Watching the detectives

Jim Reynolds The Scot is waging a battle against paedophilia which goes beyond the world of TV's The Vice

WHEN Jim Reynolds heard ITV was pillaging the vice world for a major drama, he gritted his teeth and prepared to switch off. The retired Scotland Yard police chief who is leading the UK's fight against paedophilia had seen it all before, from Taggart to Prime Suspect. He wasn't in the mood for yet another police drama.

The Vice, which proved an instant hit, tapped into viewers' preoccupation with crime, plunging them into a world of pimps and prostitutes and giving them a new TV detective - tortured Scot Pat Chappel.

"You can't get away from crime drama," says Reynolds. "It's nothing short of an obsession. It should be taken as entertainment - the way it is intended to be - nothing more. That's why I don't tend to watch too much of it."

However relentlessly dark The Vice seems to its audience, for Reynolds, it is only a glimpse into the world of sexual crime. He says that is the way it has to be, because the reality is too horrific to squeeze into a prime time television slot. "You don't solve crimes in an hour, including adverts," he says. "It has got to be beefed up to make it viewable."

The Scot, who has been dubbed the UK's "paedophilia czar", stresses how far removed he is from Chappel, the moody vice squad boss played by the respected Edinburgh-born actor Ken Stott. Until recently, Reynolds headed Scotland Yard's Paedophilia Unit. He was responsible for helping the Metropolitan Police use the internet to trace missing children and crack child abuse rings. Since retiring, he has helped co-ordinate the fight against organised paedophile networks in Britain, Europe and the US. Using the internet, the very tool that paedophiles exploit, he is forging links between UK police departments, under the umbrella of the government-backed UK National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children.

Chappel, a gruff workaholic with a heart of gold, finds it difficult to keep his private and working lives separate - in the drama's recent second series, his obsessional behaviour led to the death of an ex-colleague. Reynolds, however, had to draw an immovable line between his work and private lives. "You wouldn't let your private life and your work slip over into each other," he says. Rooting out unspeakable images of babies and children being sexually abused was a routine part of his job in the Paedophilia Unit, and he and his colleagues were given compulsory stress counselling to help them cope with the images they were exposed to on a daily basis. He learned not to become emotional about the disturbing material, viewing it simply as evidence with which to trace paedophile ring leaders.

"These are men who used their positions to get access to children and abuse them," he says. "They are school teachers, doctors and ministers of religion. We did look at horrific things and sad to say, I've seen it all. But the child pornography we looked at was no more and no less than a visual depiction of a serious crime against a child. We viewed it as a crime scene with a view to identifying the offender and arresting him."

Thanks to The Vice, millions of viewers see London's Soho as the nation's hotbed of sexual criminal activity, but the murky world Reynolds deals with extends much further than Chappel's stomping ground. The idea of a vice squad chief being preoccupied with prostitution in one of London's tourist haunts is rather quaint, compared with the cyber-territory Reynolds works in. A bunch of 'tecs sitting at computer terminals doesn't make good drama, though - and Reynolds knows it.

"The Vice is highly dramatised to make it viewable, and you've got to go where your audience is, which is in the big cities," he says. "But the internet has no territorial or ethnic boundaries. You might get a wee village in the north of Scotland being the base for internet paedophile activity."

He warns that Britain will inevitably follow in the grubby footsteps of America in internet porn, just as it has with fast food culture. "In America, you can see paedophiles with a child live on the internet," he says. "You can watch what's going on and send your requests to them. That will come here eventually."

If there is one comparison to be made between Reynolds and telly's Mr Vice, besides the obvious Scottish connection, it is that both are driven by their work. Retirement has been a minor inconvenience for Reynolds as he continues his fight against paedophile crime. His work even extends into the realm of charity - he is helping set up hotlines across Europe, aimed at giving advice to parents concerned about the pornographic material their children are accessing on the internet.

The biggest difference is that while the credits roll at the end of The Vice, Reynolds' crusade will continue long after he hands over his mantle.

Copyright 2000
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.