Irredeemable or open to change? - Sex attacker jailed

THE idea of a child being snatched by a predatory sex attacker is the stuff of nightmares. That could have been the terrible fate of an 11 year-old girl in Cullohill, Co Laois, earlier this year but for the heroic intervention of her brother.

The great relief that she was not abducted is almost overshadowed by the probability that another child, on another day in another place, will be. That is a tragic reality of our world, a world too often impossible to understand.

Yesterday Dubliner Michael Martin, 36, was jailed for 17 years after he pleaded guilty to the false imprisonment of the girl. He has 92 previous convictions and has spent almost 10 years in prison for sexually assaulting and abducting two other minors. The primary reponse to this episode must be relief that Martin failed to abduct the girl and that he will not be in a position to launch another attack for some years. But, when everything that can be done to protect children is done, then other questions must be answered.

How can a man, aged 36 and with so many previous convictions, be in a position to launch these attacks? Did the decade he spent in prison not convince him of the error of his ways? Did he not, during that time, undergo treatment that might have averted this tragedy? And, almost worst of all, are we to believe that sexual predators like Martin are irredeemable?

The only certain answer we have at this stage is that any efforts to reform him while he was in prison failed.