Template:News/Popular interest

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Popular interest

• The make-believe world of child-abuse campaigners

A new report is light on facts and heavy on scaremongering. (Joanna Williams - spiked, UK)

• John Robin Sharpe: sexual outlaw

He successfully challenged Canada's obscenity laws, but opinion in political queer circles was divided on the self-styled rebel pervert. (See also:Robin Sharpe) (Maria-Belén Ordóñez, Robert Teixeira - NOW, Ca)

• Tom Watson: the unacceptable face of the paedo panic

Watson is being sacrificed to save the child-abuse crusade. (Tim Black - spiked, UK)

• Operation Midland: treating fiction as fact

The crusade against historical sex abuse is destroying due process. (Frank Furedi - spiked, UK)

• The collateral damage of sex offender laws

How our sex offender laws punish more than just the convicted. ( Radley Balko, The Washington Post, US)

• Are Sexually Violent Predators Dangerous Enough?

On June 15, U.S. District Judge Donovan W. Frank struck down Minnesota's law allowing for the civil commitment of so-called sexually violent predators. SVP laws allow a person to be locked away indefinitely after he has completed his maximum prison sentence. Twenty states and the federal government have passed such laws, and over 5,000 SVPs are incarcerated at an annual cost in excess of 450 million dollars. (Lave and McCrary, The Huffington Post, US)

• The Pointless Banishment of Sex Offenders

“predator-free zones” put an entire town or county off limits, sometimes for life, even for those whose offenses had nothing to do with children. (The New York Times, US)

• Study: Sexual Assaults Lower in Neighborhoods With More Registered Sex Offenders

Sex offender registries are premised on the belief that there is a correlation between re-offense and victim proximity. The underlying assumption is that more sexual assaults will occur in places where sex offenders live. (David Booth - CSJ, US)

• The Jared Fogle case: Why we understand so little about child sex abuse

Reading the news that former Subway pitchman Jared Fogle will plead guilty to possessing hundreds of pornographic images of children and having sex with underage girls, it is hard not to be horrified. (Sarah Kaplan - The Washington Post, US)

• How a dubious statistic convinced U.S. courts to approve of indefinite detention

In the 2002 case McKune v. Lile, the Supreme Court upheld a Kansas law that imposed harsher sentences on sex offenders who declined to participate in a prison rehab program.(Radley Balko - The Washington Post, US)

• The crusade against Ted Heath: dancing on people’s graves

The inquisition into historical allegations of abuse is out of control.(Frank Furedi - spiked, UK)

• Compo culture and the child abuse panic

Historic sex abuse claims have fuelled the UK’s compensation industy.(Barbara Hewson - spiked, UK)

• The NSPCC: still fostering fear and suspicion

The child-protection industry is constructing the crime it claims to combat. (Tim Black - spiked, UK)

• Source: Ex-House Speaker Dennis Hastert allegedly paid to hide sexual misconduct

Former Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert allegedly paid hush money to cover up sexual misconduct with a male student dating to his time as a coach and teacher in Yorkville, according to a source familiar with the investigation. ( Natasha Korecki - Chicago Sun Times, US)

Follow Up

• Ex-House Speaker Dennis Hastert Will Plead Guilty in Hush-Money Case (Nick Bogert and Tracy Connor - NBC News, US)

• Former House speaker Dennis Hastert indicted by federal grand jury

J. Dennis Hastert, the longest-serving Republican speaker in the history of the U.S. House, was indicted Thursday by a federal grand jury on charges that he violated banking laws in a bid to pay $3.5 million to an unnamed person to cover up “past misconduct.” (Paul Kane, Mike DeBonis and Mark Berman - The Washington Post, US)

• Operation Hydrant: an Inquisition for the 21st century

Police trawling for child-abuse cases is an affront to justice. (Frank Furedi - spiked, UK)