
ABC reporters in Tasmania have been told to “avoid” referring to child sex abusers as pedophiles, to avoid marginalising people with pedophilia.
An email sent to all news staff this week advises against the use of the term “pedophile”, even to describe those who have serially abused children over many years.
The edict followed a discussion between a reporter and a local Sexual Assault Support Service last weekend, in which the service “mentioned their concerns about” use of the term in reporting.
This was prompted by reporting on alleged pedophile nurse James (Jim) Geoffrey Griffin, who killed himself in October 2019 while facing multiple charges relating to child sex abuse and producing child exploitation material.

“Sexual Assault Support Service on the weekend … mentioned their concerns about describing Griffin as a ‘paedophile’,” says the email sent by a senior producer.
“We should avoid it, unless we know he had a clinical diagnosis of paedophilia and instead use serial sexual offender / predator, or a sexual abuser of children and young people,” the next paragraph, in boldface, reads.
“SASS says another consideration is from their point of view, there are a lot of paedophiles / people with paedophilia who do not act on those impulses, especially if they reach out for and receive professional psychological help … describing (perhaps technically inaccurately) Griffin as a paedophile could discourage those people from seeking help, making it more likely that they go on to abuse children.”
The email has concerned and angered some ABC staff, who believed the views of a single support service manager were put before tight, accurate reporting.
As well as concern at pandering to pedophiles, some were unhappy at having to use a convoluted phrase of eight words — “a sexual abuser of children and young people” — rather than one.
However, ABC management on Friday told The Weekend Australian the email did not constitute an official change in language use.
“There’s been no change to the ABC’s usage of the term pedophile in reporting,” a spokeswoman said. “It’s still used.
“The intent of the note was to inform staff about information from the Sexual Assault Support Service, as it’s always useful to understand the views of the services dealing closely with survivors. It shouldn’t have conveyed any official change in language use.”

At least some ABC journalists believed the edict to be binding, but others either did not, or chose to ignore it, with several instances of the word “pedophile” being used after the email was sent out.
Child abuse survivors were also concerned. Beyond Abuse spokesman Steve Fisher said dropping the term “pedophile” risked confusing the public.
“If you start changing language that has been used in the media for years there is a risk that society may be confused,” Mr Fisher said.
“The media in Tasmania have done an amazing job of exposing sex offenders and helping survivors tell their stories, so to change the language they have to use is fraught with problems.
“In our experience, the public believe if it’s pedophilia, call it pedophilia. If it’s rape, call it rape. Not ‘sexual assault’, which can mean anything from touching to raping somebody.”
Mr Fisher believed substituting the use of accepted terms for others needed “much more discussion” before being adopted.
He campaigned for 20 years to have the rape and sexual abuse of children called out for what they were, rather than euphemised by terms such “maintaining a sexual relationship” with a minor.
This was, until recently, the offence in Tasmania with which perpetrators of sustained sexual abuse of children would be charged.
Source: The Australian