NOTA News Newsletter July 2018 1

Branch News
NOTA Scotland
Evaluation of NOTA Scotland
Conference 2018, Stirling Court
Hotel, Glasgow – Elisabet
Vandelanotte
Attendance from a range of different
agencies was high at this year’s NOTA
Scotland conference and it was good
to see so many professionals happy
to network, catch up and share their
expertise. Perhaps some shared the
imposter syndrome to which Paul
Rigby (Lecturer in social work) referred,
but this was certainly not apparent
from the intelligent questions and
comments that were made during the
two days in the various presentations
and workshops. I appreciate the
different perspectives the conference
continues to offer professionals as
described by Paul Rigby, the ‘multiagency
integration of research into the
field and questioning of practice’ - and
I came away with renewed energy
to try something out, to look into
something and to tell others about it.
The golden thread throughout this
year’s conference was internet sexual
offending. Alison Di Rollo (QC and
solicitor general for Scotland) pointed
out initially that there is a systematic
increase in sexual offending, especially
on the internet, with offenders
becoming increasingly younger.
Angela Eke (research coordinator for
the Criminal Behaviour Analysis Unit
of the Ontario Provincial Police) told
us that not only is this the case, but
there is also a decrease in detection in
such a fast-growing cyber-world visited
by such a vast population. Many of
us were pleasantly surprised by the
‘Thorn’ tool they use in Canada, a fake
child sexual abuse site that interrupts
viewing and tells viewers they are not
as anonymous as they might think,
resulting in fewer people ignoring this
and continuing on to illegal sites.
Michael Sheath (who previously
worked at the Lucy Faithfull
Foundation and is currently a staff
trainer at Europol) mentioned the
’Triple A Engine theory’ stating there
are 3 drivers for the use of online
images of CSA: Access, Affordability,
and Anonymity. Previous research
has indicated, when asked what
crimes people would commit if they
could get away with them without
consequence it was found that people
would commit most crimes. When
online, people don’t tend to inhibit
themselves as they feel anonymous
and therefore think they can get away
with it (this is also thought to be one
of the reasons why we see things like
‘trolling’ on Twitter), which makes the
internet a prefect space for people to
engage in criminogenic behaviour.
Angela Eke spoke about the C-PORT
(Child Pornography Offender Risk
Tool, Seto, and Eke, 2015) and CASIC
(Correlates of Admission to Sexual
Interest in Children, Seto and Eke,
2016) risk assessment tools and some
of the other speakers also presented
their developments and research
in this field which aim to support
case prioritisation and intervention
design. Mark Farmer gave us an
overview of how the English system of
intervention, post sentence, for those
who have committed sexual offences
has changed (i.e. the development
and implementation of Horizon and
Kazien) in order to incorporate the
most recent research findings.
Gemma Lockwood (Senior Probation
Officer and MAPPA coordinator
for Guernsey) and David Briggs
(Consultant Forensic Clinical
Psychologist) pointed out that we are
working with ‘old world’ approaches
to ‘new world’ problems, which
allow people to become increasingly
versed in ways of hiding their tracks or
deceiving the system. The ‘dark’ web
is one example of this and it seems
appropriate that facilitators of internet
programmes, such as that to which
Mark Farmer refers, receive some kind
of training on this. As somebody in
the audience so rightly pointed out,
we need to understand the language
of those abusing online to be able
to understand them, see through
deception and help them. They have
learned our ‘psycho-babble’, perhaps
we need to educate ourselves a little
more about the internet. As Wayne
Denner (motivational speaker and
trainer on online safety) put it, we
need to become digitally resilient: The
internet can be threatening, but it can
also be incredibly useful.
As a general comment from the day, it
was pointed out to me by others that
female sexual offending is still hugely
under-researched and also underprosecuted;
therefore, we are unable
to adequately manage or intervene
for those few women that have been
convicted.
Prevention is a core element of what
we do in working with individuals who
commit sexual offences. We learn
from the past to prevent in the future
(risk assessment all over, right?), but
as Stephen Smallbone (retired former
prison Psychologist and University
Professor Emeritus) put it so nicely:
“The end goal is to promote healthy
physical, social and psychological
development and the focus is on the
interest of the child”.
Elisabet Vandelanotte
Forensic Psychologist
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