Why "Pedophile" vs. "Child Rapist" Matters To Prevention

This Again?

Apparently I need to cover this again more clearly, since my words can apparently be twisted beyond all recognition. So, yes, I am covering this topic yet one more time in the hopes that I can communicate more clearly what I intend to say about why pedophilia/pedophiles are different from child sex abuse/child rapists.

Most Child Rape Has Nothing To Do With Sex

That is where we will start: Child rape is usually not something that happens because someone wants the sexual pleasure of doing things with children. It is usually more related to power, control, or unmet mental health needs. The unmet mental health needs can range from anything to someone with lots of stress in their life, and the child is an available outlet for that stress to someone who cannot find an appropriate adult sexual partner, and again the child is an available outlet for that unmet need. Even in cases where the child rapist does have an ongoing sex drive towards children, the sex drive is less of an issue than other factors like desperation, depression, anxiety, or feeling in control.

This part is vastly oversimplified due to the fact that motivations behind child sexual abuse are vast and complex enough to fill multiple books. But the overarching point is that an ongoing sex drive towards children is usually unrelated to the motivations behind why someone sexually abuses a child.

That is important because...

...Those With A Sex Drive Towards Children Do Not Usually Rape Children

That may be difficult to believe, but it is true. Those with a sex drive towards children are not usually responsible for raping them. However, a statistically significant (30% or so) portion of sexual abuse does include a sex drive towards children as a factor, which means that something more could be done for these people to manage the issues (like desperation, depression, anxiety, and feeling out-of-control) that can arise from having a sex drive directed at children.

In other words, we need to make sure that those with this sex drive towards children have some way of getting help if they feel they need it- before they feel desperate, depressed, anxious, or out-of-control and are then at-risk for sexually abusing a child. Making help more readily available to someone with a sex drive towards kids means less kids are abused.

...Which Does Not Mean That...

• Child rape is okay
• We should accept pedophiles being sexual with children
• Pedophilia should be normalized (whatever the heck that even means, I have no idea)
• Pedophiles get a free pass to molest children

None of those four bullet points is the point, in any way shape or form. The point is that child rape is bad, and needs to be avoided, and one of the ways we can do that is by making sure that someone who feels sexually inclined towards children has whatever help they feel they might need in facing that sexual inclination. The point to them getting that help is so that they do not rape a child.

Primary Prevention Primer

Maybe I just like words that start with P, and maybe I think people sometimes do not understand how primary prevention differs from, well, prevention. But primary prevention is about stopping child sexual abuse, before it can happen. It means a child is not abused in the first place, as opposed to punishing the living snot out of whoever rapes a child (because at that point, the rape has already happened). Why "as opposed to punishing"? That is somewhat difficult to answer because...

...Mandatory Reporting Hurts Kids

It hurts children by making it less likely that adults who know sexual abuse has happened will report it or direct the child rapist to a therapist because they know that therapist will turn the rapist into the police. Also, it makes children less likely to say that they were abused, because they fear that the rapist (which is usually someone they know, love, and trust) will get in trouble, and because they want to protect the community from the knowledge that this great person that people love and trust is doing these horrid things.

When a mother does not take her teenage kid to a therapist for fear of the therapist calling the police because the teenage kid sexually abused a younger kid, that is a prevention failure. Not only will the teenage kid not be held accountable, they will not be likely to understand why they did that and are at-risk for abusing more children. If our system is set up to punish the snot out of those who rape kids, no matter who they are, it means less rapists are held accountable, less rapists get the mental health help that they need, and it means that rape happens more (which is bad (obviously)).

The Bowtie

A child rapist is someone who has made a choice to hurt a child (regardless of how the rapist justified it or what their motivations were, the behavior to rape a child is a choice). A pedophile is someone who has an ongoing sex drive directed at kids (and has likely never harmed a child). If child sexual abuse is to be prevented, and pedophiles are to get whatever help they feel they need (so that a child is not raped), then we need to keep these terms separate. Thus ends my rant against improper terminology, and my frustration with my apparent inability to communicate clearly what I mean when I say that, "We should pity pedophiles because they have an attraction they cannot help." The part to be pitied is that pedophiles have a sexual attraction to kids that they did not ask for and cannot change, and they can never act on it the way you, I, or most other human beings can be sexual with someone because the someone we are attracted to is old enough to consent to being sexual. That deserves pity, and whatever help they ask for. It does not deserve a correlation with being a child rapist. If someone has not raped a child, they should not be automatically confused with someone who has, regardless of their sexuality.

The Annual Halloween Sex Offender Witch Hunt

It is that time of year again! The time of year when media outlets across the United States (and beyond) publish lists and maps of where sex offenders are in your community, ostensibly to keep children safe from sex offenders. The part they conveniently leave out is that Halloween puts children at a much higher risk of being injured or killed in traffic than they are for being kidnapped or molested by a registered sex offender.

Take a look at four facts and the studies they come from:

A study looking at 67,307 sexual offenses committed against 67,045 victims and found no significance between Halloween and the rest of the year in regards to sexual offenses.

One meta-analysis looking at 45,398 offenders across 16 countries found that the average sexual offender repeats their sexual crimes at a rate around 11.5%  45,398 offenders across 16 countries. A similar meta-analysis found a lower sexual recidivism rate for child molesters (12.7%) compared to rapists (18.9%), as well as lower nonsexual violent recidivism (9.9% for child molesters and 22.1% for rapists) and lower general recidivism (36.9% among child molesters, and 46.2% for rapists).

A New York study done in 2008 found that over 95% of sexual offense arrests were of first-time offenders with no criminal history on no registry. Studies done in other states have found a similar 95-99% rate of the same.

A study looking at crimes against juveniles found that 90% of child sexual abuse is perpetrated by those known to the victim, not strangers.

In light of these four facts, there is no evidence to support the idea that sexual crimes against children are a higher or lower risk around Halloween compared to any other time of the year. In fact, these facts indicate that the biggest risk to children does not come from sex offenders, but from those trusted in the community with no criminal record. That holds true on any day of the year. That begs the question: What can you look for? Behavioral signs are the best bet.

Because of these facts, I believe it is time to stop using "sex offender" so commonly and openly, and use the more accurate "sexual abuser" instead, or some other term that does not imply that the majority of those who commit sexual crimes are registered sex offenders. That implication is a myth that flies in the face of the above facts, and puts communities in more danger by focusing their attention on a population that commits less than 5% of sexual crimes against children, and indeed, sexual crimes in general.

In short, because of the facts about sex offenders, child sexual abuse, and the rates of crime around Halloween, it is time for our fear over sex offenders nabbing children off the street to end. Strangers present minimal danger in terms of sexual crimes, and Halloween is a time for some to celebrate all that is spooky and scary... but sex offenders are not the scary part of sex crimes. The scary part is how we focus on the people who are not threats at the cost of detecting those who do present risks.

"Comfortably Numb": A Journey Through Pedophilia, An Article By Ender Wiggin

Introduction

Ender Wiggin, who has been a feature on this blog before, has again graciously allowed me to feature one of his posts on this blog. It is about a fifteen minute read, but there is also a lot to process.

Why am I featuring stories from pedophiles on a blog dedicated to the primary prevention of child sexual abuse? Because unless we can understand what it is a non-offending pedophile goes through, and how they are different from the two categories of sexual abusers, we cannot firmly establish a line between a non-offending pedophile, a situational abuser, and a preferential abuser. Without being able to draw that line, we cannot be rational or be able help non-offending pedophiles realize that they will not inevitably harm a child.

The stigma against pedophiles and the barriers that interfere with their ability to seek professional help if it is needed is also a significant barrier to accepting the idea that child sexual abuse is preventable. I believe it is time to break down those barriers, because barriers are not helping the general public understand the topic of child sexual abuse prevention.

Pedophilia is an incredibly difficult condition to understand and empathize with. It is incredibly rare, and to most people it is very mysterious. Frankly, Ender has a way with words and personal stories that far surpasses my ability to tell a story of myself and my own journey through pedophilia. I think it is very valuable to hear his story, especially if you are prejudiced against pedophiles. Without further words, here is his story.


Comfortably Numb

A journey through realization, despair, lethargy, awakening and acceptance

This is my most personal post to date. I feel very comfortable analyzing things from a rational, logical, factual point of view and then putting them down into written word. Writing about my feelings, however, is a completely different topic. I hope this post gives a different perspective of what it’s like growing up and living one’s life as a pedophile.

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Mylife took a dramatic turning point a little over two years ago. Even before that, I was never in denial about my attractions. I have memories of finding other boys attractive since as early as when I was eightyears old. As you can imagine, at the time I didn’t know much about sex — in spite of having discovered pornography (by accident) and with it masturbation two years earlier — or the notion of sexual attraction, let alone homosexuality or pedophilia. But even prepubertal children often know they feel something special that they don’t quite understand or know how to describe for some people, typically children their own age. In most cases, a boy will feel that something especial for a girl — they have a crush. In my case, I felt it for other boys my age. Of course I didn’t know any better at that age, so I never even questioned whether it was normal or not. It just was.

As I kept growing up, the boys I found attractive didn’t quite grow up with me. Up until I was about fourteen I would still find enough boys my age attractive to not think too much of it. At that age I was more aware of sexuality and started really worrying about being gay. Having been brought up in a Catholic household, it was a very scary thought. In addition, homosexuality wasn’t nearly as discussed in the open as it is today, let alone accepted by society in general. However, I always knew that I found a lot of younger boys attractive. This would typically be the younger brothers of my age peers who I knew from my neighborhood or from school, or simply boys I would see in movies and TV shows. This went on for the next couple of years. I don’t even know where or when I ever heard the term pedophile for the first time, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t until much later that the notion of there being adults interested in sex with children even crept into my consciousness.

Up until I was about sixteen I just kept hoping that I was just a ‘normal’ gay boy, and that this would be some kind of phase that would eventually pass. Even if I didn’t consciously know about pedophiles I already knew that something was really off. Now it wasn’t just my friends’ younger brothers that were perhaps two or three years younger than me. It couldn’t possibly be normal for me to develop intense crushes on boys eight years younger than me, and to have sexual fantasies about boys so young. I was so confused. Was I just gay? What the heck was wrong with me? Why me? I still on occasion thought that I would eventually have to come out to my family as gay, and the thought terrified me. When you’re brought up in an environment where your parents have never talked to you about sexuality, and where you are afraid that they will not understand and they could stop loving you, how does one deal with that pain? Who does one talk to? What is one supposed to do?

The pain is so unbearable that there is only one way out. You numb your feelings enough to survive, to go through your life weathering the storm as best as you can. You put on a mask and learn to pretend that you’re OK when you’re anything but. You daydream about running away but can’t quite figure out where you’d go. You build a wall around your very soul and you don’t let anyone penetrate it, because you are certain that they will be so disgusted by what they see inside that you just can’t bear the thought. So you never talk about anything substantial with your friends, your siblings or your parents. You become a stranger to everyone in your life. You wear the mask. You become the mask. You become comfortably numb.

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There’s a beautiful Oscar-nominated Irish animated movie called Song of the Sea, in which a boy named Ben discovers that the fantastic world of legendary mythical creatures from the stories his disappeared mother used to tell him when he was little are true, including the fact that his sister Saoirse is a selkie — a mythical creature with a woman’s body on land that turns into a seal in the sea — just like his mother was. There is an Owl Witch named Macha who helps you escape your pain by taking away your negative feelings and bottling them up — literally — in jars. But there is a hefty price to pay. The more you bottle up your feelings, the more and more numb you become, until you turn into stone.

In the movie, the giant Mac Lir’s heart was broken, and the pain was so intense that he cried an entire ocean. In order to save him from the pain, his mother Macha the Owl Witch took away his feelings, and turned him into stone. Thus, he became the island which can be seen from the lighthouse where Ben lives with his family. I became the stone giant. The pain was just too much to bear. I resigned myself to the idea that I would never know love. I would always be alone.

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Thus I lived my life; the great pretender. I was social enough. I hung out with my friends from college, while my parents—or anyone else in my life, for that matter — never suspected there was anything wrong with me. I became so adept at wearing my mask and hiding my feelings.

Until one day someone you’ve known for a while does something unexpected and tells you she has feelings for you in a quite unconventional way. And you freak out. And you freeze. So you don’t react. You do nothing. It’s just too scary and you’re too afraid to move.

You’ve already given up on being normal, or even a ‘normal gay guy’. But you wonder, and you ask yourself. If I was normal. If only. Sure, you have some girl friends (not girlfriends) and you like them enough—as friends. In that kind of awkward friendship you can build with someone when you’re constantly wearing a mask and checking that the fortified walls around your soul are properly manned to protect you from assault. You’ve never been attracted to them. Not that way. Not the way a guy your age is supposed to be attracted to a girl. Not the way your friends talk about the girls they’re attracted to. But you do like them. And you realize there’s someone you like a little differently, a little more. She’s the one that you think about when you think “if I was normal”. Because she’s an amazing human being, the kindest heart you’ve ever known. And she happens to be the one that shakes your entire world by telling you about her feelings for you. What do you do? How do you react? You try to pretend like nothing happened and you do nothing. You’re literally too scared.

Until something happens and you just can’t hide anymore. You can’t hide from her. You can’t hide from yourself. So you have to meet up with her. You tell her you like her, but you’re unsure if you’re even capable of loving someone. You tell her that you hate yourself, even if you can’t say why, and that you find it hard to believe that anyone would want to be with you. But she tells you that she sees something in you, even though you’re largely a mystery to her — as you are to everyone in your life. She can sense the pain, though she doesn’t know exactly what it is, and has no idea where it comes from.

You don’t want to lie to her. You really don’t. You don’t want to hurt her. She says she wants to know you, but you know you can’t let anyone know you. Notthe real you. You can’t let them penetrate that wall. It would be… no — you just can’t. You never even think about it at a conscious level. You just know it’s impossible. You don’t even make a decision. It’s not even an option. But you try. You really want to be normal, so you try to be normal. And it hurts. Being in a relationship with someone is scary when you have never let anyone come close to you before. When — in addition — you have a secret as terrible as this one, it’s even harder. When you have numbed your feelings so much that you don’t even know what you feel, how do you express them?

And she helps you, and you learn to open up, little by little. But you keep that secret hidden, because you don’t know otherwise. Because that’s just what you do. Who in their right mind would do any different? And you start to build something. A family. And they’re all that you’ve ever done that is good, or so it feels to you. But you’re still comfortably numb, it’s too scary and painful to feel. You’re not in denial — you know well what you are. What you’re attracted to. You just haven’t named it. It’s just there in the back of your mind, and you ignore it, even though you notice it every day. And time goes by. The months turn into years; the years into a decade. I lived my life in lethargy. In an emotional auto-pilot.

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Ithappened unexpectedly, the awakening. I was traveling for work when, back in my hotel in the evening, I came across a YouTube video by James Cantor talking about pedophilia. How? Why? I don’t even remember what led me to it. The Pedophile’s Brain. Yeah, of course I’ve heard that word before. So why had I never thought of myself as… that? It hit me like a truckload of bricks. My memory is hazy afterwards. I don’t know how that led me to an article, and then another article. And one of those articles led me to theVirtuous Pedophiles website.

I sat there in my hotel room, reading the stories of other people like me featured on the main page. People struggling with the same pain. And suddenly tears are rolling down my face. I fill in the contact form to access the peer support forum, but it takes some time to get a reply. My mind is racing. The next morning I catch a flight home. I spend the entire flight crying. I think about getting back to a wife who doesn’t know her husband; children whose father will never be able to let them know him. How could I do that to them? It’s not fair. She doesn’t deserve this. They don’t deserve this. But what can I do? This is what I am. This is who I am.

I get home, and I have to keep wearing my mask. Thank God I can do this so well. So many years of practice. I can’t let her see the turmoil inside, lest she asks. I finally get access to the VirPed support group, and I introduce myself. I refer to myself as a pedophile for the first time in my life. I cringe. The welcome is soothing. They get it. They understand. I get involved, receiving support and at the same time giving it to other members, new and old. Giving is more healing than taking. And quite soon it happens. You hear people telling stories of how they came out — or were outed — to their loved ones, and how they were accepted, forgiven — if necessary — and supported. Wait, what?Is this really possible? Can one say this about oneself, and not be rejected automatically? I also hear some horror stories about just that; unfortunately not everyone can be so understanding and accepting. Unconditional love exists, but there is no guarantee.

Thus the urge starts to grow. Should I tell her? I want to tell her. How will she react? Will she be able to forgive me? Will I lose her? Will I lose my children?The numbness is gone. Everything hurts now. I cry easily. Way too easily. Hiding that something is really wrong with me becomes harder than it’s ever been. The burden is so heavy now. It weighs me down. I wouldn’t know until later that these are symptoms of clinical depression. But I somehow keep battling it out of sheer willpower for several months, while I struggle with the decision of whether I should or should not tell her. I have many reasons to, but are they the right ones? Is it just because I want my conscience to be clean? Because I want to feel better? Because I can’t bear the pain of carrying this burden by myself any longer? I have many reasons not to. Good reasons. I don’t want to lose them. I don’t want to place my burden on her. I convince myself, several times, that the risks outweigh the benefits.

I keep involved in the VirPed community and I start building friendships. These are strangers from the internet and somehow they know me better than anyone ever knew my in real life, including my parents, siblings or wife. There are no barriers with these people; no masks. They understand, and they’re there for you when you need them. You’re there for them when they need you. You take great solace from being able to help them, and they accompany you through this difficult time. They help you put things into perspective and ultimately become instrumental in you making the toughest decision you’ve ever had to make in your entire life.

It started as a therapeutic exercise. A letter. I didn’t plan on giving it to her. It took months to write, and many tears were poured over it. Many late night conversations with my friends on the forum. Many sleepless hours at night lying by my wife’s side in bed, wondering what would happen. Praying. Dreading.

One night, after yet another business trip, I knew it was the time, and I gave her the letter after the kids were asleep. Instead of having a nervous breakdown while she read it as I had imagined countless times, I felt an inexplicable calm. And cold. I was waiting somewhere else in the house, and when I heard her footsteps coming towards me, that’s when I crumbled and started to cry. We hugged, very tightly. She was crying too. I’m sorry. It’s all I can say. I’m sorry. The mask was off. For the first time in my life, someone knew me. All of me.

There’s a lot of tears. Some tough questions. And a lot of love. Unconditional love. There’s forgiveness, and acceptance. Acceptance feels like such a balm. It’s hard to describe. Like after-sun lotion on skin burned by a summer sun.

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Ireally am a different person now. It hasn’t been easy. She’s been incredibly understanding, sympathetic and supportive. I definitely do not deserve her — and yet here I am. It’s hard to cope with this knowledge, for both of us. For me, knowing that someone knows this part of me that has remained a secret for so long. For her, well, it’s kind of obvious.

She encouraged me to seek some form of in-real-life support, and I started seeing a therapist, which has been incredibly helpful. No, she wasn’t expecting to cure me, and neither was I. But being able to process of all those repressed feelings from so many years back has been incredibly liberating. My therapist has been amazing. I’ve also been taking medication, which has helped with the depression, and I’m doing much better.

I never needed therapy to know I couldn’t act on my attractions. It was never even an option for me. No one had to ever tell me it was wrong, it just felt wrong. Even growing up when I was still a teenager, it was just something that never even crossed my mind. I don’t need therapy to not be a danger to children. I never have. And I don’t need therapy to ‘cure’ me, because it just can’t.

Therapy has helped me accept myself. Accept that I am what I am, and that I am a worthy human being. In fact, I’m probably a better human being because of it. Because if I wasn’t like I am, perhaps I’d be more intolerant towards others. Being part of a hated minority does give you some perspective on things. Before all of this, though, I don’t think I had accepted it. I had resigned myself to it, if anything. But that’s not the same thing.

As a practicing Catholic, I also sought support from a priest I knew. I came out to him shortly after, and he has been incredibly supportive and understanding. His acceptance has meant a lot to me at a personal level. He also helped me understand that if I am the way I am it’s because God has wanted me to be this way. I can’t fathom why, but it does bring me comfort. God has not only made me this way, but he loves me and accepts me just as I am. And He will never turn His back on me. Many people of faith will say that I ought to pray every day to be rid of this condition, to be ‘healed’. Pray the pedo away. And if I don’t succeed, it’s because my faith wasn’t strong enough. Perhaps it isn’t, but I just don’t believe things work that way. My priest has helped me realize that the real miracle here is what’s happened in the last two years. That I am able to accept myself fully. That my wife was able to accept me and forgive me. And that we can continue to be together, building our family, building our future and that of our children.

That is all I ever needed. All I ever wanted. To be known. To be accepted. To be loved. For real. Not the me with the mask, but the me behind the mask. The hurting me. The vulnerable me.

Primary Prevention Basics

Stop A Moment...

The information that I am about to present will shock you. You will have feelings about it, and I very much doubt that you will like what you are about to read. I doubt you will want to believe it. So please take a moment to relax, and set aside how you feel about the subject of child sexual abuse. Take a moment, and give me the space to present some challenging facts.

The Cold, Hard Truth

Child sexual abuse is an epidemic that we must take steps to reduce. That one-fourth of girls and one-sixth of boys are abused by the time they come of age is pathetic, disturbing, and disgusting. Society has taken many approaches to attempt to curb this epidemic, very similar to the American war on drugs in the 1990's: The main approach is to exact a harsh penalty and hope that the penalty deters people from committing these horrific crimes. The reality that someone can touch the genitals of a child for sexual pleasure is a disgusting, appalling concept just by itself. Then you add to that reality that there are people who are sexually attracted to children the way most adults are attracted to other adults... and you get people getting their pitchforks and nooses ready. People are ready and willing to accept that the people who commit these horrific acts are evil monsters, and that the victims are poor, defenseless children who always tell adults when it happens.

The truth is not nearly as simple as that one paragraph might lead you to believe. Most children do not disclose that they were touched in a private place by anyone, because of the fear, shame, and humiliation that accompanies such a basic boundary violation. And when they do tell an adult, the reaction is typically something like, "But we know and trust that person. Only monsters molest children, and they're not a monster." Most adults who sexually abuse children are not actually attracted to them, but are heterosexual. And most juveniles (a third of sexual abusers are juveniles at the time of the crime) who sexually abuse children are doing so because of abuse they have suffered, which is a stark contrast to the majority of abusers who were never sexually abused as children. The truth is that child sexual abuse is not a simple problem to solve, and even handling a disclosure of abuse can be very, very difficult.

Extremely Controversial

Primary prevention is an extremely controversial area of sexual abuse prevention. Primary prevention involves facts people do not want to believe, and there are many extremely difficult truths to accept, if one is to look at all into what it means to prevent child sexual abuse before it occurs. Some of them are:

1. Pedophilia, the attraction to children, is separate from the act of sexually abusing a child.
2. Those who sexually abuse children cannot be profiled, and there is no one common factor that motivates the abuse.
3. Those who sexually abuse children do not typically repeat their crimes.
4. Sex offender registration and community notification laws do not prevent children from being abused, and researchers have found extremely limited, if not counterintuitive results from the enaction of such laws.
5. Victims of child sexual abuse do not disclose the abuse for months or years, if at all.
6. Mandatory reporting also prevents people who are concerned about their thoughts from seeking out a psychologist for fear of being reported to the police and having their lives ruined.

These truths are controversial in part because the media has butchered the language in stories describing those who sexually abuse. They typically refer to those who abuse as pedophiles, or paedophiles, and their crimes as pedophilia. Pedophiles and sex abusers; pedophilia and child sexual abuse: These terms are used interchangeably, even though they mean very different things to researchers and those who work with these subjects. That difference is probably the biggest hurdle to overcome, because it seems to make sense that the sexual abuse of a child would be motivated by a sexual attraction to them. If you can accept just the first fact as truth, it will become easier to believe the rest. 

Popular Myths, Stigma, And Hype... And Reality

The reality of child sexual abuse is not at all a simple subject. I have seen myths perpetrated by people who are very much against sexual abuse. This weekend, in fact, I was told that, "The subject is as simple as no matter what urges you get you DO NOT HARM AN INNOCENT!!! End of [story]..." when I told someone that the subject of child sexual abuse prevention is not simple at all, due to a myriad of controversial laws that do more harm than good, due to the complexities of what motivate someone to sexually abuse a child, and due to the oversimplifying of the issue by the media and by politicians.

Most people think that not abusing a child is as simple as knowing the difference between right and wrong, or that abusing a child is always perpetrated by adults who are sexual predators and monsters. But the reality is that those who abuse a child... are us. They are human. One-third of them are juveniles, not adults. Over 90% of sexual abusers are known and trusted by the victim and the victim's family. Most sexual abusers do not have a psychological drive to molest children, the child was just an available outlet for a powerful emotion that distorted the person's thinking and decisions, similar to the way someone desperate enough can commit murder under the influence of powerful emotions like rage, jealousy, or fear. As such, the motivations that lead to an abuser's decision to sexually abuse a child are complex to foresee, treat, or prevent, let alone be believed by the general public.

Accusations Against Researchers, Therapists, And Advocates

If I had a dime for every time I have been accused of being a sex offender just for pointing out facts and statistics about sex offenders, I would have plenty of money. This is a very common accusation against anyone who delves very deeply into the realm of preventing child sexual abuse: That we are coddling sexual offenders, sexual abusers, and child molesters. Or worse, that we are child molesters who just want to make the act acceptable. I have even been called creepy. The amount of this same pathetic logic leveled at researchers, advocates, and therapists is astounding to me. Here we are, attempting to educate people about the subject, but we are constantly being accused of coddling abusers or worse. Who are some of these experts?

I would like to showcase two researchers: James Cantor, and Elizabeth Letourneau:

Dr. Letourneau is the current director of the Moore Center for the Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse, and the former president of the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers. Her work is primarily in researching ways that sexual abuse can be prevented, studying and working with those who have committed sexual crimes, and helping form public policy so that these crimes can be prevented. She posts frequently on Twitter, but is rarely liked or retweeted, except by a handful of colleagues and advocates like myself.

Dr. Cantor is a Canadian sex researcher that studies sexual disorders, known as paraphilias, for a living. He gets paid to figure out why people are sexually attracted to what they are sexually attracted to. He has authored many research studies, spoken and written for many news organizations, and done a lot to prevent child sexual abuse. He simply wants people to know and understand his subject matter. Yet, I have seen him accused of attacking abuse victims, being arrogant, and other petty insults.

The public response to these experts is frightening, and by reading many of these responses you would think that the public are the experts, and these people are just hacks who make stuff up for their own amusement. But as you can see by their profiles and their work, they have dedicated their entire lives to contributing to a solution to the epidemic of child sexual abuse.

Tying It All Together

You may not realize it, but your opinion matters. What you know and what you think you know about the subject of child sexual abuse has a very real impact to the epidemic of child sexual abuse. If what you think you know are actually myths, stereotypes, and misinformation about the subject, then you can actually contribute to the epidemic rather than its solutions. The truths of child sexual abuse, and the facts in the realm of primary prevention are indeed counterintuitive. However, believing the myths and misinformation over the facts on the issue means that we can blind ourselves to the reality that our neighbor, our friend, our family member, or our own children could be struggling with an issue that could, or already has, led to a child being abused. Believing the myths and misinformation mean that we deny the truth, and even attempt to cover it up.

The biggest reason that children do not disclose their own sexual abuse is to protect their abuser, and to protect their loved ones from the knowledge that they are being sexually abused. Adults do not disclose abuse for very similar reasons: They do not want the atrocious decision to haunt the abuser for the rest of their lives, and they know that will happen with the laws we have formed and the public opinion on these issues. That is one of the reasons why navigating a disclosure of abuse is so complex. Our knee-jerk reactions may be to just tell the police, but the reality when it happens is not nearly that simple for most people.

When this topic comes up, please take a deep breath, in, and out. Please take a moment to center yourself, and think rationally. Take a moment to realize that your reactions are not only normal, they are expected. But also take a moment to realize that it is emotional reactions that can contribute to the epidemic of child sexual abuse rather than contributing to a solution to that epidemic. We have already formed policies and laws based on the passionate reactions to this issue, and research has shown many times that these policies are not doing what they intended to do, and they can even increase crime. It may sound like it makes sense to try to keep sex offenders away from schools and parks, or to put them on a list, or do any number of other endless punishments.

However, these methods are only effective once a sex crime has already happened.

Criminology Myths Debunked

Today, I ran across a rather unfortunate article discussing the prevention of child sexual abuse. While a very small amount of the information in the article is accurate, the majority of it is not. This will serve as a review of the information presented in the article, as well as a rally cry to protect our children. Not with myths, not with misinformation, but with facts.

Part One: What Is Pedophilia? Who Are Pedophiles?

This article is wrong from the very first sentence, which has to be some kind of achievement somewhere. Obviously, anyone with internet access (and the ability to read English) can look on the side of this blog and click the "Wiki: Pedophilia" link on the side, and read that pedophilia refers to an attraction to children that meets very specific criteria. You can also see my recent post on pedophilia. Why does this matter? Well, the title of the article is not "Pedophilia From The Perspective Of Criminology", but "Do more to prevent child sexual abuse". Sexual abuse is a choice. Our best information from the DSM-V is that pedophilia is not a choice. It is described as a sexual orientation:

Page 698 of the DSM-V, first paragraph

Obviously, pedophilia cannot be both a condition and a crime. It cannot be a noun and a verb at the same time. That is a logical fallacy of ambiguity called equivocation: Using the same word to mean multiple things so as to make a fallacious argument sound solid. A student of critical thinking could easily see where I am going with this. The article is supposedly written by a criminologist who studied at the University of Detroit in 1989 for a masters in criminal justice. If someone who is smart enough to get a masters and direct a university in Malaysia, but cannot do a simple Wikipedia search to use words properly, I question his credentials and his ability to lead properly in preventing child sexual abuse.

So far, that covers just the first sentence. The second paragraph is equally poor. Pedophiles are not people whom prefer to have sex with children, they are people who find children who have not yet hit puberty attractive. Many pedophiles would prefer not to have such a sexual attraction at all. Where this man gets the idea that he somehow knows how all people with the condition of pedophilia think, I have no clue, but I very much doubt that they teach mind-reading in the criminal justice master's programs in Detroit. And as far as I know, pedophiles do not prefer to taste children, nor do they achieve sexual pleasure from children. That would imply that all pedophiles sexually abuse children, and given that around a third of those who abuse children are pedophiles, well, that implication would not hold true under any expert's analysis.

Also, the DSM-V discusses pedophiles as exclusive (only attracted to children) or non-exclusive (attracted to children, but also to other age groups). So the last sentence, that they desire sexual relations only with children, is demonstrably false.

Part Two: Grooming, Profiling, And Abuse Facts

Some of the information here is okay, like the last sentence: A well-known abuse statistic is that 90% of sexual abuse victims know and trust their abuser, though I am not sure how exactly the victims' mothers factor into that well-known statistic. The point is that people generally trust those who abuse children. Pedophiles do in fact come from all backgrounds, and pedophiles only share one thing in common: An attraction to prepubescent children. There is no way to identify a pedophile. Nor, by the way, is there any way to identify someone who sexually abuses children, short of catching them in the act or the child disclosing the abuse, which was probably his point: There is no profile of someone who sexually abuses a child.

However, we do know why people abuse children. They abuse children because they are available, because of unmanaged mental health needs, out of mishandling difficult emotions, and yes, sometimes being sexually attracted is a factor. However, the sexual attraction is not the reason they abused, but the fact that they did not properly manage or get support for the attraction that they have. They abused a child because they made the decision to do so. The main point here is that sexual abuse is a choice, and pedophilia is not.

Huckle made decisions to seek out children, and to write a manual on how people can sexually abuse children and get away with it. You have likely seen news articles referring to Huckle as a pedophile who wrote a pedophilia manual. He is a sexual abuser who wrote a sexual abuse manual. Pedophilia had little to do with his choices. I also very much doubt that Western privelege factored much into his decision to abuse children, as there are many people with Western privelege that use it to help people rather than exploit children. You might as well mention that he had a beard, therefore all people who have beards might sexually abuse children.

He alludes to grooming in the first sentence by saying that abuse "can be a small act in everyday life". I say he alluded to it, because he does not actually name it as grooming, or go into detail about what grooming is. Grooming is the intentional or unintentional progression of earning the victim and the trust of those close to the victim so that the perpetrator can spend time with the victim alone without arousing suspicion. Grooming is a real thing, though grooming is not, of itself, abuse. Nor, I might add, is abuse a "small act in everyday life". This man is a professional at minimizing child sexual abuse, as abuse is neither a small act, nor should it ever be part of everyday life for a child.

Part Three: Criminal Behavior, Pedophilia, And Victims

The theory mentioned in the first sentence may have been a popular notion in 1989, but I very much doubt that you will find many criminologists (no, that is not my field) that believe that all criminal behavior is learned from other criminals who hold criminal attitudes and values. You might as well say that all crime is the result of mafias, we just have to identify who taught whom. I have no idea what most criminologists actually believe in regards to theories and what causes behavior, but I am very familiar with psychology and psychologists. Most experts in sex crime that I have either spoken with or read a peer-reviewed study from would say that child sexual abuse is a choice. That choice may be influenced by environmental factors, or by biological factors, but it does not negate the fact that behavior is the end result of a decision. It is controllable. This is yet another example of the man minimizing child sexual abuse.

And again, he uses the term "pedophiles" to refer to those who have abused children. The number of abusers who were abused themselves is around 30-40%, last I checked that statistic. You can look it up if you do not believe me, but 30-40% hardly qualifies as "most pedophiles", or rather, most abusers. And while pedophilia is certainly the result of some complex biological and environmental process, the condition of being sexually attracted to young children does not automatically lead to criminal behavior any more than depression automatically leads to suicide. This man is clearly speaking outside his area of expertise, and is attempting to blame mental illnesses and psychological conditions as the cause of criminal behavior. Can I get a show of hands for those who think that such blame casting towards mentally ill people is completely inappropriate?

Part Four: What Makes Someone A Pedophile, Cure For Pedophilia

While I did not look up the 2014 Korean report on twins with pedophilia (I hesitate to believe it even exists, after what I have read so far), I am quite familiar with James Cantor's work on pedophilia and what he says about the subject: That pedophilia acts as a sexual orientation and is developed very, very early and is likely the result of biological processes far more than it is the result of an environmental factor such as child sexual abuse. None of that, of course, is at all relevant to child sexual abuse and how it could be prevented, unless he were asserting that pedophiles do not choose their condition and should receive help and not stigma (this is obviously not his argument).

He claims there is no agreement about what makes an individual a pedophile. This is almost laughable. Pedophilia is a word that describes the condition of having an ongoing sexual attraction to prepubescent children, so obviously people who have such an ongoing sexual attraction would be a pedophile. While there is certainly disagreement over the nuances of pedophilia and how pedophiles should be treated, there is no academic disagreement about what makes someone a pedophile to my knowledge. It is a narrow term with a narrow definition, and the term itself does not have disagreement, the concepts surrounding it do. Should it be called a disorder? Should it be called an orientation? What about mandatory reporting? These concepts rage ongoing debates.

And it is absolutely correct that there is no cure for having the sexual orientation of pedophilia, it is absolutely incorrect that most pedophiles are sociopaths. I believe I discussed this recently. He is referring, of course, to sexual predators who are the very extreme minority of sexual abusers, which again, is completely irrelevant to pedophilia or pedophiles. While there is some comorbidity (like correlation, but for psychologists) between pedophilia and antisocial personality disorder (psychopathy, or sociopathy, if you prefer the stigmatized language), there is also comorbidity between pedophilia and substance use disorders, depressive, bipolar, and anxiety disorders, as well as other paraphilic disorders. Yes, I copied that almost word-for-word from page 700 of the DSM-5.

Conveniently ignoring the reality of pedophilic disorder to make his point that pedophiles are terrible people that have an innate drive to rape children is academically dishonest. Yet, this man is the director of a university as well as holding several affiliations and titles. He should stick to his areas of expertise and not butcher the field of psychology and pass it off as fact.

The last sentence is almost laughable. Do I even need to cite sources when I say that sexual recidivism of sexual offenders is around 10-20%? Do I need to link the two studies on the side of this page, which will tell you that sexual abusers have lower recidivism than the average sexual offender? Anyone can search "recidivism for child sexual abusers" and see the top result. The last sentence is a lie that is clearly exposed to be a lie by a simple Google search. If he had a masters degree in criminal justice, he should be able to find that information far easier than I can.

Part Five: How Abuse Happens, How Sexual Abuse Can End

Here, he begins wading into realms far outside my area of experience. What I can tell you is that law enforcement must have specific training in how to question victims of child sexual abuse so that the trauma involved is not made worse by making the victim relive the experience before they are ready. I can also tell you that law enforcement must spread far and wide the message that there is no profile for sexual abusers. I can even tell you that enforcement is a must. I also wholeheartedly agree that effective laws are a must in combating child sexual abuse. However, speaking from the perspective of an American, with all of our sex offender registration and notification laws, and all of the subsequent studies that have shown how useless they are except in maybe 5% of sexual offenders, I must say that these laws must be done with expert analysis and recommendations. Which brings me to the final part of Mr. Satar's article...

Part Six: Sexual Abuse Prevention, Responsibility, And Child Protection

I completely agree with the first two paragraphs: Preventing child sexual abuse is everyone's responsibility. The police must investigate and enforce, but parents, teachers, and others must be able to spot abuse when it is occurring, and spot the warning signs in those who may be at-risk to sexually abuse a child. The third paragraph is also brilliant: Parents must ensure the safety of their children. The fourth paragraph is golden: Parents must know the warning signs and not take someone's title for granted (oh, the irony). We must not assume that someone is reliable because they are trusted in the community, or because of a title. We must watch for the warning signs.

But that is where I stop agreeing, because the last two paragraphs scream the same precursor warning signs that America should have been hearing in the 1990's when parents began demanding laws that we now know are completely ineffective at protecting children: Put registries in place, register pedophiles and child abusers (conflating pedophilia with abuse again, I see), and do all this to protect our children! That has not worked well in the United States, and that rhetoric was formed on the assumption that recidivism is high, but that is just an erroneous assumption.

Mr. Satar, our children do need to be protected from child sexual abuse. But they do not need to be protected from pedophiles or pedophilia. They need to be protected from the bad decisions of older children and adults, and those are just that: Decisions. Our children, not just here in America, not just in Malaysia, but all of the children in the world, must be protected by facts, laws and policies that are based on those facts. America and Europe has already made the mistake of forming these policies and laws based on the emotive rally cry: Protect our children! It is time that this rally cry becomes based in fact, not just hype, so that it can be effective at actually keeping our children safe.

The first part of that, if you noticed, is fact. Verifiable, trustworthy, peer-reviewed, honest, fact. Not myths based on a misunderstanding of psychology, sexual abusers, and the dehumanization of those that abuse children. Fact.