ABC News email to staff - don't call child-sex-predators paedophiles, the word marginalises them
Saturday, 06 March 2021
Can't have the paedophiles feeling marginalised.
What's next?
Calls to marginalise them further from society and lock them up?
ABC reporters in Tasmania have been told to “avoid” referring to child sex abusers as pedophiles, to avoid marginalising people with pedophilia.
An email sent to all news staff this week advises against the use of the term “pedophile”, even to describe those who have serially abused children over many years.
The edict followed a discussion between a reporter and a local Sexual Assault Support Service last weekend, in which the service “mentioned their concerns about” use of the term in reporting.
This was prompted by reporting on alleged pedophile nurse James (Jim) Geoffrey Griffin, who killed himself in October 2019 while facing multiple charges relating to child sex abuse and producing child exploitation material.
“Sexual Assault Support Service on the weekend … mentioned their concerns about describing Griffin as a ‘paedophile’,” says the email sent by a senior producer.
“We should avoid it, unless we know he had a clinical diagnosis of paedophilia and instead use serial sexual offender / predator, or a sexual abuser of children and young people,” the next paragraph, in boldface, reads.