to be pretty terrified that being a child abuser

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has actually caused some people to rise to positions of power only because Parliament's power has been corrupted absolutely:

spotlightonabuse.wordpress.com/2013/05/11/the-dirt-book-how-the-sexual-abuse-of-children-is-used-for-political-gain/

Following the developments of Savile, I continue to be shocked, saddened and horirified on a daily basis - I just cannot get over the depths of this and how far up and nationally this goes. WTF is going on? It took Portugal 7 years to sort out the Casa Pia orphanages abuse network with their very own Savile TV type figure involved. I cannot give a shiny shit about EU referendums and Nigel Horsey Mirage while we now know all this....2015 election has no other issues surely? So long as any party is protecting alleged child abusers within their ranks and preventing due process of criminal justice system being applied to them for a court to find innocent or guilty, as with all other subjects of the law, none shall be above it, then they cannot have be entrusted with power.... how do we know child abusers aren't influencing sentencing guidelines for child sex abuse offences for example? spotlightonabuse.wordpress.com/2013/05/13/the-sentencing-council-and-other-legal-panels-took-advice-from-convicted-paedophiles-about-sentencing-for-paedophile-offences/

Am I being crazy to think people would be shouting from rooftops about this if they knew, or does everyone already know and just accept this is the way it is? Not paedo hating public hysteria....I'm a pacificst and I want to see democracy fixed so more like a very severe public Paxmanesque probing on National TV for some of those in charge of the various child abuse inquiries that have thus far been unable to provide proper resolution over the question of abusers in power and children in care being trafficked round the country to be sexually exploited? Why is at the very least this not happening?

The columnist Dan Savage has talked about this.

It seems to me that generally we don't have a lot of control over how our sexuality develops in terms of what turns us on sexually - whether that's genetically or environmentally determined (possibly both). The existence of a whole range of paraphilias including paedophilia, which are all life long sexual attractions seems like reasonable evidence for this to me. I can't, for example, decide to develop a foot fetish, or persuade myself to have one by watching lots of foot porn, if there is such a thing.

But we do have control over whether we act on our desires. So I think it's entirely reasonable to think that there are people out there who have a sexual attraction to children they didn't ask for AND a moral sense and who never act on their attraction - never look at child porn, never abuse a child. But if they are out there, they are almost certainly doing it with no practical/emotional support whatsoever because the stigma is so great and there aren't any actual treatments in place anyway. For example, in the US, if you went to talk to a psychiatrist about this in good faith, they would (rightly) be obliged to report you if they thought any children were at risk.

Paedophiles who watch child porn and campaign for the age of consent to be lowered, associate with each other or who attempt to normalise their paraphilia are not the good guys. They should be prosecuted if they commit offences and regarded as at risk of offending if they genuinely believe child abuse is OK. Otoh paedophiles who avoid child porn, stay away from other paedophiles so that they don't end up developing group think, don't try to normalise it and avoid situations that would provide opportunities to act on their paedophilia (and that includes having children themselves) deserve, I think, to have some sort of support/accountability structure in place and access to medication if wanted. It's possible that if more of them got that intervention early in their lives it might go some way towards helping the issues discussed in the OP.

Tbh I don't think you have thought about these things enough.

but ballin if these people were helped before they acted on their desires, if they learned to managed how they felt deal with the often self loathing and if you hate yourself why do you care about others less children might be abused

of course it will stop all abusers but it may stop some how we are dealing with them now is not doing anything. We have another problem now that child abuse pornography is so easily available, contact with other like minded people is easier if we can work with some before they get to that stage it is a start and that will only happen if they know they will get non judgemental support

until we can read everyone's mind we have no idea how many men and women are sexually attracted to children (and going by my psychodynamic tutor who has worked for 30+ years it is many) we can not put people in prison for they way they feel

"poppy the definition of paedophilia IS finding pre-pubescent children sexually attractive."

Actually, ICBINEG I think it's widely acknowledged that it's a psychiatric disorder (unlike heterosexuality or homosexuality).

Do you believe in EVIL? That there are devils walking amongst us who should be burned or pitch forked or castrated? I don't. And that makes the whole treatment/incarceration/talking it over issue more nuanced. Shout 'burn the witch' as loud as you like, but it doesn't fix the problem. There is a spectrum of desire and acceptable behaviour, with societal norms Could it be argued that it is less morally reprehensible to fuck an animal than kill and eat it? And pretending that there's an us and them with a million miles between us is a fallacy.

I agree that the most effective way to address this problem is to understand it as much as possible, but removing this powerful stigma is the first step in normalising the behaviour.

The fact that some groups already feel comfortable enough to lobby for acceptance of this "preference" is scary enough.

What do you think will happen when you start having nationwide pedophile group therapy sessions? More than ever they will be able to form their own like minded communities convincing themselves they suffer from a terrible affliction (self victimisation ) it is only natural to conclude this will result in normalisation at a whole new mind Fuckingly disgusting level of child abuse.
What next? Fun runs by the local primary schools to raise money for finding a paedophile cure?!

If my husband or anyone I know came to me and said they fantasised about fucking children I would hand them a knife and tell them to find a quite field and do the decent thing.

hmm so the rate is estimated as lower than 1 in 20 people suffer paedophilia....that's not massively reassuring.

Of which around 7% are exclusively attracted to children.

Which to me suggests that the majority of offenders can also find gratification elsewhere. And hence that their offence is more to do with having a malformed brain structure (suspected primary cause of paedophilia - often from damage during childhood/development) than to do with lack of sexual gratification. It also means there is likely a huge number of people who have felt significant attraction to both adults and children who have not acted on the later because their brains actually can process empathy etc.

Anyway I will not bother copying out wikipedia here.

If you want to read papers about successful methods of reducing offending rates using CBT then take a look at the linked articles from the wiki page on paedophilia.

If you just want to rant that 1:20 of the people you know may well be evil fuckers who deserve to die then good luck with that....our children will undoubtedly continue to reap the rewards of our short sightedness as a society.

I think the wikipedia statistics are little more educated guesses, precisely because as you point out most people wouldn't seek help.

I also think that you are analysing this problem in a very academic/hypothetical way and dismissing the countless wider implications, some of which have been mentioned in this thread.

I don't think they are evil fuckers, I think that they are so deformed and dangerous that being unable to be cured and not offend, means the world would be safer and better without them in it.

would you say that to your own son OTT

It is not normalising it, it is accepting that some people feel this way and they should have the support in place to help manage their feelings

never is society going to accept that attraction and acting upon this by abusing young children acceptable we have moved on in society, sadly we have taken steps back where girls in particular are sexualised but that is a different debate

do we as a society accept that it is ok to have sex with animals no but it has been written about in literature and many rumours abound in the 70's of famous people doing so

"If you just want to rant that 1:20 of the people you know may well be evil fuckers who deserve to die then good luck with that...."

Most people on this thread haven't used reductive comments and in general it hasn't descended into the "pitchfork, kill them all" type of discourse, so this comment is unfair.

Why are you assuming that a significant percentage of pedophiles would wish to be cured?

ICbinerg - are you reading none of the links to the PIE material - how about the PIE manifesto which was supported fully by the Campaign for Homosexual Equality?

They had an understanding political platform in 1975 - 1984 (when National Cuncil for Civil Liberties now Liberty formally disassociated themselves from being affiliated with Paedophile Information Exchange) They used it to identify which ppl in public office had similar procilivites and started a support network in which they normalised sexual abuse of children over 4 to the point that Harriet Harman MP and Patricia Hewitt MP (her boss at the time at NCCL) supported them! They used it to identify one another and network across government departments, social services regions, court circuits, police forces.

Where has it got us all this entertainment of civil liberties for those who wish to explot and abuse children? All this tea and sympathy.

If the top 'expert' therapist (Ry Wyre) for child sex abusers has now shown to be a child sex abuser heavily involved with a group of abusers preying on young boys doesn't this call into question his heavy emphasis on "masturbation satiation" and use of child abuse images?

At one point there was even a planning application made to build a nursery next to the Gracewell clinic (Birmingham I think) so that the child abusers being treated next door could what...have themselves tested every day for resistance? There was a vague reference to intergenerational mingling - will go and dig up where I read this. Anyway, the council entertained it as a proposition. That's how understanding, we as a society are, we will use our own children as experiments to test success of child abusers being treated.

Child protection has to come first in all of this surely?

Yes, yes I would, it would break me,, but i would.

Paedophiles who watch child porn and campaign for the age of consent to be lowered, associate with each other or who attempt to normalise their paraphilia are not the good guys. They should be prosecuted if they commit offences and regarded as at risk of offending if they genuinely believe child abuse is OK. Otoh paedophiles who avoid child porn, stay away from other paedophiles so that they don't end up developing group think, don't try to normalise it and avoid situations that would provide opportunities to act on their paedophilia (and that includes having children themselves) deserve, I think, to have some sort of support/accountability structure in place and access to medication if wanted. It's possible that if more of them got that intervention early in their lives it might go some way towards helping the issues discussed in the OP.

FairPhylis: The non-abusing paedophile could find private support. I doubt he/she would want to go to an advertised group like AlAnon (because of the stigma, true, but then lots of alcoholics wouldn't go to AlAnon for the same reason - PIE was not a self-help let's get cured group it was a let's find more ways to get access to children help group let's be clear) but they could seek private individual counselling and if their inner conflict was finding physical expression in self-harm or depression for example, they could start by seeking help for the symptoms of their misery and work backwards. It's what most people do in any situation where they have an inner conflict between values and behaviour. I'm sure the sruvivors find themselves not wanting to have to seek help either and ashamed but many are brave enough to have to find it for themselves, if it's available.

Also the non-abusing, no-image watching paedophile , this isolated fantasist of a paedophile whose sexual urges find no outer expression, not even an interest in childish things or a tendency to live next to playgrounds, let alone acquiring of images of child abuse won't ever get caught. Because s/he has done nothing wrong. They have effectively safeguarded themselves.

How many people have sexualities "in theory"? How many priests do we think keep the celibacy vow for example? The flip side to accepting the desire to sexually abuse children (even technically where consent is just not legally possible to where consent would not be physically possible - not capable of speech etc that has to form part of any debate) as a "sexual orientation" is ascribing it the civil and human rights such a status attracts. I can see certain human rights lawyers going down that trajectory. But as an essential immutable part of an individual's identity (hence why protected by civil liberties) that we accept ppl can't change we also have to accept that all the therapy in the wrold we sink our money into won't change them or their political beliefs if they subscribe to the PIE sense of entitlement to abuse of children. You only have to read how they ditch these boys once they begin to have facial hair and how heartbreaking it is for them to sometimes be then expected to recruit their younger more innocent unhairy replacement. That's when they realise they weren't looking for an old man lover as a 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 year old. They were looking for a dad, a sense of affection, interest in their life, someone to sponge cigarettes off and nag for records like an older brother.

And back to Parliament: Is there a correlation between power, risk-taking (to make big gains you need to take large stakes), control and politics that means there's a psychopathy to the abuser in power that society is not currently equipped to deal with, right through from libel, freedom of press, ie. like the banks were too big to fail and our FS regulation came into question as being out of step with the size and scale of the markets and their players - are we now in a situation where we (joe/jospehine public, ladies of the clapham omnibus) our anachronistic criminal justice system and similarly out of step civil laws (secret courts, libel law though see recent defamation bill) means we have people who are simply too big to prosecute? ie the CPS argument policy for not prosecuting Sir Peter Hayman was look how high prfile they are, they have so far too fall, just the public humiliation is disproportionate as a punishment and therefore we will not pursue prosecutions at all in those kind of circumstances = which is surely just another way of saying "too big to prosecute?"

Freudian Slipper: "never is society going to accept that attraction and acting upon this by abusing young children acceptable we have moved on in society, sadly we have taken steps back where girls in particular are sexualised but that is a different debate"

I hope you're right on the first part but sexualisation of children has happened in a context so it isn't a different debate. Sir Savile's original boss was Eric Morley at Mecca, who went on to create Miss World. Miss World was once an annual televisual event for some families. Chris Denning, Tam Paton, Brian Epstein, Joe Meek, Jonathon King, were all (however bizarre it seems to me now) influential with young people, now those in their late 30s, 40s/ 50s/ 60s? Some of the people who I talk to about how unbelievable all this is who are in their 60s (I'm 30s) come out with extraordinary utterances like well that explains a lot with Jeremy Thorpe MP or Lord Boothby - and for them it's not such a surprise.

How can removing the stigma and therefore making it MORE acceptable help? That's crazy!

Because it is not making child abuse any less of a stigma, but making the condition of paedophillia less stigmatised.

If you have mental health problems that mean you want to kill someone you can get help.

There are some excellent programmes used both in prison and out that stop re offending by making the offender look at his/her behaviour, the impact on the victim etc. They have a good record of working.

But these are only available to someone with a conviction.

We know that some people are more likely to abuse than others, abused children often grow into abusive adults. We know this but do we do anything about it?

I know that's slightly off topic but I think that's what ryanboy is meaning.

If you are an alcoholic and you receive treatment and become sober you are judged as having taken responsibility for your problem.

If you are attracted to children, you are deemed a pervert, even if you never act on the urge. If you attempt to receive treatment you are still seen as a pervert. If you try to access treatment you may even be told you cannot access it until you do commit an offence.

For every Jimmy Saville, Stuart Hall or any of the others who may yet be found guilty there is a debris trail of victims. All of them will be scared, in many different ways, but if just one of them has become a pedophile as part of that damage, society will not care, that person will just be labelled a pervert.

It has taken me hours to read this thread and I think it'll take me days to digest it.

That normalising abuse can help to stop it doesn't make any sense to me.
What abuse has ever been normalized leading to a reduction???

I'm not even sure that was the point of the OP

Dawn is breaking and I think I'll leave this thread and come back one day to try and see if I can understand some of the views that are completely alien to me at the moment

Except to add;

When people talk of mental illness are they describing peadophillia as a mental illness or saying that some mental illness can cause a lack of judgement that then leads to thoughts or acts of abuse?

Is it just easier to label undesirable, unacceptable, immoral, abusive behaviour within a society as a mental illness for some?

Can a person be compos mentis and still want to abuse children?

There are people who know themselves to be paedophiles who manage their own behaviour by never being around children or putting themselves into a situation where they might be tempted.

Then there are those who should be strung up by the balls punished in the severest possible way.

I am amazed that no sooner does a thread start about paedophilia than some paedophilia apologists pop up and start defending the poor ickle paedophiles. Paedophiles NEVER get over it. You can't overcome paedophilia with counselling or any amount of therapy.

You just need not to fucking abuse children and wreck their lives. You need not to be so bloody selfish. Whatever that takes. If that involves chucking yourself off a bridge instead of sticking your dick into a small child, then please go for it.

It's a despicable act violating children and shoul severely punished. Thought I feel that those expressing a sexual desire for children need more tan counselling, they need proper psychiatric intervention, and should not be allowed in the community until those desires are gone

I don't think anyone was saying this shouldn't be the case! I certainly didn't mean tea and gentle group sessions. Some paedophiles might even be guided into having hormonal castration. Worth trying, no?

The only other suggestion on this thread seems to be 'putting them on an island'.

But if you feel it's safer to keep potential paedophiles brooding on their unfulfilled fantasies in secret, fine. I happen to prefer to know that they are able to come forward and seek help before offending. Seems safer.

I asked this up thread and I am genuinely interested in an answer, if someone can volunteer any studies/stats:

Why do you assume that a significant percentage of pedophiles wants to be "cured" or "helped"?

As far as I know, a sense of morality/shame and a desire to curb those appetites isn't the norm in this pathology?

'Why do you assume that a significant percentage of pedophiles wants to be "cured" or "helped"?
As far as I know, a sense of morality/shame and a desire to curb those appetites isn't the norm in this pathology?'

That is because we only ever know of those that go on to offend.