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sexual
crime and
prevention

ed i t ed by

Rebecca Lievesley . Kerensa Hocken

. Helen Elliott . Belinda Winder .
Nicholas Blagden . Phil Banyard
 Sexual Crime

Series Editors
Belinda Winder
Nottingham Trent University
Nottingham, UK

Rebecca Lievesley
Nottingham Trent University
Nottingham, UK

Helen Elliott
Bishop Grosseteste University
Lincoln, UK

Kerensa Hocken
HMP Whatton
HMPPS
Nottingham, UK

Nicholas Blagden
Nottingham Trent University
Nottingham, UK

Phil Banyard
Nottingham Trent University
Nottingham, UK
Sexual Crime is an edited book series devised by a team at SOCAMRU
led by Professor Belinda Winder in the Psychology Division at Nottingham
Trent University.
It offers original contributions to specific avenues of research within
the field of sexual crime with each volume drawing together a review of
the literature from across disciplines, including cutting edge research and
practice, original material from services and offenders themselves as well
as future directions for research and practice.
These volumes will be highly relevant to clinical and forensic psycholo-
gists and therapists, offender managers and supervisors, social workers
and those working in the field of rehabilitation. They will be a great
source of insight for academics, researchers and students in these disci-
plines as well as criminologists and policy makers.

More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15477
Rebecca Lievesley • Kerensa Hocken
Helen Elliott • Belinda Winder
Nicholas Blagden • Phil Banyard
Editors

Sexual Crime and

Prevention
Editors
Rebecca Lievesley Kerensa Hocken
Nottingham Trent University HMP Whatton
Nottingham, UK HMPPS
Nottingham, UK
Helen Elliott
Bishop Grosseteste University Belinda Winder
Lincoln, UK Nottingham Trent University
Nottingham, UK
Nicholas Blagden
Nottingham Trent University Phil Banyard
Nottingham, UK Nottingham Trent University
Nottingham, UK

Sexual Crime
ISBN 978-3-319-98242-7    ISBN 978-3-319-98243-4 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98243-4

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018958919

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer International
Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether
the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of
illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and trans-
mission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or
dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant
protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book
are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or
the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any
errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional
claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Cover illustration: ivanastar/gettyimages

Cover Design: Fatima Jamadar PLS

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
 Foreword

I am delighted and excited to introduce this important and much needed

book about the prevention of sexual crime. This particular area of work
has been a consistent feature of much of my professional life, and this text
provides a welcome contribution to the development of knowledge on
the subject using evidence from around the world.
It is vital that we continue to provide help and support to victims of
sexual crime, but to prevent further victims we should use the knowledge
and experience we have gained working with people who have abused
others, to develop prevention strategies, policies, and programmes to
help deter future crimes. According to the National Crime Agency, there
are large numbers of people accessing child sexual abuse images online,
and according to international studies there is a significant proportion of
the population who have a sexual interest in children and young people.
Understandably, both these issues are concerning for law enforcement
and child protection agencies.
For much of the last 30 years, the body of knowledge has grown and
continues to grow. We continue to develop our understanding about
why people commit sexual offences, and what needs to be done to help
them not to re-offend in the future. As part of my work as the gover-
nor of a specialist treatment site for people with sexual convictions, I
have had many conversations with people who told me how they had

v
vi Foreword

tried to seek help when they were frightened and worried about their
sexual thoughts and behaviour before they committed an offence. Yet
they found that nothing was readily available. I also know from my
work the impact that sexual crime has on the family members of peo-
ple who are convicted of sexual offences, and it is thus vital that sup-
port and help are offered to people before they offend. If we are to
prevent future victims and protect family members and friends from
the burden of the sexual conviction of a loved one, we must take this
issue seriously.
I hope that this book will help to develop strategy and thinking on
the subject. Its eight chapters cover both the history and theory of the
prevention of sexual offending and some interesting insights into cur-
rent practice and future plans in this area of work. The first section
considers the theoretical underpinnings and history of prevention
work. Chapter 1 provides an introduction to the explanations and
definitions of sexual crime and theoretical underpinnings of preven-
tion. Chapter 2 provides an overview of prevention initiatives to date
from across the globe. The middle of the book then turns to the prac-
tical solutions to the prevention challenge and explores some current
prevention projects in England and Wales. Chapter 3 introduces the
work of the Lucy Faithfull Foundation, Chap. 4 examines the work of
the Safer Living Foundation and their innovative project in prevent-
ing sexually harmful behaviour, and Chap. 5 explores the prevention
project operating in the NHS in Merseyside. The final part of the
book explores additional aspects and issues in the prevention debate.
Chapter 6 considers prevention from a service user perspective. It
contains powerful insight from someone who has first-hand experi-
ences of the challenges faced by someone with troublesome sexual
thoughts and his perspective on the importance of prevention.
Chapter 7 discusses the media and societal responses to people who
commit sexual offences, and the idea that paedophilia is a sexual ori-
entation, and the implications of this. Finally, Chap. 8 considers the
future directions and barriers to effective prevention strategies and
practice.
 Foreword vii

It is vital that we think about new and imaginative solutions to this

troubling problem, and this book offers a useful and thought-provoking
basis upon which to build.

Lynn
HMP Whatton Saunders
Whatton, UK
Safer Living Foundation
Whatton, UK
 Preface

This Series: Sexual Crime

This book series will offer original contributions to current books avail-
able on this fast-growing area of high public interest. Each volume will
comprehensively engage with current literature, and make efforts to
access unpublished literature and data by key authors in the field. The
series will also, by the end of each volume, suggest potential new direc-
tions for researchers and practitioners.
These volumes are relevant not just to psychologists, criminologists,
social workers, and final year undergraduate, postgraduate, and doctoral
students in all these areas, but to practitioners and the general public with
an interest in learning more about the topic. The aim is to create books
that are readable, yet firmly anchored in a sound evidence base from both
researchers and practitioners. The volumes will therefore include a robust
synthesis of the literature, consideration of the theories relevant to each
topic, a focus on projects that are relevant to the topic, with a summary
of the research and evaluation of these, chapters focusing on the service
user voice, and a final summary chapter, highlighting future possibilities
and directions (as suggested by others in the field or by the authors
­themselves).

ix
x Preface

This Volume: Sexual Crime and Prevention

The volume begins with an exploration of the theoretical underpinnings
of sexual crime prevention, as well as the history and development of
prevention work over the years, providing an overview of prevention ini-
tiatives around the world. The text then moves into a ‘spotlight’ section,
looking in depth at three organisations that are delivering prevention
work in the United Kingdom. Lastly, the service user experience, impact
of the media, and attitudes and consideration of future directions for
prevention work are explored.

Future Texts
This series is ongoing, with planned future volumes including experience
of imprisonment, spirituality, intellectual functioning and problematic
sexual arousal.

Nottingham, UK Rebecca Lievesley

 Kerensa Hocken
Lincoln, UK Helen Elliott
Nottingham, UK Belinda Winder
 Nicholas Blagden
 Phil Banyard
 Contents

1 Theories of Sexual Crime Prevention   1

Stuart Allardyce

2 Prevention in Action: Exploring Prevention Initiatives and

Current Practices  27
Candice Christiansen and Meg Martinez-Dettamanti

3 The Lucy Faithfull Foundation: Twenty-­Five Years of Child

Protection and Preventing Child Sexual Abuse  57
Alexandra Bailey, Tom Squire, and Lisa Thornhill

4 Safer Living Foundation: The Aurora Project  83

Kerensa Hocken

5 Mersey Forensic Psychology Prevention Service: Pilot

Project 111
Lorraine Perry, Simon Duff, and Lisa Wright

6 The Need for Prevention: A Service-­User’s Perspective 133

Peter Binks
xi
xii Contents

7 Social and Professional Attitudes in the Prevention of

Sexual Abuse 157
Craig A. Harper

8 Future Directions: Moving Forward with Sexual Crime

Prevention 181
Rebecca Lievesley, Helen Elliott, and Kerensa Hocken

Glossary 201

Index 205
 Notes on Contributors

Stuart Allardyce is a qualified social worker who has specialised as a practitio-

ner and manager in working with sexual offenders as well as children affected by
abuse for more than 15 years. He is national manager of the child protection
charity Stop it Now! Scotland and manager of the Eradicating Child Sexual
Abuse project (EVSA). Additionally, he is chair of the National Organisation for
the Treatment of Abusers (NOTA) Scotland, and chair of the NOTA UK and
Republic of Ireland Policy and Practice Committee. He is an associate at the
Centre for Youth and Criminal Justice at Strathclyde University and a member
of the Scottish Government’s Expert Working Group on preventing sexual
offending amongst adolescents. He is co-author of ‘Working with Children and
Young People who Have Displayed Harmful Sexual Behaviour’ (2018).
Alexandra Bailey has worked for the Lucy Faithfull Foundation (UK) since
2005, and is a Registered Forensic Psychologist and Practitioner for the
Foundation. Bailey is involved in the assessment and intervention of adult males
who have committed/alleged to have committed sexual offences against children
and those who are non-abusing partners, and has a central involvement in the
Foundation’s work with women who have committed sexual offences. Bailey has
additionally worked with adult males and females with mental disorders within
secure forensic mental health services.
Peter Binks is a middle-aged man born and resident in the UK. He is writing
as a service user. Prior to conviction, he studied to degree level and worked
­continuously in IT. He is married but ceased to live with his partner at the time

xiii
xiv Notes on Contributors

of his arrest and remains separated but on friendly terms and not divorced. He
has no children. Binks believes that if prevention had been available he would
have grasped it with both hands and benefited from it to the additional benefit
of his victims. Binks deeply regrets the distress his actions caused.
Candice Christiansen LCMHC, CSAT-S, is a trailblazer. She is the founder of
several programmes, including her outpatient treatment centre Namasté Center
for Healing that specialises in treating a range of sexual issues from infidelity, to
sex and porn addiction, to general intimacy issues and trauma. Christiansen’s
global programme, The Prevention Project™, specialises in the treatment of risky
and problematic sexual behaviours, specifically non-contact sexual offences. The
Prevention Project™ also provides mental wellness support to adults with minor
attractions who have not committed any contact offence, with the goal of
increasing their quality of life. Her podcast The Prevention Podcast™ went viral
in its first week of launching in January 2018 and has reached over 50 countries.
Christiansen is an influential global change agent whose expertise in assessing
and treating individuals on the autism spectrum and those with brain injuries
has gained international attention and accolades by the leading experts and
advocates in the US criminal justice system.
Simon Duff is a chartered and registered forensic psychologist, working both
at the University of Nottingham’s Doctorate in Forensic Psychology and the
NHS’ Mersey Forensic Psychology Service in Liverpool. Duff’s research interests
cover a range of areas, strongly linked with his clinical work, and include fetish-
ism, sexual offending and stalking. He recently co-authored a book with
Professor James McGuire of the University of Liverpool, Forensic Psychology:
Routes Through the System (2018).
Helen Elliott is a lecturer in Counselling at Bishop Grosseteste University
(UK). She has a background in forensic psychology with a focus on offender
rehabilitation and therapeutic change and is a trainee integrative psychothera-
pist. Elliott is also co-founder of the Safer Living Foundation—a charity set up
to run rehabilitative initiatives.
Craig A. Harper is a lecturer in Human Psychology at Nottingham Trent
University (UK). His research interests lie in the psychological processes that
underpin decision-making in relation to controversial social and political topics.
Most of his research has been focused on how people form and express attitudes
towards people with sexual convictions, with the aim being to promote progres-
sive and evidence-based policies to prevent and reduce sexual victimisation.
Away from forensically-based research, he is a member of the Heterodox
 Notes on Contributors xv

Academy, which is an organisation seeking to promote viewpoint diversity and

reduce political polarisation in higher education.
Kerensa Hocken is a registered forensic psychologist. She is an award-winning
expert in the field of sexual offending, and has a special interest in people with
intellectual disabilities who commit sexual offences. Hocken is employed by Her
Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service where she has oversight for the assess-
ment and treatment of people in prison for sexual offending in the Midlands
region. Hocken is a co-founder, trustee and the clinical lead for the Safer Living
Foundation.
Rebecca Lievesley is a lecturer in Psychology and member of the Sexual
Offences, Crime and Misconduct Research Unit at Nottingham Trent University.
She has worked and researched within the Criminal Justice System for many
years, working closely with a number of prisons, the National Offender
Management Service and Ministry of Justice on research and evaluation proj-
ects. She is also a co-founder and trustee of the Safer Living Foundation.
Meg Martinez-Dettamanti is an Licensed Associate Clinical Mental Health
Counselor (LACMHC), an Certified Sex Addiction Therapist (CSAT)-
Candidate and the Assistant Clinical Director of Namasté Center for Healing
and The Prevention Project™. Martinez-Dettamanti has worked closely with
Candice Christiansen for years in regard to programme and curriculum develop-
ment for those in recovery as well as those engaged in problematic sexual behav-
iour and, further still, those with minor attractions who have committed to not
offending and are seeking support. She is well versed in the legal system and
child welfare. Through her past work with youth who had sexually offended and
then for the Division of Child and Family Services working to overcome addic-
tion, strengthen families and provide safety and stability to children, Martinez-
Dettamanti has learned the importance of ‘prevention’ as a healthy intervention.
She oversees the ­outpatient and intensive programmes at Namasté Center for
Healing and The Prevention Project™, is the lead facilitator of the project’s sev-
eral psycho-educational support groups, and is active in the global community
advocating for the well-being of minor-­attracted individuals.
Lorraine Perry is a clinical psychologist leading the Prevention Service at
Mersey Forensic Psychology Service in Liverpool, which is part of Mersey Care
NHS Foundation Trust. Perry has experience of both inpatient and community
forensic psychology work, having previously worked in a medium secure mental
health hospital. Her interests are working psychologically to help reduce risk of
offending or re-offending, particularly with sex offenders.
xvi Notes on Contributors

Tom Squire is Clinical Manager at the Lucy Faithful Foundation. He has

worked for the Lucy Faithfull Foundation since 2007 and has a background in
the Probation Service. Squire undertakes specialist risk assessments for a range
of agencies, and provides training, advice and consultancy to other profession-
als. He provides clinical oversight of the Stop it Now! Helpline, a freephone,
confidential helpline for adults concerned about either their own or another
person’s sexual thoughts, feelings and/or behaviour towards children. More
recently, Squire has contributed to the development of the Foundation’s online
‘self-help’ resources.
Lisa Thornhill is Senior Practitioner for Children and Young People at the
Lucy Faithful Foundation. She has worked for the Lucy Faithfull Foundation
since 2012 and has specialised in sexual abuse since 2005. Thornhill works with
families affected by sexual abuse, including adult perpetrators, protective carers
and young people who exhibit harmful sexual behaviour. She undertakes assess-
ments for family courts and delivers intervention programmes. She also provides
training and consultation for professionals. Thornhill is a professional doctorate
student at Bedfordshire University.
Lisa Wright is a clinical psychologist working for Mersey Care NHS Foundation
Trust. Wright has worked in secure hospitals, prisons and in the community and
specialises in working with personality disorder, psychosis, trauma and various
offending behaviours, using a range of therapeutic approaches. She manages a
community psychology service which provides therapy aimed at reducing risk of
sexual and violent offending/re-offending. Schema Therapy and Eye Movement
Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) are core components of the service,
and Wright has gradually incorporated various aspects of these approaches into
the intervention programmes.
 List of Figures

Fig. 3.1 Number of calls to the Stop it Now! Helpline from 2002 to 2016 63
Fig. 3.2 LFF initiatives within the prevention framework 78

xvii
 List of Tables

Table 3.1 Statistics from the Get Help website in comparison to the
CROGA website 76
Table 4.1 The six core processes of psychological inflexibility and psy-
chological flexibility 99

xix
 1
Theories of Sexual Crime Prevention
Stuart Allardyce

Introduction
Sexual crime is increasingly recognised by practitioners and policy mak-
ers internationally as a significant global public health issue. The World
Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that one in three women world-
wide experience either physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence
or non-partner sexual violence in their lifetime (World Health
Organisation, 2013). Many first experiences of sexual violence occur in
childhood, with around 19% of girls and 8% of boys worldwide experi-
encing contact sexual abuse by the age of 18 (Pereda, Guilera, Forns, &
Gómez-Benito, 2009). The scale of the problem is vast: 1.8 million chil-
dren worldwide are estimated to be sexually exploited every year
(International Labour Organisation, 2015).

S. Allardyce (*)
Stop It Now! Scotland, Edinburgh, UK
Lucy Faithfull Foundation, Epsom, UK
e-mail: StuartAllardyce@stopitnow.org.uk

© The Author(s) 2018 1

R. Lievesley et al. (eds.), Sexual Crime and Prevention, Sexual Crime,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98243-4_1
2 S. Allardyce

The issue of sexual violence experienced by both children and adults is

as pressing now as it has ever been, with reported sexual crime in the
United Kingdom at an all-time high and all national jurisdictions across
the United Kingdom having ongoing or recently concluded public inqui-
ries into historical abuse. Furthermore, the widespread use of the social
media hashtags #TimesUp and #MeToo since late 2017 foregrounded,
with a new-found urgency, questions about the prevalence of sexual vio-
lence and harassment and their relationship to gender inequalities within
society. The cultural commentator Rebecca Solnit described this moment
in the following way:

You could say a dam broke, and a wall of women’s stories came spilling
forth – which has happened before, but never the way that this round has.
This time around, women didn’t just tell the stories of being attacked and
abused; they named names, and abusers and attackers lost jobs and reputa-
tions and businesses and careers. They named names, and it mattered;
people listened; their testimony had consequence. (Solnit, 2018)

How we respond to sexual violence in its many forms is therefore

increasingly becoming one of the key cultural questions in contemporary
society. Central to this question is the recognition by those who have
been affected by sexual abuse and violence that the approaches to tackling
sexual crime offered by legal and statutory authorities often provide inad-
equate responses to a social issue of this nature, complexity and scale.
There is little controversy over the significant physical and psychologi-
cal harm that sexual crimes can cause through the violation of personal
physical and emotional boundaries. Although impact varies from indi-
vidual to individual and can relate to factors such as age of onset, fre-
quency, severity, and relationship with perpetrator, a range of studies
show that sexual abuse in both childhood and adulthood is statistically
associated with compromised mental and physical health outcomes that
can be experienced across the life course (Irish, Kobayashi, & Delahanty,
2009; Sawyerr & Bagley, 2017). Sexual abuse in childhood in particular
has been linked to a range of issues, including depression, anxiety, disso-
ciation, low self-esteem, hyper-sexuality (Davidson & Omar, 2014), and
complex post-traumatic stress disorder (Kisiel et al., 2014). Victims of
 Theories of Sexual Crime Prevention 3

sexual crime are statistically likely to have experienced other forms of

maltreatment in their life, and some of these incidents may pre-date the
experience of sexual crime. Accordingly, it is often polyvictimisation—
the accumulative impact of a range of adverse experiences—that leads to
poor outcomes in later life rather than being a victim of sexual crime in
and of itself (Felitti & Anda, 2010; Finkelhor, Ormrod, & Turner, 2007).
However, treating the experience of sexual abuse as a maltreatment on a
par with other adverse child experiences obscures some of the particular
sequelae characteristic of sexual violence: subsequent sexual re-­
victimisation, for instance, particularly in later adolescence and young
adulthood, may be a negative outcome characteristic of sexual abuse that
distinguishes it from other harmful experiences in childhood (Papalia
et al., 2017).
There are significant economic savings to be made through the preven-
tion of sexual crime. Considerable costs are accrued by law enforcement
agencies in detecting sexual crime, by legal processes in prosecuting those
who commit sexual crimes and by social work and other correctional
agencies related to the punishment of offenders and the protection of the
public from further harm. There are also significant costs relating to med-
ical expenditure and the provision of appropriate therapeutic and mental
health care for many traumatised by their experiences of sexual crime.
Some studies have tried to quantify these substantial economic costs: the
National Society for the Protection of the Child (NSPCC) estimated that
the cost of childhood sexual abuse in the United Kingdom in 2012, once
figures for the costs of health care and loss of earnings for adult survivors
of abuse were added to costs of policing and prosecution, came to £3.2
billion (Saied-Tessier, 2014).
The prevention of sexual crime is particularly important because the
majority of cases of sexual violence are never known to statutory service.
Estimates suggest that only one in eight children experiencing abuse is
known to the police or social services, with only a fraction of reported
cases leading to the conviction of a perpetrator (Office of the Children’s
Commissioner, 2015). This is congruent with media coverage in
2017/2018 of allegations concerning the sexual misconduct of celebrities
both in the United Kingdom and the United States which highlighted
that many who experience sexual violence in adulthood also do not report
4 S. Allardyce

crimes against them until years after the event—if at all. The relationship
with the perpetrator, feelings of shame and guilt, confusion, and
­perpetrator tactics (including their fears and anxieties being manipulated
by the perpetrator) are all factors that contribute to the significant short-
fall between reported sexual crime and actual prevalence (Allnock &
Miller, 2013). If our social response to this issue does not extend beyond
legal and statutory interventions that are only triggered after sexual crimes
have been reported, our responses will only ever relate to a minority of
those who actually offend.
All of these arguments suggest that we urgently need to address the
root causes of sexual crime and refocus efforts on prevention. This chap-
ter will look at how we define what sexual crime is before examining what
we know empirically about the nature and dynamics of the heterogeneity
of situations involving sexual crimes. It includes an appraisal of some of
the theoretical concepts that have been used to inform sexual crime pre-
vention activities over the last 40 years and concludes by considering
issues relating to how theory links to the practice of prevention.

Understanding Sexual Crime

Sexual crime has been defined as ‘a crime involving sexual assault or hav-
ing a sexual motive’ (Oxford English Dictionary, 2007, p. 2777).
However, there is no global standard about what constitutes a sexual
crime and considerable regional variation: many sexual activities that are
criminalised in one jurisdiction are not necessarily criminalised in
another. The legal age of sexual consent for heterosexual activity varies
between countries, for instance, while same sex relationships are crimi-
nalised in some jurisdictions such as parts of Africa, South East Asia, and
the Caribbean. Furthermore, sexual motive is not always apparent in all
sexual crimes, and not always relevant to whether someone is prosecuted.
For example, a person who views child sexual exploitation material out of
curiosity or because they are trying to make sense of their own experience
of victimisation in childhood may be prosecuted in UK courts as having
committed a sexual crime, even though motivation of a sexual nature is
absent.
 Theories of Sexual Crime Prevention 5

The term ‘sexual crime’ is therefore problematic, and the concept of a

‘continuum of sexual violence’ has been proposed in recognition of the
fact that the experience of sexual harm cannot be contained within legal
parameters that define sexual offences (Kelly, 1988). The term ‘sexual
violence’ has in turn been defined in WHO’s 2002 World Report on
Violence and Health as:

any sexual act, attempt to obtain a sexual act, unwanted sexual comments
or advances, or acts to traffic, or otherwise directed, against a person’s sexu-
ality using coercion, by any person regardless of their relationship to the
victim, in any setting, including but not limited to home and work… coer-
cion … (can include) a whole spectrum of degrees of force. Apart from
physical force, it may involve psychological intimidation, blackmail or
other threats. (Krug, Mercy, Dahlberg, & Zwi, 2002 p. 149)

The report goes on to describe a range of acts that would be covered by

this definition, including rape within marriage or dating relations,
unwanted sexual advances or sexual harassment (including demanding
sex in return for favours), sexual abuse of children and vulnerable adults,
violent acts against the sexual integrity of individuals (including female
genital mutilation), and systematic rape during armed conflict (p. 149).
The ECPAT ‘Luxembourg Guidelines’ on terminology relating to the
protection of children from sexual abuse and exploitation states that the
term ‘sexual violence’ has been used mainly with reference to adults,
‘often in relation to gender-based violence… and… often associated with
rape’ (p. 12). The term ‘sexual violence’ is increasingly used in interna-
tional policy contexts with reference to children who have experienced
sexual crimes. However, there remains a tension when applying this term
to the abuse of children, and in many domestic legal systems, the use of
violence can represent an aggravating factor in a sexual crime against a
child (Greijer & Doek, 2016). The terms sexual abuse and exploitation
are, therefore, preferred terms in many jurisdictions for describing sexual
crimes involving a child victim, and these terms are referenced in several
international protocols such as Article 34 of the United Nations
Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNICEF, 1989).
6 S. Allardyce

Sexual crimes therefore cover a wide range of different behaviours per-

petrated by a variety of kinds of individuals towards a range of different
types of victim in a diversity of contexts. The heterogeneity of situations
that can be labelled as sexual crimes means that caution is necessary when
examining what empirical research has to tell us about sexual crime.
Nonetheless, there are some clear messages from research that have sig-
nificant implications for prevention efforts. Understanding the ‘who’,
‘what’, ‘where’, and ‘when’ of sexual crime is necessary if prevention
efforts are to be targeted in effective and evidence-based ways.
Both boys and girls and adult males and females can be victimised, as
can people who define themselves in other terms, for example, transgen-
der individuals. Girls are generally twice as likely to be victimised as boys,
just as adult females are more likely to experience sexual crime than adult
males (Burrowes & Horvath, 2013; Pereda et al., 2009; Stoltenborgh,
Ijzendoom, Euser, & Bakermans-Kraneburg, 2011). Although any child
can be at risk of sexual abuse, some groups may be at elevated risk. Studies
of children with disabilities suggest that they are twice as likely to be
sexually abused as children without disabilities (Jones et al., 2012). Other
factors that elevate risk for children can be familial (e.g. living with con-
flict and separation; insecure attachment styles or experiencing other
forms of maltreatment), social (e.g. peer rejection; or association with
peers who are not pro-social), or relate to organisational factors (e.g. poor
safeguarding processes within an institution) (Smallbone, Marshall, &
Wortley, 2008).
Sexual crimes generally occur in a context of secrecy and in physical
spaces where there is low chance of the perpetrator being observed by
witnesses. Around 80% of sexual crimes against children take place in
domestic contexts, usually in the victim or abuser’s home (Wortley &
Smallbone, 2006). Abuse can also take place in organisational settings
(schools, hospitals, residential units, etc.) and—more rarely—in public
settings (swimming pools, shopping malls, public parks, etc.) (Smallbone
et al., 2008). Although random selection of victims can occur, victim and
perpetrator are more commonly known to each other in most sexual
crimes involving both adult and child victims (Finkelhor, 1994).
Over the last 20 years online sexual crime, including the grooming of
children for offline or—more commonly—online abuse (see Shannon,
 Theories of Sexual Crime Prevention 7

2008) and the viewing of child sexual exploitation material, has become
a significant issue for law enforcement. It is likely that detected crime is
only the tip of the iceberg with online crime as it is with offline crime:
Dombert et al. (2016) in a German study of a non-clinical sample of
8718 men found that 2.2% stated that they had viewed sexual images of
children while a study of 1978 Swedish young adult males found 4.4%
had viewed such images (Seto et al., 2015). These figures are considerably
higher than those charged with online sexual crimes each year.
The vast majority of perpetrators of sexual crimes against both adults
and children are male: 2.2% of sexual offences reported to police are
committed by females, with victimisation studies suggesting that females
account for 11.6% of sexual crime (Cortoni, Babchishin, & Rat, 2017).
In terms of age profile of perpetrators, 20–25% of all sexual offences
reported to police involve a young person under the age of 18 as the iden-
tified perpetrator; the mean age of onset in cases where children are
involved in the commission of the crime is 13/14 (Finkelhor, Ormrod, &
Chaffin, 2009).
Furthermore, 75–80% of convicted adult sex offenders have no known
sexual offending history (Smallbone & Wortley, 2000). Once convicted,
official sexual recidivism rates are generally low: Hanson and Bussiere
(1998) found a sexual recidivism rate of 13% over four to five years in a
meta-analysis of 23,393 adult sex offenders, with figures being even lower
for adolescents who commit sexual crimes (Caldwell, 2016). Only around
5–10% of convicted offenders become highly persistent, with recidivism
associated with factors such as abuse of male children, non-familial abuse,
anti-sociality/psychopathy, sexual deviance, and general criminality
(Hanson & Morton-Bourgon, 2005). Re-offending rates are still low even
when under-reporting is accounted for. This finding may seem counter-
intuitive as media coverage of sexual crime typically focuses on high-pro-
file—but relatively rare—serious cases. These tragic situations usually
involve serial offenders and the sexual murder of victims, the predations of
celebrities, or offending in institutional settings. These depictions obscure
the picture that emerges from empirical research (McCartan, 2010);
although those who take considerable efforts to abuse children do exist, it
is likely that the majority of sexual crimes involving children as victims are
much more opportunistic or situational in nature (Smallbone et al., 2008).
8 S. Allardyce

This heterogeneity creates a key challenge for those developing initiatives

involving prevention of sexual crime. Consider the following situations:

• A 35-year-old male who has physically assaulted his wife on several

occasions and anally rapes her in the course of a physical attack;
• A 22-year-old female teacher who becomes preoccupied with a 15-year-
old male student and kisses him when alone together after a class;
• A 70-year-old retired male who is charged with viewing child sexual
abuse material online;
• A 40-year-old male prisoner who threatens a 20-year-old male inmate
in custody with a knife and forces the inmate to fellate him;
• A 13-year-old male who digitally penetrates his 5-year-old step-sister
while she is sleeping.

All of these situations would constitute sexual crimes in most jurisdic-

tions. All are very different in nature and context, with contrasting causal
factors that will have led to the emergence of the behaviour. Accordingly,
different measures will be necessary to prevent each of these sexual crimes
occurring in the first place. Although there may be commonalities in how
we prevent sexual crime, many of the specifics of prevention programmes
will need to be tailored to particular contexts and victim and perpetrator
types.

The History of Sexual Crime Prevention

Our contemporary understanding of the prevention of sexual crimes
against both adults and children can be traced back to the 1970s. In the
early part of this decade, grass-roots movements led by survivors of sexual
violence, feminist activists, and survivor advocates campaigned to raise
public awareness of male sexual violence, arguing that it was both com-
monplace and not pathological in nature, but rather linked to patriarchal
power structures within society. This ‘anti-rape’ movement paralleled
work being done to raise public awareness around domestic abuse at this
time (Bourke, 2015). Rape crises centres started to emerge in both North
America and the United Kingdom, often established by activists rather
 Theories of Sexual Crime Prevention 9

than professionals. Volunteers accompanied rape victims to hospitals,

activists were involved with public-speaking events to destigmatise the
role of being a victim of sexual violence, and pressure was placed on law
enforcement agencies and courts to respond to this issue as a serious form
of crime. If many forms of sexual violence were criminalised before the
1970s, the significance sexual crimes now have in most contemporary
legal systems results from the campaigning efforts of committed groups
and individuals at this time, who were in turn responding to the lived
experiences of those who had survived harm.
As part of this paradigm shift in the 1970s, child sexual abuse also
started to be conceptualised as a social concern. Prior to then, child sex-
ual abuse was considered to be relatively rare, was commonly referred to
as ‘incest’ in clinical and forensic literatures, and was often considered to
be caused by ‘seductive children’ who provoked sexual contact with adults
(Rush, 1980). In the context of awareness raising around the subject of
rape, activists in the 1970s began to discuss child sexual abuse as a politi-
cal issue. Additionally, rape crises centres found they received calls from
adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse and accordingly had to develop
ways of responding to this issue. Services focusing on the therapeutic
needs of both children who had been sexually abused and adults who had
been sexually abused in childhood started to emerge, as did pressure on
statutory services to develop systems and processes to protect children
more effectively, to investigate crimes more rigorously and prosecute
offenders more robustly.
Very early approaches to the prevention of sexual crime foregrounded
its status as a gendered form of violence. Self-defence classes were a main-
stay of programmes designed to prevent sexual crimes involving adult
women as victims. Whittier (2009) in a history of early activism concern-
ing child sexual abuse notes that recognition of risk towards children
meant that such classes were made available to children. For instance, the
Feminist Karate Union of Seattle offered ‘self defence classes to all women
over seven years of age’ in the late 1970s and some self-defence classes
offered special classes for girls (p. 26).
In 1985, Finkelhor and Araji edited the influential textbook ‘A
Sourcebook on Child Sexual Abuse’ which gathered together findings
from emerging research on prevalence, risk factors, impact and what was
known about abusers at that time. The authors noted:
10 S. Allardyce

Sexual abuse prevention is a new field. Programmes having prevention as

their primary objective did not appear until the late 1970s, several years
after programs had been established to identify and treat sexual abuse vic-
tims… it was not until 1980 that any federal funds… became available for
prevention work… For the most part, prevention programs originated
from the grass roots without government sponsorship. Most grew out of
the volunteer efforts of rape crises counsellors, were sponsored by local
social service agencies or police departments, or originated simply, from the
efforts of concerned educators or parents. By 1983, however, prevention
programs were among the fastest growing components of the movement to
deal with child sexual abuse. (Finkelhor & Araji, 1986, pp. 224–225)

Many of the prevention interventions described by Finkelhor at this

time focused on educating children about child sexual abuse. Books and
resources for children such as ‘No More Secrets’ described what sexual
abuse was and highlighted that children could take particular actions
such as telling a trusting adult if someone tried to abuse them. Other
prevention resources at this time focused on raising awareness of parents
and helping them discuss risk with their children. Programmes engaging
adults on the subject of prevention assumed that parents were protective
and not abusers or having the potential to abuse, although Finklehor
noted that they may provide a deterrent effect as they reinforce the norm
that such behaviour is exploitative and damaging to the development of
the child. Only in the 1990s and 2000s did prevention programmes such
as Stop It Now! in the United States, United Kingdom and parts of
Europe as well as Dunkelfeld in Germany start to emerge, focusing on
deterring individuals who present a risk to children or providing early
interventions for individuals who have troubling sexual thoughts or who
have committed sexual crimes.

 ontemporary Theories of Sexual Crime

C
Prevention
Sexual crime is clearly a criminal justice matter, but since the 1980s it has
increasingly also been seen as a preventable public health issue. Public
health approaches usually involve strategies such as the use of vaccines
 Theories of Sexual Crime Prevention 11

and immunisation, sanitation of drinking water as well as the dissemina-

tion of health information to the general public to improve health out-
comes across the population. Some proponents of public health models
have argued that similar approaches targeted at raising public awareness
of the impact of sexual violence and the practical steps adults can take to
protect children could significantly reduce incidence rates of child sexual
abuse in society (Brown, O’Donnell, & Erooga, 2011).
Public health interventions can be primary (or universal), secondary
(or selected), and tertiary (or indicated) in nature. Although there is no
universal agreement about how these terms are defined, primary preven-
tion strategies are generally targeted at a community or whole popula-
tion, secondary prevention strategies focus on at risk groups or on
situations where problems are starting to emerge and tertiary prevention
strategies are interventions designed at reducing harm and preventing the
re-emergence of an issue after it had been identified.
When these terms are applied to crime, interventions may be directed
to preventing crimes before they would otherwise first occur (primary or
secondary prevention); as well as after its occurrence, to prevent further
offending and victimisation (tertiary prevention) (Smallbone et al., 2008).
Primary prevention interventions would therefore include initiatives such
as schools-based child sexual abuse prevention programmes rolled out
universally to all children. Targeted secondary prevention might include
initiatives such as those helping individuals with sexual thoughts and feel-
ings towards children manage their behaviour effectively.
The majority of interventions targeting sexual crime prevention in the
United Kingdom and North America are tertiary in nature. Police, courts,
and correctional staff in custody and community settings all have vital
roles to play in the prosecution, conviction, and rehabilitation of those
who have committed sexual offences. Since the 1990s sex-offender regis-
ters have been introduced in Anglophone jurisdictions such as the United
States and the United Kingdom, supplemented in some areas by com-
munity notification processes, residence restriction requirements, preven-
tative orders, and multi-agency public protection arrangements. Vetting
and disclosure arrangements are in place in many countries to ensure that
those who are perceived as presenting a risk to children and vulnerable
adults have reduced opportunities to access potential victims. All of these
12 S. Allardyce

measures contribute to prevention, but they apply only to those who are
known to have previously committed sexual offences.
There has been some general research into whether criminal justice
interventions go beyond tertiary prevention and also have an impact on
primary or secondary prevention. Such findings have not been specific to
the question of sexual crime and have tended to look at property crime
and violence, although they may have some transferability to the field of
sexual crime prevention (Smallbone et al., 2008). There is some evidence
that intelligence led targeting of police patrols in particular crime ‘hot
spots’ at particular times has a deterrent effect (Sherman & Eck, 2002).
This may have relevance for both the prevention of child sexual exploita-
tion where vulnerable young people may be groomed in public settings
where youths gather (such as transport hubs, shopping malls, and 24-hour
fast food restaurants) and the targeting of particular Internet sites by law
enforcement and the visibility of policing online. Conversely, there is
little evidence that increasing sanctions for crimes has a deterrent effect
with non-sexual crime (Doob & Webster, 2003; Gendreau et al., 1993),
and it is questionable whether escalating sentences for sexual crime would
contribute markedly to prevention.
Public health approaches tend to be ecologically orientated and focus
on defining the problem, establishing and tracking prevalence, identify-
ing risk and protective factors statistically associated with aetiology, and
the development and testing of relevant interventions. Although they
have value in helping practitioners and policy makers think more broadly
about what we mean by prevention, there are other ways of conceptualis-
ing approaches to sexual crime prevention. For instance, Tonry and
Farrington (1995) contrast criminal justice intervention with three other
categories of crime prevention interventions: developmental crime
­prevention, situational crime prevention, and community prevention.
This provides a useful way of making sense of contemporary sexual crime
prevention approaches, many of which straddle the categories of primary,
secondary, and tertiary prevention.
Developmental Crime Prevention draws on risk and protective factors
that tend to be associated with individual criminality or likelihood of
victimisation across the life course. Although not targeted at the pre-
vention of sexual abuse specifically, general maltreatment prevention
Another random document with
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 Close upon three hours were spent in that measure of
preparation. But Buonterzo counted upon speedily making up for that
lost time once the bluff were cleared of those pestilential
crossbowmen.
His preparations completed, Buonterzo launched the attack,
sending a body of three hundred foot to lead it, each man bearing
above his head one of the cumbrous improvised shields, and trailing
after him his pike, attached now to his belt.
From the summit of the bluff Bellarion looked down upon what
appeared to be a solid roof of timber thrusting forward across the
stream. A troop of horse was preparing to follow as soon as the
pikemen should have cleared the way. Bellarion drew two thirds of
his men farther off along the river. Thus, whilst lengthening the
range, rendering aim less certain and less effective, at least it
enabled the arbalesters to shoot at the vulnerable flank of the
advancing host.
The attack was fully two thirds of the way across the ford, which
may have been some two hundred yards in width, before Bellarion's
men were in their new positions. He ordered a volley of twenty bolts,
so as to judge the range; and although only half of these took effect,
yet the demoralisation created, in men who had been conceiving
themselves invulnerably sheltered, was enough to arrest them. A
second volley followed along the low line of exposed flank, and,
being more effective than the first, flung the column into complete
disorder.
Dead men lay awash where they had fallen; wounded men were
plunging in the water, shouting to their comrades for help, what time
their comrades cursed and raved, rousing the echoes of that
normally peaceful valley, as they had been roused before when the
horsemen found themselves in similar plight. Odd shutters and doors
went floating down the stream, and the continuity of the improvised
roof having been broken, those immediately behind the fallen found
themselves exposed now in front as well as on the flank.
A mounted officer spurred through the water, shouting a
command repeatedly as he came, and menacing the disordered
ranks with his sword. At last his order was understood, and the
timber shields were swung from overhead to cover the flank that was
being assailed. That, thought Buonterzo, should checkmate the
defenders of the ford, who with such foresight had shifted their
position. But scarcely was the manœuvre executed when into them
came a volley from the thirty men Bellarion had left at the head of the
bluff in anticipation of just such a counter-movement. Because the
range here was short, not a bolt of that volley failed to take effect,
and by the impression it created of the ubiquity of this invisible
opponent it completed the discomfiture of the assailants. They
turned, flung away their shields, and went scrambling back out of
range as fast as they could breast the water. To speed them came
another volley at their flanks, which claimed some victims, whilst
several men in their panic got into deep water and two or three were
drowned.
Livid with rage and chagrin, Buonterzo watched this second
repulse. He knew from his earlier observations and from the extent
of the volleys that it was the work of a negligible contingent posted to
cover Facino's retreat, and his wrath was deepened by the reflection
that, as a result of this delay, Facino might, if not actually escape, at
least compel him now to an arduous pursuit. No farther than that
could Buonterzo see, in the blindness of his rage, precisely as
Bellarion had calculated. And because he could see no farther, he
stood obstinately firm in his resolve to put a strong force across the
river.
The sun was mounting now towards noon, and already over four
hours had been spent at that infernal ford. Yet realising, despite his
impatience, that speed is seldom gained by hastiness, Buonterzo
now deliberately considered the measures to be taken, and he sent
men for a mile or more up and down streams to seek another
passage. Another hour was lost in this exploration, which proved
fruitless in the end. But meanwhile Buonterzo held in readiness a
force of five hundred men-at-arms in full armour, commanded by an
intrepid young knight named Varallo.
'You will cross in spite of any losses,' Buonterzo instructed him. 'I
compute them to number less than two hundred men, and if you are
resolute you will win over without difficulty. Their bolts will not take
effect save at short range, and by then you will be upon them. You
are to give no quarter and make no prisoners. Put every man in that
wood to the sword.'
An ineffective volley rained on breastplate and helmet at the
outset, and, encouraged by this ineffectiveness, Varallo urged
forward his men-at-arms. Thus he brought them steadily within a
range whereat arbalest bolt could pierce their protecting steel plates.
But Bellarion, whose error in prematurely loosing the first volley was
the fruit of inexperience, took no chances thereafter. He ordered his
men to aim at the horses.
The result was a momentary check when a half-score of stricken
chargers reared and plunged and screamed in pain and terror, and
flung off as many riders to drown helplessly in their armour, weighed
down by it and unable to regain their feet.
But Varallo, himself scatheless, urged them on with a voice of
brass, and brought them after that momentary pause of confusion to
the far bank. Here another dozen horses were brought down, and
two or three men directly slain by bolts before Varallo had
marshalled them and led them charging up and round the shallow
hill, where the ascent was easy to the wood that crowned the bluff.
The whole of Buonterzo's army straggling along the left bank of
the river cheered them lustily on, and the dominant cry that rang out
clearly and boldly was 'No quarter!'
That cry rang in the ears of Facino Cane, as he mounted the
hilltop above and behind Buonterzo's force. He had made such good
speed, acting upon Bellarion's plan, that crossing at Rivergaro he
had joined Carmagnola, whom he met between there and Agazzano,
and sweeping on, round, and up he had completed a circuit of some
twelve miles in a bare five hours.
And here below him, at his mercy now, the strategic position of
that day's dawn completely reversed, lay Buonterzo's army, held in
check there by the skill and gallantry of Bellarion and his hundred
Swiss. But it was clear that he had arrived barely in time to
command victory, and possible that he had arrived too late to save
Bellarion.
Instantly he ordered Cadillac to cleave through, and cross in a
forlorn attempt to rescue the party in the wood from the slaughter
obviously intended. And down the hill like an avalanche went the
French horse upon an enemy too stricken by surprise to take even
such scant measures of defence as the ground afforded.
Over and through them went de Cadillac, riding down scores, and
hurling hundreds into the river. Through the ford his horses plunged
and staggered at almost reckless speed, to turn Varallo's five
hundred, who, emerging from the wood, found themselves cut off by
a force of twice their strength. Back into the wood they plunged and
through it, with de Cadillac following. Out again beyond they rode,
and down the slope to the plain at breakneck speed. For a mile and
more de Cadillac pursued them. Then, bethinking him that after all
his force amounted to one third of Facino's entire army, and that his
presence might be required on the main scene of action, he turned
his men and rode back.
They came again by way of the wood, and along the main path
running through it they found nigh upon a score of Swiss dead, all
deliberately butchered, and one who still lived despite his appalling
wounds, whom they brought back with them.
By the time they regained the ford, the famous Battle of Travo—as
it is known to history—was all but over.
The wide breach made in Buonterzo's ranks by de Cadillac's
charge was never healed. Perceiving the danger that was upon them
from Facino's main army, the two broken ends of that long line went
off in opposite directions, one up the valley and the other down, and
it must be confessed that Buonterzo, realising the hopelessness of
the position in which he had been surprised, himself led the flight of
the latter and more numerous part of his army. It may have been his
hope to reach the open plains beyond Rivergaro and there reform
his men and make a stand that should yet retrieve the fortunes of the
day. But Facino himself with his own condotta of twelve hundred
men took a converging line along the heights, to head Buonterzo off
at the proper moment. When he judged the moment to have arrived,
Facino wheeled his long line and charged downhill upon men who
were afforded in that narrow place no opportunity of assuming a
proper formation.
 Buonterzo and some two hundred horse, by desperate spurring,
eluded the charge. The remainder amounting to upwards of a
thousand men were rolled over, broken, and hemmed about, so that
finally they threw down their arms and surrendered before they were
even summoned to do so.
Meanwhile Koenigshofen, with the third battle into which the army
had been so swiftly divided, dealt similarly with the fugitives who had
attempted to ascend the valley.
Two thousand prisoners, fifteen hundred horses, a hundred
baggage-carts well laden, a score of cannon besides some tons of
armour and arms, was the booty that fell to Facino Cane at Travo. Of
the prisoners five hundred Burgundian men-at-arms were taken into
his own service. A thousand others were stripped of arms, armour,
and horses, whilst the remainder, among whom were many officers
and knights of condition, were held for ransom.
The battle was over, but Facino had gone off in pursuit of
Buonterzo; and Carmagnola, assuming command, ordered the army
to follow. They came upon their leader towards evening between
Rivergaro and Piacenza, where he had abandoned the pursuit,
Buonterzo having crossed the river below the islands.
Carmagnola, flushed and exultant, gave him news of the
completeness of the victory and the richness of the booty.
'And Bellarion?' quoth Facino, his dark eyes grave.
De Cadillac told of the bodies in the wood; Stoffel with sorrow on
his long swarthy face repeated the tale of the wounded Swiss who
had since died. The fellow had reported that the men-at-arms who
rode in amongst them shouting 'No quarter!' had spared no single
life. There could be no doubt that Bellarion had perished with the
rest.
Facino's chin sank to his breast, and the lines deepened in his
face.
'It was his victory,' he said, slowly, sorrowfully. 'His was the mind
that conceived the plan which turned disaster into success. His the
gallantry and self-sacrifice that made the plan possible.' He turned to
Stoffel who more than any other there had been Bellarion's friend.
'Take what men you need for the task, and go back to recover me his
body. Bring it to Milan. The whole nation shall do honour to his ashes
and his memory.'

CHAPTER IX

DE MORTUIS

There are men to whom death has brought a glory that would
never have been theirs in life. An instance of that is afforded by the
history of Bellarion at this stage.
Honest, loyal, and incapable of jealousy or other kindred
meanness, Facino must have given Bellarion a due measure of
credit for the victory over Buonterzo if Bellarion had ridden back to
Milan beside him. But that he would have given him, as he did, a
credit so full as to make the achievement entirely Bellarion's, could
hardly be expected of human nature or of Facino's. A living man so
extolled would completely have eclipsed the worth of Facino himself;
besides which to the man who in achieving lays down his life, we can
afford to be more generous—because it is less costly—than to the
man who survives his achievement.
Never, perhaps, in its entire history had the Ambrosian city been
moved to such a delirium of joy as that in which it now hailed the
return of the victorious condottiero who had put an end to the grim
menace overhanging a people already distracted by internal feuds.
News of the victory had preceded Facino, who reached Milan
ahead of his army two days after Buonterzo's rout.
It had uplifted the hearts of all, from the meanest scavenger to the
Duke, himself. And yet the first words Gian Maria addressed to
Facino in the audience chamber of the Broletto, before the
assembled court, were words of censure.
'You return with the work half done. You should have pursued
Buonterzo to Parma and invested the city. This was your chance to
restore it to the crown of Milan. My father would have demanded a
stern account of you for this failure to garner the fruits of victory.'
Facino flushed to the temples. His jaw was thrust forward as he
looked the Duke boldly and scathingly between the eyes.
'Your father, Lord Prince, would have been beside me on the
battle-field to direct the operations that were to preserve his crown.
Had your highness followed his illustrious example there would be
no occasion now for a reproach that must recoil upon yourself. It
would better become your highness to return thanks for a victory
purchased at great sacrifice.'
The goggle eyes looked at him balefully until their glance faltered
as usual under the dominance of the condottiero's will, the
dominance which Gian Maria so bitterly resented. Ungracefully the
slender yet awkward body sprawled in the great gilded chair, red leg
thrown over white one.
It was della Torre, tall and dark at his master's side, who came to
the Duke's assistance. 'You are a bold man, Lord Count, so to
address your prince.'
'Bold, aye!' growled the Duke, encouraged by that support. 'Body
of God! Bold to recklessness. One of these days ...' He broke off, the
coarse lips curling in a sneer. 'But you spoke of sacrifices?' The
cunning that lighted his brutishness fastened upon that. It boded, he
hoped, a tale of losses that should dim the lustre of this popular
idol's achievement.
Facino rendered his accounts, and it was then that he proclaimed
Bellarion's part; he related how Bellarion's wit had devised the whole
plan which had reversed the positions on the Trebbia, and he spoke
sorrowfully of how Bellarion and his hundred Swiss had laid down
their lives to make Facino's victory certain.
 'I commend his memory to your highness and to the people of
Milan.'
If the narrative did not deeply move Gian Maria, at least it moved
the courtiers present, and more deeply still the people of Milan when
it reached them later.
The outcome was that after a Te Deum for the victory, the city put
on mourning for the martyred hero to whom the victory was due; and
Facino commanded a Requiem to be sung in Saint Ambrose for this
Salvator Patriæ, whose name, unknown yesterday, was by now on
every man's lips. His origin, rearing, and personal endowments were
the sole subjects of discussion. The tale of the dogs was recalled by
the few who had ever heard of it and now widely diffused as an
instance of miraculous powers which disposed men almost to
canonise Bellarion.
Meanwhile, however, Facino returning exacerbated from that
audience was confronted by his lady, white-faced and distraught.
'You sent him to his death!' was the furious accusation with which
she greeted him.
He checked aghast both at the words and the tone. 'I sent him to
his death!'
'You knew to what you exposed him when you sent him to hold
that ford.'
'I did not send him. Himself he desired to go; himself proposed it.'
'A boy who did not know the risk he ran!'
The memory of the protest she had made against Bellarion's
going rose suddenly invested with new meaning. Roughly, violently,
he caught her by the wrist. His face suddenly inflamed was close to
her own, the veins of his brow standing out like cords.
'A boy, you say. Was that what you found him, lady?'
Scared, but defiant, she asked him: 'What else?'
'What else? Your concern suggests that you discovered he's a
man. What was Bellarion to you?'
 For once he so terrified her that every sense but that of self-
preservation abandoned her on the instant.
'To me?' she faltered. 'To me?'
'Aye, to you. Answer me.' There was death in his voice, and in the
brutal crushing grip upon her wrist.
'What should he have been, Facino?' She was almost
whimpering. 'What lewdness are you dreaming?'
'I am dreaming nothing, madam. I am asking.'
White-lipped she answered him. 'He was as a son to me.' In her
affright she fell to weeping, yet could be glad of the ready tears that
helped her to play the part so suddenly assumed. 'I have no child of
my own. And so I took him to my empty mother's breast.'
The plaint, the veiled reproach, overlaid the preposterous
falsehood. After all, if she was not old enough to be Bellarion's
mother, at least she was his senior by ten years.
Facino loosed his grip, and fell back, a little abashed and
ashamed.
'What else could you have supposed him to me?' she was
complaining. 'Not ... not, surely, that I had taken him for my lover?'
'No,' he lied lamely. 'I was not suspecting that.'
'What then?' she insisted, playing out her part.
He stood looking at her with feverish eyes. 'I don't know,' he cried
out at last. 'You distract me, Bice!' and he stamped out.
But the suspicion was as a poison that had entered his veins, and
it was a moody, silent Facino who sat beside his lady at the State
supper given on the following night in the old Broletto Palace. It was
a banquet of welcome to the Regent of Montferrat, his nephew the
Marquis Gian Giacomo, and his niece the Princess Valeria, whose
visit was the result of certain recent machinations on the part of
Gabriello Maria.
 Gabriello Maria had lately been exercised by the fundamental
weakness of Gian Maria's position, and he feared lest the victor in
the conflict between Facino and Buonterzo might, in either case,
become a menace to the Duchy. No less was he exercised by the
ascendancy which was being obtained in Milan by the Guelphs
under della Torre, an ascendancy so great that already there were
rumours of a possible marriage between the Duke and the daughter
of Malatesta of Rimini, who was regarded as the leader of the
Guelphic party in Italy. Now Gabriello, if weak and amiable, was at
least sincere in his desire to serve his brother as in his desire to
make secure his own position as ducal governor. For himself and his
brother he could see nothing but ultimate disaster from too great a
Guelphic ascendancy.
Therefore, had he proposed an alliance between Gian Maria and
his father's old ally and friend, the Ghibelline Prince of Montferrat.
Gian Maria's jealous fear of Facino's popularity had favourably
disposed him, and letters had been sent to Aliprandi, the Orator of
Milan at Casale.
Theodore, on his side, anxious to restore to Montferrat the cities
of Vercelli and Alessandria which had been wrested from it by the all-
conquering Gian Galeazzo, and having also an eye upon the
lordship of Genoa, once an appanage of the crown of Montferrat,
had conceived that the restoration of the former should be a
condition of the treaty of alliance which might ultimately lead to the
reconquest of the latter.
Accordingly he had made haste, in response, to come in person
to Milan that he might settle the terms of the treaty with the Duke.
With him he had brought his niece and the nephew on whose behalf
he ruled, who were included in Gabriello's invitation. Gabriello's aim
in this last detail was to avert the threatened Malatesta marriage. A
marriage between the Duke and the Princess of Montferrat might be
made by Theodore an absolute condition of that same treaty, if his
ambition for his niece were properly fired.
At the banquet that night, Gabriello watched his brother, who sat
with Theodore on his right and the Princess Valeria on his left, for
signs from which he might calculate the chances of bringing the
secret part of his scheme to a successful issue. And signs were not
wanting to encourage him. It was mainly to the Princess that Gian
Maria addressed himself. His glance devoured the white beauty of
her face with its crown of red-gold hair; his pale goggle eyes leered
into the depths of her own which were so dark and inscrutable, and
he discoursed the while, loud and almost incessantly, in an obvious
desire to dazzle and to please.
And perhaps because the lady remained unmoved, serenely
calm, a little absent almost, and seldom condescending even to
smile at his gross sallies, he was piqued into greater efforts for her
entertainment, until at last he blundered upon a topic which
obviously commanded her attention. It was the topic of the hour.
'There sits Facino Cane, Count of Biandrate,' he informed her.
'That square-faced fellow yonder, beside the dark lady who is his
countess. An overrated upstart, all puffed up with pride in an
achievement not his own.'
The phrase drew the attention of the Marquis Theodore.
'But if not his own, whose, then, the achievement, highness?'
'Why a fledgling's, one whom he claims for his adoptive son.' The
adjective was stressed with sarcasm. 'A fellow named Bellarion.'
'Bellarion, eh?' The Regent betrayed interest. So, too did the
Princess. For the first time she faced her odious host. Meanwhile
Gian Maria ran on, his loud voice audible even to Facino, as he no
doubt intended.
'The truth is that by his rashness Facino was all but outfought,
when this Bellarion showed him a trick by which he might turn the
tables on Buonterzo.'
'A trick?' said she, in an odd voice, and Gian Maria, overjoyed to
have won at last her attention, related in detail the strategy by which
Facino's victory had been snatched.
'A trick, as your highness said,' was her comment. 'Not a deed of
arms in which there was a cause for pride.'
 Gian Maria stared at her in surprise, whilst Theodore laughed
aloud.
'My niece is romantic. She reads the poets, and from them
conceives of war as a joyous joust, or a game of chivalry, with equal
chances and a straightforward encounter.'
'Why, then,' laughed the Duke, 'the tale should please you,
madonna, of how with a hundred men this rascal held the ford
against Buonterzo's army for as long as the trick's success
demanded.'
'He did that?' she asked, incredulous.
'He did more. He laid down his life in doing it. He and his hundred
were massacred in cold blood. That is why on Wednesday, at Saint
Ambrose, a Requiem Mass is to be sung for him who in the eyes of
my people deserves a place in the Calendar beside Saint George.'
His aim in this high praise was less to bestow laurels upon
Bellarion than to strip them from Facino. 'And I am not sure that the
people are wrong. Vox populi, vox Dei. This Bellarion was oddly
gifted, oddly guarded.' In illustration of this he passed on to relate
that incident which had come to be known by then in Milan as 'The
Miracle of the Dogs.' He told the tale without any shame at the part
he had played, without any apparent sense that to hunt human
beings with hounds was other than a proper sport for a prince.
As she listened, she was conscious only of horror of this
monstrous boy, so that the flesh of her arm shrank under the touch
of his short, broad-jewelled paw, from which the finger-nails had
been all but entirely gnawed. Anon, however, in the solitude of the
handsome chamber assigned to her, she came to recall and weigh
the things the Duke had said.
This Bellarion had laid down his life in the selfless service of
adoptive father and country, like a hero and a martyr. She could
understand that in one of whom her knowledge was what it was of
Bellarion as little as she could understand the miracle of the dogs.
 CHAPTER X

THE KNIGHT BELLARION

That Requiem Mass at Saint Ambrose's for the repose of the soul
of Bellarion was never sung. And this because, whilst the bells were
solemnly tolling in summons to the faithful, Messer Bellarion, himself,
very much in the flesh, and accompanied by Werner von Stoffel, who
had been sent to recover his body, marched into the city of Milan by
the Ticinese Gate at the head of some seventy Swiss arbalesters,
the survivors of his hundred.
There was some delay in admitting them. When that dusty
company came in sight, swinging rhythmically along, in steel caps
and metal-studded leather tunics, crossbows shouldered, the officer
of the gate assumed them to be one of the marauding bands which
were continually harassing the city by their incursions.
By the time that Bellarion had succeeded in persuading him of his
identity, rumour had already sped before him with the amazing news.
Hence, in a measure as he penetrated further into the city, the
greater was his difficulty in advancing through the crowd which
turned out to meet him and to make him acquainted with the fame to
which his supposed death had hoisted him.
In the square before the cathedral, the crowd was so dense that
he could hardly proceed at all. The bells had ceased. For news of his
coming had reached Saint Ambrose, and the intended service was
naturally abandoned. This Bellarion deplored, for a sermon on his
virtues would have afforded him an entertainment vouchsafed to few
men.
At last he gained the Broletto and the courtyard of the Arrengo,
which was thronged almost as densely as the square outside.
Thronged, too, were the windows overlooking it, and in the loggia on
the right Bellarion perceived the Duke himself, standing between the
tall, black, saturnine della Torre and the scarlet Archbishop of Milan,
and, beside the Archbishop, the Countess Beatrice, a noble lady
sheathed in white samite with black hair fitting as close and regularly
to her pale face as a cap of ebony. She was leaning forward, one
hand upon the parapet, the other waving a scarf in greeting.
Bellarion savoured the moment critically, like an epicure in life's
phenomena. Fra Serafino rightly described the event as one of those
many friendly contrivings of Fortune, as a result of which he came
ultimately to be known as Bellarion the Fortunate.
Similarly he savoured the moment when he stood before the Duke
and his assembled court in the great frescoed chamber known as
the Hall of Galeazzo, named after that son of Matteo Visconti who
was born ad cantu galli.
Facino, himself, had fetched him thither from the court of the
Arrengo, and he stood now dusty and travel-stained, in steel cap and
leather tunic, still leaning upon the eight-foot halbert which had
served him as a staff. Calm and unabashed under the eyes of that
glittering throng, he rendered his account of this fresh miracle—as it
was deemed—to which he owed his preservation. And the account
was as simple as that which had explained to Facino the miracle of
the dogs.
When Buonterzo's men-at-arms had forced the passage of the
ford, Bellarion had been on the lower part of the bluff with some two
thirds of his band. He had climbed at once to the summit, so as to
conduct the thirty men he had left there to the shelter on the
southern slope. But he came too late. The vindictive soldiers of
Buonterzo were already pursuing odd survivors through the trees to
the cry of 'No quarter!' To succour them being impossible, Bellarion
conceived it his duty to save the men who were still with him.
Midway down the wooded farther slope he had discovered, at a spot
where the descent fell abruptly to a ledge, a cave whose entrance
was overgrown and dissembled by a tangle of wild vine and
jessamine. Thither he now led them at the double. The cave
burrowed deeply into the limestone rock.
'We replaced,' he related, 'the trailing plants which our entrance
had disturbed, and retired into the depths of the cave to await
events, just as the first of the horsemen topped the summit. From the
edge of the wood they surveyed the plain below. Seeing it empty,
they must have supposed that those they had caught and slain
composed the entire company which had harassed them. They
turned, and rode back, only to return again almost at once, their
force enormously increased as it seemed to us who could judge only
by sounds.
'I realise now that in reality they were in flight before the French
cavalry which had been sent across to rescue us.
'For an hour or more after their passage we remained in our
concealment. At last I sent forth a scout, who reported a great body
of cavalry advancing from the Nure. This we still assumed to be
Buonterzo's horse brought back by news of Facino's real
movements. For another two hours we remained in our cave, and
then at last I climbed to the summit of the bluff, whence I could
survey the farther bank of the Trebbia. To my amazement I found it
empty, and then I became aware of men moving among the trees
near at hand, and presently found myself face to face with Werner
von Stoffel, who told me of the battle fought and won whilst we had
lain in hiding.'
He went on to tell them how they had crossed the river and
pushed on to Travo in a famished state. They found the village half
wrecked by the furious tide of war that had swept over it. Yet some
food they obtained, and towards evening they set out again so as to
overtake Facino's army. But at San Giorgio, which they reached late
at night, and where they were constrained to lie, they found that
Facino had not gone that way, and that, therefore, they were upon
the wrong road. Next morning, consequently, they decided to make
their own way back to Milan.
They crossed the Po at Piacenza, only to find themselves
detained by the Scotti for having marched into the town without
permission. The Scotti knew of the battle fought, but not of its
ultimate issue. Buonterzo was in flight; but he might rally. And so, for
two days Bellarion and his little band were kept in Piacenza until it
was definitely known there that Buonterzo's rout was complete.
Then, at last, his departure was permitted, since to have detained
him longer must provoke the resentment of the victorious Facino.
'We have made haste on the march since,' he concluded, 'and I
rejoice to have arrived at least in time to prevent a Requiem, which
would have been rendered a mockery by my obstinate tenacity to
life.'
Thus, on a note of laughter, he closed a narrative that was a
model of lucid brevity and elegant, Tuscan delivery.
But there were two among the courtly crowd who did not laugh.
One was Francesco Busone of Carmagnola, Facino's handsome,
swaggering lieutenant, who looked sourly upon this triumph of an
upstart in whom he had already feared a rival. The other was the
Princess Valeria, who, herself unseen in that concourse, discovered
in this narrative only an impudent confession of trickery from one
whom she had known as a base trickster. Almost she suspected him
of having deliberately contrived that men should believe him dead to
the end that by this sensational resurrection he should establish
himself as the hero of the hour.
Gabriello Maria, elegant and debonair, came to shake him by the
hand, and after Gabriello came the Duke with della Torre, to praise
him almost fawningly as the Victor of Travo.
'That title, Lord Duke, belongs to none but my Lord Facino.'
'Modesty, sir,' said della Torre, 'is a garment that becomes a hero.'
'If my Lord Facino did not wear it, sir, you could not lie under your
present error. He must have magnified to his own cost my little
achievement.'
But they would not have him elude their flattery, and when at last
they had done with him he was constrained to run the gauntlet of the
sycophantic court, which must fawn upon a man whom the Duke
approved. And here to his surprise he found the Marquis Theodore,
who used him very civilly and with no least allusion to their past
association.
 At last Bellarion escaped, and sought the apartments of Facino.
There he found the Countess alone. She rose from her seat in the
loggia when he entered, and came towards him so light and eagerly
that she seemed almost to drift across the floor.
'Bellarion!'
There was a flush on her usually pale cheeks, a glitter in her
bright slanting eyes, and she came holding out both hands in
welcome.
'Bellarion!' she cried again, and her voice throbbed like the
plucked chords of a lute.
Instantly he grew uneasy. 'Madonna!' He bowed stiffly, took one of
her proffered hands, and bore it formally to his lips. 'To command!'
'Bellarion!' This time that melodious voice was pitched
reproachfully. She seized him by his leather-clad arms, and held him
so, confronting him.
'Do you know that I have mourned you dead? That I thought my
heart would break? That my own life seemed to have gone out with
yours? Yet all that you can say to me now—in such an hour as this—
so cold and formally is "to command"! Of what are you made,
Bellarion?'
'And of what are you made, madonna?' Roughly almost, he
disengaged himself from her grip. He was very angry, and anger was
a rare emotion in his cold, calculating nature. 'O God! Is there no
loyalty in all this world? Below, there was the Duke to nauseate me
with flattery which was no more than base disloyalty to my lord. I
escape from it to meet here a disloyalty which wounds me infinitely
more.'
She had fallen back a little, and momentarily turned aside.
Suddenly she faced him again, breathless and very white. Her long
narrow eyes seemed to grow longer and narrower. Her expression
was not nice.
'Why, what are you assuming?' There was now no music in her
voice. It was harshly metallic. 'Has soldiering made you fatuous by
chance?' She laughed unpleasantly, as upon a sudden scorn-
provoking revelation. 'I see! I see! You thought that I ...! You thought
...! Why, you fool! You poor, vain fool! Shall I tell Facino what you
thought, and how you have dared to insult me with it?'
He stood bewildered, aghast, and indignant. He sought to recall
her exact expressions. 'You used words, madonna ...' he was
beginning hotly when suddenly he checked, and when he resumed
the indignation had all gone out of him. 'What you have said is very
just. I am a fool, of course. You will give me leave?'
He made to go, but she had not yet done with him.
'I used words, you say. What words? What words that could
warrant your assumptions? I said that I had mourned you. It is true.
As a mother might have mourned you. But you ... You could think ...'
She swung past him, towards the open loggia. 'Go, sir. Go wait
elsewhere for my lord.'
He departed without another word, not indeed to await Facino,
whom he did not see again until the morrow, a day which for him was
very full.
Betimes he was sought by the Lord Gabriello Maria, who came at
the request of the Commune of Milan to conduct him to the Ragione
Palace, there to receive the thanks of the representatives of the
people.
'I desire no thanks, and I deserve none.' His manner was almost
sullen.
'You'll receive them none the less. To disregard the invitation were
ungracious.'
And so the Lord Gabriello carried off Bellarion, the son of nobody,
to the homage of the city. In the Communal Palace he listened to a
recital by the President of his shining virtues and still more shining
services, in token of their appreciation of which the fathers of the
Ambrosian city announced that they had voted him the handsome
sum of ten thousand gold florins. In other words, they had divided
between himself and Facino the sum they had been intending to
award the latter for delivering the city from the menace of Buonterzo.
 After that, and in compliance with the request of the Council, the
rather bewildered Bellarion was conducted by his noble escort to
receive the accolade of knighthood. Empanoplied for the ceremony
in the suit of black armour which had been Boucicault's gift to him,
he was conducted into the court of the Arrengo, where Gian Maria in
red and white attended by the nobility of Milan awaited him. But it
was Facino, very grave and solemn, who claimed the right to bestow
the accolade upon one who had so signally and loyally served him
as an esquire. And when Bellarion rose from his knees, it was the
Countess of Biandrate, at her husband's bidding, who came to
buckle the gold spurs to the heels of the new knight.
For arms, when invited to choose a device, he announced that he
would adopt a variant of Facino's own: a dog's head argent on a field
azure.
At the conclusion a herald proclaimed a joust to be held in the
Castle of Porta Giovia on the morrow when the knight Bellarion
would be given opportunity of proving publicly how well he deserved
the honour to which he had acceded.
It was a prospect which he did not relish. He knew himself without
skill at arms, in which he had served only an elementary
apprenticeship during those days at Abbiategrasso.
Nor did it increase his courage that Carmagnola should come
swaggering towards him, his florid countenance wreathed in smiles
of simulated friendliness, to claim for the morrow the honour of
running a course and breaking a lance with his new brother-knight.
He smiled, nevertheless, as falsely as Carmagnola himself.
'You honour me, Ser Francesco. I will do my endeavour.'
He noted the gleam in Carmagnola's eyes, and went, so soon as
he was free, in quest of Stoffel, with whom his friendship had ripened
during their journey from Travo.
'Tell me, Werner, have you ever seen Carmagnola in the tilt-yard?'
'Once, a year ago, in the Castle of Porta Giovia.'
'Ha! A great hulking bull of a man.'