applied,” Ms Johnston said.

A 2016 study of CUBIT by the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research found “no evidence” it reduced sexual or violent reoffending because many prisoners did the course only to get parole.

The study found 11.7 per cent of offenders who did the course reoffended within five years compared to 12.1 per cent who did not do the course.