Originally posted by Scayde
One of which was a child rapist. One of the other inmate/patients who was also a rapist, but not of children, asked this man 'why' he preyed upon children. There was a clear ring of disgust in his voice. I noted that even here, it was considered reprehensible. But what was even more alarming, was the man's answer. He said..."Because they are clean"
Yes
You hear the most strange and uncomforting, often disgusting, reasons for why child molesters do what they do. I have not worked with any such patients myself, but I have one friend who's a forensic psychologist who has done research on the cognitive functioning of child sex offenders, and one friend who is a child psychiatrist and ass prof in forensics, specialized in pedophilia and sexual abuse of children, so I get to hear a lot... The weird thing IMO is that pedophilia is not at all as unusual as one might think - studies from both the US and Europe show that lots of people, actually many percent (numbers vary from a few % up to as much as 20-30%) of the population have some pedophilic inclinations. If we on the other hand look at the victims, about 15% of people in the US report they have been sexually touched by adults as children, and about 1 in 30 Swedish children have actually been victims of some type of severe sexual molestation such as performing sexual acts, rape, etc.
One could split the phenomena in 3 distinct subgroups: one large group who sometimes have sexual fantasies or have felt sexual attraction or the wish to perform sexual acts with children, one smaller group who are true pedophiles, ie have children as objects of sexual/romantic love instead of adults and finally, one very small subgroup of pedophiles who actually abuse children. According to my friend the forensic psychologist, the child molesters can in turn be divided into two subgroups: those who know they are doing something wrong but cannot control their impulses and those who absolutely cannot understand they are doing something wrong and harm the children, but instead has delusional ideas regarding the nature of their disorder (ie "it's only natural, the child really wants it/is in love with me" etc). The latter group are often characterised by other cognitive disturbances as well.
This is from a good review in JAMA last year:
Pedophilia
Peter J. ***an, PhD; Thomas N. Wise, MD; Chester W. Schmidt, Jr, MD;
Fred S. Berlin, MD, PhD
JAMA. 2002;288:2458-2465.
In a general population study of sexual behaviors in the United States, 12% of men and 17% of women in the study reported being sexually touched by an older person when they were children. Governmental agencies working largely from criminal records and child protective services agencies data have provided further estimation of the magnitude of the problem. The Third National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect (NIS-3), which addressed only those cases involving parents, parent substitutes, adults, or nonparental teenagers in a caretaking relationship with the child, estimated that the number of sexually abused children rose 125% from 133 600 reported cases in 1986 to 300 200 in 1993.3 The report concluded that children are consistently vulnerable to sexual abuse from the age of 3 years on, girls were sexually abused 3 times more often than boys, children from the lowest-income families were 18 times more likely to be sexually abused, and there were no racial differences in maltreatment incidence.
The NIS-3 reported that natural parents accounted for 29%, other parents for 25%, and others in a caretaking role for 46% of the offenders. In addition, a sexually abused child was most likely to sustain a serious injury or impairment when a birth parent was the perpetrator. Approximately 89% of the children were abused by a male, compared to 12% abused by a female.
Additional incidence data about both custodial and noncustodial sexual abuse have been provided from findings from the Federal Bureau of Investigation's National Incident-Based Reporting System.4 Based on reports from 12 states from 1991 to 1996, 67% of sexual assaults handled by law enforcement agencies involved juvenile victims, of whom 1 of every 7 was younger than 6 years and a third of whom were younger than 12 years. Eighty-three percent of the younger than 12 years cohort was female. Adults were the offenders in 60% of the sexual assaults on children younger than 12 years, and 5 of every 6 assaults occurred in a residence. Nearly all the offenders were male (96%), although female offenders were most common in assaults on victims younger than 6 years. Strangers accounted for less than 5% of the offenders, while except for the younger than 6 years group, acquaintances were 53% and family members were 42% of the offenders.
Such data can provide only some approximation of the prevalence of pedophilia in a population for 2 reasons. First, a pedophilic disorder may be present in a person who does not act on the fantasies and impulses. Second, not all child sexual crime is the product of a pedophilic disorder. This caveat notwithstanding, these data and the general conclusions of similar reports leave little doubt that sexual crimes against children, and by inference pedophilia, are both a major public health problem as well as a criminal justice problem.
Btw, regarding sex crimes against children, in Sweden it has been discussed whether the "sensualised" and sexualised image of children and very young teens in ads and general media affects potential pedophiles to feel more confortable with their disorder since society sort of declares it's acceptable to view kids as sex objects. It is interesting to note that a society with such a distinct non accepting attitude towards adults molesting children sexually at the same time use almost naked 12-year old girls as fashion model in sexy poses, and there are many TV-shows where kids perform on stage rolling their hips and asses like Christina Augilera or the boybands do on MTV. The message to be sexually attractive starts long, long before puberty...and I don't know, but
it's an interesting an important debate whether media in our society actually can affect pedophilic behaviour in a destructive way.
