Hetty Johnston: Keep child sex offenders locked up to keep our kids safe
Children should be protected from predators. When convicted child sex offenders like Michael Guider reach the end of their sentence, we have to do more to make sure they do not re-offend,, founder of the Bravehearts Foundation, Hetty Johnston, writes.
As a community we value the rule of law and the presumption of innocence. But we also value the need to protect children and others from the risk of future harm — particularly from those whom we know to be predators.
At no time are these concerns brought more sharply into focus than when convicted child sex offenders like Michael Guider reach the end of their sentence and are due to resume their lives back in the community.
As the state of NSW, on behalf of the community, grapples with keeping Guider locked up against the real risk he poses on his release, the same issues face children and their parents across Australia.
The tough laws that Bravehearts has fought for and won in Queensland need to be repeated. These kind of offences and offenders have no borders.
In 1999, 12-year-old schoolgirl Keyra Steinhardt was raped and murdered by a recently released serial sex offender, Leonard John Fraser.
This preventable tragedy led Bravehearts to push for laws that would indefinitely detain dangerous sex offenders past their release date until such time as they no longer posed a risk, perhaps forever.
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In 2003 the Queensland parliament introduced the Dangerous Prisoners (Sexual Offenders) Act 2003 (DPSOA) with a promise to do just that. The legislation was soon copied into legislation across most other states.
However, it wasn’t long before the application of the legislation by the judiciary all but destroyed the original intention of detaining dangerous sex offenders to the point that it became largely ineffective.
The legal fraternity generally holds the civil rights to freedom of repeat and dangerous sex offenders in higher regard than that of the human rights of children to be protected from known dangerous sex offenders.
In 2008, and in response to our continued frustration with the ‘watering down’ of the DPSOA, Bravehearts called for the strengthening of the risk assessment regime such that only if all three independent risk assessments unanimously found a ‘low risk’ would the court be able to release the offender. This still has not occurred.
So, we fought and won the introduction of a mandatory two strikes legislation for repeat child sex offenders because it was clear that judges were continuing to release known, dangerous sex offenders into the community, irrespective of assessments of risk to children.
In 2012 Queensland introduced the Criminal Law (Two Strike Child Sex Offenders) Amendment Act to apply to sex offenders who have previously been convicted of an offence that attracts a maximum sentence of life imprisonment and, who have been released and, who then commit another sexual offence that attracts a maximum sentence of life.
These tough laws are necessary because the reality is that child sex offending is a compulsive, addictive behaviour that damages victims for life.
We believe that a specific, targeted multiple strike legislation is an appropriate and justified response to these habitual and persistent child sex offenders.
The dominance of current opinion is that paedophilia is as much a part of one’s orientation as anything else and as such does not respond to treatment.
So, if one has this orientation, it is not a question of IF they will re-offend but WHEN they will re-offend.
For these types of offenders, the only way to stop them from offending is to not allow them access to children and the only place that can happen currently is in a jail.
* Hetty Johnston AM is founder of the Bravehearts Foundation
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