The social dangers of paranoia

Pædophilia is the knee-jerk fixation of our times. Not, I hasten to add, that I feel any less revulsion over child abuse than the next person: I am as keen as anyone to see children protected from its traumas. But I seriously doubt whether waves of lynch mob frenzy on the one hand, and fear driven inhibitions of natural behaviour on the other, really benefit children. (On the contrary, in fact: I fear that urban children particularly in the UK and US these days, immured behind walls of parental paranoia, are less able to protect themselves than those of previous generations.)

In Britain a released offender has been barred from attending his local synagogue. Now this is a difficult area for a humanist unbeliever like myself to comment upon; and it’s also, I realise, a difficult area for administrators in places of worship. Clearly, communal worship includes vulnerable children who must be protected. But there is a balance to be struck: most Abrahamic religious traditions recognise the possibility of redemption, and that needs to be accommodated. It seems to me that excluding a sinner from her/his place of worship, rather than just from those occasions when s/he may be a danger, somewhat undermines the moral foundations of the religious community which that place of worship serves.