Last updated at 15:42, Wednesday, 12 November 2008

As a teenager Lianne Anderson wanted to be a plumber, but fate led her down a different path – as a forensic psychologist dealing with serial killers and rapists. HELEN WALL reports

MOST of us have read the news and at some point thought: “What sort of a person would do that?” after a story of an atrocious crime.
But for Barrow woman Lianne Anderson the question has been a way of life.

For 10 years she worked at an NHS maximum secure hospital for mentally disordered offenders (security prevents us naming it) where her daily workload included talking to serial killers, rapists and some of the country’s most dangerously violent offenders.
Lianne is a chartered forensic psychologist and she has spent hours listening to horrendous stories of abuse and disturbing behaviour.
As a teenager at Walney School she had no idea what she wanted to do with her life.
She was academically bright and thought she might be a vet, a journalist or a plumber – it’s a hands-on job, is about problem solving and quick results.
She still envies plumbers.
She was also an avid reader of pretty heavy Russian and Irish literature like Dostoyevsky and Brendan Behan.
It gave her a taste for politics, psychology and philosophy, and a tendency to keep an open mind, particularly about labeling people.
She went to Barrow Sixth Form College and, like many past students, was inspired to question culture and behaviour by sociology tutor Rod White.
She developed an interest in crime (she had read the Russian classic Crime and Punishment in her teens), why people committed it and what could be done about it, and decided to study politics and social policy at Stirling University.
After graduating she came back to Barrow to teach A-Level psychology at Furness College. She also did a short spell at the Evening Mail and the probation service, but, still in her early 20s, Lianne was ready for adventure.
She especially wanted to live in a totally different culture and learn a new language, so she applied to work with the Voluntary Service Overseas and went to North West China for two years.
The winters were so cold, minus 20 degrees, that she used to go to work with her pyjamas sticking out under her clothes as it had been too cold to take them off in the morning.
She loved the experience and made many friends and the time turned out to be especially important to her in her work with offenders.
Lianne explains: “Afro-Caribbean people are over-represented in criminal justice and secure psychiatric services.
“In my experience, they tend to come from families who place greater emphasis on religion and can talk openly about ‘God’ ‘the devil’ and ‘spirits’.
“It is easy see a person’s culture and spiritual beliefs as evidence of underlying psychosis (a mental condition where somebody is unable to distinguish between reality and their imagination), when the focus should be about understanding people’s thoughts, beliefs and actions in the context of their life experiences.
“I think it is easier now for me to respect and appreciate cultural factors – as obviously my friends and colleagues in China afforded me the same courtesy.”
Another factor helped Lianne in her career dealing with offenders.
As a child, two of the people she knew well had mental health difficulties and Lianne understood the stigma attached to this and wanted to do something about it.
It also meant she was not afraid of the labels that people attach to disorders, as she knew the people to be perfectly normal in most ways.
She feels this gave her an advantage when working one-to-one with violent offenders with labels like schizophrenic.
Lianne started in the personality disorder service doing research, one-to-one and group work with a specialist focus on sexual offending treatment programmes, which she had studied for an MSc.
An important focus of her work was to reduce the risk of reoffending.
Lianne said: “There is not always a clear delineation between ‘perpetrator’ and ‘victims/survivor’.
“People always need to take responsibility for their behaviours – the focus should always be on reducing the likelihood of repeat offending and further victims.
“But there is not always one type of person who commits offences and one type of person who is a victim.
“Many of those who had committed a range of offences, including some of the most violent in our society, had also experienced the fear, lack of power and humiliation that comes from being a victim.”
During those years Lianne became a mother and is now back in Furness in a new career in the University of Cumbria.
Her vast experience with offenders led Lianne to look at the way people in the profession worked and a desire for a more “joined-up” service and she began to think about an MSc programme that would help people achieve this.
She waited until the time was right, then the new university in her home area advertised for someone with Lianne’s qualifications and experience and she was able to put her ideas to them.
The university saw its value and took Lianne on, along with her MSc course, which is unique in its field.
It was difficult for her to leave the people she was helping.
Lianne said: “For me to leave, I had to feel satisfied that each case had been completed for this part of the journey.
“There is also a need for fresh people and ideas in this type of service, to avoid burnout.
“I also wanted to focus on an MSc course I wanted to develop and to have more time for research.
“It was also a good time to come home to Barrow, where I still have close friends and family and the friendliest of neighbours.”

First published at 11:46, Wednesday, 12 November 2008
Published by http://www.nwemail.co.uk