Editorial: Risks in setting up child-sex register

We can all agree that the harm done to a child by a sex offender is catastrophic and impacts for years beyond the crime. Photo / Thinkstock

I am not a fan of Social Development minister Anne Tolley's plans for a child sex-offender register, to be introduced next July.

It might seem logical, prudent even, that police and social services have access to a confidential register, which can be used to assist to monitoring over a set number of years, or even for the offender's lifetime.

Details can be passed on to certain members of the community, like school principals.

My difficulty is these things are logical in an administrative sense but highly emotional in a community sense. They are prone to demands for access by social extremists and also, I believe, are unfair.

In 1996 and 2003 writer and MP Debra Coddington released two editions of a sex offenders' index, the first with 500 names and the second with 1200 names, based on court records of crimes against both adults and children.

All court-imposed suppressions were respected. It caused an uproar. She received death threats.

We can all agree that the harm done to a child by a sex offender is catastrophic and impacts for years beyond the crime. But it is a logical fallacy that there be some kind of parallel millstone around a sex offender's neck for all time.

The courts determine guilt and the sentence required, and it would seem they may now appear on a register for a time. But most sex offenders do not reoffend.

And I do believe that, in a fair society, all persons who have served their time are entitled to take on the responsibility of living the rest of lives without offence, in the community, without being constantly reminded of their crime - as a register will be prone to do.

Mob mentality is never far from the surface and it angers me when I see posters going up or flyers being handed out, purporting to warn about a person in the neighbourhood. That is victimisation and vigilantism. It's scaremongering.

If a register can be contained to the dry administrative work it is designed to support, then that's well and good. But in the wrong hands it will be a disaster.

Andrew Bonallack is the editor of the Wairarapa Times-Age.