Philip Pickett sentenced to 11 years imprisonment

[ahinton]

I wonder if any other reader might share my belief that, while these crimes are often despicable, we, as a society, must take a more enlightened view to the problem of paedophilia in society. It is apparent that this is a bigger 'problem' than hitherto thought and that many many ,mainly men, harbour feelings of a sexual nature about children and teenagers. Of course it is right that those found guilty face prison sentences but how do we address this problem, this 'unhealthy appetite' that a great number of men, and some women, have. Punitive sentences i fear will deter very few. More help, especially to those who have not committed a crime may be one option. I am interested in the thoughts of other board members.

Punitive sentences might at least make some people think twice if they fear a risk of being caught, charged, tried and found guilty, but two important factors - on which Ian Pace has rightly focussed in his campaigning on this - are (a) the blind eyes and deaf ears wilfully turned to it and (b) the reluctance of victims to report instances of it; it does seem tht the suicide of Frances Andrade has been a particular determining factor that has encouraged more victims to come forward and, to the extent that this has been and continues to be the case, her sad death has not been entirely in vain (although that's precious little consolation to her husband Levine or to their three sons and one daughter).

I do think, however, that this kind of thing cold be seen as falling within the bounds of what can be called an "unhealthy appetite" in much the same way as some people once ascribed it to homosexual feelings although, of course, whilst the former is understandable in that it involves minors, the latter is now, thankfully, largely derided; quite what to do about that at its source, however, is unclear but I still believe that the greater the likelihood that victims will be honest and come forward to report incidents and the more convictions are secured, the more the attention of pædophiles will be drawn to the risks in which their actions might place them.

[richardfinegold]

Richardfinegold's post prompts me to ask a couple of questions:

1) Was the issue of sexual abuse an accepted part of 1970s culture in the USA and Europe or was it confined to the UK?

2) Will all of you who own Pickett's records be binning them forthwith?

I suspect that we will ultimately treat their musical legacy as we treat those of great Composers. There was a time when I found it difficult to listen to Aaron Copeland after hearing stories of his sexually predatory legacy. I knew Wagner's music before I learned of his odious Philosophical views, and ditto for Liszt.
Chopin, Beethoven and other greats had views that would not pass a political correctness muster.
Caravaggio is one of my favorite Painters, despite his personal conduct being more in line withthat of a a contemporary Gang Banger .
Ultimately I forget thiese things and admire these men for their Creative Art.
For reasons I cannot explain, I feel less inclined to cut some slack for a "re-creative Artist" i.e. a Performer but not a Composer such as Pickett or King or Gendron. There is no logical reason to do so, particularly with something as abhorent as Pedophilia.
I suppose one solution is to have continous monitoring of interactions between adults and minors. Web cams in every practice and dorm room. It sounds Orwellian, but if used to protect people, as opposed to controlling them, perhaps justifiable?

[Richard Tarleton]

ditto for Liszt.

What are you thinking about here, richard?

[richardfinegold]

What are you thinking about here, richard?

Anti Semitism

[P. G. Tipps]

I wonder if any other reader might share my belief that, while these crimes are often despicable, we, as a society, must take a more enlightened view to the problem of paedophilia in society. It is apparent that this is a bigger 'problem' than hitherto thought and that many many ,mainly men, harbour feelings of a sexual nature about children and teenagers. Of course it is right that those found guilty face prison sentences but how do we address this problem, this 'unhealthy appetite' that a great number of men, and some women, have. Punitive sentences i fear will deter very few. More help, especially to those who have not committed a crime may be one option. I am interested in the thoughts of other board members.

You make a pertinent point though I don't agree with your 'enlightened' sentiments. Humans don't change, they are a mixture of good and bad and should be rewarded for the former and punished for the latter.

Furthermore, in the decades when most of these 'historic' offences were alleged to have occurred, society had a quite different attitude to child abusers. They weren't considered 'monsters' but rather extremely sad individuals who provoked almost embarrassed pity from others.

Authorities who discovered a child sex-abuser in their midst tended to shunt him/her to another patch in the naive hope that would give the perpetrator a fresh chance to sort out their lives. Modern society, in its mad rush to 'point the finger', appears to be wholly ignorant of previous attitudes, or more likely does not wish to know preferring to indulge in smug-ridden moral outrage about the supposed deficiencies of previous generations.

Of course, I am referring to opportunistic offences where no physical harm is done to the child "only" obvious psychological damage. The sort of offences of which Pickett and others have been found guilty are of a quite different order and forced rape is a dreadful crime indeed and deserves the harshest possible punishment.

However, I'm still not clear how such serious crimes can be established beyond reasonable doubt after so many years, and especially pre-DNA. Is it simply a question of the police 'encouraging' more possible victims to come forward and complain, and if there is enough of those then simply press charges despite the lack of any real, solid evidence?

If so, I find that quite extraordinary and, indeed, deeply worrying in a supposedly fair and just society. Thankfully, we now have scientific methods denied to previous generations so that offenders can be tried and found guilty on incontrovertible evidence. The future looks rather brighter than the past when it comes to tackling these horrible crimes against women and children and, it seems, increasingly men as well.

[ahinton]

You make a pertinent point though I don't agree with your 'enlightened' sentiments. Humans don't change, they are a mixture of good and bad and should be rewarded for the former and punished for the latter.

The notion that humans can never change should all too much like an admission of defeat in advance, whether or not you may have intgended it to do so; under such a belief, what would you seek to do about serial abusers of minors? - lock them all up for life?

Furthermore, in the decades when most of these 'historic' offences were alleged to have occurred, society had a quite different attitude to child abusers. They weren't considered 'monsters' but rather extremely sad individuals who provoked almost embarrassed pity from others.

I think that this is an exaggeration and I doubt that it would stand up to scrutiny; even if it did, however, does a change in societal attitude (if indeed there has been such) make any difference to the abuse or its consequences? The prospect that a change in attitude on the part of society means that the abuse and its effects change with it is risible, but perhaps that isn't what you meant...

Authorities who discovered a child sex-abuser in their midst tended to shunt him/her to another patch in the naive hope that would give the perpetrator a fresh chance to sort out their lives. Modern society, in its mad rush to 'point the finger', appears to be wholly ignorant of previous attitudes, or more likely does not wish to know preferring to indulge in smug-ridden moral outrage about the supposed deficiencies of previous generations.

On the contrary, many such authorities turned a blind eye to such conduct. I happen to know a musician, sadly now dead, who taught at one of the institutions on which much attention has been focused in recent times and whose repeated entreaties to the aithorities there to investigate abuse cases were invariably met with either disinterest or advice to keep his mouth shut; in his case, he was seeking to report cases of bullying rather than sexual misconduc per se, but the cap mevertheless fits.

Of course, I am referring to opportunistic offences where no physical harm is done to the child "only" obvious psychological damage. The sort of offences of which Pickett and others have been found guilty are of a quite different order and forced rape is a dreadful crime indeed and deserves the harshest possible punishment.

It is indeed, but I think that you do yourself no favours in appearing to try to play down the effects of psychologocal damage by comparison to it; these are now widely regarded as often long-term and extensive - one has surely only to consider the case of Frances Andrade to realise that?

However, I'm still not clear how such serious crimes can be established beyond reasonable doubt after so many years, and especially pre-DNA. Is it simply a question of the police 'encouraging' more possible victims to come forward and complain, and if there is enough of those then simply press charges despite the lack of any real, solid evidence?

If so, I find that quite extraordinary and, indeed, deeply worrying in a supposedly fair and just society. Thankfully, we now have scientific methods denied to previous generations so that offenders can be tried and found guilty on incontrovertible evidence. The future looks rather brighter than the past when it comes to tackling these horrible crimes against women and children and, it seems, increasingly men as well.

I take your point in principle but there's no guarantee of any such thing as "pre-DNA" in all historical cases; DNA testing has been used to identify many past occurrences (and I'm not just referring to crominal acts here).

[Richard Tarleton]

Anti Semitism

OT, but you may need to lookinto this a bit further, richard. Liszt wasn't anti-Semitic, and was deeply wounded by the charge, which seems chiefly to have arisen from the appearance in 1881 of a revised edition of his book Des Bohemiéns [Gypsies] et leur musique en Hongrie. He left the proof reading to Carolyne von Sayn Wittgenstein (he was by now a very old man, living in Rome), who was a notorious anti-Semite and who carried out a major re-write without his knowledge. She was living separately in Rome, as you know, and heavily under the influence of the anti-Semitic higher clergy in the Vatican.

It's a complicated story, there's a good section of it in vol.3 of Alan Walker's magisterial biography of Liszt, but it's fair to say Liszt was innocent as charged. Why did Liszt not tell his readers the offending chapter was the work of Carolyne? The answer seems to have been chivalry - a wish to protect Carolyne. When he read Liszt's letter to the Gazette de Hongrie of 6 April 1883, Wagner said to Cosima (the day before he died) "Your father goes to his ruin out of pure chivalry!".

[ahinton]

OT, but you may need to lookinto this a bit further, richard. Liszt wasn't anti-Semitic, and was deeply wounded by the charge, which seems chiefly to have arisen from the appearance in 1881 of a revised edition of his book Des Bohemiéns [Gypsies] et leur musique en Hongrie. He left the proof reading to Carolyne von Sayn Wittgenstein (he was by now a very old man, living in Rome), who was a notorious anti-Semite and who carried out a major re-write without his knowledge. She was living separately in Rome, as you know, and heavily under the influence of the anti-Semitic higher clergy in the Vatican.

It's a complicated story, there's a good section of it in vol.3 of Alan Walker's magisterial biography of Liszt, but it's fair to say Liszt was innocent as charged. Why did Liszt not tell his readers the offending chapter was the work of Carolyne? The answer seems to have been chivalry - a wish to protect Carolyne. When he read Liszt's letter to the Gazette de Hongrie of 6 April 1883, Wagner said to Cosima (the day before he died) "Your father goes to his ruin out of pure chivalry!".

Indeed. That said, his friend Chopin was sadly not quite so easily exonerable from the charge of anti-Semitism, although his expressions of it tended largely to be directed at Jewish music publishers and it was in any case bnyt no means as rabid as that of Wagner; even then, one of Chopin's great friends in Paris for the last decade or more of his life was Alkan -and the far more public anti-Semite Wagner himself counted Jews among his friends.

[teamsaint]

DNA evidence is a useful tool, but it is a very long way from being foolproof.

[jean]

Authorities who discovered a child sex-abuser in their midst tended to shunt him/her to another patch in the naive hope that would give the perpetrator a fresh chance to sort out their lives. Modern society, in its mad rush to 'point the finger', appears to be wholly ignorant of previous attitudes, or more likely does not wish to know preferring to indulge in smug-ridden moral outrage about the supposed deficiencies of previous generations.

It is well known now that 'shunting' the child-abuser 'to another patch' was exactly whty the Catholic church routinely did with child-abusers it discovered, but I don't believe that if the wider society had known of this practice, it would have been condoned even then.

I can't see any connexion between the first sentence I've quoted here and the second.

[Mary Chambers]

Furthermore, in the decades when most of these 'historic' offences were alleged to have occurred, society had a quite different attitude to child abusers. They weren't considered 'monsters' but rather extremely sad individuals who provoked almost embarrassed pity from others.

Authorities who discovered a child sex-abuser in their midst tended to shunt him/her to another patch in the naive hope that would give the perpetrator a fresh chance to sort out their lives. Modern society, in its mad rush to 'point the finger', appears to be wholly ignorant of previous attitudes, or more likely does not wish to know preferring to indulge in smug-ridden moral outrage about the supposed deficiencies of previous generations.

.

I have to say this was and is my impression also. There are a lot of people who were not around at the time now expressing outrage at the sort of thing that would have been considered unfortunate but not much more when I was young. I am talking only about minor abuse here.

Something that worries me and makes me uncomfortable is the feeling that some of the anti-sexual abuse campaigners, who spend much of their time researching the subject, are enjoying the search rather too much.

[MrGongGong]

It is well known now that 'shunting' the child-abuser 'to another patch' was exactly whty the Catholic church routinely did with child-abusers it discovered, but I don't believe that if the wider society had known of this practice, it would have been condoned even then.

I can't see any connexion between the first sentence I've quoted here and the second.

Nor can I.

Are we allowed to mention the Catholic church?

[teamsaint]

Consistency in the treatment of offenders by society, in terms of sentence, rehabilitation, reintegration, is something that should be a priority.

At the moment we are a long way from anything remotely approaching consistency, if one considers the cases of Robert King, Jonathan Rees Williams, and Gary Glitter.

king wasn't even banned from working with children, for example, and his offences and sentence seem to have been broadly comparable with Rees Williams.

[teamsaint]

Nor can I.

Are we allowed to mention the Catholic church?

Or ITV, or specific music colleges, or particular football clubs.......etc etc etc

[Pabmusic]

You make a pertinent point though I don't agree with your 'enlightened' sentiments. Humans don't change, they are a mixture of good and bad and should be rewarded for the former and punished for the latter...

A seriously mistaken view. At the very least, most people 'grow up' (that is, change over time). Ignore that fact that, in 30 years of prison life I've witnessed many changes in human beings - not all for the good either - we see it happening in our everyday lives.

The problem is that if there is one area in which it's very difficult to effect change it's in sexual crimes. The main problem is that many don't view their acts as crimes, but rather as a 'natural' part of a relationship. (This does not usually apply to predatory types, of course.) The problem is one of not recognising, understanding, appreciating the consequences of the imbalance of power that almost always exists (usually an adult in a trusted position, and a child). This is a severe case of cognitive dissonance and needs to be approached as such. If the perpetrator is psychotic (delusional, say) then some 'treatment' might be available, but often they're not and the issue is behavioural. Behavioural issues are more diffcult to 'treat', since it is a 'normal' self that commits the offences.

People are simply not born alike and a 'one size fits all' solution can only ever be partially effective.