By MARY LONGMORE in Bangkok
A national "men's day of shame" should be held on Father's Day when New Zealand men should take to the streets and apologise for the sexual abuse inflicted on children, says an Auckland lawyer.
Denise Ritchie told an international conference in Bangkok that more than 75 per cent of violent sex abuse convictions in New Zealand between 1992 and 1999 involved children.
She said New Zealand could lead the way internationally if "good" men stood up in shame and denounced the sex crimes committed by other men.
Ms Ritchie is New Zealand's national coordinator for Ecpat, which campaigns to stop child prostitution, pornography and trafficking.
She was one of 200 delegates in Bangkok for the East Asian and Pacific Regional Consultation Against the Commercial Exploitation of Children.
"I want to eliminate child sex. I want to make New Zealand a child-sex-free zone," she said.
A "day of shame" should be held on a day significant to men, such as Father's Day, and not involve women at all.
Ms Ritchie planned to approach "one or two" high-profile men in sports or television for support.
The New Zealand Commissioner for Children, Roger McClay, said he would support the idea.
He said statistics showed that two children a night suffered sexual abuse in New Zealand.
"I don't think we would get the changes we are looking for in those figures until enough people are outraged enough to stand and scream 'stop' from the rooftops."
But one men's support group was horrified by the idea.
"It's shocking really, but it's hardly surprising," said Union of Fathers spokesman Bruce Cheriton.
"Men have been dumped on for everything."
Asked why innocent men should take the blame for the crimes of others, Ms Ritchie said the message that having sex with children was unacceptable needed to come from men.
For eight years Ecpat had focused on protecting children from sexual exploitation, commercial or otherwise.
But any trade had supply and demand "and it's time that we started placing our focus on the demand, which is men".
Ms Ritchie said she was referring both to sexual abuse in New Zealand and to New Zealand "sex tourists" in Asia.
Most of these men were not predatory paedophiles but often "normal" blokes with a good job and girlfriend back home who had sex with a child under 17 because they had the opportunity.
She planned to approach sports and church groups over the next year, to support her plan.
Last week's conference follows the first world congress in 1996 in Sweden, where 122 Governments, Ecpat International, Unicef and other organisations discussed how to eliminate the commercial sexual exploitation of children.
The second world congress will be in Japan in December. The second world congress will be held in Japan in December.
Father's Day should be a day of shame: lawyer
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