Michael Sheath

Micheal Sheath

Associate Lecturer, School of Psychology

School of Psychology

Department of Violence Prevention, Trauma and Criminology

Contact Details

tel: 07565369639

Michael worked as a Probation Officer for almost ten years, in prison and community settings, including hostels, ‘Unpaid Work’, Divorce Court Welfare, group work, supervision, and pre-sentence report writing. He received the Butler Trust Award for his prison based work with male victims of sexual abuse. He spent twenty five and a half years, from 1997, working for The Lucy Faithfull Foundation, the UK’s only charity focused solely on the prevention of child sexual abuse. In that employment, he was responsible for preparing reports for use in Care Proceedings and attended Family Courts as an ‘Expert Witness.’ He trained hundreds of police officers and social workers in working with sexual offenders and their families. He was involved in whole community safeguarding inspections of a number of British Overseas Territories, including The Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic and Pitcairn in the South Pacific.

Qualifications

  • BA Hons, Politics. University of Lancaster.
  • Master of Arts, Social Work. University of Nottingham.
  • Certificate of Qualification in Social Work.
  • Certificate in Sexual Addiction, (Association for the Treatment of Sexual Addiction and Compulsivity.
  • Trainer in Safer Recruitment in Schools, including ‘Train the Trainer.’ (Safer Recruitment Consortium.)
  • Trainer, ‘Staff Supervision in Social Care.’ (Tony Morrison Associates.)

Teaching Interests

  • The causes and course of child sexual abuse and rape.
  • Childhood trauma as a causative factor in adult crime.
  • The supervision of staff working in criminal justice and therapeutic settings.
  • Schema theory as an aid to working with and understanding perpetrators and victims of sexual and violent crime.
  • ‘Internet’ based sexual crime, including the possession and dissemination of indecent imagery of children, ‘soliciting’, and ‘grooming.’ The overlap between mainstream pornography and indecent imagery.
  • The use of drama and fiction in teaching theory and considering policy and personal attitude.

Research Interests

  • The prevention of child sexual abuse through public engagement and education.
  • The problem of inadvertent harm caused by police enquiries into the possession of indecent imagery of children, specifically the risk of suicide by offenders and the ‘secondary harms’ caused to their families.
  • Understanding the behaviours of victims of sexual abuse, and the difficulties they have in making and sustaining complaints.
  • The impact of working with crime, deviance and trauma upon police, probation officers, and social workers.

Membership of Professional Bodies

Previous:

  • Registered Social Worker
  • Member of NOTA
  • The national organisation for the treatment of sexual offenders

Recent Publications

  • Author of a play, now a book, ‘Crossing the Line’, ( Aspect Design, 2022) which deals with the traumas caused by online and offline sexual abuse. It includes perspectives from the partner of a man who viewed indecent images of children, the detective who investigated that crime, the offender, his daughter, and a mother whose child was abused to provide the images. The book is now a set text on the University College Dublin Forensic Computer Examiners’ course.
  • Written various articles on the treatment and management of sexual offenders and am the author of a chapter of a book ‘Constructing stories, telling tales: A guide to formulation in Applied Psychology’, Ed S Corrie, D Lane, Routledge, 2010. This deals with case formulation in cases of suspected intra familial sexual abuse. 

External Roles

  • Patron of StopSo, an organisation that offers counselling to anyone who is expressing a sexual interest in children.
  • ‘Staff Trainer’ at Europol, the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation
  • 'Staff Trainer' at CEPOL, the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Training.
  • Independent member of the Football Association’s Safeguarding Review Panel, which adjudicates on misconduct in the Regulated game.

Previous:

  • ‘Safeguarding Governor’ at a local Secondary School
  • Board Member of Vamos, a local theatre group.