To objectify women is to initiate abuse

It was a simple trade. He wanted sex with a small girl - aged between seven and 10 - and he was willing to pay £100 for it. And no, he didn't see it as an abuse; that's because he was willing to pay for the service.

It may be that former Garda Sergeant Kieran O'Halloran has done us all a service. With a couple of words, as the would-be buyer of a thing he is said to have called the service, he revealed a central truth. In this man's eyes, this was not a child he was attempting to buy, nor even a sensate animal; but a service, like a plane ticket or a haircut.

What made it particularly revealing was how he went about his shopping. He approached a 21-year-old woman and asked her to find the item for him. To his mind, this was perfectly in order; she was only a prostitute.

What would such a creature know of ordinary human feeling, of pain, terror and humiliation; what empathy could she have with the crucifixion of a little girl, ready-trussed for £100?

Kieran O'Halloran is not uniquely evil. He had been crucified himself. According to his psychiatrist, he was brutally raped in his early teens. There are plenty who perceive this type of story as a convenient ploy for mitigation.

Doubters, however, should take another look at the SAVI report (Sexual Abuse and Violence in Ireland, published last year). I've said it before in this space but it bears repeating; nearly a quarter of the Irish men surveyed said they had been sexually abused as children. No longer boys, where are they now? Without help, how are they coping with life or relating to other human beings?

Kieran O'Halloran married and had a child, but long before that, it seems, some vital part of his human essence had withered. How can it be possible to fill those wonderful, life-giving roles of husband and father, or to be a "capable, competent . . . very well-respected" member of the Garda or any human-centred organisation, while believing that vast numbers of your own species are little more than spittoons in small human form?

The notion of a human being as a commodity, or a service, is one that has long troubled many of us, especially women.

It is why we shrink from the notion of licensed brothels, or lap-dancing "clubs" or Page 3 girls or male strippers or girl's bums writ large on lonely bus shelters. It's nothing to do with the lack of a sense of humour or some prudish resistance to a walk on the wild side.

It is a recognition that once you objectify any part of any human sector, the whole sector becomes dehumanised.

And when people are dehumanised, they are downgraded to a service. This way, the service users don't have to bother about inconvenient sensitivities; they're dealing with spittoons, nothing more.

Amid all the waffle in recent weeks about the relative inoffensiveness of merely looking at images, it had to be repeated ad nauseam that each picture represented the destruction of a child. A point that wasn't made often enough is the fact that studies show that up to a third of those who salivate over such images go on to abuse a child.

But surely this doesn't apply to the relatively adult boobs-and-bum material, the every day soft porn that juts from the top shelves of most respectable newsagents?

Indeed, now that we know that masturbation doesn't make you blind or grow hair on the palms of your hands, or that playful sex in a loving relationship is a healthy pursuit, such images might even be healthy. Just like the Page 3 girl - celebrated in style last week by the Sun's first woman editor, Rebekah Wade.

SHE began her Wapping-based reign over Britain's best-selling family newspaper by arranging for Page 3 to be dominated by a young woman called "Rebekah from Wapping". What a wheeze, what a gal. (A quick look at the website - and another 74 sizzling, soaraway pictures - tells us that the woman is from Birmingham and that she's a "pussy cat" in bed).

The real Rebekah is the one who launched the News of the World's "name and shame" campaign against paedophiles, which triggered a lynch-mob's attack on the home of a paediatrician.

Undaunted, Rebekah took her leave from that illustrious organ with the final sanctimonious reminder to her readers that: "Every day there are, on average, 10 sex attacks on children."

So what do you do about it? If you're Rebekah, you address this on-going catastrophe by making a virtue of your hot, naked, ever-ready, Page 3 women . . . shucks, like most of our readers, we just happen to like pretty girls, get a life.

If you're Rebekah, you roll your eyes at anyone who suggests you might be confusing healthy admiration with objectification, a commodity, or a service. If you're Rebekah, you might prefer not to consider whether your part in the sexualisation of everyday life, and the production of everyday porn, might be more damaging than the stuff that's too hard to make it to a shop's top shelf.

And what evidence do we have for that? Well, we know that more than a third of all child abuse is perpetrated by adolescents under 18.

And it's just a hunch, mind, but my guess is that they're not all paedophiles.