I'm not sure of the relevance of statistics here in the context of known parties vs unknown. Tracey knows her partner and male friends/relatives and hence would have been able to make an assessment of whether they are a paedophile (acknowledging that its not always obvious so she may not make the corect assessment).
Risk assessment takes into account both risk likelihood and impact, in the situation of the unknown party you really have no way of knowing if the person your UM will sit next too is a pervert or not. People typically overweight the risk of the unknown but in this case suggesting they dont sit next to a male is about the only risk mitigation technque available.
PS. I'm slightly offended by the whole article myself (mainly the presumption of guilt over innocence), but under the mooted new laws I think we'll all need to get a little more used to being offended sometimes.
Since we’re getting into the risk management domain, let’s look at this through a risk management process. I’m using the Risk Matrix adapted from ISO 31000:2009
First of all, the impact for such an event would be moderate to major. At this level it’s fair to say serious injury causing hospitalization or multiple medical treatment cases, depending on your definition long term, this could also be considered life threatening due to suicide (thus pushing the risk to the major category). The highest level is catastrophic that would involve the death of the child on the plane.
Now we move onto the probability, the lowest level it goes to is 1 in 10,000 – 100,000. So assuming a 31 million flights a year (according to a 10 second google search), and the last recorded instance was back in 2001, that would put the likelihood around the 1 in 403 million mark. Let’s assume than only 50% of all flights actually carry a UM so that puts us in the 1 in 201 million. Let’s also assume that out of those 50% of flights carry both a UM and a sex offender, so in our worst case scenario, where 25% of all flights have the right conditions for the risk to happen, that still only has a 1 in 100 million chance when all the conditions are fore filled.
Now at the original definition of rare, with the max at 1 in 100,000 cases, Moderate to Major comes in a Medium risk. This means that it is managements responsibility to properly mitigate the risk, however since the risk is so low that it’s off the bottom end of the scale, it’s probably fair to say that it is a low risk, which means managed by routine procedures.
Now you may have an argument that by moving males away from UM is routine procedures, however since the risk is so low it does not make an appreciable difference compared to having a female sitting next to the UM. In both cases the actual risk of the UM been harmed by the adult is statistically unlikely regardless of the gender of the pax sitting next to the UM.
This brings us to the next point, since it is unlikely that an adult poses a risk to a UM, what about the risk of an adult simply sitting down in an empty seat next to a UM whilst “waiting for the loo”? Again, using our risk model, it’s highly unlikely that such an event would happen and be a risk for the child, that said it is not unheard of that people have sat in vacant seats next to others and sexually assaulted the pax. Since we are using some pretty out there numbers to justify the risk mitigation of placing a male next to a UM, any other risk to the UM no matter how remote should be included.
There is of course a risk to the UM from other UM’s. I don’t know how what others childhoods where like, but in mine, not every other kid I knew was friendly towards me. As such I had exactly 100% higher chance of been involved in a fist fight with another kid than with an adult. Whilst it’s unlikely that two kids are going to get into a punching match (remember that we are looking at mitigating every risk, regardless of how small), it’s not unforeseeable (or unheard of) that one UM might try emotional scaring via teasing or taunts, or actual physical scaring by way of a violent act such as biting, scratching or other act.
So until the airlines can prove that they take all these above risks towards a UM as seriously as the “all men are dangerous to kids” risk by actual management intervention (as technically required by the risk matrix), I will continue to argue against any “we need to mitigate the risk at all costs, provided that mitigation is simply labeling men as potential pedophiles".