News Slant	News Slant Archive

When the nude body of eight-year-old Sarah Payne was found in a West Sussex field in July, a wave of media-stoked revulsion swept across Great Britain. Seizing the moment, the editor of the weekly News of the World, Rebekah Wade, embarked on a "Name and Shame" campaign aimed at raising public awareness of an alleged pedophile menace, and at selling newspapers.

On two consecutive Sundays, the Murdoch tabloid printed names, addresses, and photographs of 83 sex offenders who have completed prison sentences or remain free under probationary conditions. This new feature was to continue until the whereabouts of at least 150 individuals had been published. The controversial series boosted readership instantly.

View our poll archive

It also ignited the worst European moral panic since 1996, when the arrest of child rapist and murderer Marc Dutroux in Charleroi, Belgium, triggered widespread witch hunts. When the News of the World ran its first batch of names on July 23, mob violence occurred in Manchester within hours. Violent incidents soon took place in 11 communities from the south coast of England up through Scotland. The hysteria precipitated at least two suicides.

A group called Antimatter began mass-mailing letters warning residents of neighborhoods that sex predators lurked in their midst. The inevitable wrong addresses and mistaken identities took their toll. At least five innocent people had to seek police protection. Actual sex offenders-- some with dubious convictions, some guilty of crimes that range from consensual touching to serial rape-- fled underground.

At Paulsgrove council estate in Portsmouth, demonstrators carried signs reading "Hang Them" and "Kill the Paedophiles." A mob of 150 roamed the develo pment looking for 20 supposed sexual deviates in a population of 15,000. Cars were overturned and set ablaze. Bricks were thrown through windows and at people. Families fled for their lives.

On August 4, in the aftermath of the Portsmouth riot, the News of the World condemned vigilantism and announced that it was discontinuing its "Name and Shame" tactic, but stepping up its campaign for tougher laws against pedophiles. Its "For Sarah" website (www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/forsarah/) now houses at least 40 hard-copy pages of hyperbolic material, divided into sections with titles like "What to Do If There's a Pervert on Your Doorstep."

The website's most prominent feature is a "Sign Here for Sarah" petition urging the Home Secretary to seek passage of "Sarah's Law," a public sex offender registry system modeled on the American Megan's Law, variants of which are now on the books in all 50 states. The statute, which enables anyone to find out where freed sex offenders are living, was inspired by the 1994 rape and murder of Megan Kanka by a neighbor in Hamilton Township, New Jersey.

Better dead than soft

The present British sex-offender registry, which places the means of tracking persons convicted of sex crimes in the hands of law enforcement officials but not the general public, has chilling implications of its own. But the American system, which grants everyone access to the names and addresses of sex offenders, invites vigilantism while it fails to deter sex crimes. In creating its own Megan's Law effect, Rebekah Wade's campaign has produced the result that has caused the scheme to be disavowed by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, condemned by leading criminologists, and rejected by the Home Office when the British registry was instituted in 1997.

This isn't stopping the child savers of the United Kingdom. As responsive officials strive to avoid the appearance of being "soft on pedophiles," the British government may soon join them in embracing the irrational.