You don’t see the world through the same eyes any more: The impact of sexual offending work on police staff
| Date | 01 December 2019 |
| Author | Jo Bryce,Nicola Graham-Kevan,Ruth Parkes |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X18812515 |
| Published date | 01 December 2019 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
You don’t see the world
through the same eyes any
more: The impact of sexual
offending work
on police staff
Ruth Parkes, Nicola Graham-Kevan and Jo Bryce
University of Central Lancashire, Preston, UK
Abstract
This paper examines the experiences of police staff in England who work with sexual
offence material (SOM). Eleven officers completed a questionnaire then took part in
semi-structured interviews. The data were analysed in two stages: Interpretative Phe-
nomenological Analysis was used to illuminate the ‘lived experience’ of participants, and
establish a theme structure. Clinical models of workplace trauma were then employed to
explore the theme ‘Impact of working with sexual offending’. Impact includes cognitive
intrusions and increased suspiciousness. The authors identify where officers’ accounts
intersect with nascent symptoms of both Vicarious Traumatisation (McCann and
Pearlman, 1990) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Keywords
Sexual offending material, police, PTSD, indecent images, interpretative phenomenolo-
gical analysis
Police officers and civilian police staff investigating contact or online sexual offences
are required to scrutinise a range of sexually explicit and potentially disturbing material
on a regular basis. Sexual offence material (SOM) includes detailed examinations of
forensic evidence, such as indecent images or videos of sexual abuse, along with written
communication between people who derive sexual gratification from the abuse of chil-
dren (Brady, 2016). In conjunction with this, Police staff are required to interview
Corresponding author:
Ruth Parkes, University of Central Lancashire, Eden Building, Victoria Street, Preston, PR1 2HE, UK.
Email: rparkes@uclan.ac.uk
The Police Journal:
Theory, Practice and Principles
2019, Vol. 92(4) 316–338
ªThe Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/0032258X18812515
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vulnerable victims and perpetrators in order to gather evidence about the offence. In both
these interview settings, staff must seek to suspend thei r own personal feelings and
reactions in order to maintain professional objectivity. This means, therefore, that they
are required to manage their emotional and cognitive responses to having witnessed
offences at the time they were perpetrated through indecent images, the aftermath of
offences for the victim, and the offender’s potential denial, minimisation or justification
of their behaviour (Blagden et al., 2014; Burns et al., 2008).
The proliferation of online indecent images of children (IIOC) in the last decade has
been facilitated by the ubiquity of the internet, which has not only increased the acces-
sibility of illegal images but has allowed like-minded offenders to find each other more
easily and create online ‘peer-to-peer’ networks (Home Office, 2015). Sharing thousands
of indecent images or producing a new image of abuse is often a prerequisite to being
allowed access to a particular online group (Krone, 2004; Wolak et al., 2013). This
encourages individuals to amass collecti ons of images or commit their own contact
offences in order to gain access to new material. In turn, repeated and extensive exposure
to sexual abuse images has been found to result in habituation, leading to more extreme
images being sought and collected (Aslan et al., 2014; Wood, 2011).
The increased volume and severity of images being produced and shared online and
the concomitant increase in contact sexual offences has significant implications for those
who are tasked with investigating such crimes. In the last 12 months CAID (the Child
Abuse Image Database) has allowed law enforcement agencies in England and Wales to
make real progress in identifying victims and perpetrators at a pace which is ultimately
hoped to match the rate of production of online sexual offence material (Home Office,
2015). The functions of CAID are similar to the Interpol International Child Exploitation
Database of images (US Department of Justice, 2016), assisting in the identification of
‘known’ child abuse images which have appeared on th e computers of offenders in
several cases. Once an individual image has been given the same severity categorisation
by three different police constabularies, it is considered a valid categorisation and is
automatically sorted by CAID into the relevant category folder (Thomas, 2016). This
reduces the volume of indecent images of children that officers have to view, leaving
them free to sort through ‘new’ or first-generation images depicting victims potentially
known to the perpetrator in question. As well as increasing the speed with which cases
can be processed, CAID offers the additional potential benefit of reducing staff exposure
to traumatic material.
While the majority of exposure to SOM in police con stabularies in England and
Wales is confined to those working in specialist sexual abuse teams or Public Protection
Units (PPUs), any member of police staff may encounter such material in the course of
their duties. For example, a neighbourhood p olicing officer may be involved in the
execution of a warrant concerning sexual offences and be exposed to SOM during a
search of the premises. In other cases, the examination of a computer or phone for a drug-
related offence may unexpectedly uncover illegal sexual material. The level and type of
interaction with sexually explicit evidence raises concerns about the potential for both
short- and longer-term negative consequences for those involved, such as hypervigilance
or intrusive thoughts and images about the material (Perez et al., 2010; Powell, 2014).
The World Health Organisation’s ICD-10 (WHO, 1992) does not go into detail about the
Parkes et al. 317
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