Criminologist: Sex offenders just like us

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Sex offenders are just like the rest of us, according to criminologist and researcher Philip Birch. Birch, who has come from the United Kingdom to take up a position at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), challenges the notion that sex offenders are psychologically damaged, lonely, insecure or dysfunctional. Instead, he says we are more likely to find offenders in our homes, workplaces and neighbourhoods than lurking behind a bush in a dirty trenchcoat. "It serves us well to construct the sex offender as the 'other', (to believe) they're not like us, that there's something pathologically wrong with them," Birch says. [...]

Birch, who recently delivered a seminar entitled The Making of a Sex Offender at UNSW, bases his conclusions on a study he conducted two years ago that later became the book Sex as Crime?, published in 2008. [...]

Birch says the portrayal of sex offenders in the media and films, such as the troll-like pedophile played by Jackie Earle Haley in the movie Little Children, fuels the stereotypes his research challenges.

source: Article 'Criminologist: Sex offenders just like us' by Judy Skatssoon; www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/2408794/Criminologist-Sex-offenders-just-like-us; stuff.co.nz; 14 May 2009