Accountability.

Iatrogenic effects to become public. A frightening array of serious medical mishaps and preventable deaths in hospitals is due to be revealed next week.

And this is long overdue.
It will, unfortunately, just be the 'tip of the ice berg' (If you enter a public hospital you have a 15 per cent chance of suffering an adverse event.) Many 'adverse events' would self remit, would not be recorded as such, rather as complications to normal procedure. It will also, as has been stated by a Wellington doctor, push hospitals "back into the dark ages". "People will be less likely to own up when something goes wrong."

Now one would hope they would become more methodical, more careful ... that the standard of health care would improve as a result ...

And really one should be able to expect a little more than an 'all care no responsibility' adage from perhaps the most well paid professionals in society due to the trust a majority of people (mis)place in them.

'Hunting a 'charming' serial rapist???'

Now what use psychology without predictive ability ... so this becomes very interesting, it is like 'hanging out your dirty washing (academic learning) for all the world to see.'
But then again, only if the information is specific and says more than Mr Joe Average could come up with ... and they have. Mr Joe Average would never come up with this sort of stuff ...


He is thought to be European and aged 18 to 40. A leading criminal profiler says the rapist is "highly likely" to be married with children and "charming", "trustworthy" and "believable"... (University of Auckland psychologist Dr Ian Lambie).
So yes, he succcessfully gets them in to his car, which means he has pretty good verbal skills .. or sufficient to effect his intentions at the time he does this. 'Married' is but only one way by which sexual or other proclivity can be hidden, but a lack of previous sexual conviction? Always there is previous sexual behaviour approximating the use of excess force and always many people are aware of this.
"They like to fool their victims and ensure they aren't caught. They experience some sexual satisfaction but the actual concept [of rape] also excites them."
So it's like a game, and a game where the fantasy or (even more intellectually) the concept, is greater than the act ... oh yes.

The police perspective is also interesting ... not altogether different from Lambie's, a bit of echolalia perhaps... projection with a Women's Refuge/feminist overlay ...

Unit head, Sergeant Brett Pakenham, said, ... Rape is "seldom about sex", he says, but usually about power.Some serial offenders are driven by a fantasy which the reality never lives up to. They continue to offend in an attempt to realise that fantasy. Others rape to release anger and while that anger may be released in the short term, when the anger builds up again they will look for another victim."

Rape is by definition always to do with sex, in fact sex realised through power, non consensual imposed suppression of dissension sex. But 'power, fantasy and anger?' ... not sex?

And if 'reality never lives up to the fantasy,' then one would assume it to become self-limiting .. oh, unless of course he doesn't have a partner, or unless this is previously well established behaviour and re emerges periodically ... like rather than reoffend again presently he may well do the four to seven year hibernation that is quite common with serious sexual offenders when the probability of impending consequences become considerably greater than the pleasure from the rape.

My dad always used to say a 'standing prick has no conscience.' It sort of said it all really, and far more succinctly and realistically than our experts and law enforcers seem to be able to ... not withstanding that frequently the level of physiological arousal is such that it is this that drives the behaviour, not the erection per se .. too much blood flow to the peripheral muscles ... but that is academic really.

Profile of a rapist
* Is convicted of any criminal offence at the average age of 16 and convicted for the crime of rape at the average age of 24
* 90 per cent of rapists have a conviction for house burglary before committing their first rape
* At the time of being arrested for a series of rapes the offender is unlikely to have a previous rape or sexual-related conviction.
* He is also likely to continue offending until he is apprehended.
* Victims are usually always strangers, identified by prowling activity.

It's A Long Road 'Till You Find The Perfect Woman Son.

Researchers are warning that it could take up to 50 years to stem New Zealand's child abuse problem.
Massey University's human development team says abused children often think violence is normal and go on to treat their own offspring in a similar manner... and indeed they do, in so far as they learn to discriminate between private and public situations and it can become associated with sexual behaviour and as Bensen-Pope knows, enhance it ... and so the violence perpetuates privately, not accessible to moderation.
...researchers have now developed a method to identify problems within a family in an effort to bring about change ... oh yes
Professor Kirkland says that by focusing on the child's reactions rather than the parents, they can make a good assessment of what is going on in the family ... teachers and others have known this for a long time, eons in fact ... it's called poor instructional control, poor impulse control, a withdrawal response to close social contact often with body tenseness, strong approach/avoidance behaviour, averted eye gaze - not a sign of respect at all, simpy authorities trying to conceal excess, to maintain that 'code of silence,' continue to make the excess not addressable - and parallel 'play'/provocative behaviour with minimal reasonable interaction.
This behaviour used to be adequately addressed by the education system ... it used to be possible to override this asocial/antisocial behaviour and replace it with reasonable behaviour, but now this system no longer has the ability to do this. Teachers know that in the ultimate they can be out-pointed, that they are powerless to effect change, even at times powerless to teach.

Quite simply, Kirkland is wrong ... this problem can be addressed much more quickly, after all it has taken only two generations to escalate what was there all along to the proportions we have today. Further what he is almost suggesting is greater intrusion in to families, as others before him have (Cindy Kiro) and I am sure what he is describing is a simple paper and pencil rating scale as a means of being able to do this with a sense of self-righteousness, with a sense of it being entirely warranted and proper intrusion.

But aside from the well reported victims, it is a pretty sad indictment when a maori girl can say that she wont have a relationship with a maori guy because she is too frightened of what they might do to her.

Memories.

FORGET THE PAST: Researchers have confirmed what common wisdom has long held – that people can suppress emotionally troubling memories – and said they have sketched out how the brain accomplishes this.
In essence I agree, but not with the process .... ongoing reasonable or pleasurable experience expunges the past by far the best of all - brain processes indeed. Perhaps the most widely acclaimed example is child birth, that act of nature so necessary to species survival, that is touted by those afflicted with enduring this experience as the 'worst pain imaginable.' Yet it is a process to be repeated.
Unfortunately though, these days every man and his dog is set upon by counsellors for anything that could possibly be construed as 'traumatic' - such that these emotionally troubling memories become the focus, and often the cause of continued problems or debility, related or not.

A Sign of Things to Come?

An overweight eight-year-old British girl who already wears size 16 clothes has been taken away from her parents and put into care.

Parents say: "Our daughter doesn't overeat and she's active. She's always been chubby but she's always out playing. The only bad thing we have given her is fizzy drinks."

Authorities say: Cumbria County Council, in England's far north-west, has taken the girl from her parents because of fears she could be a victim of neglect, The Times reported.

Neglect? Arguably something to do with over-indulgence, parents acceding to the child's wants and desires. An overly empowered child?

"Our daughter doesn't overeat and she's active. She's always been chubby but she's always out playing. The only bad thing we have given her is fizzy drinks."

It is to be hoped that endeavours were made to provide guidance and indeed oversight if this girl's weight did constitute sufficient a health problem and that removal only occurred after her parents refusal to recognise this as a problem and act on it and there were possible life-threatening consequences ... if not then .... simply a further narrowing of what is deemed acceptable behaviour by those in positions of power.