To think help should be given before it's too late?*trigger warning*

[RottenTomatoes959]

Met with a few friends for coffee last night and ended up discussing those videos doing the rounds on facebook of those paedophile hunters catching predators which is great.
However the discussion moved on to a documentary we watched ages ago about paedophiles who knew what they were but locked themselves away from society and did everything in their power not to offend.

Before i get flamed i was abused as a child so i know what its like to go through that.
IIRC there is somewhere in england possibly that is like therapy or something for people who have offended to try rehabilitate them,but nowhere for people who haven't and dont want to either.
I think that people with that kind of rewiring or chemical imbalance in their brain should in no circumstances be around children,ever. At the same time though i feel its counterintuitive to shut someone down or abuse or attack someone whos seeking help before doing anything.
I feel that it pushes them down underground where the likelihood is that theyll meet likeminded people and begin to normalise it and even encourage it.
There should be a safe space or spot where someone can go and get the correct therapy or even surgery or tablets to rupress sexual urges
Im not saying that we should accept because we cant and never should and they should not be able to to be around children or accepted into society with open arms. I just dont want what happened to me to happen to anyone and i think that people being so afraid of getting killed or whatever else will hide what they are until they cant hide it anymore.
Ive probably made a balls of explainging this properly but heyho.

Before flaming me for thinking im saying they should be accepted or it should be normalised im definitely not.
I just want to help and keep safe kids like i was.

"I think peadophiles are born that way, in the same way that gay and straight people are." So paedophilia is a sexuality?

or by pretending that it's ok to be a pedophile (in The Netherlands, the pro-pedo organisation Martijn tried to get people to call them "pedosexuals" so that it would seem as if it was just another normal sexuality

sigh, this organisation was permanently banned in 2014. Many countries have had their 'normalization' groups, UK included (PIE etc)

Another SA survivor here, along with my DSis and my DB, we were abused by my father and others. (My father is dead thankfully.) Now, my DB also abused my DSis and me. He was copying what he saw happening in the home. He still has twisted images of child abuse in his head, and he's very nervous around children, but I'm quite certain he hasn't abused a child as an adult.

My DSis and I have young children, so we don't allow him to be around our children, because obviously the thought is in our heads that we can never be sure. He has serious MH issues and isn't nice to the DCs, but I think it's because of his anxiety caused by those dark thoughts.

I certainly wouldn't say he was born that way, though, he's been very badly damaged.

dworky I worded it like that because I didn't want to class it as a sexuality and don't. But yes I do believe they are born that way and nothing will ever stop them thinking that way (not saying all act upon it but the thoughts are still there). That's just my own opinion, I haven't looked into any studies or research and frankly, I don't want to, but that's what I think.

" I can see where you're coming from but there are numerous people,myself included who have been through the same experience and not turned out like that."

No two people have the same experience. Like some psychopaths, some peadophiles brains are wired a certain way. Depending on what they are exposed to, they may act in a way that is abhorrent to the rest of us.

"So paedophilia is a sexuality?"

Some experts believe this and there are many academic books written on this subject. When I was doing my Social Work BA and focusing on Child Protection, I was, at first disgusted by those books, but it changed my thoughts around the offender, not the offence, but the person.

I prefer the concept that they cannot be cured and we need every safety measure in place to protect children.

Chemical castration doesn't work, studies have shown that objects are used, or the abuse becomes physical and can turn to murder.

The Specialist Treatment Organisation for the Prevention of Sexual Offending, StopSO,, is due to close next month because of a lack of funding. They are nationwide.

Sexualised behaviour from children who have been abused is very common, they 'act out' what was done to them. That's how the psychologist I saw explained it to me.

@Birdsgottafly

No two people have the same experience. Like some psychopaths, some peadophiles brains are wired a certain way. Depending on what they are exposed to, they may act in a way that is abhorrent to the rest of us.

There's also a whole bunch of variables - how severe the abuse was, how long it went on for, was there a non-abusive adult who provided support or just a safe place, if the abuse was disclosed was the child believed and so on.

I agree paedophiles should be chemically castrated and kept far away from children. In my ideal world they wouldnt exist at all. But I take massive umbridge at the whole "They want help before they offend/ want help to stop them". Sorry but thats disgusting and makes out they have no choice in their sexual urges. People every day manage to not rape/sexually assault/watch abuse. Why are paedos seen as incapable of managing not to do it?

birdsgottafly crikey i didnt realise that about chem castration thats awful.

Throw them all in a room,lock the door and throw away the key.

this is the problem attitude that leads to a chain of events that I'm fairly sure leads to more offences because people who would look for help don't dare to.

Also, how exactly do you plan to find 'them' all? How do you frame the law so that you can lock up people with those urges but who have not yet offended?

I don't know what the answer is, though I do think some paedophiles should be removed from society. Some of the ones I met were indeed horribly manipulative and one in particular I think should be downright assassinated (sorry for the drama), since he can't be removed from society by legal means.

But I do think less hysteria and more resources and highly trained people would help a lot.

Ah, thanks Nicky, I see. Mob rule.

Martha I get your point of view, it's my knee jerk reaction as well. But they do exist, so maybe it's better to accept that and try and do something about limiting that behaviour rather than resist it? I don't think that comes from a sense of wanting to minimise or ameliorate offenders actions, more a perspective of trying to keep children from harm.

martha a lot of people just can't live without sexual release. It's one of the most powerful urges going. People don't like to acknowledge that but it seems to be the case. Societies where sex is forbidden often turn into very twisted organisations.

I just find it weird the whole support for paedophiles but rapists arent considered a sexual orientation. No one would want to support and give therapy to them living life in society. That said I hate the vigilante paedo hunters what if they get the wrong person? Which has happened in the past an innocent man was brutally murdered. But what if the "hunters" make up their "evidence" as an excuse to attack innocent people.

Csa surviver here too

My personal opinions don't matter in this but my strong feelings are that the massive reactions to finding a person is an abuser or has sexual feelings for minors drive these people underground and makes it harder to catch them before they have serially offended.

By allowing potential offenders (without the threats to their life or trashing their homes etc) to come forward we can keep an eye on them, it's harder to offend if agencies are aware of them because they wouldn't (hopefully) be able to get jobs around children or become partners to women with children, become best friends with fathers and become uncle to the kids.

Obviously everything Iv said is hypothetical but the system now isn't working we must find a better way (whatever that is) we as a society must do what we can to protect our children.

Sorry to add. The other side of the coin that needs addressed is the justice system because these small sentences are letting some offenders offend many many times with short sentences in between offences.

I see what you are saying OP and what some others posters are mentioned.
It like thinking about your own sexual fantasy/urges/wants/needs. Some people get turned on by very attractive people, some by those over weight, some the same sex, some like big boobs, some like older men, some like younger men and so on.

For example if you tried telling me I had to fancy an old, overweight man with no teeth- I'm not going too, it's not me
Trying telling a gay person to fancy the opposite sex- if they don't, they don't
Try telling a young man to fancy an older women- he may not

I agree with the 'wiring of the brain' mentioned. If you fancy a certain 'type' how can someone tell you if too. So is this the same. Except they fancy children (I hated even writing that then). So how effective is therapy at changing their way of thinking?

It's not a valid sexuality because there is no desire for a mutual, loving, sexual relationship.

By definition, a paedophilic relationship could not be mutual and would always be one of abuse, involving harm to one for the sexual pleasure of another. A paraphilia.

It's also not a "relationship" capable of any longevity. The paedophile isn't attracted to the person, just the age. Every child grows, and so they would need a steady stream of different children within the desired age bracket before they start to "grow up".
The person isn't appreciated as an individual, but fetishised/objectified for their age.

I think it's highly dangerous to seek to normalise paedophilia in any way, and have no doubt that numerous paedophilic organisations would love to achieve this.

I also think that the number of true 'remorseful' paedophiles is likely to be a small percentage.

However, I do think we should, as a society, put more resources into understanding and managing it. I'd love to see intense psychoanalysis of the causes and how they might be minimised.
ie. Is it scannable in the brain? Genetic? Something you're born with? Is past abuse a major factor? What other factors are there? If chemical castration really doesn't work then I'd wonder if it feeds a psychological urge rather than a purely sexual one (not an expert).

I think there are a lot of questions we could seek answers for, culminating in what to do about it.

So what do you suggest then, SeaEagleFeather? I'm assuming that you're not suggesting that paedophiles are not to blame for indulging their perverted sexual urges?

I'm sure a lot of abusers have justified themselves with that argument. My father used to talk about a man's sexual urges, how they were impossible to resist. As if that justified their sexual behaviour. (He used to say that a woman's adultery was worse than a man's adultery.)

Some countries have projects called Circles of Support and Accountability, where a team of trained volunteers help released offenders to avoid reoffending. So they help with social support (e.g. going to watch a film together, or out for a cup of tea) as well as practical reintegration.

I think it's had mixed results, but of course so much depends on the motivation of the offender.

In my experience, those who've experienced child abuse are usually the ones who want to prevent it from happening to others however that's possible. I am one of those people. I would much rather young men who realise they have this issue can seek help and learn techniques to prevent them from offending. I feel deeply sorry for anyone who is attracted to children - that must be an horrific thing to try and manage and we live in a society that doesn't encourage people to seek help and manage it, which leads to more child abuse. There are groups of young men online who support each other to not offend and not to use child sexual abuse imagery(and of course at the other end of the spectrum, the men who justify it to each other and campaign to make child abuse lega). There are doctors who specifically work with men like this. If we are serious about stopping child abuse, we actually have to tackle the problem.

Is paedophilia purely and simply about them being sexually aroused by children, or is there a deeper psychological element to it? What I mean is, is the sexual expression of paedophilia a manifestation of non-sexual issues? Basically, can someone be a paedophile without having massive issues?

If so, it must surely be able to be "corrected" with hardcore therapy.

But if its simply a sexuality with no underlying issue within the person, them there's no correcting it.

I guess this is what academics are attempting to understand.

I would have thought sexuality with no underlying issue could be corrected (or at least massively diminished) with chemical castration... but someone reported upthread that they instead tend to move onto physical objects and violence including murder.

That would indicate massive psychological issues to me rather than any sort of sexuality. But as I say, I'm no expert. I do think there should be more expert attention spent on it though.

lizzie under no circumstances do I think that it's OK. Or that men or women should give in to their urges (I've encountered female sexual abusers too, one of them did appalling things).

I'm making a difference between someon esaying that 'men have their urges and they have to be satisfied' and the way that it appears that some people are driven so incredibly strongly by the urge that they'll end up almost maddened. A great deal fo the power of many religions comes from the control of sexuality and supposedly celibate communities often aren't ... or people seem to become very twisted within them. Many teens are constantly on edge from the power of hormones.

As I've said I think no hysteria would be a great start followed by looking at what measures have been found to be -effective- in preventing offending and reoffending.

I think sexual contact between an adult/much older child and a younger child is the single biggest shortcut to inflicting immeasurable pain on the abused person, often for life, and the effects ripple down the generations; a very hurt person faces challenges that a non-abused parent does not. Some people manage to stop the damage descending to the next generation, some don't. Not necessarily replaying sexual abuse towards the children, but living with the sense of unsafety, the difficulty trusting, the anger and the shame and fear make it harder to parent.

I think that actually more resources and more training, more help available and more mechanisms to remove unrepentant paedophiles from society would mean a hell of a lot less suffering and also, a far better societal outcome generally, in the cost to people's lives, happiness and productiveness.

But realistically I don't think that those resources will be made available, nor will the hysteria stop.

It pisses me right off that there's a mass hysteria that people would rahter indulge in, that there's a scary lack of political will to really tackle this and that more money is spent on arms, than on genuinely tackling the behaviour of people that has such an appalling effect on far too many people.