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Plenary, 27 Jun 2001

27 Jun 2001 · S1 · Plenary

Item of business

Serious Violent and Sexual Offenders

Ullrich, Kay SNP West of Scotland Watch on SPTV

As many members know, in a previous existence, I spent many years working with victims of violent and sexual offending and with perpetrators of those awful crimes. To understand both the mindset of those who sexually abuse and the findings of the MacLean report, it is necessary to acknowledge that sexual offenders have the innate ability to minimise and rationalise their horrendous crimes.

I will give members a few examples from my professional experience. A man was found guilty of eight years of sexual abuse of his daughter. On the night when I arrived to remove his children from his home, he said to me as I left the house,

"I'll have you know she gied it to me".

The little girl was 10 years old when he first forced himself on her.

What about the 50-year-old who had a catalogue of previous convictions for lewd behaviour and indecent assault? His explanation for his continued abuse of a neighbour's six-year-old child was that he was trying to comfort the child. A 19-year-old who raped the 10-month-old—yes, 10 months old—daughter of his girlfriend told me, when I was compiling a report:

"It wasn't me, it was the drugs".

He said that the drugs made him do it. I had to witness that baby's injuries as part of my job. I still wake up in the middle of the night with a picture of the injuries and the pain that he inflicted on that baby.

Because of those experiences, I am especially pleased with the emphasis that the MacLean report places on risk assessments and the need for such assessments to be structured and based on the best available evidence. For too long, criminal justice social workers have been denied access to much of the information that is required to predict risk.

At the present time, criminal justice social workers usually have access only to the records of the Scottish Criminal Records Office. Those records merely list previous convictions which, as often as not, are the result of plea bargaining. Those records, together with offenders' tendency to minimise their behaviour, make less than adequate bases on which to assess risk.

Will the minister assure me that he will take the necessary steps to ensure that those who will compile risk assessments will have access to police records and to original complaints or indictments? That would allow assessments to be based on historical factors, rather than on the sanitised SCRO versions—many of which, as I said, are the result of plea bargaining.

I welcome the Executive's embracing of the MacLean report. However, like other members, I must return to the problem that is faced by criminal justice social workers as they endeavour to undertake their duties to the highest possible standards; lack of resources and insufficient funding. In his summation, will the minister assure members that, when the new proposals come into force, they will not be constrained by lack of resources and insufficient funding?

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Plenary, 27 Jun 2001

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