Amid a wave of anti-pedophile violence, the British government refused to make public a list of convicted sex offenders but promised to protect children from abuse and molestation in other ways. Two weeks ago, Britain’s top-selling tabloid The Sunday News of the World began running photographs and whereabouts of men convicted of molesting children who have been released from prison. Rioting crowds have demanded that the list be made public, igniting lynch mob attacks and firebombings that have ravaged 11 communities across England and Scotland. Much of the violence has been directed at homes of people wrongly identified as suspected pedophiles.
News of the World recently collected 300,000 petitions that urge the government to establish “Sarah’s Law,” in memory of Sarah Payne, an eight-year-old girl who was abducted and later found dead and naked in July. The law would be similar to “Megan’s Law,” the 1994 U.S. legislation named after Megan Kanka, a seven-year-old girl raped and murdered by a repeat sex offender. Megan’s Law required that all sex offenders register with the police and alerted community organizations to the presence of repeat offenders in the area. The law also prohibited verbal and physical vigilantism.