In fact, more than 90 per cent of all abused children suffer at the hands of family friends or relatives. About half a dozen children a year are abducted and killed by strangers. That's six too many, but there are plenty of ways of saving many more children's lives than that, and which I've yet to see the pundits touting quite so gleefully as they do naming paedophiles. Recently, one of the transport lobby groups suggested cutting the speed limit on residential roads to 20mph, a simple act which would save the lives of hundreds of children. Diamond's point is a very sound one, but unlikely to generate much enthusiasm among his journalist colleagues.
Road safety is very dull compared with the lurid image of the paedophile.
It doesn't result in that essential frisson of irrational fear which sells newspapers so effectively. At SIRC we have long been concerned with the ways in which people come to perceive risk in their lives and in the world around them. We have argued that people should have the right to accurate and balanced information, on the basis of which they can make informed decisions about how they live their lives. And we have highlighted the many occasions on which people are misled, either by false scaremongering or by the cynical promotion of false promises. The ill-fated News of the World campaign has served only to direct attention away from the real threats to children's lives, generating hysterical, misdirected concerns which can only be damaging to them.