A few hours ago, I listened to some people talking in a coffee shop. They agreed among themselves that all <18 criminal records should be sealed except for sex crimes. I’ve encountered this view before. A few years ago, I was very disappointed to discover a journalist on the left I otherwise have a lot of respect for was defending her work, trying to name and shame some 17-year-old rapists. My view, for what it’s worth, is that all crimes committed by children should be sealed(*). I am troubled by what seems like the increasingly popular idea that sexual violence offences should be exempt from the normal civil liberties procedures. This seems to me downstream of a broader idea- that sexual crime is incomprehensibly worse than other kinds of human misconduct. Sexual crime is awful, and it is awful in a distinctive way, but there are many things that are awful in a distinctive way, and no less bad.

The reason we seal the criminal records of children is that we don’t believe they are capable of committing crimes with the clarity of will that justifies marking them forever. At least that’s the rational reason to seal the criminal records of children- if the idea is that they’re more reformable, that’s probably not true- most evidence suggests child criminals are empirically less reformable than adult offenders- more like recidivate. Nevertheless, we take a principled stand that they are simply not capable of the kind of agency that should mark someone forever. If they were capable of that kind of agency, then we should let them vote, leave home etc.- but we don’t. There is no reason to think that as a crime becomes more grave, the capacity of a child to truly understand what they are doing as a fully developed moral being increases- on the contrary, if anything, the opposite seems more probable.

The best evidence tends to suggest that sexual criminals are not especially likely to reoffend, relative to other types of criminals- although these things are difficult to measure.

When I was raped, it happened like this. We started having consensual sex. I said, “Please stop.” I said it very clearly. He didn’t- saying “I’m almost finished”. Honestly, I think the idea that what he was doing was incredibly serious never even occurred to him. Make no mistake, what he did was incredibly serious, but I don’t think it was, for example, more serious than, say, getting drunk and punching someone at random because you want to start a fight. I recognise that what happened to me was in some sense, ‘on the low end’ of the rape spectrum, but that itself is part of the point- sexual violence, just like any other crime, comes in numerous different forms, degrees, etc, something that treating it like an alien horror occludes.

Treating it like an alien horror has another disadvantage. Precisely because of the aura it has accumulated, people have trouble recognising it. I think the guy who sexually assaulted me might well have trouble recognising what he did for the following reason: Rapists are horrific monsters. I’m nota horrific monster; therefore, I can’t be a rapist.

Part of what it occludes, I think, is just how common this stuff is. I’ve been groped on the genitals twice, and sexually harassed once, and that’s just by women. Serious incidents in my life involving men must number a dozen or more. Even the self-report statistics on perpetration - groping, harassment, sexual assault- even among women- are frightening- and keep in mind that self-report is riddled with people rationalising away their own behaviour, selectively forgetting, thinking ‘they don’t mean the sort of thing I did’ or outright lying.

Feminists quite rightly suggested that we don’t take sexual violence seriously enough. I would suggest that there is also a kind of non-seriousness in treating sexual violence as an alien evil, wholly unlike other forms of human selfishness and cruelty. The seriousness we need is a down-to-earth seriousness, not melodrama. There’s a tension here because, yes, ultimately, yes, I do actually agree, sexual violence is a form of cosmic horror, but in the same sense that all human wrongdoing is. Sexual crimes are grave, but treating them as wholly distinct distorts our vision in all sorts of ways.

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(*Footnote)- Although I think even sexual crimes by children should be sealed and not made public, I do think one exception is rational and proportionate with the civil liberties of the child. For some - not all, but some - sexual crimes committed by children, there should at least be the option of a lifetime ban on working with children as an adult, and other vulnerable populations like the intellectually disabled. This could be accomplished through a proper working with children checks system, without making the crime public, or requiring lifetime sex offender registration. It shouldn’t be automatic- but judges should have the option to impose it if the facts and offence warrant it. Naturally, an appeals and review system should exist, as for all important judicial decisions.