New study: Millions of men ‘would xesually abuse children if secrecy was assured’ — The Times

[ElatedShark]

New study: Millions of men ‘would xesually abuse children if secrecy was assured’ — The Times.

A new study has revealed a shocking proportion of Australian men would abuse children “if no one found out”.

The research, conducted by the University of New South Wales, found “concerning” patterns, including that one in six Australian men said they had feelings for children under the age of 18, with 48 per cent of those answering being aged over 54.

One in 15 men questioned admitted they would have xesual contact with a child under the age of 14 if “no one found out”, while one in 25 said the same about children under 10.

The odds of a respondent saying they would have had xes with someone under the age of 18 was 10 times higher if they were aged over 65.

The survey, which questioned over 1900 men aged between 18 and 65 years old, is the world’s largest child sexual abuse perpetration prevention survey of its kind.

The study was welcomed by those who say that the common nature of xesual violence against women needs to be studied at the perpetrator level as well as with victims.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/millions-of-men-would-sexually-abuse-children-if-secrecy-was-sure-ncf9lx5v7

AIBU to be find it disturbing that these were the men only willing to admit it and its probably alot higher??

Reminds me of that red*it thread about men getting aroused changing their daughters diapers or that other study that showed men would happily commit rape if they were assured to never be revealed/caught.

What can we as women/parents/men that don't fall into the above statistics do to combat this ? How can we ensure our sons are not thinking these thoughts are ok?

Yes. A male friend at Uni declared to me without thought or hesitation that if he found he had 6 months to live he’d ‘steal loads of money and rape as many beautiful women as possible’ To him it was a perfectly reasonable thing to say and think.

is anyone genuinely surprised?

im disgusted. But not surprised in the slightest.

If I had six months to live I'd cut off the penises of as many rapists as possible.

I’m a bit suspicious of a survey of men 18-65 where most of the disturbing responses come from men over 65.

This is vile and so disturbing, although this but doesn’t make sense…

“The odds of a respondent saying they would have had xes with someone under the age of 18 was 10 times higher if they were aged over 65.

The survey, which questioned over 1900 men aged between 18 and 65 years old, is the world’s largest child sexual abuse perpetration prevention survey of its kind.”

Did they question over 65 year olds or not?

The only way I've described paedophilia on this thread is as a psychosexual disorder. Which it is, as is hebephilia.

Hebephilia is not classified as a disorder of any description.

Discussed here in The Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and Law.

https://jaapl.org/content/39/1/78

The key paragraph.

"As we shall see in the second section of this article, attraction to pubescent individuals is far too widespread to be considered unusual or bizarre and has not been considered to be evidence of a paraphilia in any of the DSMs from DSM-I all the way through to DSM-IV-TR. Given the rightful illegality of predatory sexual relationships with minors, being intensely sexually aroused by adolescents may predispose the individual with such inclinations to committing a crime, but the attraction in and of itself is not an indicator of mental disorder."

Whilst this paragraph notes the illegality of sex with pubescent children it also very clearly normalises it.

Yes, they did. It's been reported incorrectly. Here is the original paper:

https://www.humanrights.unsw.edu.au/sites/default/files/documents/Identifying%20and%20understanding%20child%20sexual%20offending%20behaviour%20and%20attitudes%20among%20Australian%20men.pdf

Yes, I agree.

A few years ago a police operation (Operation Ore) was launched to catch viewers of child pornography. I watched a documentary on it. One of the officers said “the sheer number of men is shocking. And they’re so ordinary. They’re often married, with kids of their own. The majority have never been arrested before and have no criminal record.”

I have a nasty feeling many of the men in our lives (neighbours, friends, etc) hide all kinds of fantasies about young girls. I’ve noticed men staring at 10 or 11 year old girls playing about at barbecues on summer evenings. And I mean good, decent men - not creepy little weirdos. I remember being in a beer garden once and catching my 67-year-old FIL virtually drooling over a girl playing on the swings. It was a summer evening and she was wearing tight shorts. She was probably 12. He was chatting away, but I noticed him staring at her out the corner of his eye when he thought we weren’t looking. Horrible. This is why we should ALWAYS be hyper-vigilant. We should never completely trust adult men around young girls, especially in schools, hospitals, orphanages, care homes, etc. I have known several women in my life who were sexually abused as kids but never told anyone.

Key findings of the study:

Around one in six (15.1%) Australian men reports sexual feelings towards children.
Approximately one third of this group reports sexually offending against children.
Around one in ten (9.4%) Australian men has sexually offended against children. Approximately half of this group (4.9%) reports sexual feelings towards children.

In total, almost one in five (19.6%) Australian men in the study have sexual feelings for children and/or have sexually offended against children. The 4.9% of men with sexual feelings who have sexually offended against children differed from men with no sexual feelings or offending against children on a number of measures:

Relationships
They were more likely to be married and reported higher levels of social support.

Employment and wealth
They were almost three times more likely to be working with children.
They were more likely to earn a higher income

Health and wellbeing
They were more likely to report mild, moderate or severe anxiety and depression.
They were over four times more likely to report weekly binge drinking.

Childhood abuse and neglect
They reported approximately twice the rate of adverse childhood experiences. They were over six times more likely to report being sexually abused as children.

Attitudes to child sexual abuse
They were more than 25 times more likely to hold attitudes conducive to online child sex offending.

Online behaviour
They were more likely to use the internet more frequently and intensively. They were much more active on social media. They were significantly more likely to use encrypted apps and privacy services. They were twice as likely to own cryptocurrency and over five times more likely to use cryptocurrency for online purchasing.

Pornography consumption
They were over eleven times more likely to watch violent pornography and over twenty six times more likely to watch bestiality pornography.
They were over sixteen times more likely to purchase sexual content online. 29.6% of those with sexual feelings towards children want help; this is 4.5% of Australian men. These men were more likely to have sexually offended against children online and offline than men with sexual feelings who did not want help

Whenever people chuntering about the pushback about same sex spaces and women’s rights refer to section28 and just like the stigma gay people endured, I think it’s actually more akin to PIE in the 70s. An attempt to legitimise and garner sympathy for something society needs to double down about.

I agree. Some extraordinary naivety on this thread.

I'm not surprised the over 65's were more likely at all - as previous posters have said in the 70's many older family men were getting teenage girls pregnant. This probably reminds them of their heyday.

No they're not, they've been latching onto lbgt, and it's not the first time they've tried similar.

You must live under a rock

Quite.

I totally agree. It helps us to protect more children. It is wrong to stress puberty as some kind of threshold beyond which it becomes OK, or somehow less horrific to have sex with a child.

We need to focus both research and treatment toward anyone attracted to minors of any description.

I agree. But it isn’t just the Indian community. I have known at least six women in my life (all white) who were sexually abused, and none of them went to the police. Even as late as the 1990s people just didn’t talk about it. My friend (who had been a child in the 1970s) was sexually abused by her step grandad. One day, when she was 10, he stuck his tongue down her throat in broad daylight in the middle of a park. A woman was passing and said “you shouldn’t be doing that sort of thing,” as if she’d just caught him peeing in the bushes or allowing his dog to foul the pavement. Unbelievable.

I’m convinced the sexual abuse of young people was absolutely rife in this country until very recently. From what I have read and heard I suspect it went on in orphanages, schools, gymnasiums, etc, but was simply laughed off. I went to a state school in Essex in the 1980s. One of the male teachers set up a girls football team, which he ran on his own. He was a weird little guy. At school assemblies the teacher would say “Mr X has asked me to remind you that places are still available in the girl’s football team” and the whole assembly would start laughing - including the teachers. There was this unspoken agreement that he was a pervert and was running the team for sexual kicks, and it was treated as a joke!!! I mean wtf were those teachers doing smirking and laughing about it?!

Yeah.

And this really emphasises, imo, the need to retain judgement and shaming.

These men are inhibited by shame- they don’t want to be caught. So we ramp up the shame. Make it unthinkable.

Obviously there will still be those who do it ‘if no one finds out’, but we need to keep up the pressure.

If it becomes ok when people find out then frankly it will be carnage for (mainly) girls and boys.

Social mores are important. We shouldn't be trying to get rid of the stigma of men (and a few women) who either sexually abuse children directly or provide a market for that sexual abuse by consuming media of child sexual abuse. I don't believe it is ever a victimless crime.

Just like the racism that the older generation showed in Brexit - these are things they do think should be acceptable because in "their day" there wasn't such a "fuss" about it. They haven't fully accepted why things have changed. Reinforcing the damage done and trying to make them empathise in some way would probably help, although at older ages I suspect it would be harder to change perceptions and their view on societal norms.

@Hartley99 I do not disagree. Abusers look for opportunities and come in all shapes, sizes and ethnicities. The issue we have within the Indian community is however acute and women and girls are simply afraid to do anything or report abuse and this is now not 10 or 20 years ago.

@Hartley99 @Cyclebabble very interesting posts.

I agree that it was rife in the UK, and would like to think it’s less prevalent now, but sadly suspect it isn’t. Would agree it’s probably easier to speak out in UK as opposed to India.

I worked as a local journalist many years ago and often covered local court stories. I’d often suggest we covered the child sex abuse stories, but they’d often not even make the paper as the editor didn’t think they were news! Apparently, ‘it happened all the time’ and people weren’t surprised! Or interested.

Not really a fair comment, given that there was no stigma attached to PIE while it was thriving. Most people hadn't even heard the word 'paedophile'. In the present day, few have heard of 'hebephile'. I do think it's more useful to have one term covering both groups - there's a large overlap, in any case.

Tbh, I'd rather the new term were 'kiddy fiddlers' because everyone understands that! But I suppose Minor Attracted will do.

When we were 14 a girl in my year was pregnant by a 30 year old. He moved in with her and her mother and she had a second child at 16. Then she left school.

That is horrible.

I was regularly at the pub by 15. I was kissed by some skanky man, idk how old he was but he was well into his 20s, maybe more. I was so taken by him… except he was apparently seeing another girl in my year and I was horrendously bullied because of the kiss… all (unbeknownst to me) whilst living with a woman, whom he got pregnant around about the same time. He organised to see me several times, mostly standing me up. I didn’t realise why he never came as agreed at the time but it’s obvious, he’d preyed on another teen or was with his partner etc.

My friend was pregnant and married at 16 to a 35 year old. A group of us went to the wedding. We discussed that he was a bit too old and that 30 was our cut off point. 🤬 Unsurprisingly he turned out to be abusive and they divorced.

Yep, similar studies have shown a worryingly large proportion of men would have sex with women without their consent (i.e. rape) if they could get away with it.

I underwent my first attempted rape at 12. One perpetrator, five other men watching as if it were a fun circus act or something. Fortunately, another pal of theirs came along and went ballistic. I'm very grateful to him, but wtf the other men??!