“I sort of agree Sharon, but I can't blame the Sentinel for reporting it (although I do think the language is deliberately designed to provoke and mislead).

You're right anyway. While I think all child abuse is abhorrent, the idea that a polygraphy test is going to detect or prevent offending against children is ludicrous for the reasons outlined earlier. If we're going to go down the "well if it protects just one small child" route then why not just subject all parents and immediate relatives of children to a polygraph test? As they are statistically far more likely to abuse children than a complete stranger, this is surely going to protect a hell of a lot more children?

Even though, um it won't, because polygraph tests are unreliable and prove nothing.”

“Seems the Sentinel is even more desperate than its parent company, The Daily Mail, to provoke the mass idiots of Stoke. Anyone who spends 5 minutes on the actually subject would know that more than 90 per cent of child abusers are the actual parents of the children, but hey, that points the finger at us all so isnt any fun is it. Never mind the facts - wind up the idiots”

“What about a marriage?
Can they wed??”

“The article clearly points out that lie detector tests are already being done on the most dangerous sex offenders, which one would assume includes those who pose a threat to children.

Therefore, I don't see how extending it to all sex offenders (ie. those who have neither committed crimes against children, nor pose a threat to them) validates the "well if it projects just one child" argument. It's illogical. Probably because it's a knee-jerk reaction to a story that used the words "perverts" and "paedos".

But these are all negative comments, and people are never happy with anything right? Just say what you mean: 1) How dare people have an opposing viewpoint. 2) How dare people criticise how their (public) money is being spent. 3) How dare people draw attention to the unreliability of polygraph tests.”

“Raymond....you have me wrong...i agree with everything you say but in the reality we are living in where these monsters seem to have more rights than the victims wehave to take whatever we can get and if lie detectors help then im all for them. Believe me, i know something about being the victim of sexual assault so i have very strong views on this...if it were up to me every victim would be given the right to inflict as much pain on their attacker as they recieved themselves, sadly this wont ever happen so anything that an help deter this monsters im happy to support.”

“Anon, Stoke... There would be no need for this, if their rights to draw breath had been revoked....
You see it is us the normal person who has to protect our own from these vile creatures. They've been through the system, then the system lets them go and protects them. They should be branded, so we know who they are, While their victims have to live a life of torture....
These are one of the worst of the worst. Yet we don't know who they are, where they are. how bad they are, but they are amongst us......”

“as far as im concerned anything that can help prevent them re-offending is a useful tool. I love all the negative comments about this...people are never happy with anything. I dont care, if there is even one child that is protected because of this scheme then it has worked. Dont you think? I mean thats what this is about isnt it...protecting our children......or maybe some people have forgotten that!”

“Almost as stupid as the headline last week (Police are writing to criminals to tell them they are being watched) 2 things wrong with this splendid idea...1 criminals tend to be illiterate...2 they also tend to be of no fixed abode...and make it 3 they would take no bloody notice anyway. What clowns dream up these ideas”

“This is the most stupid thing i have heard, they are not reliable, thy dont let u no if someone is lying, so what a waste of money. Surely that coul dbe spent on trying to make sure that once they are back in the community that they have people checking on them, making sure nothing suspicious is happening with them, in their behaviour etc. The pobation service need to start doin their jobs properly”

“Agreed John. The late Professor David Lykken - behavioural geneticist, emeritus professor at the University of Minnesota and the world's leading expert on polygraphs, leaving a lifetime's work of studying polygraphy (which meant, mostly but not entirely, debunking it) behind him, once said:

"There's something about us Americans that makes us believe in the myth of the lie detector... It's as much of a myth as the tooth fairy."

And thanks to the likes of Jeremy Kyle and Trisha, that absurd mindset has skipped across the pond to Britain, and what's good enough for trashy, sanctimonious daytime TV is apparently good enough for the probation service now? *sigh*

And let's not forget that MOST people are on the sex offender's register for minor sexual offences - not crimes like paedophilia. As an example: One guy in Scotland ended up on it recently after being caught having relations with a bicycle in (what he thought was) the privacy of his own hostel room. There is a grey area between fetish and perversion, and there's nothing like bandying words like 'paedophile' around to whip up the public hive mind and get its support behind measures like this. Measures which drift disturbingly into the realm of thought crime.”