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I have a friend - let's call him Dave, though that's not his name - who is active in his church, a loving and supportive husband, and a hilarious dinner companion. He's also a former rapist.

He confessed this to me in fits and starts, over dinners and phone calls and late-night drinks, after we'd known each other a couple of years.

His story matches much of the research my work relies on, but it still forced me to re-evaluate some of my core assumptions about rapists and about the role of men in ending rape.

Dave's former MO is familiar to anyone who thinks about sexual violence for a living. He picked victims he knew. He got them alone, encouraged them to have conversations that made them feel vulnerable, and pressed a lot of alcohol on them. And then, when they were too drunk to consent, he "had sex" with them. (That's how he thought about it at the time, though today he will tell you straight up it was rape.)

The research is very clear: most rapists know they don't have consent, and they rape an average of six times each. Before Dave told me his story, I thought that meant that most rapists were essentially sociopaths. I worried for a long time that Dave, too, must be a sociopath. But I've done a lot of thinking and searching on that idea, and I just don't think he is. I think he's a guy who grew up with some very toxic ideas about what it means to be a man.

While Dave's violence is inexcusable, his story also gives me some hope. It shows that men can change. Even men who've already done terrible things.

Better models of masculinity are everywhere, if you know where to look.

When I polled my friends about where they find examples of the kind of masculinities they want to see more of in the world, the crowdsourced list was dazzling in its diversity and included the musician Frank Ocean (for his "openness and vulnerability around sexuality"); the basketball star Steph Curry caring for his daughter at postgame press conferences; all of Barack Obama's interactions with children; queer men of various stripes subverting the very definitions of manhood; and an array of fictional men of film and TV, including Bob from Bob's Burgers and modern superheroes like the Flash and Midnighter.

American men may be enjoying more emotional vulnerability in their superhero stories, but they also elected the living embodiment of toxic masculinity as president. Trump has spent his life defining his manliness in opposition to the women he dominates and degrades. He has been accused of sexual assault by over a dozen women, including his first wife, Ivana. The men he's installed into power share his attitudes.

And when these men talk about making America great again, one of the things they're yearning for is the re-establishment of "traditional" gender values in which men are dominant, women are subservient, and anyone who questions whether that's really the natural order of things is punished.

My friend Dave grew up in a household steeped in those very values. It was only in learning that there are other, better ways to "be a man" that he became the friend I know him as today.

That's not to say that we should let guys who've already offended of the hook in order to tempt them into the light. If you hurt someone, whether or not you mean to, you should face consequences. In fact, consequences can sometimes help facilitate learning.

"I think one of the reasons my behavior went unchecked for so long is that I didn't suffer any consequences," recalls Dave. It wasn't until he lost a friendship he valued that he had to think about his behavior in a new light.

Whatever he knows now, he still hurt those women, and if any of them decided to hold him accountable for that, I'd support them. So would Dave, for that matter.

He has hardly become a full-time feminist crusader, but he does small things that make a big difference. He refuses to laugh at rape jokes or slut-shaming or anything that reduces women to commodities, and he goes out of his way to explain to other men why these things aren't funny.

He doesn't vote for candidates who want to control women's access to abortion or birth control.

He's raising his daughter to know that her body is her own.

These are, of course, small victories, less "revolution" and more "baby steps toward basic human decency".

The difficulties in divorcing masculinity from misogyny aren't confined to the tricky business of rape prevention.

Hostile sexism - the kind that involves calling women degrading names, rape and rape threats - is the kind that's most often linked to toxic masculinity. But it's not the only kind of masculinity that relies on the dehumanization of women. After all, if men were just hostile to women all of the time, why would any of us enter into relationships with them?

Instead, hostile sexism plays Mr Hyde to benevolent sexism's Dr Jekyll, the two of them teaming up to keep women subservient to men's needs. Benevolent sexism says that real men protect "good women", who are morally superior angels living on uncomfortably narrow pedestals. It's a kinder, gentler way to force three-dimensional women into two-dimensional boxes and strip us of our humanity.

Dozens of programs work with boys to help them rethink what it means to be a man. These programs need to start younger

We have to get a lot more deliberate if we want to transform masculinity into a healthy identity that doesn't rely on the subjugation of women. It would be a whole lot easier if we started at the beginning, teaching boys that being strong includes being able to embrace their own vulnerable emotions and that girls aren't teacups or trophies or aliens from Venus but fellow human beings who are pretty dang interesting.

Karen BK Chan, a sex and emotional literacy educator, speaks compellingly of the need to teach boys resiliency in the face of sexual rejection. "How might we empathize with a young guy who is balancing masculinity pressures and the desire to show and receive love?" she encourages us to ask. "How can we help him experience bearable rejection instead of unbearable failure?"

Across the country, dozens of programs work with high school and college-age boys to help them rethink what it means to be a man. These programs need to start younger. We need to shift from an intervention mindset - trying to shift young men's conceptions of masculinity after they've already been formed - to a prevention mindset in which we help boys develop healthier ideas about gender to start with.

Research suggests middle school could be an ideal time to inoculate boys against toxic masculinity. Middle school boys' ability to resist traditional masculine norms is relatively strong, but weakens when they get to high school.

Maine Boys to Men (MBTM), a program that has long worked with high school boys, is developing a curriculum for middle school boys that teaches them to see and sidestep the rigid gender roles they're already growing into. That's only part of its shift from being strictly a training program for high school students to becoming a multifaceted program working to transform masculinity at the community level.

In some ways, this shift is the result of the executive director Matthew Theodores' very productive midlife crisis. Until 2012, he was general manager for marketing and strategy at a division of Microsoft. Unfulfilled, he started looking for not-for-profit organizations to connect with and stumbled into a board position at Boys to Men.

Since he had three boys of his own, then ages six, eight, and eleven, it's no surprise the work quickly got under his skin, or that he saw the potential impact of working with younger boys.

MBTM adapted its high school curriculum for a middle school audience and tested it during the 2015-2016 academic year, reaching just over 500 boys in southern Maine. It tuned it up accordingly, adding more periods of physical activity and centering emotional literacy as the heart of the program, and wound up with a four-hour curriculum. The program is usually delivered one hour at a time over the course of four weeks at participating schools.

The course begins with the "gender box" exercise that's a hallmark of all MBTM programs. The idea is simple: the group leader draws a big box on the chalkboard, and the boys brainstorm stereotypes of masculinity. All of those go inside the box. Then they discuss what happens if a guy tries to behave in a way that's not described in the box. Those punishments and threats hover around the outside of the box. The completed visual serves as a jumping off point to discuss how confining traditional masculinity can be and how harmful to both boys and girls, both men and women.

Once they are primed to move beyond the gender box, the course gets the boys up and moving through a series of exercises in which they have to decide what they think about topics related to sexism and violence and debate their opinions with peers. Empathy is the glue that holds together all of the ideas in the course.

As an adult woman, my presence would have inhibited the boys in the middle school program. But MBTM let me check out day two of a two-day program for high school students. The high school programs differ from their middle school work in more than age grouping - the high school group is mixed gender, with a hand-selected bunch of students the school has identified as being leaders or showing leadership potential across a range of social circles, teams, and interests. The idea is to use these teens as a schoolwide vaccine, each inoculating those in their particular spheres of influence.

In one exercise, students were asked to respond physically to a series of scenarios by walking toward one side of the room or the other to indicate where on the spectrum of "healthy" to "abusive" the relationship being described sounded to them.

The most contentious scenario involved a girl, Lindsay, and her prom date Ben. The two have left an after party when Ben turns off on to a strange side street and stops the car. Lindsay pretends to sleep. He kisses her neck, gropes her breast. She pushes his hand away; he gropes her some more.

The three students who take a stand in Ben's defense are all girls: "She didn't say no."

One boy says: "It's not on her to say something. She has indicated that she does not want this to continue."

A facilitator ends the stalemate, announcing that what Ben did is sexual assault, in no uncertain terms. The girls remain unconvinced. It's a stark reminder that toxic masculinities aren't just perpetuated by men.

After completing the program, the students will be assigned an adviser and encouraged to help their fellow students step out of their gender boxes.

It's all part of a focus on making a community project of shifting gender norms that everyone can take part in. To that end, MBTM is also expanding its adult offerings, including a boot camp for new dads that offers practical parenting prep along with some exercises to help the dads think about how they want gender to play out in their relationship with their co-parent, their parenting style, and the values they pass on to their kids.

Though the high school program has proven effective through years of evaluation, it's too soon to say what impact the new offerings will have. But the signs are encouraging.

Feedback from the middle school boys is almost universally positive, with most of them saying they're going to change the way they talk to people or adjust their judgments about how others do gender. "Kids have come up after we're done," facilitator Sam Eley tells me, "and said, 'Man, I'm really not going to try and be in a box!'"

The staff at MBTM hopes that the project will transform the kind of measurement they can do on the effectiveness of their interventions, by following the students as they grow into high schoolers and beyond. That kind of longitudinal data on transforming masculinities is nearly nonexistent and could light a way forward for many other programs to follow.

And not a moment too soon, because the boys are already being influenced by our fragile masculinist-in-chief.
Adapted from Unscrewed: Women, Sex, Power, and How to Stop Letting the System Screw Us All, by Jaclyn Friedman. Copyright © 2017. Available from Seal Press, an imprint of Perseus Books, LLC, a subsidiary of Hachette Book Group, Inc. Topics

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Building better men: how we can begin to redefine masculinity

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I have a friend - let's call him Dave, though that's not his name - who is active in his church, a loving and supportive husband, and a hilarious dinner companion. He's also a former rapist. He confessed this to me in fits and starts, over dinners and phone calls and late-night drinks, after we'd known each other a couple of years.

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Anyone who thinks the business of cannabis cultivation in the UK is a friendly, hippyish occupation, imbued with wholesome organic principles, needs to reflect on the experience of Stephen, a vulnerable Vietnamese orphan who was 10 when he was trafficked to the UK to work as an enslaved cannabis farmer.

Stephen arrived in Britain in the back of a freezer lorry, after a long journey on foot and in trucks from Hanoi, where he had been destitute and homeless. In Britain, he was locked up alone in a series of terraced houses that had been converted into cannabis farms, and forced over the course of four years to work as a cannabis gardener by the Vietnamese gang that had smuggled him here.

In many ways, his unhappy childhood has taken a very positive turn. At 16, Stephen was arrested during a drugs raid and police recognised him as a victim of trafficking. He was taken into foster care by a vicar in County Durham, where he has learned fluent English and taught himself to cook by watching YouTube videos. He hopes to become a chef and work in a Chinese or Thai restaurant. However, now that he is 19, the Home Office has ruled that he must return to Vietnam. He has no family or friends there, and feels he would be at risk of being retrafficked by gangs back to the UK.

Despite Stephen's experience as a victim of modern slavery - one of the most high-profile causes adopted by the prime minister - the Home Office decided in December that he had no valid asylum case. Last-minute campaigning is underway ahead of a final appeal tribunal hearing on Monday, attempting to overturn the ruling. On Thursday, Stephen (his real name cannot be revealed as he could be identified by his traffickers) will travel to the Home Office to deliver a letter to Home Secretary Amber Rudd, asking for her support. More than 100,000 people have signed a petition backing his campaign to remain.

The details of his case provide a rare insight into the conditions in which a significant proportion of cannabis is cultivated in the UK. Although the existence of young cannabis slaves is well-known, most former gardeners are too frightened about reprisals from their traffickers to talk in detail about their experience; often they have been told that family in Vietnam will be targeted if they speak out. Because Stephen has no family in Vietnam, and is hopeful that publicity may help avert deportation, he gave a long interview in January in the quiet sitting room of the vicarage where he has spent the past three years.

Abandoned at birth, and then effectively orphaned a second time at nine when the woman who cared for him died of cancer, he travelled from rural Vietnam to Hanoi, to work as a shoe cleaner and newspaper seller, before traffickers spotted him and offered him a better life in the UK. "They promised a lot of good things, that they would give me a great life; they were just lying to me," he says. What followed was a difficult journey across Europe and then four years of slavery at the hands of his traffickers, locked up in flats and houses around England, where the contents and furnishings had been stripped out, replaced by rows of cannabis seedlings.

His journey from Vietnam took him to Russia, where he was sold by one gang to another, and then to Poland and later, he thinks, to a camp known as Vietnam City in northern France: a squalid collection of huts hidden next to a disused mine shaft that has, for years, been used as a holding camp for Vietnamese nationals being trafficked to the UK.

During the parts of the journey when he was expected to walk - mostly during the night to remain unseen - he was beaten to make him go faster, "sometimes with hands, sometimes with sticks". On the final stretch of the journey, he was put in the back of a freezer lorry, with four other people, for the Channel crossing. Once they arrived in Britain, the leader of their small group started banging on the side of the truck, until the driver came out and opened the door. "We ran to a forest, then the leader, who had a mobile phone, called someone in the Vietnamese group in England, and they came and picked us up," he says. "First there was a motorway and lots of trees around and then lots of houses, lots of traffic jams, everywhere was crowded with people. I think it was London."

He was taken to a six-room house, where every room had been emptied and converted into a cannabis-growing area. "Three people stayed for the first few days to show me how to organise everything. Then they locked the door and left me alone," he said. By this point, he thinks he was about 12 years old.

"To water the cannabis, I had to mix lots of liquids and powder together with water. It was difficult work - dangerous and unhealthy. When I mixed the liquids, I would be dizzy and sick afterwards," he said. "There were about 40 big lamps in the house. I had to be very careful with all the wires. Sometimes I electrocuted myself. Sometimes I touched the lamps with my head and burned my hair, sometimes I burned my arm." It was impossible to look out of the windows because they were all covered with thick insulating plastic. He didn't know if it was night or day and he doesn't know if he was there for weeks or months. Every few days, in the evening, a group of Vietnamese men would come to inspect the plants, bringing him food. "Sometimes I did something wrong that made some plants die. They would get angry and beat me. My life was much worse than when I lived in Vietnam."

He was taught how to harvest the plants when they were ready and hang them from the ceiling to dry. Occasionally, dealers would come to buy the plants and he saw large sums of money change hands. Once, a gang of British drug dealers kicked the door down, tied him up, and stole the entire cannabis harvest. When his own minders returned, they were angry, but simply moved him on to a new location, where he had to begin the process of cultivating cannabis seedlings again. In the next house, they no longer locked him inside, but they told him they would find him and kill him if he tried to escape. He never tried to flee because he had no idea where to go.

"I just lived day by day. I couldn't see anything in the future. No one was kind to me." He thinks, in total, he worked in about 20 cannabis houses. When he was about 14, the police raided one of the houses, and started shouting at him. "I didn't understand what they were saying. I didn't speak any English. I was very frightened; I thought the police would kill me or do something terrible, but they took me to stay with an English family." His traffickers had prepared him for this eventuality, and had given him a number to call. After two days with the foster family, Stephen called them and went back to them. "I was so frightened. I thought I was going to be put in prison. It was very stupid."

His traffickers started to make him smoke cannabis, gave him vodka and whisky with every meal, and made him take a white powder that he thinks was probably cocaine. "At first, it was quite bad and I didn't like it, but when I had it I felt strong and I could work harder; when I didn't have it, I felt very tired."

He wasn't familiar with the concept of slavery but now he understands that this is what he experienced. "I think I was a slave. I worked for them for a long time, but I earned nothing. They said I owed them lots of money for the journey here, so I had to work; only when I had paid them back enough, then I could leave. But when I asked how long that would take, they said: 'You are not allowed to ask that.'" Every time the plants died, or were stolen, he was told it was his fault, and the money would be added to the amount he owed them; they talked about a debt of $100,000 - although he had no understanding of what that sum represented.

After a second drugs raid and a second arrest when he was 16, he was given a translator who helped him to understand his situation better. He was sent to stay with the vicar's family and this time he was delighted to escape from the traffickers.

He is very conscious that his experiences are not unique. He met dozens of other trafficked boys during the time he was working, most of them a bit older, but the youngest about 10. "He was very unhappy," he says. "He was crying; he missed his family and his parents." He understands why Vietnamese children from poor backgrounds such as his own are targeted. "Gangsters couldn't control British people," he says. Sometimes, walking in nearby towns, he thinks he can see cannabis houses, recognising them by the absence of frost on the roof - the heat from all the lights pouring out and melting the ice.

All over the country, young Vietnamese people are being forced to work in similar conditions. Until a few years ago, if they were caught they would have been sent to young offenders' institutions (in spite of the fact that the majority had been trafficked against their will and forced to do this work); now they are usually recognised as victims of trafficking, but mostly they are denied asylum, deported back to Vietnam, where they return to their old homes, and often re-encounter their traffickers, who retraffick them back to the UK.

The anti-trafficking organisation Ecpat hopes that anger about Stephen's case may trigger reform of the system designed to support victims. "Children identified as victims of trafficking are among the most vulnerable in our society and most in need of long-term protection," the organisation warns in a letter to the home secretary. The charity has recently taken a short animated film to Vietnam explaining the risks of being trafficked, showing it to children in deprived rural areas, to help educate them about the risk of being made to work in cannabis farms.

Ahead of his hearing, Stephen has felt extremely worried about the prospect of a return to Vietnam. His foster mother says he has been having trouble sleeping. "We see him as a member of our family; as long as he needs a home with us, he has a room here," she says. "We don't want him to go back."
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Trafficked, beaten, enslaved: the life of a Vietnamese cannabis farmer

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Anyone who thinks the business of cannabis cultivation in the UK is a friendly, hippyish occupation, imbued with wholesome organic principles, needs to reflect on the experience of Stephen, a vulnerable Vietnamese orphan who was 10 when he was trafficked to the UK to work as an enslaved cannabis farmer.

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A university lecturer who blackmailed people he met online into sending him degrading photos including acts of paedophilia has been jailed for 32 years. Dr Matthew Falder's conviction is thought to be the first UK prosecution related to sadistic "hurtcore" material located on the dark web. It follows a four-year, worldwide investigation involving security services from the US, Australia, New Zealand, Israel and Europe.

Falder was, on the surface, a Cambridge-educated academic with a good job, family and friends.

His Twitter feed revealed a love of dinosaurs, baking, table-tennis and 3D-printing, featuring selfies, crossword puzzles and innocuous questions about how to "put nice quality videos online?"

Yet, behind the scenes, he operated under anonymous usernames on the dark web to share videos and images of paedophilia, blackmailing victims into sending him horrific material he would then pass on to other offenders.

The National Crime Agency (NCA) said the 29-year-old simply enjoyed inflicting pain, describing him as one of the most prolific and depraved offenders they had ever encountered.

They estimate he had more than 50 victims over a period of eight years from 2009 to 2017.

A "sadistic and manipulative" man, Falder admitted 137 charges out of the 188 against him, ranging from encouraging the rape of a four-year-old to possessing a paedophile manual.

One of the officers involved in hunting Falder down, Will Kerr, of the NCA, said in all his 28 years of policing he had never encountered a more "dangerous individual".

Supervising senior investigations officer Scott Crabb, of Homeland Security in the US, described him as a "monster" and "pure evil". He said: "Falder is absolutely the worst child exploitation and blackmail offender I have ever seen."

'World's worst website'

Falder was caught thanks to the culmination of work by agents which first began in the United States in 2013, as the FBI worked to expose users of dark web paedophilia sites.

Specialists built their own websites on the servers which hosted the offending sites to track what was being said and done on them.

In doing so, they were able to access the so-called hurtcore communities who are defined by their sharing of images of rape, murder, sadism, torture, paedophilia, blackmail and humiliation.

'Hurt 2 The Core', described by the NCA as "the world's worst website", was one such site.

A user known only as "Inthegarden" posted blackmail pictures of a teenage girl. The user was tracked online and found to have also made posts on online marketplace Gumtree.

There, the suspect approached potential victims by masquerading as a depressed female artist. He went by the names Liz, Jess and Shona to lure victims into talking to him, using at least 30 different email addresses encrypted via services which originated in Russia.

He promised hundreds, sometimes thousands of pounds, which he never paid, for naked or partially-clothed images of people. After building a rapport with them, he would obtain their personal information and immediately move the conversation away from Gumtree's servers.

His victims would then be blackmailed into sending increasingly horrific images, with Falder threatening to send them to friends and relatives if they did not submit to his demands.

Victims as young as 14 years old were told to strip naked, write racist and homophobic messages on signs and take pictures of themselves with them.

Others were forced to lick toilet seats and used tampons as well as eat dog food. Some were forced to pose in their school uniforms. These images were then posted on hurtcore forums where they could be seen by countless members of global child sex abuse networks.

Not only this, but the suspect also offered advice to other paedophiles on how to evade capture, suggesting they avoid using money but instead use "vouchers to get kids to trust you".

Many of the suspect's UK victims reported abuse by Inthegarden to police, but there was not enough evidence to identify who was behind the username.

Then in April 2015, the NCA discovered someone posting under the username "666devil".

'Hell week'

666devil used a picture of a young girl as his icon on the forum, claiming she was his "daughter". He said he planned to "torture" her during what he dubbed "hell week" and requested ideas from members about what he could do to her.

Officers scrambled to identify the girl in the profile image, accessing the user's webmail accounts to find out who she was and protect her.

That was when they realised 666devil, evilmind and Inthegarden were the same person, and that whoever they were, they had approached more than 200 victims worldwide, including victims living in the US.

However, at this stage, there was still not enough intelligence to identify the suspect.

A special taskforce involving the NCA, GCHQ, Homeland Security Investigations in the US, the Australian Federal Police and Europol - as well as law enforcement in Israel and Slovenia - was set up specifically to "enhance evidence gathering against the suspect".

It proved to be successful as, by the end of March 2017, intelligence linked a person of interest to an address in Birmingham.

Falder was identified as the suspect in April and placed under covert surveillance for three months. He was filmed on the train, using his laptop.

NCA officer Matthew Long said Falder was a "highly manipulative" and "sadistic" man who boasted he would never be caught.

However, he could no longer evade justice and on 21 June last year plain clothes officers were deployed to capture him, arresting him at his workplace.

He was handcuffed in his office at the University of Birmingham, with footage from the arrest revealing how he described the charges against him as the "rap sheet from hell".

Two of Falder's devices were immediately seized, revealing what the NCA called "significant evidence". They showed that Falder's offending went back to 2009, when he was a 21-year-old student.

Police found these early voyeurism offences in fact took place at a total of eight locations, involving 13 victims.

Falder was questioned by police over three days, during which he largely refused to comment but did admit to controlling the evilmind account.

His home in Harborne Park Road, Edgbaston, was raided, revealing a chaotic student-like living space, an untidy bedroom with laundry, old pizza boxes and coins scattered across the carpet.

A desktop computer and laptop were also found, surrounded by drawers of tools and masses of wires stuffed into bulging plastic containers. Officers found information on the devices often had double layers of encryption.

Throughout June and August of last year, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) worked with authorities in the US, eventually deciding to prosecute Falder in the UK.

He admitted and was charged with 137 offences in October last year, making him one of the country's most prolific paedophiles, according to BBC Home Affairs Correspondent Danny Shaw. A further 51 charges remain on file.

Investigation timeline

August 2013 - FBI begins its investigation into dark web paedophilia sites, identifying user known as Inthegarden and passing files to the NCA

April 2015 - The NCA investigate 666devil with "daughter" icon posting on a dark web forum. Officers discover links between 666devil, evilmind and Inthegarden while seeking to "safeguard" the girl

August 2015 - Suspect's webmail accounts are accessed, identifying the girl in his profile and further US victims. Taskforce set up between NCA, GCHQ, Homeland Security, Europol and Australian Federal Police

March 2017 - "Person of interest" identified at an address in Birmingham

April 2017 - Falder identified as the suspect

June 2017 - Falder arrested while at work at the University of Birmingham. Devices seized and Edgbaston home raided. Three days of questioning reveals Falder is behind 666devil

June to October 2017 - Falder admits to and is charged with 137 offences. A further 51 remain on file

Documents released by the CPS and the NCA show that during Falder's near-decade of offending, his multiple victims included boys, girls, men and women.

Ruona Iguyovwe, of the CPS, said: "He sought out his innocent victims on Gumtree and even targeted victims on pro-anorexia websites."

To get what he wanted, Falder posed as a teenage girl on these websites to obtain images of six girls.

Ms Iguyovwe added: "He enjoyed humiliating his victims."

Some victims said since coming into contact with him they had attempted suicide multiple times. Others said they would never get over what happened, that they would always feel "dirty, like used goods".

Analysis: Sima Kotecha, BBC Midlands correspondent

Matthew Falder's case raises further questions about how police can stay one step ahead of those with such an advanced technical knowledge that they're able to exploit the most vulnerable and expose them.

He was a manipulative person whose prime motivation was power and control. He wanted his victims to feel embarrassed and humiliated.

His in-depth knowledge of the internet meant he could post obscene photos in a space only visible to a restricted audience.

The National Crime Agency worked with its international partners to identify the man behind the pseudonyms but he managed to carry out his crimes for several years without detection.

A mother, who gave Falder photographs of her daughter, said: "I was physically ill when I found out that my child's image had been coerced from me and was so shook up that I was in no fit state to go into work.

"I feel as if I failed my daughter massively by being too trusting, as it is my job as her mum to protect her and I put her in danger.

"That will never go away and it is something I have to live with and struggle with the guilt for the rest of my life."

Clinical and forensic psychologist Kirsty Lowe said Falder took pleasure from torturing his victims.

"He refers to enjoyment," she said. "He said he enjoys seeing the reluctant look on her face, seeing how far he could push the person."

Other victims are of course unable to speak for themselves, as Falder shared images of baby torture, Birmingham Crown Court was told.

A spokesman for website Gumtree said it maintained strong relationships with law enforcement and had given its "full support and co-operation to the NCA in their investigation of this case".

Senior investigations officer for the NCA, Matt Sutton, said that Falder's "victim targeting" showed "organisation and advanced manipulation".

He added: "His primary motivation was for power, control, suffering and humiliation. Believing he had superior intellectual and computational abilities, he was confident that he could outwit law enforcement.

"There is little doubt that Falder would have continued his offending, causing untold pain and distress to many other vulnerable people."

GCHQ said it was "an horrific case" and that the hearts of its staff "go out to the victims".

"GCHQ is determined to use our expertise to counter this type of terrible online child sexual abuse."

Steven Wilson, head of department for the European Cybercrime Centre at Europol, said he was "proud to have been able to have contributed to bringing this offender to justice".

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How global taskforce caught 'worst' paedophile

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A university lecturer who blackmailed people he met online into sending him degrading photos including acts of paedophilia has been jailed for 32 years. Dr Matthew Falder's conviction is thought to be the first UK prosecution related to sadistic "hurtcore" material located on the dark web.

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No further action on UK media phone hacking, chief prosecutor says

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Crown Prosecution Service says insufficient evidence to bring charges against Mirror journalists or News UK

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Crime + Investigation is a TV channel exploring the who, what and why of real crime for over 10 years.

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The government plans to increase the severity of punishment for benefit fraud. It did cross my mind that the timing of this announcement was rather brilliant. In the middle of the Liberal Democrat annual conference, perhaps the aim is to unsettle those, like Sarah Teather, who still believe in social justice and don't want to stay in power at any price.

Anyone who examines the facts knows that benefit fraud is a minor problem. Tax fraud is 15 times bigger, unclaimed benefits 17 times bigger, benefit cuts are 22 times bigger and tax evasion is 30 to 70 times bigger. In the context of our national finances benefit fraud is near irrelevant:

However this is not the impression we get from the national press. Using Google Trends it is possible to count the frequency of words used on the internet. In the UK, between June 2010 and September 2013 'benefit fraud/cheat' appears on average 80 times per month, whereas 'tax fraud/cheat' appear only 20 times per month (a ratio of 4:1). Even worse, if we search news pages the difference is 37 to 6 (a ratio of 6:1). In other words, while benefit fraud is 6% of tax fraud, the media talks about benefit fraud 600% more.

This is just one part of a much wider problem. An analysis of government cuts shows the same pattern. Compared to the average person cuts target the poor 5 times more, disabled people 9 times more, and the severely disabled 19 times more. Meanwhile, artificially low interest rates hide a major shift in resources towards the better-off.

We are living in a severe economic crisis created, not by people in poverty nor by disabled people, but by inflated house prices and the associated debt. Banks, politicians, home owners, the moderately wealthy and the very wealthy are all complicit in this problem - but nobody wants to take any share of the blame - instead we shift responsibility to those groups that are politically weak and utterly innocent. This is the role of the scapegoat.

In the UK scapegoating increases as party politics becomes a madcap chase for the swing voter. Recent policy pronouncements make clear that, while nobody is interested in reducing poverty, there is a great deal of interest in subsidising home owners, child care and reducing taxes for middle-income earners. We live in a medianocracy - power lies in the middle and the welfare state is increasingly being distorted by the needs of the middle. This explains why increasing punishments for benefit cheats is good politics - even when it's unfair, illogical and expensive.

In reality benefit fraud is often a side-effect of desperate poverty and the messiness of ordinary life. WomenCentre in Halifax works with women whose lives have descended into a hellish combination of debt, mental illness, abuse, ill health and many other problems. The graph below shows the problems of 44 women working with WomenCentre:

85% of these women had recently experienced domestic violence. It is not unusual for women sometimes to tell the benefit agency they are single even when they may be in some kind of relationship - often a highly toxic relationship. They do this because it means they will get a modest improvement in their very low income, which they can then use to better look after themselves and their children. But if the system discovers that the woman has lied then they can be sent to prison - at a cost of £40,000 per year; the cost of putting children in care is even greater.

In an ideal world all fraud would be wrong. But we do not live in an ideal world, and many women and families live in a desperate poverty which is not just financial - it is reinforced by isolation, stigmatisation and despair. In those circumstances is benefit fraud even wrong?

Interestingly the Church used to take a very firm line on social justice. Archbishop Temple, one of the founders of the welfare state, quoted St Thomas Aquinas with approval:

...it is lawful for a man to succour his own need by mean's of another's property, by taking it either openly or secretly; nor is this properly speaking theft or robbery.

St Thomas, along with many other great thinkers, understands that there is nothing sacred about the right to property. Unless society takes care of those with the least it cannot expect those with the least to respect property rights or other damaging rules and regulations. Fraud from greed is always wrong, but fraud from need is not.

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The government plans to increase the severity of punishment for benefit fraud. It did cross my mind that the timing of this announcement was rather brilliant. In the middle of the Liberal Democrat annual conference, perhaps the aim is to unsettle those, like Sarah Teather, who still believe in social justice and don't want to stay in power at any price.

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I am a woman. I am a feminist. And it took me 12 years to admit that someone I loved was a sexual predator.

This isn't easy to acknowledge, but it feels especially important after a year marked by several high profile accusations of sexual assault and domestic violence. Almost every case featured public scrutiny of the accuser's history and values and motivations; almost every case featured a woman who choses to publicly stand by the accused. Many other women responded with shock and disappointment: Why would any woman defend a rapist? How could any smart, confident woman be in such denial?

The public refusal to believe rape accusations is harmful to all women, and it casts a shadow on rape victims all over the world. But as appalling as it is to refuse to believe a woman who has been so brutally violated, I cannot help but feel some empathy with the disbelievers, because when a close family member of mine - who I'll call Steve - was accused and convicted of sexual assault, I refused to believe it.

My father had left for Nigeria when I was two years old and my brother was six months old and, as we grew up, Steve was what we imagined a "cool dad" would be like: he was funny, he swore, he played pranks. He always had time for us when it seemed like all the other adults had more important things to do.

The first time Steve was arrested for sexual assault was in 1988, when I was seven years old. I remember little more than visiting him in prison, talking to him through the glass. Nobody talked about why he was there.

When he was released three years later we all acted as if nothing had happened. Steve went back to being the ticklemonster and the prankster in the family. He babysat me. We went to Disneyland together.

Three years later, he was arrested again - this time, for a particularly violent rape of a prostitute.

After his second arrest, I was old enough to know what was going on. His parents frantically scraped up every dollar they could for his defence, emptying their retirement accounts and selling their house. They were confident that the truth would win out and people would see that Steve was the victim of a vindictive woman.

Steve's parents were kind and loving people. But these charges brought out a shocking side to them.

"That whore", Steve's dad would say. "That lying whore."

When the victim showed up to court covered in cuts and bruises and her neck in a brace, Steve's parents argued to us that it was a ruse: the bruises were makeup; the neck brace was for show. My mom, who hadn't even been particularly close to Steve, believed all of their stories and justifications. She never said anything to vilify the victim, but she would say that something about it just "didn't seem right."

When Steve was convicted for rape for the second time and sentenced to 12 years in prison, we still didn't believe that our Steve was capable of something so monstrous. His parents cried every day over the injustice of the system. My brother and I sent letters and pictures to him in prison. He made us little gifts in return, and we treasured them. I dreamed that the police would realise they had made a mistake and he could come home. I would wake up crying.

I missed him desperately.

Nobody ever talked about the first conviction. Nobody ever discussed the charges that led to his 12-year stint. We didn't tell any of the extended family where he was.

Even after I grew up, got married and had kids, I still didn't believe Steve was a rapist. So, when he was released, I greeted him with open arms. We had a party; I painted a banner.

One evening, a few years later, we were all at a family dinner. Somehow his jail time came up in conversation.

"That whore," his dad whispered. Everybody quietly nodded and changed the subject.

After dinner, I drove home with my brother's then-wife and I realized she was shaking with rage. I didn't understand.

She finally turned to me and said, "Do you realize that he just called a rape victim a whore?"

She looked at her two little girls in the backseat, and I did too. I finally realised what this looked like to an outsider, what I had been condoning all these years - all to preserve the fantasy of a man who never existed, all to keep from realising that my love had been wasted on someone who was the embodiment of everything I stood against.

What a failure of a family we were, to enable this man and to put a roof over his head while he was victimising women. I can't imagine how people must have shaken their heads at us as we refused to believe a woman covered in injuries, and how terrified they must have been to have us in their neighbourhood. We must have seemed absolutely delusional to deny that there was anything behind not only one, but two rape convictions. How heartless we must have looked to call a rape victim a "whore".

It's terrifying that we never questioned it.

I no longer have any relationship with Steve. The man I see now has tainted every memory of the man I once knew. His mother, to this day, rages at the system that unfairly locked him away, and she still supports him financially and emotionally. I think that admitting that the baby she rocked in her arms grew into a monster would kill her; it would strip away every year, and every day that she had poured her love and devotion into him.

We have to believe victims, even if we are hurt and ashamed by what they say. It's necessary to face that pain and that shame in order to protect the innocent and get justice for those who have been harmed. The pain and heartbreak that the families of rapists face should never be an excuse for turning your back on victims - and I know just how devastating acknowledging the truth can be.
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I understand why people believe sexual predators before victims. I did | Ijeoma Oluo

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I am a woman. I am a feminist. And it took me 12 years to admit that someone I loved was a sexual predator. This isn't easy to acknowledge, but it feels especially important after a year marked by several high profile accusations of sexual assault and domestic violence.

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We're doing this by influencing decision-makers, opinion formers and the public to:

Reduce the use of prison.

Improve conditions for prisoners.

Promote equality and human rights in the criminal justice system.

Find out more about what we do

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We're doing this by influencing decision-makers, opinion formers and the public to: Reduce the use of prison. Improve conditions for prisoners. Promote equality and human rights in the criminal justice system. Find out more about what we do

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Police have been called to supermarkets across the UK amid crowd surges as people hunt for "Black Friday" offers.

Greater Manchester Police appealed for calm after attending seven Tesco shops, at which three men were arrested and a woman was hit by a falling television.

The force said the issues were "totally predictable" and it was "disappointed" by shop security. Tesco said only a "small number" of stores were affected.

Police were called in places including Dundee, Glasgow, Cardiff and London.

Originating in the US, Black Friday is becoming a major UK shopping day.

Visa has predicted that UK shoppers will spend £518m online on cards on Friday - which would make it the country's biggest internet shopping day in history.

Police in Manchester tweeted: "At least two people arrested at #BlackFriday sales events already this morning. Keep calm people!"

The force said there had been "disturbances" at the seven Tesco stores.

Incidents at those stores and other locations included:

About 200 shoppers refused to leave a store in Middleton "despite being told stock had all gone"

Fights broke out between shoppers in Stretford, and a woman suffered "minor injuries" after being hit by a falling television. The store was closed at 00:36 GMT

A man was arrested in Salford after he threatened to "smash a staff member's face in"

A woman broke her wrist in a crush, with Greater Manchester Police's deputy chief constable Ian Hopkins describing shoppers' behaviour as "appalling"

In Wigan, officers were called to reports of "several hundred people trying to enter the store". Police added: "Two men were ejected before control was regained"

There were reports of fighting in a store in Hattersley, where a man was arrested for a public order offence

A man was arrested for assault at a store in Green End

Bicester Village shopping outlet in Oxfordshire had to temporarily close after roads around it became gridlocked by Black Friday shoppers

In London, police were called by both Tesco staff and queuing shoppers as people gathered at the Glover Drive store in Edmonton.

Officers also attended Tesco stores in Willesden and Surrey Quays.

The Metropolitan Police said officers worked with staff to "ensure that sale-goers were able to enter and exit the stores safely", and said no-one had been injured "as a result of the overcrowding".

Sgt Paul Marshall, a Metropolitan Police officer, tweeted: "Even on #BlackFriday shoving people to the floor so you can get £20 off a Coffee Maker is still an assault."

In South Wales, police said they were called by concerned staff at a number of Tesco stores.

A spokesman said officers were twice called to Tesco in Excelsior Road, Cardiff, just after midnight, when concerns were raised about customer conduct inside the shop. No arrests were made.

Police were called to Tesco at Silverburn in the Pollok area of Glasgow about 11:45 GMT on Thursday after staff reported scuffles among several customers.

The store was closed for a period, and footage from the scene shows shoppers shoving each other as they attempt to grab items from trolleys.

Police were also called to the Tesco in Kingsway, Dundee, to help with crowd control.

Avon and Somerset Police said they were called after scuffles in the queue at Tesco in Brislington, Bristol, at about midnight.

The BBC's Zoe Conway tweeted a picture of a woman on her knees with the words: "Customers knocked to the ground in the rush at Asda Wembley #BlackFriday."

Jamie Hook was buying food at Tesco in Stretford on Thursday night when he said "the screaming started".

"I looked at the massive crowd to see people climbing over shelves and displays, staff running for cover, fights breaking out, stock flying through air, people breaking through carrying televisions - and this was before the sale had even started," he said.

"The lady on the till I was at was in tears, terrified of it all, but she was under orders to close her till to go and help crowd control."

Ross Lewis was at one of the stores participating in Black Friday in Cardiff. He said people fought to get hold of television sets.

"People were biting each other, pinching, punching, kicking - it was just absolutely horrendous, it was so, so bad."

Sir Peter Fahy, Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police, expressed his frustration via his Twitter account about the amount of Black Friday-related work being asked of his officers.

In a statement, he also said he was "disappointed that stores did not have sufficient security staff on duty".

"Across Greater Manchester large supermarkets already make significant demands on policing through calls to shoplifting, anti-social behaviour and thefts of fuel from their petrol stations - much of which is preventable," he said.

"We just ask these stores to work with us to reduce the demands on policing and reduce the risks of disorder and crime."

A Tesco spokesman said: "Over 600 Tesco stores have Black Friday offers available in store.

"In the interest of customer safety a small number of these stores contacted police last night to help control crowds safely and stores are now trading normally."

Black Friday - historically the big sales day in America that follows the Thanksgiving holiday - has been adopted by an increasing number of shops in the UK.

The websites of several retailers, including Tesco, Argos and John Lewis, crashed earlier due to the number of shoppers trying to access them.

Despite its website problems, John Lewis said it was forecasting record online sales by the end of Friday. It said Apple's iPad mini and a discounted food processor were its fastest-selling products in early sales.

Currys said it experienced "astonishing" online demand overnight, with a "pre-planned queuing system" operating.

Many retailers have been advertising Black Friday deals, with Tesco offering discounts of up to 70%.

At about 07:00 GMT on Friday Tesco tweeted that it had "loads" of Black Friday bargains - but that tweet was later deleted.

And on Friday afternoon, Tesco also tweeted that it was having problems with its website, due to "huge demand".

The company has previously said it expects Black Friday to beat Boxing Day sales in 2014.

Its 24-hour stores began selling a minute after midnight, and extra staff have been laid on in some areas.

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Police have been called to supermarkets across the UK amid crowd surges as people hunt for "Black Friday" offers. Greater Manchester Police appealed for calm after attending seven Tesco shops, at which three men were arrested and a woman was hit by a falling television.

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In this videocast Sudhir Venkatesh, well known for his authorship of Gang Leader for a Day, discusses his experience of being invited to work with the FBI as a roving advisor on issues related to gang related crime. He describes how "as a researcher and a geek" it was fascinating to see the FBI from the inside out:

Sudhir Venkatesh, William B. Ransford Professor of Sociology at Columbia University, talks with Vera director Michael Jacobson about his 18 months advising the FBI on working with local law enforcement agencies to deal with gang-related crime and his current research on informal justice systems in urban communities. This podcast is part of the 2011-2012 Neil A. Weiner Research Speaker Series.

Categories: Committing Sociology

Tags: FBI, Sudhir Venkatesh

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In this videocast Sudhir Venkatesh, well known for his authorship of Gang Leader for a Day, discusses his experience of being invited to work with the FBI as a roving advisor on issues related to gang related crime. He describes how "as a researcher and a geek" it was fascinating to see the FBI from the...

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(New York) - Global clothing brands tied to a Bangladesh factory that caught fire two years ago should immediately support full and fair compensation for workers and families of the dead. Survivors of the fire at Tazreen Fashions are still suffering from their injuries and loss of income.

Only two out of 16 firms linked to the factory are believed to have paid any meaningful amount of compensation to the victims. Five companies have paid nothing, claiming the factory was making or storing their products without their knowledge or authorization. Other companies have offered undisclosed charitable donations.

At least 112 workers died in the fire at the Tazreen Fashions factory on November 24, 2012, in Savar, outside the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka. Managers had barred them from leaving by the stairs since they said it was a false alarm, survivors said. The exits were also blocked with cartons as the factory was rushing to fill an order. Workers were badly injured as they jumped out of the upper floors of the burning factory. Hundreds continue to suffer from their injuries and cannot afford their medical treatment.

The fire took place in the same industrial town where five months later the Rana Plaza building collapsed, killing more than 1,100 workers.

"The victims of Tazreen, like those of the Rana Plaza tragedy, need a huge amount of support. Many of the survivors might have escaped the flames, but their lives are ruined," said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. "These global brands should no longer dodge their duty to help these people."

Interviewees said they had received 100,000 Bangladesh Taka (US$1,267) in compensation from the Bangladesh government and the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA), but they had spent most of the funds within the first year of the disaster on medical costs.

According to the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, companies have a responsibility "to prevent or mitigate adverse human rights impacts that are directly linked to their operations, products or services by their business relationships, even if they have not contributed to those impacts." The UN guidelines also state that "where business enterprises identify that they have caused or contributed to adverse impacts, they should provide for or cooperate in their remediation through legitimate processes."

In November 2013, Human Rights Watch wrote to five companies whose products were in some way associated with the Tazreen factory, but who have refused to provide any financial support to the victims because they publicly said either their clothes were not being produced at Tazreen at the time of the fire, or their products had been manufactured or stored in Tazreen without their knowledge or authorization. To date, Dickies (USA), Sears (USA), Disney (USA), Teddy Smith (France), and Walmart (USA), have not replied.

However, Dickies released a statement stating it had cut ties with the factory some time before. The CEO of Delta Apparels told ABC News on December 4, 2012, that Tazreen had not been authorized to produce its clothes. Sears was quoted in the Wall Street Journal on November 29, 2012, saying that merchandise was being made at the factory without its approval. Teddy Smith told France 24 on December 4, 2012, that a supplier had placed an order with the factory without its knowledge. On December 21, 2012, Disney said that several boxes of its sweatshirts were found at Tazreen, but they had not been manufactured there, and had been stored there without its authorization.

"Companies should not claim that just because they did not know their products were in Tazreen they have no responsibility to the victims," Adams said. "The UN Guiding Principles clearly state that all firms have a responsibility to conduct due diligence throughout their supply chain, and provide a remedy to anyone affected by human rights violations."

Bangladeshi activists who entered Tazreen Fashions after the fire also found labels, clothing, and documentation connected to C&A (Belgium), Edinburgh Woollen Mill (UK), El Corte Ingles (Spain), Sean Combs/Enyce (US), Karl Rieker (Germany), KiK (Germany), Li & Fung (Hong Kong), and Piazza Italia (Italy). Human Rights Watch wrote to each of these companies in November 2013, but one year later, none have replied.

Of these firms, Karl Rieiker, Piazza Italia, Edinburgh Woolen Mills, KiK, El Corte Ingles, and Enyce said they had or would make charitable donations to the victims, according to the Amsterdam-based Clean Clothes Campaign. However they have not publicized how much they have given or how it was spent, if indeed they had made any donations.

Only two of the brands, Europe's C&A and Li and Fung of Honk Kong, are believed to have made meaningful attempts to compensate the survivors and relatives of those who died, according to the Clean Clothes Campaign.

An appeal to raise funds for the many victims of the Rana Plaza tragedy has also failed to raise the necessary amount of money. As of November 2014, the trust had raised just under $19.4 million, less than half of the total amount the ILO-chaired Rana Plaza Donors Trust Fund estimates they need. In the case of the Tazreen Fashions fire, the Clean Clothes Campaign believes that compensation should be calculated according to international standards as set out by the Rana Plaza compensation arrangement overseen by the ILO. Human Rights Watch called on the ILO to lead efforts to establish a trust fund for the victims of the Tazreen Fashions fire, similar to the one it established for the Rana Plaza disaster.

However, according to the Clean Clothes Campaign, on the cusp of the two-year anniversary of the Tazreen fire an outline agreement has been made between Clean Clothes Campaign, IndustriALL, and C&A to contribute "a significant amount towards full and fair compensation" for the Tazreen victims. Clean Clothes Campaign said the final details of the pledge will be worked out and made public once the cost of the package has been finalized.

Workers interviewed by Human Rights Watch said that on the day of the fire, Tazreen Fashions was on deadline to meet a big order. Factory managers, they alleged, initially ordered people to stay at work even after fire alarms sounded so that work would not be interrupted. They also claimed that some factory personnel locked the exits on several floors of the building, while other exit routes were blocked by stock prepared for delivery. Many of the survivors injured their limbs or spines as they jumped from the upper floors of the building to escape.

Speaking in September 2014, one of the survivors, Mohammed Sulaiman, said that he has not been able to work since:

Those who could tried to save their lives by jumping off the building. I jumped too, but broke my leg ... I was the only earning member [in my family]. My brother stopped studying because of my accident and now works as a daily wage laborer. I have not done any work since the accident because the doctor told me not to do any heavy work. I still have to spend money on medicines. I cannot sit on the floor anymore. I cannot sit or stand for too long at a time.

Aleya, 24, survived the fire by jumping off a fifth-floor window in the factory. She told Human Rights Watch in September 2014 that she had suffered serious injuries which still prevent her from working.

"I was injured on my back, my neck, and my head. I haven't worked since the accident because of health conditions. I still have pain in my head and back. I can't sit for more than half hour and can't talk for too long."

"It is important that a system is put in place to ensure that the right amount of support goes to the right people," Adams said. "The survivors of the Tazreen Fashions and the Rana Plaza catastrophes need and deserve long term help."

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Bangladesh: After Fire, Companies Evade Compensation

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(New York) - Global clothing brands tied to a Bangladesh factory that caught fire two years ago should immediately support full and fair compensation for workers and families of the dead. Survivors of the fire at Tazreen Fashions are still suffering from their injuries and loss of income.

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Women's groups and civil rights organisations in Hungary have expressed anger over an official public safety video that appears to partially blame women for sexual assaults against them.

Women's groups and civil rights organisations in Hungary have expressed anger over an official public safety video that appears to partially blame women for sexual assaults against them.

The video depicts three friends on a night out, dressing up, drinking, dancing and flirting, before one of them is approached by a hooded assailant outside a nightclub. It closes with a shot of the woman lying on the ground, and the slogan: "You are responsible, you can do something about it."

The film was one of three commissioned by Baránya county police in a £9,000 crime-prevention initiative, and premiered at a cinema in Pécs, Hungary's fifth largest city, last Friday.

"Official copies have been handed over to local school board representatives so that they can show it to students during crime prevention discussions," the police said in a press release. "The films feature popular local actors and Fanni Weisz, an equal opportunities activist and the 'official face' of Pécs."

The Association of Hungarian Women launched an online petition calling on the police to make public safety education videos that "address the offenders, not the victims".

Éva Cserháti, of Hungary's Women United Against Violence (NaNe), told the Guardian the video caricatured female sexuality "almost to the level of a soft-porn movie" and suggested "that women should not drink or have fun in a way that is not completely acceptable to men, because this sort of behaviour is provocation". She said the video "intentionally spreads some of the worst ideas of an extremely socially conservative and patriarchal society".

Cserháti said the portrayal of the offender was also problematic. "A stranger attacking a woman on a dark street is very rare. Most sexual assaults are committed by somebody known to the victim, often from their inner circle of friends and family," she said. "This understanding of rape as a social phenomenon comes from the Socialist era, when the victim, or in some cases even the basic citizen was habitually blamed, and contrasted with the blamelessness of public institutions such as the police."
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Hungarian police accused of victim-blaming in safety video

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Women's groups and civil rights organisations in Hungary have expressed anger over an official public safety video that appears to partially blame women for sexual assaults against them. Women's groups and civil rights organisations in Hungary have expressed anger over an official public safety video that appears to partially blame women for sexual assaults against them.

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Even within the tiny file marked 'schoolboy killers', Will Cornick is an oddity. He came from an apparently loving home, he was intelligent and an academic achiever, and not subject to the detailed scrutiny of social services because of years of teenage run-ins with the authorities. He had no criminal record.

How he came to murder Ann Maguire - a popular teacher at his school, against whom he held a murderous grudge - remains a mystery to his family and those closest to him.

What to do with the 16-year-old murderer will now exercise social workers and the prisons system for at least the next 20 years. He might never be released from jail and his prospects, should he ever be - based on the evidence of past cases - could be grim.

The naming of Cornick, and the length of sentence that he received, was criticised yesterday by campaigners for youth offenders who said they would see him detained for decades in a system ill-suited for rehabilitation.

"I don't think a child - and he was a child - should get a life sentence because they are young, their brain is not mature and a life sentence is indeterminate, it could last forever. I think no other western European country would impose a life sentence on a teenager," said Penelope Gibbs, who chairs the Standing Committee for Youth Justice (SCYJ), an umbrella group of charities and campaign groups.

"Do we want him to be rehabilitated? Do we want him to leave prison with the lowest risk possible of causing more harm to others? Yes. How long do we need to achieve that, rather than how long do we need to punish him for? We do need to punish him but I think to punish him for longer than he's been alive for is disproportionate."

He will be one of just 16 other children in custody for murder in a detention system that houses more children - more than 1,400 in the UK according to 2012 figures - than any European nation other than Turkey. Britain is considered to have one of the most punitive systems for children in Europe with the lowest ages of criminal responsibility of ten in England and Wales, and eight in Scotland.

Only Switzerland has a comparable age of responsibility, according to a study by the Council of Europe. Even so, the number of young offenders has been slashed from more than 3,000 six years ago after a change in police targets culture that saw teens picked up as a matter of routine for minor offences to boost clear-up rates.

Cornick could now be detained in a secure children's home, which tend to be for the most troubled and damaged youngsters. The home was the initial destination for the two 10-year-old boys convicted of murdering James Bulger on Merseyside in 1993.

Alternatively, he could go to a specialist unit at a young offender's institute - such as the Keppel Unit at Wetherby prison that was described in a prison inspector's report as a model for the treatment of young offenders. It holds about 48 children aged 15-18 who were some of the "most challenging and vulnerable" people in the country but is the only one of its kind in the country.

It is clear that any attempt to rehabilitate him will be a monumental task. After the attack, he told psychiatrists he "could not give a shit" about the grief of his victim's family. "In my eyes, everything I've done is fine and dandy," he told experts.

He is unlikely to get the academic stimulation of his previous studies. Cornick could be taught in a class of around eight people with a focus on basic literacy, numeracy and vocational skills to get a job when they were finally released. He took and passed five GCSEs a year early, but he will be unlikely to be able to study for higher level qualifications now.

Harry Fletcher, a criminal justice expert and director of the anti-online abuse charity Digital Trust, said: "I think that the judge really had no choice but to give him a lengthy sentence, because the possibility of him voluntarily taking part in any rehabilitation processes at the moment is really rather slim.

"He's been on remand for quite some time and all the people who work with him say he hasn't shown any remorse at all. Given the sentencing guidelines, the judge's hands were fairly tied.

"The notion that he might never get out I was surprised about, because who knows what he'll be like in 20 years? He may have come to terms with it, be grief-stricken - we just don't know. But it is going to be extremely difficult to manage him, given that he is saying it was justified. It's possible that he will develop a full-blown personality disorder, which will mean rehabilitation is extremely difficult if not impossible.

He added: "On the other hand, he might be working with therapists, psychologist and psychiatrists with whom he can bond, and that improvements are made. But pre-meditated killing at 15 - you don't want to damn him now as having no hope, but the prospects aren't brilliant."

Children involved in the most grave of crimes have tended to be highly damaged individuals, with a long history within the care system and underlying mental health issues, said the Howard League for Penal Reform.

"Custody does nothing to help that and everything to exacerbate these issues," said Andrew Neilson, head of campaigns for the charity.

"First and foremost, custody is about security and locking people up and rehabilitation is second, particularly in the current context within prisons where budgets have been slashed."

The fate of previous high-profile cases reveals the difficulty of rehabilitation given the notoriety of their crimes.

The young killers of James Bulger - Jon Venables and Robert Thompson - were both named and pictured after they were convicted of his murder as 10 year-olds. They had lured the two-year-old boy away from a shopping centre, took him to a railway line and beat him with bricks and iron bars.

When he was given a new identity on his release from a secure children's home in 2001, Venables was rearrested after breaching the terms of his parole by visiting Merseyside.

He developed drink and drugs problems and revealed his real identity to friends. He was jailed for two years in 2010 for downloading and distributing indecent images of children. He was released again in 2013.

Mary Bell, who secured notoriety in the 1960s for killing two children at the age of 11, successfully applied for lifelong anonymity in 2003 despite collaborating on a book. She had assumed a number of different identities and had moved more than five times after people discovered who she was.

It is impossible to know whether Cornick will come to regret his crime in 20 years time, but the stories of Venables and Bell suggest that it will not be forgotten in his lifetime.

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Will Cornick: The boy who killed his teacher, and a conundrum for the

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Even within the tiny file marked 'schoolboy killers', Will Cornick is an oddity. He came from an apparently loving home, he was intelligent and an academic achiever, and not subject to the detailed scrutiny of social services because of years of teenage run-ins with the authorities. He had no criminal record.

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Violent and sexual crime stats from the guardian

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Violent and sexual crime stats from the guardian

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There were 1.9m violent incidents in England and Wales in 2012-13, with just over one in fifty adults victimised, according to the latest figures from the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW), released today.

Violent crime has decreased by 13% over the past five years and 35% on the peak figure of 4.2m in 1995. The CSEW surveys people across the country face-to-face and as a result differs from the number of crimes reported by police, as we reported last month.

The definition of violent crime in the CSEW also differs somewhat from how the police record it. For example, robbery, which the report describes as "an offence in which violence or the threat of violence is used during a theft" is not included by police as violence against the person but is in the CSEW violence category."

Homicide and sexual offences are also excluded from the overall count of 1.9m given above.

A breakdown of violent crime

The category with the largest number of incidents was assault without injury which made up 37% of the total and then assault with minor injury, which made up 28%.

The number of incidents directed at repeat victims has decreased by 68% since 1995, when violent crime was at its height. However, crime targeted at these victims still makes up more than half (55%) of all incidents recorded.

3.2% of males experienced violent crime in comparison to 1.9% of females. Those aged 16-24 are more than twice as likely to be the victim of violent crime as any other age band. Single people were also far more likely to be victims than those who are married.

Homicide

Although, the CSEW count of violence does not include homicide, the ONS release contained statistics detailing occurrences over the previous year.

Although the 551 homicides recorded in 2012-13 was 20 more than in 2011-12, it is still lower than any other year since 1989's 521.

The number of homicides recorded by the police increased between 1961 and 2002-03 but has seen a generally downward trend since. The peak includes 172 homicides committed by Harold Shipman, which although were committed over a long period of time, were recorded by police in 2002-03 as a result of Dame Janet Smith's inquiry.

The chart below shows the number of homicide offences recorded by the police in England and Wales from 1961 to 2012-13. It's important to note however, that the figures are based on the year in which offences are recorded by police rather than the year of the incident.

As in recent years, two-thirds of homicide victims were male.

45% of all homicides involving females were committed by a partner or ex-partner, compared to 4% for males.

There were 9.7 offences per million in the population. Children under one had the highest victimisation rate at 30 offences per million in the population.

However, homicide still remains at a very low rate in comparison to other causes of death.

Weapons

Knifes and other sharp instruments, such as broken bottles, made up the largest proportion of weapons involved in offences currently recorded as homicides at 35% of the total, down slightly on the previous year's 39%.

A larger proportion of females at 16% than males at 4% were strangled or asphyxiated. Homicides involving shooting, of which each gender was involved in five making ten overall, were at their lowest number since 1980.

Domestic abuse and intimate violence

Women were much more likely to be the victims of domestic or sexual violence. 2% of women and 0.5% of men experienced some form of sexual assault, including attempts, in the last year.

7.1% of women and 4.4% of men reported an experience of domestic abuse in the last year, which is roughly 1.2m females and 700,000 males.

Intimate violence includes experience of emotional, financial and physical abuse by partners or family members, as well as sexual assaults and stalking by any person. The most common form of intimate violence for both men and women was non-sexual partner abuse. When asked if they had experienced this type of abuse since the age of 16, 24% of women and 11% of men said yes.

Nearly 5 million women or 30% of the female population have experienced some form of domestic abuse since the age of 16.

As well as asking about experience of intimate violence, respondents were asked questions to indicate their attitude towards it. One in ten people thought it was mostly or sometimes acceptable to hit their partner in response to having an affair. Respondents aged between 16 and 19 were the likeliest to think that it was acceptable, 16% thought this was the case at least sometimes.

The table below shows the number of incidents by crime type recorded by the CSEW. The downloadable spreadsheet includes the data since 1981. What can you do with this data?

Data summary

Download the data

ONS data: download the tables

Can you do more with this data?
* Download the data
* Contact us at data@theguardian.com
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Crime statistics for England and Wales: violent crime and sexual offences

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There were 1.9m violent incidents in England and Wales in 2012-13, with just over one in fifty adults victimised, according to the latest figures from the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW), released today. Violent crime has decreased by 13% over the past five years and 35% on the peak figure of 4.2m in 1995.

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UKCrimeStats.com - The Leading Independent Crime Data Platform

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Welcome to UK Crime Stats, the leading public resource for maps, analysis and reporting of monthly crime data in England and Wales, growing by 500,000 crimes a month

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Some 40% of adults have experienced online harassment, according to a study from the US Pew Research Internet Project.

From name-calling to other threats, harassment is a common part of online life for many, its research suggests.

While men are more likely to experience name-calling, women are more vulnerable to sexual harassment and stalking.

The report comes amid a rise in social media abuse aimed at women in the games industry.

The report found that 73% of American adult internet users had witnessed online harassment - from being called offensive names to witnessing someone being stalked online.

It found that young adults - aged 18-29 - are most likely to experience online harassment, with 65% of internet users in this age group claiming to have fallen victim.

The vast majority of harassment took place on social networking sites, according to the research.

The report looked at six types of abuse:

Attempts to purposefully embarrass

Harassment for a sustained period of time

Online threats to physically harm

"It was striking to see how different varieties of harassment impacted different groups on different platforms, and the range of reactions online harassment elicited," said report author Maeve Duggan.

Of those who had personally been harassed online, the majority chose to ignore it, she found.

Young women are particularly vulnerable to sexual harassment and stalking online, she told the BBC.

Her research also found that gaming platforms were seen as the least welcoming to women, with 44% of people saying such forums were more geared towards men.

Last month, more than 2,000 people signed an open letter calling for an end to "hateful, harassing speech" on Twitter and other social media, following death threats to feminist games reviewer Anita Sarkeesian.

Her series on the portrayal of women in video games led to what she described as "some very scary threats" which forced her to leave her home.

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Some 40% of adults have experienced online harassment, according to a study from the US Pew Research Internet Project. From name-calling to other threats, harassment is a common part of online life for many, its research suggests. While men are more likely to experience name-calling, women are more vulnerable to sexual harassment and stalking.

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Now the dust has settled in the South African courtroom. The camera crews and journalists are packing up and getting their planes home. Pistorius is in a prison cell, facing a five-year sentence, but secure in the knowledge that he may only have to serve ten months of it. Who knows, perhaps his hotly anticipated memoir will be on the shelves ready for next Christmas. The sports committees who make the decisions have ruled that he won't be allowed to compete for five years. So at least Steenkamp's family won't have to hear thousands of fans in Rio cheering the name of their daughter's killer.

Pistorius' story is already being re-written. No longer a case of a man who shot a woman dead, it's now a narrative of the fallen hero. It's a story about his 'ordeal'. His 'fall from grace'. We're already hearing about his 'ruined life' - always written in the passive tense so that we don't notice he was the active agent in his own ruining. The fact that Reeva Steenkamp's life is ended remains unspoken.

I believe there's another story to be told, in the wake of this case. And that's the story of male violence against women - both in South Africa where a woman is killed by her partner every eight hours, in the UK where a woman is killed by her partner every 3.5 days, and around the world where 1 in 3 women will be raped, beaten or abused in their lifetimes. During the period of Pistorius' sentencing, approximately 27 women were killed as a result of domestic abuse in South Africa.

Reeva Steenkamp was killed on 14 February 2013 - the same day millions of women followed Eve Ensler's to dance in defiance of male violence for One Billion Rising. Since her death, approximately 243 women have been killed by suspected male violence in the UK - 118 this year alone. The last woman killed - in my hometown - was just 18 years old. She had her whole life ahead of her. She had hopes and dreams. Whoever killed her stole that future from her.

Some of those women's murders were followed by an inquiry into police failings. The inquiries found, again, that the police could have acted sooner to protect the victim. The inquiries found, again, that calls for help from the victim were ignored. The inquiries found, again, that if the women were listened to and supported, they didn't need to die.

Meanwhile, the safety net of refuges that have saved countless women's lives are being attacked, and closed. As a result, a snapshot day recorded by Women's Aid found that 150 women with 103 children were turned away from refuges.

Almost every time a woman is killed by a man in the UK, the murder is described by the police as an 'isolated incident'. But when 118 women are killed by men in nine and a half months, these are not 'isolated incidents'. These murders are connected. Until we recognise that these are not isolated incidents, that they are part of a pattern of male violence, then we won't be able to prevent these killings.

Not treating domestic abuse murders as isolated incidents will involve the police taking calls for help from abused women seriously. It will involve a co-ordinated and urgent response to reports from women that their partner is threatening them. It will involve recognising the signs, hearing the cries for help, and ensuring that women are listened to and protected. And it will mean properly funding and supporting the safety net of refuges, so that when women are listened to and responded to, they have somewhere safe to go.

Because we can't go on like this. We can't end 2014 with another 140 women dead as a result of suspected male violence. We can't read another report that highlights police failings in the case of too many of those deaths. We can't have another day where 150 women are turned away from refuges and forced to return home, knowing that the moment of trying to leave is the most dangerous of all.

We can't continue to put up with a world where women aged 15-44 are more at risk from rape and domestic abuse than cancer, car accidents, war and malaria. Because that's not an 'isolated incident'. That's a pattern of deadly misogyny that is killing women every day.

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Since Reeva Steenkamp's death, 243 women have been killed by male

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Now the dust has settled in the South African courtroom. The camera crews and journalists are packing up and getting their planes home. Pistorius is in a prison cell, facing a five-year sentence, but secure in the knowledge that he may only have to serve ten months of it.

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Marxism and crime

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The government is to roll out another campaign to warn claimants who don't report changes in their circumstances that they are risking jail. With 600 people a day calling the benefit fraud hotline, it's an issue many are happy to help stop. But how big an issue is it really?
Topics

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The government is to roll out another campaign to warn claimants who don't report changes in their circumstances that they are risking jail. With 600 people a day calling the benefit fraud hotline, it's an issue many are happy to help stop. But how big an issue is it really?

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Not quite a communist revolution but might be helpful to see a rebellion in action http://occupylondon.org.uk/

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A revision video found by Molly - thank you

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Sociology AS - Gender Differences In Crime

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This is a video I produced as part of my Sociology AS Level

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A revision video found by Georgia - thank you

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How a deviant label can impact on your life chances.

http://schoolsimprovement.net/school-exclusions-can-condemn-kids-to-life-of-crime/

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An article for global crime - worth reading

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-29651780

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For 'wider reading' have a look at this website - lots of notes (just make sure you look at the right topic) Miss Aylwin

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Sociology website with good links to the exam, videos clips and revision notes for all of the papers.