Prosecuting paedophiles for possessing child pornography would be an abuse of their human rights, a controversial sexologist has claimed. University of Hong Kong professor of psychiatry Ng Man-lun said new laws proposed in the long-stalled Child Pornography Bill meant paedophiles who were sexually attracted to children would be criminalised for their thoughts rather than their actions and would be driven underground, out of reach of treatment. 'I think this is very bad, first of all that possessing something, information or pictures, can be a crime, it's against human rights. You are being punished for your inclination, not what you have done. 'I think this is against the spirit of the law. I don't know why this is allowed in Western countries,' he said. 'They are discussing implementing this type of law in Hong Kong. I think it is very dangerous to follow Western mistakes.' He said paedophiles - who he defined as people who were 'predominantly infatuated with children' - did not necessarily go on to abuse children. 'The newspapers talk about [the issue] quite frequently . . . a lot of them refer to child sexual abuse cases as paedophilia cases. But not all paedophiles abuse children and not all child abusers are paedophiles. 'I hope people don't misunderstand me - I am in no way in favour of child sexual abuse - but I am not convinced this is the way to approach the problem. It may even make it worse.' The Sunday Morning Post recently revealed that local detectives had a list of Hong Kong residents who had used their credit cards to access child pornography, prompting calls from child abuse campaigners to speed up the passage of the bill to make possession of child pornography a criminal offence. It was part of a worldwide inquiry started in the United States in the late 1990s, which has identified 75,000 people who paid for access to hardcore child pornography on the Internet, and led to the arrest last month of British rock star Pete Townshend of The Who. 'Another very controversial part of the proposed bill says that you possess child pornography even if they are photos of actors who appear to be younger than 16 - so if a 21-year-old actress dresses like a 14-year-old it is also a crime to possess that material,' said Professor Ng. 'I think this type of investigation really drives paedophilia underground. There will be difficulty in studying paedophiles, they won't go for treatment or [be available for] academic research and nobody will want to investigate them - so even that will go underground.' Professor Ng said that if laws came into effect he would be scared to research the topic because he could be accused of being an offender. 'In Western countries they have created a panic over paedophiles, but I don't think this is justified because not all paedophiles are sexual abusers. Pushing them underground will be missing the point. 'You can't protect children from this - I don't think so,' he said. He said people who employed children to work in the pornography industry, or abused them while making it, were clearly criminals, but they should be prosecuted under existing laws. He said they may, however, be abusing children for money and may not actually be paedophiles. Professor Ng said some paedophiles were born with a predominant infatuation with young people, while others could have been affected by sexual trauma in early childhood. In some cases, paedophiles had suffered brain injury or experienced psychological problems, which resulted in a loss of confidence and meant that they found it far easier to relate to children than adults. 'In nature there are variations from the normal range, so some people are born more infatuated with older people and some with young people,' Professor Ng said. Graphic: CPORNGET
